House of Commons

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

Monday 2 March 2015

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

1. How many academies have reported a decline in exam results in the last year.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

This year’s key stage 4 results are the first since crucial reforms to our qualification and accountability systems, which were designed to raise the bar for our children, came into force. Overall, the proportion of pupils achieving A* to C grades including English and maths in state schools fell across all types of school. There has been a 71% increase in the number of pupils taking the key academic subjects that will prepare them better for life in modern Britain.

[John Mann]

That was a bit of a non-answer. If an academy is successful, parents are happy and so am I, but what if an academy is getting bad results and is on the way down? What powers are there for local people to enable them to have any influence whatsoever on the future of that academy?

[Nicky Morgan]

I do not think that saying that 71% of pupils are taking the more academic subjects most highly valued by employers and universities could be described as a non-answer. In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question, I am sure that as the local Member of Parliament he will be working closely with the regional schools commissioner, the head teacher, the teachers and the governors of that school. What we all want at the end of the day is the best possible education for our young people.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

I was able to see for myself at Kennington Church of England junior academy on Friday the benefits of academy status in improving a school that has had serious weaknesses in the past. Does the Secretary of State agree that academy status increasingly benefits not just secondary schools but primary schools?

[Nicky Morgan]

I agree very much with my right hon. Friend. He will want to know that the first wave of sponsored primary academies, which opened in September 2012, has seen the proportion of pupils achieving levels 4 and above in reading, writing and maths increase by 9 percentage points, double the rate of improvement in local authority-maintained schools over the same period.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware of the Grace academy in Coventry. She facilitated a meeting with one of her Ministers and we are grateful for that, but she will understand—and I hope will therefore follow it up closely herself—that the proof of the pudding will be in the effective action taken to deal with the situation. We have no indication that it is improving and the career prospects of 1,000 young children are being put at risk.

[Nicky Morgan]

I was pleased to facilitate the hon. Gentleman’s meeting with the Minister in question, one of my excellent team of Ministers. We will of course always maintain a close watch over all academies and their results. He might like to know that secondary converter academies perform well above average, with 64% of pupils achieving five or more good GCSEs in 2014 compared with 54% in local authority schools.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

Late last week, it was announced that Pendle primary academy in Brierfield has been rated as good with outstanding features and outstanding behaviour by Ofsted, a big turnaround for a school deemed to be in need of major improvement just two years ago, before it became an academy. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating the principal, Mrs Burnside, all the staff and the outstanding Nelson and Colne college, which sponsors Pendle primary academy?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. It is an absolute pleasure to congratulate the head teacher, Mrs Burnside, and all the staff, governors and pupils on their hard work in achieving those spectacular results. I greatly enjoyed my recent visit to schools in Pendle.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

2. What recent assessment she has made of the effect of the cost of child care on the household disposable income of parents with disabled children.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

This Government have introduced the biggest reforms to special educational needs and disabilities provisions in 30 years, reforms that enjoy cross-party support. Every disabled child, like all other three and four-year-olds, is entitled to a free 15 hours of early education, and the situation is the same for disadvantaged two-year-olds. In addition, when tax-free child care is introduced, parents of disabled children will get double the allowance of other families at £4,000. The disabled child element of universal credit is £4,300, on top of all the other benefits parents of disabled children receive.

[Liz McInnes]

The cross-party parliamentary inquiry into child care for disabled children found that 92% of parents with disabled children reported difficulties in finding suitable child care for their children. As child care costs overall continue to rise, particularly for disabled children, that figure can only continue to grow. What is the Minister doing to ensure sufficient places for disabled children?

[Mr Gyimah]

On the cost of child care in general, let me point out that the Labour party left us with the highest child care costs in the OECD; they went up by 50% when it was in government. This Government have been helping parents with the cost of child care, particular parents with disabled children, whom the hon. Lady mentioned. Local authorities have a legal duty to secure sufficient child care for working parents in their area. As far as free entitlement is concerned, local authorities that set the rate they pay for free entitlement can pay for additional hours, on an hourly basis and tailored to individual children, from the dedicated schools grant.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The Minister’s words to parents of children with disabilities are just that. Can he explain the reality of the situation for families who have a child with a disability when the proportion of local authorities reporting that they have sufficient places for children with disabilities has fallen by seven points in just one year to only a fifth? That is the reality for parents of children with disabilities. Can he please explain what happened last year?

[Mr Gyimah]

Of course the cost of child care for children with disabilities is high, because the ratios are higher. They often need one-to-one care, and sometimes more. When children have really complex needs, staff need additional training in order to provide that care. The reason tax-free child care has been doubled to £4,000 from the £2,000 for every other family is to give parents the additional financial power they will need to provide more child care. It has also been extended from age 12, so the parent of a disabled child can now access tax-free child care until their child is 17. That also applies to specialist care regulated by the Care Quality Commission.

[Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

3. If she will undertake a reassessment of the merits of grammar schools.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

The law prohibits the establishment of new grammar schools, but we fully support the right of all good schools to expand, and that applies to grammar schools too. What is most important is that all children have access to a good local school, and we are committed to delivering that through our academies and free schools programmes.

[Douglas Carswell]

Does the Minister have much sympathy with the argument that academically selective schools in the state sector can enhance social mobility?

[Nicky Morgan]

I know that the hon. Gentleman’s party says that it has a clear policy on grammar schools—that is a relief, because at least it has a clear policy on something. Does he agree with his party’s leader, who said that the party was not going to publish its manifesto until as late as practically possible? May I suggest 8 May?

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Why is the Secretary of State pursuing a policy that is attacking grammar schools with large sixth forms, which are being underfunded for their A-level provision?

[Nicky Morgan]

I am well aware of that issue, which has been raised in a Westminster Hall debate in recent weeks. We fully support sixth forms and want to see them continue, but the hon. Lady will be aware of the economic condition in which her party left this country.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

How can the Secretary of State be so sure that expanding grammar schools will enhance opportunities for our most deprived young people and not just perpetuate and reinforce existing social privileges?

[Nicky Morgan]

The hon. Lady might have misheard my answer to a previous question. This Government are in favour of expanding all good schools. I think that she will want to recognise that we have 1 million more children in good or outstanding schools as a result of this Government’s education policies.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

13. May I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement on extending grammar school provision in Kent? Does she agree that grammar schools are an important part of the diversity in our education system that gives parents the best possible choice of the kind of school that suits their children?

[Nicky Morgan]

I agree with my hon. Friend that parents being able to make the right choice for their child is exactly what we want to see, because they know their child best. I should make it clear that the Department is currently considering the proposals that have been put to us by a school in Kent, and I expect to reach a decision in due course.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

4. If her Department will publish a ranking of the property data survey programme of participant schools.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

Through the priority school building programme 2, we have used the property data survey to allocate £2 billion to rebuild and refurbish buildings in the worst conditions at 277 schools across the country. We have no plans to publish a ranking of surveyed schools.

[Craig Whittaker]

The previous Secretary of State said that Calder high school was one of the worst he had seen in England. Similarly, when the Prime Minister came to Todmorden, he pledged money for the rebuilding of Todmorden high school. Despite those assurances, so far neither school has received any money. Will the Minister pledge to do as was initially intended and make transparent the priority listings of all schools surveyed under the property data survey programme so that we can see how robust they are?

[Mr Laws]

I know that my hon. Friend is a champion of the schools in his constituency, including the two that he mentions. In addition to the priority school building programme phase 2 funding, we recently announced £4.2 billion of funding for the improvement and maintenance of school buildings over the next three years, and his local authority is able to draw down on those moneys allocated to its area for the schools that he mentions. On the ranking of schools, we have no plans to publish a ranking list of surveyed schools, which could be misleading without taking into account other information supplied by schools and local authorities with their PSBP 2 bids.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

5. What recent discussions she has had with teachers associations and unions on teacher work loads.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

The Secretary of State and I engaged with teachers associations and unions in the discussions about teacher work loads, most recently through the work load challenge. I welcome their contribution to the debate, including through the programme of talks at the Department for Education.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The Government’s own figures show that the average primary teacher is working 60 hours a week. Teachers in Bristol tell me that their work load is at an unsustainable level and that the accountability system in particular has reached absurd levels and demonstrates a profound lack of trust in teachers. Teachers are too often unsung heroes, under-appreciated and overworked. When is the Minister going to let them just get on and do their job?

[Mr Laws]

The work load burden on teachers, which has been present for some time in this country, including under the Labour Government, is precisely the reason that we established the work load challenge. The hon. Lady will have seen the comprehensive and detailed plan that we published, which we believe will help over time to drive down the unnecessary work load of teachers.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

As a former teacher, may I say that teacher work load really matters? The 10% increase that was shown up in the work load survey, which the Minister published only after being hounded for some considerable time by the Opposition, is contributing to low morale and to a looming teacher training and recruitment crisis. The response from the Government that he mentioned has been roundly rejected by teachers, thousands of whom have taken the trouble to tell Ministers of the negative impact of Government policy on teacher work loads. Do we not need a new beginning for teachers, with a Government who take seriously the impact that work load pressures are having on teacher morale and on children’s learning?

[Mr Laws]

I would gently make two points. First, let us look back at some of what has been said by the teacher unions about the Government’s response. The National Association of Head Teachers said that it believes that

“the proposals for better planning and greater notice of changes are a step in the right direction. They could do a great deal to improve the quality of education”.

Secondly, I do not think the Labour party is in any position to give any lectures about Government communications with teachers. After all, the hon. Gentleman’s boss, the shadow Secretary of State, was recently contacted by one parent teacher group to ask about Labour policy and he replied with eight words:

“Stop moaning. Read the speeches. Do some work.”

That was the Labour party’s response—hardly constructive engagement.

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

6. What assessment she has made of recent trends in the number of pupils taking up STEM subjects.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

9. What assessment she has made of recent trends in the number of pupils taking up STEM subjects.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Record numbers of students are taking mathematics and the sciences at A-level—15% more students took physics in 2014 than in 2010. Maths is now the single most popular A-level, with an increase of 13% since 2010, but more needs to be done. We need even more young people to take these subjects at A-level. That is why we are supporting the Your Life campaign headed by Edwina Dunn of Dunnhumby, which aims to increase the numbers taking maths and physics A-level by 50% over the next three years.

[Karen Lumley]

When I visit engineering companies in Redditch, I find that one of their main issues is attracting apprenticeships or graduates, especially women. Does my hon. Friend agree that along with the take-up of STEM subjects, we need to encourage students to see that careers in engineering are a great choice for all?

[Mr Gibb]

Indeed. We want all young people to have the right careers advice so that they take informed decisions about their future and so that they are aware of all the options available—including, as my hon. Friend said, apprenticeships—and of the advantages that studying maths and the sciences to A-level can bring.

[Heather Wheeler]

Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating students from the William Allitt school in my constituency, who have been shortlisted as finalists in the national science and engineering competition, The Big Bang UK young scientists and engineers fair at Birmingham NEC from 11 to 14 March? This is the UK’s biggest celebration of technology, engineering and maths for young people.

[Mr Gibb]

I am pleased to add my congratulations to students from the William Allitt school. The national science and engineering competition, which receives £350,000 of funding from the Government, is an excellent example of a positive initiative that helps to promote and to recognise achievement in STEM subjects. I wish my hon. Friend’s constituents every success in the final stage of the competition, and I look forward to attending the Big Bang fair next week.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Recent research found that more than a third of schools in Newcastle do not offer triple science at GCSE. Newcastle has a thriving digital and information and communications technology hub, and a history of fantastic scientific achievement such as the recent mitochondrial breakthrough. What is the Minister doing to make sure that every pupil in Newcastle can access triple science if they have the talent to do so?

[Mr Gibb]

I share the hon. Lady’s desire that every school should offer three separate sciences at GCSE; that is very important. That is why the EBacc is such an important measure. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we have seen a 70% increase in the numbers taking those core academic subjects, which are vital to keeping opportunities open for young people.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The Minister says that he wants more young people to be taking maths and science subjects, but does he acknowledge that there is a chronic shortage of teachers applying for STEM subjects? Why has that happened, and what action are the Government taking to reverse this serious problem for young people and for the wider economy?

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. That is why the Prime Minister recently announced a new £67 million package of measures over the next five years to increase the skills and subject knowledge of 15,000 existing maths and physics teachers and to recruit an additional 2,500 teachers over the course of the next Parliament. As the hon. Gentleman will know, bursaries of up to £25,000 are available to trainee teachers with high degrees in maths and physics. As he will also know, some 17% of teacher trainees now hold a first-class degree and 73% of current trainee teachers hold a 2:1 degree or higher.

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

The excellent new curriculums for computing and for design and technology can do much to inspire young people to take up STEM subjects, but further to the Minister’s last answer, can he reassure me that we recruit enough teachers to teach these important subjects?

[Mr Gibb]

I can provide my hon. Friend with that reassurance. We are offering generous bursaries, including in computer science, to attract the highest quality graduates into teaching.

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

7. What assessment she has made of which of her Department’s policies since May 2010 has been most successful in achieving its original objectives.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

There have been many outstanding achievements during this Parliament, but I particularly highlight our reforms to raise standards in schools as a key success. This has led to more children than ever before—as I said, almost 1 million pupils—attending a school rated good or outstanding by Ofsted.

[Mr Stuart]

We currently have the fastest expanding economy in the western world, which is obviously extremely welcome, but the improvement in standards in our schools has come about because of recruitment of the best possible graduates into the profession. What more can the Government do to ensure that these graduates come into our schools, particularly those in rural and coastal areas?

[Nicky Morgan]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. We now need to see excellent teaching right the way across the system in every school. Every child’s life chances are only as good as the quality of teaching they receive. That is why the Prime Minister recently announced that our manifesto would include a national teaching service to encourage more good teachers to enter the profession and to be represented in all schools right across the country.

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

Any reputable organisation evaluating its success employs external consultants or impartial people, or at least consults its consumers. When I go round schools in this country, as I do very regularly, I find a devastated landscape. Does the Secretary of State agree? I find unaccountable schools, a top-down culture, a restricted curriculum, and a very low regard for this Secretary of State.

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his most charming remarks, but no, I completely disagree about the landscape that he finds. I find excellent schools up and down the country; brilliant, highly qualified teachers working incredibly hard; rigorous academic standards; and a tough but worthy new curriculum that is introducing subjects such as coding and computing, as we have heard. Now our task is to make sure that excellence is spread right the way across the country.

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

School sport partnerships were scrapped very early on in 2010 and have been replaced with various measures, which I am very pleased to welcome. May I have an assurance that something has now been set, that it will continue and that we can build back to where we were with the excellent partnerships?

[Nicky Morgan]

The introduction of the sport premium means that we have given substantial funds directly to heads and teachers to spend in their school. The number of sports and the amount of time that pupils are spending on physical activity are going up each week. The Prime Minister has made a commitment to keep that funding until 2020. On a school visit last week, I saw that a fantastic co-ordinator was being employed to get all the young people moving.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

In 2010 the Conservative party manifesto promised to

“close the attainment gap between the richest and poorest”,

so can the Secretary of State tell the House whether, over the past two years, since the roll-out of coalition policy, the attainment gap between pupils on free school meals and their better-off classmates has narrowed or widened?

[Nicky Morgan]

I can say to the hon. Gentleman, without equivocation, that it has narrowed. The 2014 key stage 4 results show that the gap between disadvantaged and other pupils has narrowed by almost 4% since 2012.

[Tristram Hunt]

Oh dear, it is yet another reprimand for the Secretary of State from the UK Statistics Authority, because the attainment gap is widening on her watch. According to Teach First,

“things are getting worse for poorer children, instead of better.”

When it comes to education, at the end of this Parliament this Government have failed. There are more unqualified teachers, failing free schools, chaos and confusion in the school system, falling youth apprenticeships, a teacher recruitment crisis, class sizes rocketing and too many pupils taught in schools that are not judged good. Is that not the reason that, come 8 May, we will have a Labour Government ready to clean up this mess, invest in and reform our schools, and offer every child an outstanding education?

[Nicky Morgan]

It might have helped if the hon. Gentleman could have said any of that with a straight face, but he could not because he knows it is all utter drivel. We see fewer unqualified teachers, more children educated in schools rated good by Ofsted and the gap between disadvantaged and advantaged children falling. As we saw with the Labour party’s tuition fee policy announcement last week, Labour’s education policies are a farce, like scenes from “Nuns on the Run”.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

8. What assessment she has made of the potential benefits to pupils of the expansion of the Troops to Teachers programme.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

Service leavers have a wealth of skills and experiences that are transferable to classrooms, including teamwork, leadership—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There is very discordant noise in the Chamber. A very respected Minister, Mr Timpson, is endeavouring to answer a question and I think pupils in the average classroom around the country would behave rather better. I remind the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), in all gentleness and charity, that he is something of an elder statesman in this House and we look to him to set an example to other colleagues.

[Mr Timpson]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Anyone would imagine that there is an election on the horizon.

There are 84 trainees on the Troops to Teachers scheme and the expansion of the programme allows even more talented service leavers to make an important contribution to our children’s education.

[Caroline Dinenage]

My Gosport constituency has very strong links to the armed forces, particularly in Navy engineering. Does my hon. Friend agree that schemes such as Troops for Training can only help to spread expertise to students in my area?

[Mr Timpson]

I absolutely agree. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State recently visited Bristol to see for herself the latest cohort being trained, and she was hugely impressed by both their calibre and their commitment. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), I strongly encourage schools in Gosport and elsewhere to contact the university of Brighton to secure a trainee for this September and benefit from the next tranche of Troops to Teachers.

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

10. What steps she is taking to encourage pupils to study modern languages.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

The new curriculum requires all maintained primary schools to teach a foreign language to pupils from the age of seven. The number of entries for a modern language GCSE has increased by 20% since 2010 due to the introduction of the English baccalaureate performance measure, a major step towards remedying the enormous damage to foreign language teaching in schools caused by the previous Labour Government’s 2004 decision about the curriculum.

[Mr Evans]

“Ya khochu govorit’ svobodno po-russki”, possibly means “I want to speak Russian fluently.” For somebody of my age, it is an ambition I might hope to reach before I die, but youngsters tend to be more adept at learning foreign languages. Could we do more to encourage even more youngsters to learn Russian, Arabic and Mandarin not only to open doors in their minds, but to make their worth even more attractive in the employment market?

[Mr Gibb]

Spasibo, Mr Speaker. The number taking Russian GCSE has increased from 1,500 in 2010-11 to about 2,000 in 2013-14. I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of languages for the economy, and for learning about other cultures. According to a report by the CBI published in 2014, 65% of businesses say they value foreign language skills, most importantly for building relations with overseas customers.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

On the subject of businesses and foreign languages, what work is the Minister doing to get companies more closely involved with secondary schools to make learning foreign languages relevant, and to put the business application and the real-life experience together?

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. The careers and enterprise company recently announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is doing precisely that—inspiring schools and young people to engage with business in considering their future careers. The importance of that has been shown by other surveys. The Economist this week points to a 2012 British Chambers of Commerce survey of 8,000 British companies, reporting that 96% of them had no foreign language speakers. In a country like Britain—an international trading nation—that is a disgrace and something we are working hard to remedy.

[Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

Are not our horizons still too limited? With the advent of IT and refinements in distance learning, should not any child in any school be able to learn any language?

[Mr Gibb]

I agree with my hon. Friend that that should be possible, and we are doing everything we can to encourage more young people to study a foreign language. The problem is that a decision was taken by the previous Labour Government in 2004 to remove the compulsory nature of taking languages to GCSE, and that has had a devastating effect on the numbers doing so. We have reversed that trend.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

11. If she will take steps to promote the establishment of more sixth-form colleges.

[The Minister for Skills and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

We have supported the creation of new sixth-form schools, such as Exeter Mathematics school, the London Academy of Excellence in Newham and Sir Isaac Newton sixth-form school in Norwich, but we do not currently plan to promote the establishment of more sixth-form colleges.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The Minister will have seen the statistics showing that sixth-form colleges outperform other providers of 16-to-18 education on every measure of academic success and in value for money. Does he not therefore agree that an intelligent Government would seek actively to establish many more sixth-form colleges, instead of allowing their numbers to reduce?

[Nick Boles]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s support for and admiration of the work of sixth-form colleges, which are generally fantastic institutions producing great results, but I disagree with him on this obsession with particular forms and structures. I agree with him that schools that are dedicated to teaching 16 to 19-year-olds in sixth forms do very well, which is why we have supported the creation of so many sixth-form schools, but whether they are schools or colleges is a second-order issue.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I can assure my hon. Friend that in the Sixth Form college in Farnborough we have one of the finest structures in the country. However, sixth-form colleges are facing a challenge because they are eligible for VAT, unlike sixth forms in mainstream schools. Will my hon. Friend do something to remedy that anomaly because it is really having an effect on not only my sixth-form college but many others around the country?

[Nick Boles]

We absolutely recognise this “anomaly”, as my hon. Friend calls it, which also applies to further education colleges. It goes along with other freedoms that schools and academies do not have—sixth-form colleges have the freedom to borrow in a way that academies do not—but we nevertheless recognise that this issue is of concern to a lot of sixth-form colleges, and we are actively discussing ways in which we might ameliorate it. However, to get rid of the problem entirely would cost many tens of millions of pounds, which would require us to identify savings that we cannot find at the moment.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I understand that the Minister, who recognises this “anomaly”, has in his rather amiable way when visiting sixth-form colleges been encouraging some of them to consider going for academy status. When that happens, however, his noble friend Lord Nash says, “This isn’t on mate”. Which is right? Can colleges go for academy status or not?

[Nick Boles]

Lord Nash and I are not only great friends but we agree entirely on this issue. It is legally possible under existing provisions for a college to convert to academy status, but there are issues around how the VAT will be dealt with, and how any debt that it has already amassed will be dealt with on its balance sheet. Those issues are tricky, but we are looking at them.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

Successive rounds of cuts to sixth-form and further education colleges are having a devastating effect. One principal of a college in the west country—a college recently judged by Ofsted as outstanding and a beacon college—recently told The Times Educational Supplement that

“cuts have taken us to the edge”,

and added that any further cuts would threaten the services the college offers.

Will the Minister commit to Labour’s pledge to protect the education budget in real terms?

[Nick Boles]

I will not commit to a pledge that is as unfunded as every pledge that Labour has made since 2010. Labour Members think that they will pay for all this out of a tax on bankers’ bonuses that has so far been used about 27 times. There was no money left according to the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and that is because Labour has absolutely no idea how to run a budget.

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

12. What support her Department is providing for the establishment of a college of teaching.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

Nothing in schools matters more than good teaching, and we are proud to have so many dedicated professionals in our classrooms. An independent professional body could play a valuable part in raising the status and standards of teaching, and give teachers vital support. Our consultation, “A world-class teaching profession”, outlined our commitment to offer support to those seeking to establish such a body, independent of Government, and we will publish our response to the consultation shortly.

[Charlotte Leslie]

The Government’s offer of funding to help a college start up is welcome, but can the Secretary of State reassure me that it will come with no strings attached so that teachers themselves can drive what the college is, and that she will not seek to impose things such as teacher licensing schemes top-down, before this fledgling college has even left the nest?

[Nicky Morgan]

If my hon. Friend knows anything about me she will know that I am not in favour of anything that is top-down, and I agree that the proposed body must be established and owned by teachers for teachers. To be successful, a college of teaching must be free from Government control. Our recent consultation made a commitment to offer support—whether financial or otherwise—if that would be helpful, but the independence of the college from Government remains our overriding concern and our support must not compromise that.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

14. What steps she is taking to ease teachers’ work loads.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

Reducing unnecessary work load is a priority for this Government. In October 2014, we launched the Workload Challenge, asking teachers for views on how to tackle unnecessary work load. On 6 February, we published our response with a comprehensive programme of action.

[Julie Hilling]

Teachers across Bolton West are telling me that they love teaching but are thinking of leaving the profession because they cannot tolerate the work load any longer. Will the Minister set a target for the reduction in work load and limit working hours, rather than just monitoring them?

[Mr Laws]

The risk of that is picking out an arbitrary number, but we are clear that we want to see consequences for the actions we are putting in place, and reduce figures for unnecessary work load. We are commissioning biannual surveys to measure the effectiveness of the policy. I hope that the Labour party will sign up to some of the measures included in the conclusions of the Workload Challenge, including the protocol that would set out minimum lead-in times for significant changes in curriculum qualifications and accountability, which has been very much welcomed by teachers.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

15. How many state secondary schools and colleges in England engage alumni to support students.

[The Minister for Skills and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

We encourage all schools to involve former students in advising young people about career opportunities and the course choices that can lead to them. Future First does excellent work in helping schools to do this.

[Ian Swales]

St Peter’s school in my constituency is in one of the most deprived communities in the country, yet it has produced the current head of performance engineering at the Williams Formula 1 team and the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). Does the Minister agree that such alumni can play a valuable role in raising aspiration in the next generation?

[Nick Boles]

I agree with my hon. Friend absolutely. It is hard to know who I admire more: my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells or the other gentleman he refers to. One of the key tasks of the new careers company being set up by Christine Hodgson is to help every school in the country to have an enterprise adviser, a current or recently retired local executive, who can help the school and the students identify opportunities in the area for their future career.

[Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)]

16. If she will ensure that all children receive age-appropriate sex and relationship education.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Sex and relationship education must be taught in all maintained secondary schools; we believe that most secondary academies and many primary schools also teach it. Any school teaching SRE must have regard to the Secretary of State’s “Sex and Relationship Education Guidance”. The guidance makes it clear that all sex and relationship education should be age-appropriate, and that schools should ensure that young people develop positive values and a moral framework that will guide their decisions, judgments and behaviour.

[Simon Wright]

Will the Minister consider that the ongoing revelations over child sexual exploitation, the explicit content on new technologies widely available to children, and the warnings of the deputy Children’s Commissioner and the Education Committee among others together make an overwhelming case for the urgent introduction of mandatory age-appropriate sex and relationship education, starting at primary school?

[Mr Gibb]

We are considering the report of the Education Committee very carefully and will respond to it in due course. We believe that all schools should teach personal, social, health and economic education and, within that, SRE. Indeed, the introduction to the new national curriculum makes that explicitly clear. What is important is not whether PSHE is statutory, but the quality of the teaching. That is our focus, and we are working with the PSHE Association and other expert bodies to ensure that teachers have the best resources to teach these very sensitive issues.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

18. What progress has been made on attracting former members of the armed forces to become teachers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

There are currently two cohorts of former service leavers on the Troops to Teachers programme, totalling 84 trainees. The university of Brighton is proactively working with the Department for Education and the Ministry of Defence to promote the expansion of the scheme through a targeted marketing and recruitment campaign, including attendance at recruitment fairs and MOD resettlement centres, as well as promotion through a variety of online and other publications.

[Mr Hollobone]

Those who served in Her Majesty’s armed forces represent Britain at its very best. Getting these individuals into our schools needs to be a key priority for any Government. Can the Minister supercharge this policy and put rocket boosters under it so that many more troops are turned into teachers?

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend’s long-standing support for this policy is extremely gratefully received. He will be pleased to hear there has been a huge interest in the latest cohort, which will take up its training in September this year. It is our intention to do what we can to expand the programme in the future for the very good reasons my hon. Friend has given.

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

20. If she will encourage and extend the use of the Teach First scheme.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Teach First has made a real difference to the education and life chances of thousands of children in some of the most disadvantaged areas in our country. Since the Government came to office, we have more than doubled the number of trainees on the programme and spread its reach to every region in the country. For 2015-16, we have expanded the programme again. Funding has been allocated for 2,000 trainees, 33% up on last year. More than 50% of the secondary allocation will focus on priority subjects: maths, science, modern languages, computing, and design and technology.

[Richard Harrington]

I thank the Minister for that comprehensive answer. On a recent visit to the absolutely splendid Grove academy in Watford, it was brought to my attention that it can be difficult for the school, and for Watford schools in general, to attract staff because 2 miles down the road, with London weighting as it is, people receive £2,500 a year more for the same job. Given that Watford is demographically and occupationally similar to most London suburbs, will the Minister look at London weighting in this respect, so that Watford jobs become more competitive with London jobs next door?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend raised these issues when I visited Watford and a number of schools there recently. The pay reforms we have introduced over the last two years have given schools greater flexibility to decide how much they can pay a teacher and how quickly pay progresses. Our reforms are providing schools with the discretion they need to address any school-level recruitment and retention problems they may have. However, as my hon. Friend also knows, decisions about the definitions of inner and outer London and the London fringe area are ultimately a matter for the independent School Teachers Review Body.

[Mr Speaker]

It is good that we have got through all the substantive questions on the Order Paper.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

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

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

As this is the last Education Question Time of this Parliament, I thank colleagues in all parts of the House for their questions, though I particularly thank all staff and governors at the thousands of schools up and down this country who work so hard every day to prepare our young people for life in modern Britain.

In this Parliament, the Government have established more than 4,200 academies, 255 free schools, 37 studio schools and 37 university technical colleges. More than 100,000 more six-year-olds are able to read because of our focus on phonics, and we have introduced the pupil premium, worth £2.5 billion this year. Our plan for education is working.

[Sir Bob Russell]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer, but one thing that the Government have not done is introduce a holistic approach to education for life. If we are talking about positive values and life skills, is it not time that first aid training was made a requirement in the school curriculum?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for spotting one of the things that we have not yet achieved in this Parliament. I agree with him that first aid skills are very important, and I was discussing that only this morning with Natasha Jones, who has been named Tesco community mum of the year for setting up a baby resuscitation project. We also welcome the work of expert organisations such as the British Heart Foundation to support schools in this aspect of teaching and we have been working with the Department of Health on helping schools to procure defibrillators at a reduced price.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

T7. Today is national secondary offer day, yet 24% of the country’s secondary schools are full or over capacity. Given that this Government have wasted £240 million on free school places in areas without any real need for them, what does the Secretary of State say to parents whose children are being crammed into schools that are over capacity?

[Nicky Morgan]

What I say to the hon. Lady, and therefore to anyone who wants to ask questions about this, is that when her party was in government, it stripped 200,000 places at the time of a baby boom and allowed uncontrolled immigration. At the last national offer day—[Interruption.] I suggest that she waits to find out what the offers are this year, but at the last national offer day, 82.5% of pupils were offered a place at the highest preference school and 95.5% were offered a place at one of the top three; and of course, seven out of 10 free schools have been opened in areas of basic need.

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

T2. Little Fatima at Fonthill school in Southmead made two years’ reading progress in just 16 weeks thanks to the “Read on. Get on” scheme. What support are the Government giving to reading recovery schemes such as this?

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

One of the purposes of the phonics check, which we introduced in 2012, is to identify early on those children who are still struggling with the basic reading skill of decoding. We expect schools to focus their resources on helping those children, which is why they retake the check at the end of year 2 to ensure that no child slips through the net. As a result of our policy on reading and the introduction of the phonics check in 2012, 102,000 six-year-olds are today reading more effectively than they would otherwise have done had Labour stayed in office.

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

Given that two secondary academies in my constituency have recently been judged inadequate by Ofsted—one having previously been judged as outstanding, the other as good—the Secretary of State will understand that many of those parents would like to see her working closely and quickly with those schools to get them back to where they need to be. What action is she going to take to ensure that those children in Stockport and in Tameside receive the life chances they deserve?

[Nicky Morgan]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that a good education is exactly that: it is all about enhancing the life chances of all the young people at those schools. If he wants to let us have the names of those schools, I am of course happy to follow the issue up with DFE officials and the regional schools commissioner, as well as working with the heads directly.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

T3. On that subject, does the Secretary of State agree that improving the links with local businesses and schools is key? Will she therefore welcome the interest that David Nieper Ltd has shown in sponsoring Alfreton Grange arts college?

[Nicky Morgan]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend’s points, and I would like to congratulate the company he mentioned on its sponsorship. Professional standards of governance in schools are vital, and we want to make sure that governing boards are focused on recruiting people with the skills for the role. People from business have valuable transferable skills and benefit from board-level experience. I want to see more employers encouraging and supporting their staff to volunteer as governors. This is something I have discussed with the CBI.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

Why does the Conservative party not value education? Why is the Secretary of State happy to see her budget slashed under any future Tory Government? Why will she not make a commitment, as the Labour party has done, to protecting the education budget in real terms rather than delivering a 10% cut to schools over the next Parliament?

[Nicky Morgan]

Why will the hon. Gentleman not secure from his party leader a per pupil funding? Under our spending plans, the next Conservative Government will be spending £590 million more on schools than his party will.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

T4. All Durham’s secondary schools were rated good or outstanding in 2013, and there was such a surplus of places that one school closed. That school became the home of the Durham free school, and I noticed that the Secretary of State was in Durham confirming its closure just last week. Why does she think her Department allowed this waste of taxpayers’ money, and what lessons has it learned?

[Nicky Morgan]

I was pleased to meet some of the parents from the Durham free school, and we discussed various interests. I made it clear to them that my Department operates on the basis of putting the interests of children absolutely first. We will of course look at all the lessons to be learned from the way in which the application was processed and considered in the first place. Nevertheless, 24% of open or free schools have already been judged outstanding by Ofsted, and more have been judged as good. This is a successful programme, but there will inevitably be some issues, and we have taken swift action to deal with problems in this case.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

What help can the Minister give to the Archbishop Sumner primary school—a school in my constituency that has been rated outstanding by Ofsted—which has been trying to become a two-form entry school for some years? Lambeth seems to have taken against that idea, despite it not affecting any of the local schools. Will the Secretary of State get involved in this issue?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising the matter with me. I would be happy to take a look. We can take further details, arrange a meeting and work out ways to raise this issue with the local authority. On the basis of previous conversations, I think both she and I want the same thing, which is for all young people to get the best possible education to set them up for life.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

We have some of the best schools in the country in my Windsor constituency—and perhaps one or two of them are slightly over-represented here in the House of Commons! I speak, of course, of Windsor Boys’ school. Will the Secretary of State commend Windsor Girls’ school for forming a joint academy status with Windsor Boys’ school?

[Nicky Morgan]

I add my congratulations to the two schools on becoming academies. On this side, we firmly believe that academy status puts power in the hands of heads and teachers who know how best to serve their pupils and give them the best possible start in life.

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

Does the Secretary of State agree that all our children should have a full chance of exploiting all their talents in our educational system? If so, why is she cutting further education again when FE is so important to the less privileged in our country? Why has nothing been mentioned in this Question Time about special educational needs or autism or about the fact that so many parents in this country have no chance of help?

[Nicky Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman raised an important point at the end of his question, but to be honest, I am here to answer the questions, not to ask them. It is up to hon. Members to raise the issues, whether they be about special educational needs, autism, disability or any other topic. The Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), would answer any such questions brilliantly, as he always does. On FE, I have already explained that this Government have had to take difficult financial decisions as a result of the legacy that we inherited. I think that the hon. Gentleman would agree that the decision to prioritise spending on early years and on schools for children up to 16 is right because that will be of most benefit to our young people.

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

T5. We may not have Eton in the Ribble Valley, but all our schools are of an incredibly high standard. To make parental choice effective, we must ensure that parents are not stung when youngsters decide to go past their nearest school to a grammar, a faith-based school or, indeed, a non-faith-based school. They might want to go and learn Russian. Will the Secretary of State ensure that she talks to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government so that we make parental choice effective?

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend has raised this matter before. I know that he has campaigned on it, and that he feels passionately about it. I should be happy to talk to Ministers in the Department for Communities and Local Government. I believe that faith schools play an important role in our education system, and I support them. As my hon. Friend is aware from discussions that we have had, I want to encourage all local authorities to arrange school transport flexibly, creatively and innovatively, and to make the best possible use of any gaps in their existing school bus provision.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I understand that the Minister recently visited Shanghai to look at the education system in China. In this respect, the Chinese are more successful than we are in many ways. What is the key difference that makes China’s socialist state system so much more successful than our system, in terms of classrooms, culture and teaching methods, and what did the Minister learn from that?

[Mr Gibb]

In maths, 15-year-olds in Shanghai are three years ahead of 15-year-olds in this country in the programme for international student assessment tables. We look very carefully at international evidence, which is why we sent 71 teachers to Shanghai to study teaching methods there. Now 30 Shanghai teachers are in 20 primary schools in this country, teaching our teachers how to improve their maths teaching. They have a mastery model. Pupils face the front, learn their tables, concentrate for 35 minutes, and use textbooks. We are learning from the best in the world.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I feel sure that there will be a full debate on this matter on one of the long summer evenings that lie ahead of us.

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

T6. Will the Secretary of State commit himself to maintaining a focus on social justice and rooting for those who do not go to university? Will he reject out of hand a policy that has been described by the New Statesman as “dire”, by Martin Lewis as “financially illiterate”, and by The Times as Labour’s worst policy? Tuition fees cuts amounting to £2.7 billion would subsidise the very richest at a time when we need to do more for the very poorest.

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. We are taking money from the welfare budget to pay for apprenticeships that will set our young people up in life, while the Labour party is taking money away from pensioners in order to fund a misguided policy on tuition fees. According to the vice-chancellor of my own university, Loughborough, that policy would make 500 people redundant. Which 500 people in Loughborough does the shadow Secretary of State think should be made redundant?

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I have had a letter from the head teacher of the excellent Baylis Court secondary school in my constituency, pointing out that the cost of payroll changes involving, for instance, national insurance will be £222,000 next year, without funding. Moreover, the education support grant is to be cut by £53 a head. What difference will that makes to the girls’ learning?

[Nicky Morgan]

As we have seen during the current Parliament, schools have been able to raise standards at a time of straitened budgets. I have every faith in them. I believe that they will continue to raise their standards, and that all the young people in that school will benefit.

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

The Secretary of State has been very supportive of the protection of schools against terrorism attacks, and my constituents and I are very grateful for that. Will she update the House on progress in the funding of counter-terrorism measures at independent Jewish schools?

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend has raised an extremely important point. I do not want any young people to feel frightened of attending school or of their journey to and from school, and, sadly, that applies particularly to members of the Jewish community at present. I have had discussions with a number of Jewish organisations about the funds that are required and the estimates that they have provided.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Given that 30% of Birmingham’s population are under the age of 15, there are enormous pressures on school places, which will continue. However, there is no correlation between teacher training places and demand in regions where that demand will increase. Will the Secretary of State address the problem, and ensure that the availability of teacher training places matches regional demands?

[Nicky Morgan]

That is a very interesting point. I shall need to look into exactly how the teacher supply model is calculated each year, but I can tell the hon. Lady that, during the current Parliament, the Government have invested £5 billion to create new school places, and that, because we continue to recognise that there is pressure on the system, we have announced further funding up to 2021.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

We were delighted to see the Orchard special school in Newark added to a list of 16 schools in Nottinghamshire to which funding was provided last month for classrooms. Those of us who know the Orchard school believe it may be beyond repair; this school really is in bad condition. Will the Secretary of State agree to review this case and get back to us?

[Nicky Morgan]

I was delighted last month to be able to announce £6 billion of investment in school buildings for school blocks in the worst condition, but of course, sadly, demand always outstrips supply. If my hon. Friend would like to send me further details, I shall ensure that I or one of the Ministers respond, and perhaps meet him to have a chat about it.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement that she is against top-down imposition. Will she therefore admit that her predecessor made a huge mistake when he ordered the decoupling of AS and A-levels, and put that right before it is too late?

[Nicky Morgan]

I like the hon. Gentleman very much indeed, but I am afraid I am going to have to disagree with him on this, because the evidence shows that having linear exams, where students have much longer to study the subject, benefits them as they understand the subject in depth. This is an important reform and I wait to see the progress it makes.

[Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

This Government have protected school budgets, yet those at the secondary school in my constituency who wrote to me last week say that they are facing a cut of nearly 3% in their funding next year. Is that a result of the long-standing unfair budget formula, is it because of an imbalance between secondary and primary schools, or is it because of decisions taken by Somerset county council locally?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I suspect that it is a combination of factors, and I am sure that Ministers will be happy to look into this further, but he makes an important point about the need to push on with restoring the national fairer funding formula. Too many areas and too many authorities in this country have suffered from funding falling back over many years. We are making progress—small progress—in this Parliament and we hope to make greater progress in the next Parliament in restoring that fairness.

Counter-Terrorism: Conflict Zones

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

15:31

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

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on the Government’s counter-terrorism policy and implications for individuals travelling to the Iraq/Syria conflict zones.

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

As the Government have made clear repeatedly, the threat we face from terrorism is grave and is growing. The House will appreciate that I cannot comment on operational matters and individual cases, but the threat level in the United Kingdom, which is set by the independent joint terrorism analysis centre, is at severe. This means that a terrorist attack is highly likely and could occur without warning.

The Government have consistently and emphatically advised against all travel to Syria and parts of Iraq. Anyone who travels to these areas is putting themselves in considerable danger, and the impact that such a decision can have on families and communities can be devastating.

The serious nature of the threat we face is exactly why the Government have been determined to act. We have protected the counter-terrorism policing budget up to and including 2015-16, and increased the budget for the security and intelligence agencies. In addition, we have provided an additional £130 million to strengthen counter-terrorism capabilities and help address the threat from ISIL, and we have taken significant steps to ensure that the police and the security services have the powers and capabilities they need.

Last year, we acted swiftly to protect vital capabilities that allow the police and the security services to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to clarify the law in respect of interception for communications-service providers. This year we have introduced the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act. This has provided the police with a power to seize a passport at the border temporarily, during which time they will be able to investigate the individual concerned—and I can confirm that this power has already been used. It has created a temporary exclusion order that allows for the managed return to the UK of a British citizen suspected of involvement in terrorist activity abroad. It has strengthened the existing terrorism prevention and investigation measures regime so that, among other measures, subjects can be made to relocate to another part of the country, and it has enhanced our border security for aviation, maritime and rail travel, with provisions relating to passenger data, no-fly lists, and security and screening measures.

Since its national roll-out in April 2012, more than 2,000 people have been referred to Channel, the Government’s programme for people vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism, many of whom might have gone on to be radicalised or to fight in Syria. The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 has now placed Channel on a statutory basis. It has also placed our Prevent work on a statutory basis, which will mean that schools, colleges, universities, prisons, local government and the police will have to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. Already since 2012, local Prevent projects have reached more than 55,000 people and have helped young people and community groups to understand and challenge extremist narratives, including those of ISIL.

In addition to this work, alongside the checks we already conduct on a significant number of passengers who leave the UK, we have committed to reintroducing exit checks, and arrangements to do so will be in place by April 2015. These will extend our ability to identify persons of interest from a security, criminal, immigration or customs perspective. And as the Prime Minister stated last week, the Transport Secretary and I will be working with airlines to put proportionate arrangements in place to ensure that children who are at risk are properly identified and questioned.

The Government are taking robust action, but we have been clear that tackling the extremist threat that we face is not just a job for the Government, the police and the security services; it needs everyone to play their part. It requires educational institutions, social media companies, communities, religious leaders and families to help to protect people vulnerable to radicalisation and to confront this poisonous ideology. If we are to defeat this appalling threat and ideology, we must all work together.

[Yvette Cooper]

An estimated 600 British citizens have now travelled to join the conflict in Syria, from extremists with a terrorist history to 15-year-old schoolgirls. The whole House will share a revulsion at the barbarism of ISIL, a determination to tackle extremism and strong support for the vital and unsung work of the security services and the police to tackle the threat here and abroad. Members on both sides of the House have also recently supported further legislation to tackle the terrorist threat. However, there are specific areas in which we need answers about Government policies and decisions.

First, we need answers on the handling of a west London network of terror suspects. In 2011, court papers described a network including three individuals relocated on control orders, 10 other named individuals and further unnamed individuals based in west London who were

“involved in the provision of funds and equipment”

to terrorism and the

“facilitation of individuals’ travel from the UK”

to join terrorist-related activity.

The Home Secretary’s decision, against advice, to abolish control orders and cancel relocations was implemented in 2012, meaning that no one could then be relocated, despite the continued police view that relocation was one of the best ways to disrupt terrorist networks. One of those who had been relocated absconded in a London black cab; another associate absconded wearing a burqa. Other men from that west London network have been reported in the media as subsequently leaving for Syria and becoming involved in brutal violence. The Home Secretary has finally restored the relocation powers within the past few weeks. Does she believe that her decision to remove those relocation powers made it easier for that west London network to operate, recruit and send people to Syria? Will she now ask the independent terrorism reviewer or the Intelligence and Security Committee to consider the details of that west London network and to assess whether Government policy made it easier for it to operate and harder for the police and the Security Service to disrupt it?

Secondly, we need to know about the Government’s policy to prevent young people and children from travelling to Syria, in the light of the distressing story of three schoolgirls from east London travelling there. I have not had a reply to my letter to the Home Secretary of last Wednesday, so will she tell us now whether the Government had an agreement in place with the airlines to raise alerts over unaccompanied minors travelling on known Syrian routes? If not, why not? And will she put such an agreement in place now? The girls flew out on Tuesday, but they did not leave Istanbul bus station until late Wednesday. It is reported that the police contacted the London embassy on Wednesday, but when were the Istanbul authorities alerted, and when were checks made at the main airports and train and bus stations in that city?

One pupil from Bethnal Green academy is reported to have left for Syria before Christmas, and it is widely known that recruitment is taking place through friendship groups and social media. What training and support was given to the teachers and parents of other children at Bethnal Green academy to prevent further recruitment, grooming and radicalisation? What community-led Prevent programmes is the Home Office currently supporting in Bethnal Green?

When the Home Secretary came to office and changed policy to end relocation orders and to remove community work from Prevent, she claimed that previous policies had failed to tackle extremism and she promised:

“We will not make the same mistakes”.—[Official Report, 7 June 2011; Vol. 529, c. 52.]

We need answers from her now about the mistakes that have been made under this Government, so that we can all work together to strengthen counter-terrorism policy in the face of these serious threats.

[Mrs May]

The shadow Home Secretary has raised a number of serious issues. She asked about Prevent and on that I have to say to her that she needs to stop using the numbers she likes to quote. She tries to compare Prevent before the election with Prevent after the election, but in 2011 we took the very important decision to split work on integration, which is now the sole responsibility of the Department for Communities and Local Government, and Prevent. That was done for very good reasons, and if the right hon. Lady wants to securitise integration work again, I suggest to her that she has not learned from the mistakes made by her Government. I would like her to say, at some stage: whether she supports the changes we have made to Prevent; whether she supports the fact that Prevent now looks at non-violent extremism as well as violent extremism; and whether she supports the changes we have made to make sure that no public money finds its way to extremists, as it did under her Government.

The right hon. Lady made various comments about TPIMs, and has done so outside this Chamber, asking why I did not put certain individuals on TPIMs. I cannot comment on individual cases, but I think she should understand how TPIMs work and how control orders worked. I do not decide to put somebody on a TPIM; the Security Service makes an application to me for permission to put somebody on a TPIM and if it has made a strong enough case, I approve the application. If she thinks that the Home Secretary should be taking operational decisions, I suggest that she should study the history of our constitution.

The right hon. Lady raised the issue of control orders, but, as I have said at this Dispatch Box many times, control orders were being whittled away by the courts—they were not a sustainable system. TPIMs have, in contrast, consistently been upheld by the courts. She mentioned relocation, and, of course, the House has just passed the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, which adds relocation to the TPIM regime. I understand that she told the BBC on Sunday:

“I think effectively—

that TPIMs and control orders are—

“the same thing if you bring the relocation powers back”.

That is precisely what we have done.

The right hon. Lady says the power to relocate has not always been there, but what she fails to say is that the cases that have been raised in the media date from the time when control orders and the power of relocation were in place. At no point has anybody from the police or Security Service said to me that if we had the power of relocation we would be able to prevent people from travelling to Syria. Indeed, at the weekend, Helen Ball, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said—and they have said consistently—

“short of locking someone up for 24 hours a day, you can’t eliminate the risk they pose.”

The shadow Home Secretary herself said yesterday about control orders:

“We can’t pretend it’s going to solve all of the problems.”

I agree with her, which is why we consistently look at the powers available to the police and the security services in dealing with this issue. But, as I made absolutely clear in the answer to her question, this is not just a question of government and the powers we give to the police and to the security services; this is about families and communities as well, and we all need to work together to ensure that we can defeat this poisonous ideology.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

The Home Secretary should be wary of taking advice from Labour Members on control orders, because under the last four years of their regime seven of the so-called “control order” subjects absconded, in some cases, as we know, to commit jihad abroad. However, will she revisit the issue of using intercept evidence in court, as the best protection of the British public is provided by being able to prosecute, convict and lock up the people who are a threat to the British public?

[Mrs May]

I agree that the best way of dealing with these people who pose a threat is to prosecute them and lock them up. That view has been shared with the assistant commissioner with responsibility for counter-terrorism. Indeed the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson, also made that point. On the question about intercept as evidence, that issue has been looked at on a number of occasions over the years. Most recently, it was considered by a cross-party Privy Council group, which reported some months ago and made it absolutely clear that, in the current situation, it was not appropriate to change the arrangements such that intercept should be used as evidence.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Ind)]

No one is suggesting that there is any range of measures that would completely eliminate the risk of people travelling to Syria and Iraq. My right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary has certainly not done so. But since the Home Secretary has now reintroduced the power of relocation, does she not accept that removing that power in 2011 was a mistake?

[Mrs May]

We took the decision that we did in 2011 based on the situation at the time. We have now reviewed the measures that are available and put other measures in place. I repeat what I said earlier, which is that some of the cases that have been quoted in the press go back to a date when control orders with relocation were in place.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the Home Secretary agree that it is quite right that when the identity of some brainwashed, narcissistic psychopathic killer is exposed there should be wide media coverage of it? But does she also agree that a degree of self-restraint at some point should be necessary if we are not to build up these bogey men in precisely the way that they intend us to do?

[Mrs May]

I accept my hon. Friend’s point. Indeed, as others have said, including Helen Ball in her interview yesterday, there are other reasons why restraint should be applied, and they include when there are ongoing investigations and when there may be a risk to life involved.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I am sure that the Home Secretary has heard the anguished pleas of the parents of Shamina, Kadiza and Amira, the three London schoolgirls who have left this country. They left on the Tuesday, but the Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey says that the Turkish authorities in Istanbul were not informed until three days later. I accept that the embassy in London may have been alerted, but this is something that should have gone straight to Istanbul. Will she look again at the circumstances so that we know exactly what the facts are, and will she look at a recommendation made by the Home Affairs Committee, which is that police spotters need to be placed in Istanbul, a destination of concern, so that immediate action can be taken if young girls disappear in this way?

[Mrs May]

I always look with great care at the recommendations of the Home Affairs Committee. The Metropolitan police have been absolutely clear about the date and time at which they alerted the Turkish authorities to the girls going missing. There is concern over this matter. Sadly, we have seen, over time, an increasing number of women and girls going to Syria, alongside the men and the younger boys. This is an ongoing matter, which is why Home Office officials have been talking to Turkish airlines about these issues. I will meet the Transport Secretary to see whether further arrangements can be put in place to ensure that we do not see other families facing the same trauma and stress.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

We are of course all concerned about radicalisation in the UK and people going to join ISIS, but I urge the Home Secretary not to give way to the authoritarian views of the Labour party as it was wrong on identity cards, wrong on 90-day detention without charge and is wrong now. Will she update the House on what progress she has made on implementing the Anderson recommendations, which are a far more sensible way to resolve this matter?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend will know that we did in fact take on board a number of Anderson’s recommendations in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill. David Anderson is carrying out a fuller review for the Government on the question of the threat, the capabilities that are needed and the regulatory framework that needs to be in place to ensure that the police and the security and intelligence agencies have the necessary powers, and I look forward to his report.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

If I knew at 7 o’clock on Wednesday evening that three girls had gone to Turkey, why did not the authorities in Istanbul?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady is basing her comments on statements that have been made in Turkey. The Metropolitan police have made it very clear what the position is and when they alerted the Turkish authorities.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

May I reinforce the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis)? I find it abhorrent that the media continue to use a photograph of a man who is a murderer, to name him and to give him an identity by giving him a nickname. That will probably reinforce the ideas of those who think that what he is doing is good and that he is some sort of modern Jesse James. I just find it abhorrent that our media continue to use this man’s name.

[Mrs May]

I will not comment on any individual case when ongoing investigations are taking place, and I am sure that my hon. Friend would not expect me to do so. What I will say is that we are all appalled and shocked at the horrific barbarism that is being shown by ISIL, and we expect that to be reflected in any reporting.

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary spends a great deal of time trying to persuade us that there needs to be more surveillance of everyone and that more data need to be collected. Does she not agree that recent cases suggest that the biggest problem is the incapacity of the security services—although it is not their fault—to deal adequately with the data and information that they already possess?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman is right that I am saying that the agencies should have different capabilities. It is right that as people communicate less by telephone and more across the internet, we should update the legislation on access to communications data. This capability is not about looking at the content of any messages that people are exchanging. It is an important capability that has been there for some time and that has proved valuable not just in counter-terrorism cases, but in serious crime cases. I believe that it should be updated and a Conservative Government would certainly do that.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

It has been reported in the newspapers that one of the three poor girls was travelling on a false passport. Does that not indicate that there are severe shortcomings in the entry and exit checks by our immigration and nationality department and in the airline checks? Will my right hon. Friend commit a future Conservative Government to a root and branch re-examination of those systems?

[Mrs May]

Of course, we are reintroducing exit checks. A certain amount of advance passenger information is available from airlines. We are looking at other ports of departure and the information that can be available. As I said in response to the shadow Home Secretary, exit checks will be in place in April of this year.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I am not aware that the media have made a hero of the individual who has been mentioned today, but is it not important to make it absolutely clear from this Parliament, not just from the Government, that the person who is responsible for the beheading of kidnapped British citizens should be brought to justice in whatever form is necessary and however long it takes?

[Mrs May]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that we wish to bring to justice the individual who is responsible for the beheading of British hostages. There is an ongoing police investigation into that case and that is why I am not commenting any further on it. However, he is absolutely right that that individual should be brought to justice.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend ignore any opportunistic criticism and continue to meet the difficult challenge of balancing the defence of our values and our security? Will she continue to ensure that our intelligence services and her Department learn from our experiences in this area, so that we continue to be among the best in the world at getting that balance right?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is right, and of course that is what this Government have done. We have looked at the balance between people’s privacy and liberty and the need for our services to have the appropriate powers and capabilities to keep people safe. I believe that we have struck the right balance, but of course we must continue to consider the issue as matters develop and as the terrorists find new ways of communicating and of carrying out their terrible and horrific attacks. We must be ever vigilant on this matter and that is exactly what the Government have been.

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

The Home Secretary failed to answer the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) about airlines and airline checks. A number of Members from all parties have been raising this concern for some months; I raised it in relation to constituents of mine who had travelled to Syria, tragically, to fight. Will the Home Secretary explain whether specific arrangements are in place with commercial airlines flying to Turkey and Cyprus, specifically with Turkish airlines?

[Mrs May]

A number of measures are put in place at our ports for people leaving the United Kingdom. As I said earlier, we are considering what further steps can be taken and, specifically, are having discussions with Turkish airlines.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

Has my right hon. Friend seen the comments made by activists from Cage, an organisation that receives charitable funds? What does she make of those comments, and will she take the opportunity to thank and congratulate in this House the security and intelligence services in this country for their excellent and brave work?

[Mrs May]

To take the latter point first, the shadow Home Secretary made that point and I am happy to do that again, as I have on many occasions in the past and as I did at the weekend. The men and women working for our security services do an excellent job for us. It is challenging work that they are doing unseen and unknown and without general praise precisely because they have to be unseen and unknown. They do an excellent job for us. As for the comments made by Cage, I must say to my hon. Friend in this House that there can be no excuse for the barbarism shown by those operating in the name of ISIL. I condemn anybody who attempts to excuse that barbarism away in the way that has been done by Cage.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

May I ask the Home Secretary not to set her face completely against the potential the control orders might still offer? Will she give further thought to helping families to be more resilient, particularly when young members are susceptible to violent extremism? Will she give more support and encouragement to projects such as the JAN Trust, which are very helpful to people in that situation and certainly need to be encouraged?

[Mrs May]

The comment that has consistently been made about control orders concerns the power of relocation, but as the shadow Home Secretary said yesterday, TPIMs are effectively the same as control orders if we bring the relocation powers back, which we have done. The right hon. Gentleman is right that many good groups up and down the country are providing support for families. I launched a project by Families Against Stress and Trauma—FAST—last summer, which works with those families whose sons and daughters might have tried or might want to travel to Syria. I also commend the work of Inspire and Sara Khan, standing up with Muslim women throughout the UK against the radicalisation of young people.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

“World at One” this lunchtime carried a discussion about the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 and its effect on radicalisation. Will the Home Secretary take this opportunity to send a clear message to universities about how they can play their part in addressing that?

[Mrs May]

I am happy to do so. It is absolutely right that we have included universities in the Prevent duty in the Act. Universities should have a duty of care for the welfare of their students. If radicalisation is taking place on their campus, they should be aware of that and willing to deal with it.

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

I would be grateful if the Home Secretary could answer the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) about what training and support has been provided to teachers and parents from the Bethnal Green academy since the teenager absconded at Christmastime. When does the Home Secretary expect to release the funds to schools and universities to take part in the Prevent programme?

[Mrs May]

We are finalising the Prevent guidance that is going out to universities and the other public sector bodies that are involved, and I understand that the police did have discussions with the school that the hon. Lady mentions.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for the diligence she has shown in introducing various Prevent programmes to Crawley. Gatwick airport is also in my constituency, so can she say a little more about passenger name record checks for intra-EU flights, not just for those coming from outside the EU?

[Mrs May]

The whole question of exchanging passenger name records for intra-EU flights is one that I and others have been putting forward in the debate in the European Union arena for some time now. I am pleased to say that other member states have recognised the need for an EU PNR directive. It was one of the issues referred to at the recent European Council meeting. I am clear that any such directive should include the exchange of PNR for intra-EU flights. Failing that, it is open to member states to undertake bilateral agreements to that effect.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Scotland Yard’s budget for monitoring extremism on social media has been cut this year—by how much and why?

[Mrs May]

Decisions about individual aspects of Scotland Yard’s budget are a matter for the Metropolitan police. Let me be clear that the Government have protected counter-terrorism policing budgets over our period in office, and we have extended that to 2015-16.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Given that many of these terrorists represent a clear and present danger to our country, our national security and the security of individuals, is it not important that we offer our intelligence services more powers, particularly through human rights reform and a communications data Bill, to ensure that we can secure our nation properly?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the impact that human rights legislation has sometimes had, for example on our ability to deport certain individuals who pose a threat to us here in the UK. I am clear that we need to reform our human rights legislation and introduce a communications data Bill, and a Conservative Government after 7 May will do just that.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Why should members of the public trust for one second Ministers whose judgment was so utterly flawed that they thought terrorist suspects should be able to live wherever they want, mix with whoever they like and have access to computers and mobile phones? Is it not a fact that when we introduced relocation powers not a single terrorist suspect absconded, but when the Home Secretary got rid of them, lots of them did? [Interruption.] She can laugh all she likes, but the people out there do not think it is a laughing matter. Last week Lord Carlile said that if one of those people had been subject to a control order, they would not have been able to leave the country.

[Mrs May]

I am afraid that some of the facts that the hon. Gentleman suggests in his question are inaccurate. Control orders were being whittled away by the courts, as he knows, so we decided to introduce TPIMs. We have now enhanced TPIMs through the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, and the ability to introduce a TPIM has remained available to the security services upon request to the Secretary of State.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

Yesterday I attended an event in Pendle at which counter-terrorism and security were discussed. It involved the former Pakistani high commissioner, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the MEP for North West England, Sajjad Karim, my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) and many more, all of whom reject the idea that the so-called Islamic State has any connection with the true faith of Islam. Does my right hon. Friend agree that dialogue with the vast majority of the law-abiding Muslim community in this country is the best way to avoid radicalisation, rather than stigmatising communities, as Labour’s failed Prevent strategy did?

[Mrs May]

I absolutely agree. We should make it very clear that the so-called Islamic State is neither Islamic nor a state. One of the best ways to prevent radicalisation is for communities themselves to stand up and say that what is being done by terrorists is not being done in their name. I commend those imams and others from Muslim communities across the country who have responded to events such as the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, the beheading of hostages and recent terrorist incidents in Europe and elsewhere precisely by saying that it is not in their name and that it is not about Islam; it is about a poisonous ideology.

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

It should not have to be said that the people who were subject to control orders and those who are now subject to TPIMs are very dangerous people indeed. Does the Home Secretary not recognise that the changes that she instigated in 2011 to counter-terrorism laws, particularly the decision to remove the powers of relocation, did not help? I think she does recognise that, from the fact that she had to reintroduce them three years later. Will she say sorry?

[Mrs May]

I can only repeat to the hon. Gentleman what I have said in answer to a number of questions on this matter from his right hon. and hon. Friends. Of course the background against which we are operating has changed over the past few years. We have taken the decisions that we believe were necessary and appropriate at the time.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

It is right that we show compassion and sympathy for the families. It is every parent’s worst nightmare that their children should do as those young girls have done, but does my right hon. Friend agree that the approach of some in the media leaves something to be desired? I am thinking also of the Government’s YouTube videos, which could make more apparent the full horrors of what those young ladies have got themselves into, to try to deter young people like them from going to Iraq and Syria in the future.

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is right. It is important that we make very clear the dangers and the horrors of what can happen when people go to such countries. Even if people are going to Syria with the best of humanitarian intentions, they can find themselves caught up in horrific situations, including with terrorist groups. That message is important. We have consistently been saying to people that they should not be travelling to Syria and Iraq. If they wish to help and support the people of Syria who have been displaced by the actions of the regime in Syria, there are better ways of doing it. That is a message that we will continue to put out.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Returning to the point first made by the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) that some of these sick individuals revel in and feel rewarded by high-profile media, does the Home Secretary agree that when young girls like those choose to travel, apart from instances where their identity is needed, perhaps for the public to apprehend them on their route, it would be far better if the media were to report the facts in a more anonymised form, rather than naming those individuals and showing pictures of them time and again?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. A free press is obviously part of what underpins our democracy, but I would expect the media to be responsible in the way in which they deal with such issues in a number of ways. She mentioned the young girls travelling and whether their names should have been revealed. I say to the media that these are important issues. The families in that case are under considerable stress and trauma, suffering as a result of their daughters having gone to Syria, and I expect the media to respect that.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

With Heathrow airport in my own patch, exit checks are very important to me. The whole House, including the shadow Home Secretary, has welcomed the improvements made to TPIMs and to other Prevent measures. On relocation, exit checks and the data and communications changes that we need, the Conservative elements of the Government have been pushing hard to put these in place sooner rather than later. To what extent has the Home Secretary been held back by the Liberal Democrats in coalition?

[Mrs May]

The reintroduction of exit checks was a coalition Government agreement; it was in the coalition Government agreement that we published at the beginning of this Government as one of the measures that we were going to introduce. The draft Communications Data Bill is a different matter. It is a matter of public record that our Liberal Democrat colleagues did not want the introduction of that Bill. That is why we have not been able to do it.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Speaking on the BBC yesterday, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball said that the Metropolitan police have always thought that relocation powers were a valuable tool in disrupting terrorist networks. Is the Home Secretary saying that when she relaxed the control order regime, the Metropolitan police never made this clear to her?

[Mrs May]

When we changed the control orders regime we discussed the matter with the agencies and the police, and they were absolutely clear that the changes we were making did not significantly increase the risk.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I have saved the hon. Gentleman, who is an exquisite delicacy in the House, until last.

[Mr Hollobone]

With regard to the London schoolgirls going to Syria, is there not a mechanism in place whereby parents can apply for a parental watch on a young person’s passport so that if they undertake an airline ticket purchase or present themselves at the airport, an alarm goes off that the parents need to be contacted because the passport is being used without parental consent?

[Mrs May]

I know that parents up and down the country who are concerned about the possibility of their children travelling have removed their passports from them so that they are unable to access them in order to travel. In some cases, that has been effective in ensuring that young people do not travel.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

rose—

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

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

I will come to the right hon. Gentleman’s point of order, but, to be fair, the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) has been present in the Chamber, although he has only just started standing—but that is perfectly proper. Let us hear from him.

[Jason McCartney]

Thank you, Mr Speaker; nobody has made the point that I am about to make. Many legitimate people are travelling from these troubled parts of the world, including students from the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, many of whom study at Huddersfield university. Will the Secretary of State assure me that these security measures will ensure that they are still able to travel to our country and enjoy a world-class education at our universities?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The assumption that has appeared to lie behind some of the points that have been made is that there should be security because any young person travelling is a matter of concern, but of course that is not right—there will be people travelling for perfectly legitimate reasons. In relation to travel to Turkey, I think that about 2 million British tourists go to Turkey each summer, so there is significant movement between the United Kingdom and Turkey, and that is an important part of the Turkish economy.

Point of Order

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

16:11

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

I seek your help, Mr Speaker. I received an e-mail from the Chancellor of the Exchequer engagingly entitled “Constituency courtesy”, which told me that he was proposing to visit my constituency on the following day—Friday—as indeed he duly did. However, this e-mail was sent at 9.17 pm on Thursday night, when I received it. That seems to stretch the concept of courtesy rather a long way. Could we not introduce some sort of training course or refresher course that we can send Ministers and their advisers on so that they have a full understanding of what these courtesies are?

[Mr Speaker]

I am bound to say that I think Members would benefit from such a course. I have known the right hon. Gentleman long enough to know that, perhaps unlike a number of colleagues in all parties, his own included, he himself would never be guilty of a discourtesy because he is among the most courteous Members of the House. I think that people ought to observe the spirit and not just the letter of the convention. Many people will feel that it is a discourtesy for him to be notified at such a late stage. I leave colleagues to consider whether that is worthy of somebody who occupies any ministerial office—notably, in this case, the occupant of the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think that people ought to rise to the level of events, if I can put it that way.

Estimates Day

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[2nd Allotted Day]

Estimates 2014-15

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

Department for Communities and Local Government

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

Devolution in England

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Relevant Documents: First Report from the Communities and Local Government Committee, on Devolution in England: the case for local government, HC 503, and the Government response, Cm 8998; and Third Report from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Session 2012-13, Prospects for codifying the relationship between central and local government, HC 656, and the Government response, Cm 8623.]

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That, for the year ending with 31 March 2015, for expenditure by the Department for Communities and Local Government:

(1) further resources, not exceeding £752,206,000 be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1019,

(2) the resources authorised for use for capital purposes be reduced by £607,860,000 as so set out, and

(3) the sum authorised for issue out of the Consolidated Fund be reduced by £1,092,985,000 as so set out.—(Damian Hinds.)

16:13

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to introduce this debate on the report of the Communities and Local Government Committee entitled “Devolution in England: the case for local government”—which rather gives away the Committee’s findings and recommendations. I thank Professor Alan Harding from Liverpool university and Sean Nolan, an ex-local authority treasurer, who, as our specialist advisers, helped us through a great deal of technicality in trying to come to terms with the recommendations we made. I also thank Steve Habberley, our Committee specialist, whose hard work and diligence helped us through a very challenging report on which to reach conclusions.

The Committee decided on its inquiry not because of any specific Government legislation, but because of the widespread and welcome interest across all parties in localism, decentralisation and devolution. Despite recent reforms, the reality is that the United Kingdom, particularly England, remains one of the most centralised western democracies in terms of its arrangements both for expenditure and for tax raising, and that is still a matter of concern. Indeed, figures produced by the Mayor of London show that local authorities in London have to get 75% of their funding from central Government. In Tokyo the figure is only 7%, and in Madrid, New York and Berlin it ranges from 25% to 40%. In other words, all those capital cities get more than half their money from locally raised taxes, while in London only a quarter of it comes from such taxes.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is correct about the importance of devolution to cities in England, but the counties make up about 50% of its population and about 85% of its land area. Does he agree that there is a very strong case for devolution to county government, which has a strategic and very strong democratic record?

[Mr Betts]

Absolutely. The essence of our recommendations is that there should be a framework—a pathway—by which all areas of the country could achieve devolved powers. Some will probably go more quickly than others, but there is no reason for there to be a barrier to all areas joining in. That is very much in the spirit of the work of the Local Government Finance Commission, which has just been published by the Local Government Association and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. It has slightly different arrangements, although the essence is that, while some authorities will go quicker than others, they will all get there eventually.

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

I am a firm believer in the decentralisation of power, but does my hon. Friend recognise that decentralisation is not an end in itself and that we need to have accountability alongside it? Does he share my concerns that, under the Greater Manchester proposals, nobody in Greater Manchester other than the council leaders has been asked about what model of decentralisation they would like to see?

[Mr Betts]

We looked at that issue and it is clear that there have to be proper governance arrangements if local authorities are to have not just large amounts of extra spending to control, but greater tax-raising powers, as we also recommend. We looked specifically at the combined authorities, which is the issue my hon. Friend refers to, and we have said that different government arrangements might be suitable in different areas. A directly elected mayor might be appropriate in some areas and a strengthened Public Accounts Committee could scrutinise the work of the executive of the combined authorities. In other areas an indirectly elected mayor might be appropriate, as is the case in Bologna and other places in the world. There are different models available, but no single one is necessarily the right one for every area. We should not say that devolution cannot happen until an area has a particular model of governance in place, but it is clearly right that they should get a proper model in place.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I support the remarks of my fellow Select Committee Chair. We have to make a start, particularly given that our country has been so massively over-centralised in Whitehall. It may be a halting start or it may take different forms, but the letter crafted by the Mayor of London, the leader of Greater Manchester, and by Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, Labour members and parish councils that appeared in The Times before Christmas called for devolution at all levels to be comparable—not identical—to that achieved in Scotland. Does my hon. Friend think there is something in the water in England that means that somehow we are incapable of devolving effectively over the long term in England?

[Mr Betts]

That is an interesting question. I do not think there is anything in the water of members of the Communities and Local Government Committee that would prevent that. Members on the two Front Benches probably have slightly different water that affects the way they think on certain issues. I will come back to that in due course.

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

rose—

[Mr Betts]

The right hon. Gentleman on the third Front Bench wants to join in as well.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s commitment on this issue, particularly to the devolution of tax-raising powers. Does he recognise that the accountability problem, which has been raised, is a real one? For example, in the north-east, one party currently has the leadership in every authority, so there is a lack of representation of the minorities, whether Conservative or Liberal Democrat, across the region in bodies holding accountability for what is done with the money.

[Mr Betts]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says and I think the issue of accountability is important, but it can be dealt with in a number of ways. Instinctively, my view is that these things should be decided at a local level, and areas may come to different views about how accountability should be exercised. I do not think that it is up to us to prescribe one model for how that should happen.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Betts]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Robert Neill]

First, I assure—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We are not having an identity parade, but I think the hon. Gentleman has the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) in mind.

[Mr Redwood]

I am grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee. When the members of his Committee looked at the big devolution of powers, including that of income tax to Scotland, did they ask themselves how England would settle such issues? Is there not a need for income tax to be settled at England level, just as there is not power in Scotland?

[Mr Betts]

There are two aspects to that intervention. The first is that we did not look at income tax, although we said at the end of the report that, in terms of fiscal devolution, there is a case for considering income tax and VAT further. That is an issue for the future, but we recognise that it has to be addressed. The second issue probably strays into the area of English votes on English laws, which the Committee did not go into, but there is a case for devolution within England to more local areas irrespective of how Parliament addresses the other issue.

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important and powerful point. He is right to say that although accountability is critical, we should not get too hung up on issues of party political control. When, as the Minister, I signed off the Greater Manchester combined authority, it struck me that both Conservative-controlled Trafford and Liberal Democrat-led Stockport were able to live within the system that was set up. It is important to get the structure of devolution in place before we worry about other matters.

[Mr Betts]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Indeed, the Committee visited Manchester as part of the inquiry, and it found exactly the arrangements that he has described.

We also went to look at the arrangements in Lyon in France. Interestingly, it has attempted, with the development of the grande métropole, to pull authorities together into almost a combined authority arrangement. It currently has an indirectly elected mayor and it will eventually move to a directly elected mayor, so it will have two different governance arrangements in the same area within a short period. There are therefore clearly alternatives.

The report was agreed unanimously—it is a cross-party report—and it was very much written with the next Parliament in mind. The Government made a response, as they should to a Select Committee report. I would say to the Minister that responses are supposed to be made within eight weeks, not eight months. The response was rather a long time in coming, as though the Government could not quite get their collective view together about what should be done.

It was very good to hear the comment that the

“Government welcomes this report’s contribution to the ongoing public debate on the scope for devolution and decentralisation within England.”

That is welcome, at least as a contribution to the debate, but there were not many welcomes in the Government response to the Select Committee’s specific recommendations. I have obviously also read the briefing from those on the Opposition Front Bench. I would say to both Government and Opposition Front Benchers that they do not seem fully to have bought in to the level of change that the Select Committee has recommended and which I think we need. I am sure we will have an ongoing debate with them both over a period of time.

The report was written before the Scottish referendum, but it anticipated that more taxation and spending powers would be given to Scotland and Wales. Very simply, I think that what is right for Scotland and Wales is right for England, and we followed that very simple rule. The report was also written after the London Finance Commission report, which was supported by the Mayor and the London boroughs, as well as the eight Core Cities. All those bodies and the Local Government Association have welcomed our report. Indeed, the Mayor said that Ministers “could not ignore” the “excellent” findings, as it would

“provide England’s cities with the means, incentives and crucially the stability of funding to deliver much needed jobs, growth and infrastructure”.

The Mayor of London is clearly with us, and he is pushing Ministers a little bit further than they are currently inclined to go.

We have had subsequent reports from the Institute for Public Policy Research, ResPublica, the City Growth Commission, and we now have the Independent Commission on Local Government Finance from the Local Government Association and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. All have come to a similar direction of travel on devolution, perhaps with slight differences concerning how it should be done. We came to the conclusion that in England we should not be creating new bodies or regions, for example, and that we should base devolution on local authorities and combinations of local authorities—the Government have at least welcomed that fundamental recommendation.

Why not local authorities? Greater Manchester has a larger gross value added than Wales, and London has a larger GVA than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland put together. Those are large economic entities, and there is no problem about devolving powers to them. We came to the conclusion that devolution was beneficial for growth, a way of delivering better public services that are better related to local need, and a possible way of re-energising the democratic process. People feel that we in Westminster are somewhat out of touch with what happens in their daily lives, and there is more chance of reconnecting politicians and the democratic process with people if decisions are taken at a more local level.

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

Is my hon. Friend concerned about how the Government have pushed through this undemocratic process in terms of what has happened in Greater Manchester and the NHS, because it seems to be completely at odds with the process of increasing democratic involvement?

[Mr Betts]

I hope that colleagues will discuss with their colleagues in local government in Greater Manchester how that process can be made truly accountable and how social care and health can be joined up—I think that aspiration goes across the House. I have been concerned that the debate could lead to social care being transferred to the health service, and local accountability being lost as part of that process. I therefore welcome what the Government have done to put health commissioning into the arena for local councillors to commission along with social care, as that is an interesting step forward. A lot of detail is required to ensure that that is done properly and with true local accountability, but the principle of putting that measure into the local arena, rather than centralising it to NHS England, is probably correct.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I share my hon. Friend’s views about the benefits of devolution to people and communities, but what is happening in Greater Manchester looks to me like a levelling up of power, not a levelling down. Health and social care is currently rolled together at local level with local accountability, but the deal imposed on Greater Manchester takes those decisions to a regional level, and at worst takes away a national framework. It enables the centre to hold its hands up and say, “It’s not our problem”, and takes away accountability from local people and councillors to make decisions about their local areas.

[Mr Betts]

Without going into the details of Greater Manchester, which I do not know all the aspects of, this seems to be a debate between the combined authority, and the collective of leaders there, and individual local councils about further localisation. In my view, devolution does not simply stop with the transfer of power from central Government to a local authority or combination of authorities; it is about how combined authorities enable devolution within their areas to existing local councils, and how those local councils ensure that devolution goes out of the town hall door and into local communities. We cannot be too prescriptive of those stages in this debate, but I understand the concern about losing national frameworks. The idea that everything in the national health service works similarly across the country is not true. Indeed, the words “postcode lottery” did not come from local government but from the NHS because things have been done differently in different parts of the country. More accountability through mechanisms that will potentially be set up is the way forward. I hear the concerns, but they are a debate for Members to have with their colleagues in councils in Greater Manchester.

The Committee defined fiscal devolution as:

“handing to local authorities the power to raise money through a range of existing and new taxes and charges; some responsibility for setting those taxes; and the facility to borrow.”

We contrasted that with decentralisation transferring powers over service delivery and spending to local authorities. We welcomed these developments, but said that greater control over local spending did not constitute devolution. In that sense, we are disappointed with the Government’s response, which seems to equate fiscal devolution with a desire to raise taxes everywhere. The two are not the same. Fiscal devolution is about making tax-raising decisions at a different level, not necessarily about raising taxes through those decisions. I think the Government missed that point.

I hope the Minister agrees with the Prime Minister, when he said the other day:

“Today’s agreement paves the way for a referendum, that could deliver an assembly that’s not just a spending body but is actually responsible for raising more of its revenue too. And to me that is responsible devolution, that is real devolution and I think that is vital for Wales”.

It is vital, too, for Manchester, London and the other major cities that we are going to devolve powers to. The Prime Minister has made a really important point. It means that those who spend taxpayers’ money must be made more responsible for raising it. That is an absolutely fundamental point. Devolution is not simply about handing money out from the centre and allowing more say in how it is spent at local level. It is about holding local politicians to account not just for spending the money, but raising it in the first place. That is fundamental. If the Government resist that, they will stop the general flow of movement throughout the House and the country that requires genuine devolution that is more than simply decentralisation of spending powers to take place.

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

My hon. Friend has produced an excellent report. On the relationship between taxes and responsibility, does he agree that one of the problems in Scotland, which has allowed the Scottish National party to have fantasies that it can spend more and more money, is that the Scottish Parliament was set up with the ability to spend money but not to raise taxes? That is the exact opposite of what the plantation people had in north America, where their cry was “No taxation without representation”. In Scotland, we have had representation and tax without taxation, which has been a democratic disaster.

[Mr Betts]

That has been true so far, but the positions in Scotland and in Wales are going to change. They will have more tax-raising powers and will be held to account. Otherwise, we will have a body that simply spends and gives out the largess, but is not held accountable for raising the money in the first place.

The Committee tried to deal with some difficult issues. We recognise that we may not have got absolutely all the details right. We felt, on balance, that there was a very clear case that devolution would encourage greater growth, particularly in cities. That applies to counties as well, but there are very clear figures for cities. Unlike other countries where the GVA of their major cities tends to be above the national average, with the exception of London and Bristol, the GVAs of the major cities in this country are actually below the national average. There is a fundamental problem there. Devolution does not necessarily guarantee more growth, but it removes some of the current restrictions on decisions being taken at a local level that can make growth take place.

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee with whom I served for some time, although I did not take part in this report. One problem of devolution as he describes it, particularly on the issue of GVA in cities, is potentially the buoyancy and predictability of taxation and revenues. I would have thought that if this was done too rapidly and without some sort of mechanism from central Government to iron out fluctuations, there could be some very severe problems.

[Mr Betts]

I was going to come on to equalisation. Some areas have a greater ability to create and get the benefits of growth than others. This was a difficult issue, and we looked at it. I see the former Minister the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) in his place. We thought that what had been done with the business rate retention scheme, or at least the partial retention scheme, was actually quite a good model: a starting point where a certain amount of tax is collected and transferred to a local authority in exchange for the grant that is currently given. The extra receipts that come in through growth would be kept in that area. Some receipts might in future be disproportionate, perhaps because of a very large increase in rateable values that are not directly linked to the efforts of an authority, so there should be a resetting arrangement every so often to take account of that.

We thought that was quite a careful way of doing it. We have probably gone further, in that we recommend that the totality of business rates be kept at local level and there should be a right within a group of authorities, a combined authority or the Greater London authority to set business rates as well—and obviously the element of any increase in the business rate level should not be taken back by central Government. It is a complicated issue, but we thought that the Government had basically got it right in their business rate retention scheme, which could be used as a model for the totality of business rates, or for stamp duty or capital gains tax, bearing in mind the fact that stamp duty is much more a London issue and therefore slightly more complicated. We recommend the idea in principle, but we recognise that it needs to be looked at in the way the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst mentioned.

We tried to deal with equalisation. We suggested that an independent body be set up to deal with problems of resetting and other issues where there might be a conflict between central and local government. The Government dismissed that and thought that they could do all those things. We thought it would probably be useful to have a body like the Office for Budget Responsibility in the local government sphere.

In principle, we are recommending that a framework be set out for how more powers could be devolved, with local authorities setting out their governance arrangements, how they will be fiscally responsible and the sort of strategy they have for using any powers that are devolved to them. We recognised that progress would probably be made more quickly in some areas than in others and that initially the GLA and the combined authorities would probably be best placed to take on those powers. We see them very quickly taking on place-based budgets, strategic planning and housing, and the sorts of health arrangements proposed for Greater Manchester—I will be careful to go back to that with my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) present. Indeed, the Government intend to introduce primary legislation to allow those sorts of powers to be taken by the combined authorities. We also recommended the devolution of 100% of business rates, setting the multiplier on business rates, stamp duty and capital gains tax, and flexibility with council tax bands as well.

Although all local authorities could go there, we thought there were some changes that could immediately be made to the powers available to all local authorities, including the complete freedom to set council tax. It is quite staggering that the one tax that local authorities have got—the one that is supposedly theirs—is one for which any increase by more than the Secretary of State thinks is appropriate has to be put to a referendum. There is no other tax in this country for which we have to have a referendum to increase it. Those sorts of freedoms could be given straight away. We thought there could be further freedoms by pushing the commissioning of the Work programme down to all local authorities and that controls over fees and charges could be freed up. Why should the Secretary of State fix fees and charges? They should be fixed at a more local level.

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend will know that the report from the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, which I chair, is tagged to today’s debate. We talk about the democratic aspect of this issue, which may reassure some of our hon. Friends and other hon. Members in the Chamber. Does he accept that although we might get a benign Government who wish to push power away from Whitehall, there may be Governments who want to take it back? Does he accept what I hope is the strong case made by my Committee that there needs to be some entrenchment of the independence and rights of local government? Otherwise, that possibility could come true in time.

[Mr Betts]

Yes, and I congratulate my hon. Friend and his Select Committee on the work they have done; indeed, we have worked together on a number of these aspects. He is absolutely right: there ought to be some fundamental commitment to the rights of local authorities to have these devolved powers. The worry is that everyone feels that this is a great thing now, but in five years’ time it could be reversed. There needs to be a degree of certainty about the direction of travel we are moving in.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Betts]

This will be the last intervention; then I will conclude.

[Bob Stewart]

Once these powers have been devolved, what happens if a local authority started behaving in a mad, mad way? Would national Government have any oversight in that instance, or is there none?

[Mr Betts]

It is possible for a Secretary of State to have reserve powers to intervene in extremis, as indeed the Secretary of State has powers to do now. [Interruption.] I hear a little whisper from my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) about what happens when the central Government behave in a completely irresponsible way—who can deal with them? At the local level, the local electorate can take a view.

[Robert Neill]

It might be worth bearing in mind the fact—for the benefit of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)—that even with significantly greater devolution, the local authority would still have to behave within the principles of public law, acting in Wednesbury reasonableness terms, and be subject to judicial review if it behaved wholly irrationally.

[Mr Betts]

I am sure lawyers will not be out of business any time soon on this matter The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. In our recommendations on extra borrowing powers as part of a devolution package—including the housing revenue account and using tax increment financing more actively as local authorities have complete control over business rates—we make it clear that all the borrowing has to be done within the prudential borrowing rules. That is absolutely clear.

There is one other major issue: the control total for total managed expenditure that central Government use. The Government have already had to accept that if the Scottish Parliament decides to raise more money and spend it, that has to come outside the total. If Scotland can vary it, there cannot be a total managed expenditure that is absolutely fixed, because it cannot be cut elsewhere to compensate for Scotland’s increase. The principle has been accepted, and the Treasury has to relax more about allowing local authorities to raise money for investment purposes at local level outside the controlled total.

Finally, let us return to what the Prime Minister said about devolution in Wales:

“That means those who spend taxpayers’ money must be more responsible for raising it.”

That is a fundamental point. It is why fiscal devolution, as well as spending devolution, is essential. As the Select Committee said:

“The point has been reached for the Government (and policy makers in other political parties) to make it clear whether they are committed in principle to large-scale and more comprehensive fiscal devolution in England.”

We as a Select Committee are, and we believe that all those on the Front Benches should be, too.

16:42

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I congratulate the Select Committee on its report and the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) as Chairman on his excellent speech introducing it. He is right that there is a consensus between the political parties on the need for, and role of, greater devolution. In my view, that should include devolution of powers not just from central government to local and regional government, but ultimately from local government to communities as well. I shall touch on that in my remarks.

The topical issue in this debate is about the northern powerhouse, the Manchester area and the devolution of powers from central Government to that Greater Manchester authority on matters including economic development and infrastructure, and health and social care. I am sure we will hear more from hon. Members from that region as the debate proceeds. In my region of Kent, however, many people looking at that level of devolution would probably welcome it and like to see it in their area, too.

The Select Committee Chairman rightly highlighted the number of city and county areas in the country that are of comparable size to other devolved areas of government. Kent, for example, has a similar size of population and parliamentary representation as Northern Ireland, which is a clearly defined area. If devolution can be managed in Northern Ireland, I think it can be managed in an English county authority, particularly one with more than 1.5 million people, as well. I would like to see this form of devolution—incorporating the planning of major economic projects, major investments and major infrastructure projects. We can take a county-wide view, lobby the Government for money, plan for the future and have the power to manage more of the investment ourselves and to create our own priorities, particular for transport infrastructure.

The debate about the integration and local management of health and social services also reflects something that many hon. Members would recognise and agree with for their own communities—the fact that greater integration between the management of those two resources is essential. We need to consider the experience of patients either being treated in the health service or receiving social care in their community so that they end up on one single pathway of care that can be managed by different bodies. The more they are integrated and the more their budgets are managed together, the better the results will be.

As we all know from our constituency case work, when a vulnerable person needs urgent and expensive medical care, we know exactly how that should be dealt with and it is often easy to provide for it, whereas when someone needs less expensive intervention at a lower level to support independent living at home, the money may be harder to find. I believe that if we adopted a more strategic approach and viewed such cases alongside each other, we would deliver not only better value for money for the taxpayer but better outcomes for patients.

[Mr Redwood]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we also need an England level of decision making when it comes to strategic railways, strategic roads and major health policies? We already have that in Whitehall Departments, but is there not a fundamental injustice if Members of Parliament from other parts of the United Kingdom can vote on such issues when they are England-only issues handled by England Ministers?

[Damian Collins]

I agree that powers and decisions should not be forced on English communities by MPs who are not affected by the outcomes of their votes. However, I think that there is a case for devolution of the kind that we have seen in the Greater Manchester area to large English authorities—county authorities such as Kent county council, for instance—which should be able to take a strategic lead. My right hon. Friend is right about major infrastructure projects. Local enterprise partnership boards, for instance, are often better placed than someone in Whitehall to know which road and which rail network should be made a priority for funding and investment. Local leadership of that kind is greatly to be welcomed.

[Mr Allen]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that if all that we do relates to the question of English whipped MP votes for English laws, we may well recreate the worst features of the Whitehall system rather than devolving power to where it can be used more effectively at local levels?

[Damian Collins]

I think that there are two important debates to be had, and that it would not necessarily be helpful for them to become entirely enmeshed. There is a debate to be had about English votes and English laws, which is very important to the settlement for the whole United Kingdom. As one who believes in the Union, I think that we must get that settlement right. We need to look at it again, and we are doing so. There is another debate to be had about the role of devolution to city regions and larger strategic authorities in England, which might cause some regions to look with envy at others and say, “We wish we had some of those more devolved powers.”

In some respects, that debate is more specific. I think that it should be led by city and other local regions, presenting their own proposals, and that there should be an active dialogue in which the presumption is that devolution should and could be possible for those regions. As I said earlier, I think that health and social care should be a priority, alongside economic development and infrastructure. That is why I was particularly pleased by the announcement about Greater Manchester.

Many local authorities are already considering how services can be better integrated, and, in my area of south-east Kent and in Dover, the Kent Health Commission has examined the issue in some detail. GPs in Folkestone and Dover have been working on a pathway of proactive health care enabling more joint decisions to be made by GPs and social services. Such a system often leads to better-quality interventions, better advice for patients, and fewer occasions on which patients are required to go to a major hospital because of a failure in their treatment and care pathway. Obviously that is not only inconvenient for the patient, but a more expensive and often less effective solution. What I am proposing are common-sense reforms.

We should look beyond the city regions to the county areas. We should consider the role that could be played by more strategic authorities in not only receiving powers from central Government but managing the relationships between county and district authorities, and parish councils as well. In Kent we have three tiers of local government, county, district and town parish councils. We often hear the challenging cry, “Who is in charge?” It can be frustrating when so many powers are split between authorities, or it is not clear which is the lead authority.

I think that a degree of simplification and clearer structures under the umbrella of a strategic authority would make sense. We see that in part already with district councils working together to share resources on the environment and waste management and on housing allocation and provision. In east Kent we have seen the East Kent Housing group bringing together different districts and boroughs to work together on common housing strategies. That is a sensible use of resources and will deliver a better quality of service for local residents, and we should see more of it.

Could there also be scope to look at other central Government agencies working with a strategic authority in areas such as Kent? For example, we already have local flood management run in part by the Environment Agency and by the county council. There are also major strategic national projects that are of great significance to my community but on a scale that makes it right for central Government to take the lead. For example, in respect of the completion of the sea defences at Dymchurch on the English channel coast in my constituency, investment that has already been spent and that is currently planned amounts to around £130 million. That is clearly a significant capital investment. Many other schemes are managed routinely by the Environment Agency, the local authority and the local drainage boards. Do we really need three different bodies to manage some of that work? Could it not be better managed by devolving it to a local strategic authority that could oversee some of the work currently done by Government agencies operating within a national framework? Could not such work be done better locally? Those are issues we should look at, too.

I said at the beginning of my remarks that I wanted to look at the scope for devolving powers to communities. We have seen this in a number of areas, such as the devolution, effectively, of the management of schools to academies, so that schools can now manage their own budgets and, indeed, roll them over. That was a significant reform. There are head teachers in my constituency who say that gives them greater certainty in planning for the future, and they are perfectly able to manage their budgets and are doing so very well.

There are other areas of devolved government, too. In Kent there has been a particular success in devolving youth service provision to local communities. That is contracted out. I declare an interest as chair of the Folkestone Youth Project. It receives a budget from the county council, and I believe it delivers a better and more flexible youth service than was delivered before—it is designed around the people who use it and it is not run by the county council. It is not necessary for the county council to run that. It may be responsible and commission and provide the resources, but the communities can design it. We are already seeing that in library provision on a voluntary basis, where villages and parishes are coming up to take over the provision of their local libraries. Often they can design and run that service more effectively than the council could.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is talking very eloquently about the need to devolve powers to communities. Does he agree that neighbourhood planning represents an opportunity for communities to express their preferences in respect of how they see their communities developing over time?

[Damian Collins]

I agree with my hon. Friend and believe that having a good local plan is the best guarantee a local community has that it can design its future in line with its own aspirations and ambitions. That is a process that councils work on in different ways, but I believe that a strong and robust local plan and good neighbourhood plans are a very important way of designing the services that people want and allocating them as communities want. It is something they should pursue.

I shall not take up any more time as other Members wish to speak, but I just want to reiterate the fact that I think the devolution of power from central Government to English county regions should be considered, as well as for major city regions. The major county regions such as Kent are just as capable of taking on those powers as major city regions. We should also consider creating more strategic authorities that look to centralise powers between districts and borough councils within those strategic authorities. We should look not just at devolving power from the centre but at how those local authorities might work together, and, wherever possible, at devolving further power to the communities themselves. That is the general approach we should follow. I welcome the Select Committee report and the important debate it has started.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) has spoken for approximately 10 minutes, which is just about right in a debate such as this, and fits in with the amount of time available to us. If everybody has the courtesy to speak for approximately 10 minutes, it will not be necessary to impose a formal time limit. I hope we can manage without such a time limit.

16:54

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

I would like to start by disagreeing with my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who said in an intervention on the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), that decentralisation was not an aim in itself. If democracy and local democracy is an objective—and I believe it is—then decentralisation is an objective. To allow local people to vote for people to take decisions that affect them directly, and for the people who are elected to raise local taxes to pay for those services, is a clear objective. There is absolutely no guarantee, in any system of national or local democracy, that this will lead to efficient services or economic growth, but at the heart of the matter is the principle that we should be able to vote for the people who take decisions using public money raised through taxes. I therefore believe that that is an objective.

I am not on the Select Committee, but I have read the report and I have been left with two conflicting emotions. First, I found the report depressing, although not because it is not a good report; it is a good report and it goes into a lot of detail. I was elected—as I suspect my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East was—to a local authority more than a third of century ago. At that time, local authorities had complete control over the level of the business rate and over their other rates, and they could set levels of expenditure. It is a measure of how far we have moved that we now think it an advance to have a share of the local business rate. That is a depressing thought. On the other hand, I am optimistic about some of the Government’s proposals and some of the activities in our major cities and counties where agreement to devolve powers has been reached. There seems to be a movement to reverse many decades of centralisation.

There is one thought that lies behind a lot of the Government’s thinking and behind the thinking of other Members, even though it might not be expressed. It is that central Government somehow do things better than local government. I have never seen any evidence of that. Let us consider the waste of money on the NHS computer. I do not have the exact figures, but I believe that about £12 billion has been wasted—a mere £12 billion. That would probably be sufficient to fund the Government grants to run Manchester and Birmingham for about a decade, and that is just one example of a failed computer programme. It is extraordinary that central Government can sit there and think that they are more effective than local government. There is no evidence whatever for that.

[Mr Betts]

Thinking slightly cynically, may I ask my hon. Friend whether he thinks that Treasury Ministers and shadow Treasury Ministers are interested in pushing more spending powers down to local level because they think that they can get better value out of that arrangement and that if there is more austerity to come, local government would probably manage it better?

[Graham Stringer]

Sometimes that is absolutely true. It is sometimes the objective of central Government to pass on the responsibility for “difficult decisions”, which can often be code for “cuts”.

In the light of the great achievements of cities such as Sheffield, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle—the cities that this country’s wealth was built on—we have taken that money and power and centralised it. This has led to an increase in the north-south divide. London has such a booming economy because of its geography and because of the City of London, but also because the expenditure in local government has been centralised, and about 90%—we can argue about the final decimal point—of the expenditure on transport has been spent in London and the south-east and not in the other regions. That in itself leads to economic growth. There is also an increased intensity of investment in hospitals and science in the golden triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London.

On that basis, I very much welcomed the statement about the devolution to Manchester, the powerhouse of the north and the combined authorities, which would give control over the skills budget and over transport, allow the re-regulation of buses in Greater Manchester, give control over the housing budget and allow a look at the social care budget, so that local people would take decisions locally. A lot of the criticism, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), is that nobody has been consulted about a mayor for that process, but let us look at what the combined authority was faced with. All those local authorities—Labour, Lib Dem-led and Conservative-controlled—believed that more decisions should be taken locally, which, incidentally, would also lead to more efficient services. The Government’s position is that they are willing to hand over control of that money but that because a lot of those services, particularly transport and skills, are provided at a county level, there should be an elected mayor. One could either recreate the Greater Manchester county council, which used to deal with many of those services, or have an elected mayor, and the Government prefer an elected mayor. The position facing the leaders of the 10 authorities was: do we accept this—and we wanted this kind of thing when I was leader of Manchester city council, a long time ago —accept what is offered by the Government and plug the hole of the democratic deficit, or do we not?

[Lisa Nandy]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue about the mayor. He says it is a directly elected mayor but, unfortunately, it is not; the mayor that is envisaged will be appointed immediately and will serve until 2017, or possibly 2019, without facing an election. In the meantime £13.5 million-worth of public money has been spent and, according to Ministers, there are currently no plans for public involvement or scrutiny in this process.

[Graham Stringer]

I do not disagree with my hon. Friend about that, although we do disagree on other parts of this devolution. The gap between what we have now and an elected mayor is too long. Appointing a mayor is almost a contradiction in terms; mayors should be elected and then they should take the responsibility that the electorate give them, having stood on a manifesto. I would prefer the 10 leaders, who do have an elected mandate, to continue. Having an appointed mayor is a halfway house—a solution that is not really a solution—and it would be better to move earlier to an elected mayor and not have an interim situation. Having made that criticism, I do not think it spoils the whole broth—the essential elements of the decentralisation.

The next part of the decentralisation that seemed to cause some difficulty to some of my hon. Friends, and to some other right hon. and hon. Members, is the devolution of the health budget, so that health and social care can work together in Greater Manchester and deliver better services. When it was announced on the “Today” programme—six days ago, I believe—the presenter said, “This will mean that local councillors will get their grubby hands on the health service.” That represents not only an appalling statement by a supposedly neutral BBC presenter, but an attitude of contempt for local democracy. There is absolutely no guarantee that when locally elected councillors, working with the clinical commissioning groups, get together the service will be better, but the expectation must be that it will be, because when decisions are taken locally, the decisions are usually better. That is not always the case and it is not inevitable, but usually when people of good will try to make things better and they can see the detail on the ground, we get a better service.

I have been fighting the Healthier Together proposals in Greater Manchester, which are all about bringing care for the elderly and the ordinary services together. I have been fighting them not on principle, because the principle of what they are saying is right, but on detail and procedure. In every case, we go back to NHS England. I would much rather discuss my disagreements over detail with people who are elected locally and with local clinicians than with some distant bureaucrat in London. I do not believe that this measure is being imposed; it is being negotiated by properly elected local government leaders. One objection that may be made before a general election—I had better be up front about this—is that Labour councillors should not be sitting down with the devil of a Conservative Chancellor. Well, I think they should. It would be an absurd position if any elected leader of any district or city said, “I will not accept something that I think is good for my area because the person who is proposing it is of a different political colour.”

There are still many details to be decided and some obvious pitfalls. We need to ensure that at least the amount of money that was scheduled to go into the NHS actually goes in and is transferred to Greater Manchester. If that money goes across but there is a deficit, we come back to that most difficult decision—I will finish on this point because I know many Members wish to speak—which is the closure of a hospital. If care for the elderly works in combination with the NHS and many people who should not be in hospital are taken out of hospital, hospitals may have to be reduced in size. If that happens, who would Members like to take that decision: somebody sat in Whitehall or locally elected people who have to face the electorate daily? That is the toughest decision, and I would prefer it to be made by local people, which is why I am pleased to support the proposals for Greater Manchester. I hope that this Government and the next one get more enthusiastic about devolution.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I had every confidence that the hon. Gentleman could add 10, get over the hour and get to the right number, but I appreciate that he had a lot to say. Let us try a bit harder for the 10 minutes.

17:07

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer). I agree with his analysis of the right approach to Greater Manchester, but I will come back to that in a moment.

First, let me address the broad thrust of the report, with which I very much agree. It is an excellent report, the Chair of the Select Committee made an excellent speech on it, and I struggled to disagree with anything in it. I hope that all parties will take the report on board.

We have a real opportunity to create a cross-party consensus on this matter. All too often in this House, devolution is spoken of in terms of legislative devolution —of votes for laws and structures. That is critically important, but without significant fiscal devolution, it is effectively meaningless. If we can get around that point, we would have a sensible basis on which to build. We need to recognise that this Government have done a lot already. I congratulate the Secretary of State and his team—I might be seen as being a little biased here—on having reversed what was nearly a 50-year trend of centralism.

The hon. Gentleman made the point that, when he was elected, there was much more control, and that is true. I was first elected to a London borough in 1974—I would like to think that I lied about my age, but I did not. By that stage, power was already being removed, and that had been a process throughout the post-war period. Therefore credit must go to this Government for having reversed that trend so significantly. I am talking here about the power of general competence, removing capping and replacing it with the consultation of residents via a referendum, which is an important step forward, and breaking down ring-fencing. Those are important and significant changes. I particularly welcome the further steps that were taken around devolution to Greater Manchester. I am a little disappointed that one or two Members were carping about the approach.

I am a firm believer in the idea that, from the point of view of local government, the first thing to do is to get the power devolved. For heaven’s sake, do not worry about the detail until the power is devolved. It is the tendency to allow the best to be the enemy of the good that has bedevilled local government in its relations with central Government over the years. It has been all too easy for the civil servant or the Minister, with every respect, to be told, “The local authorities cannot agree among themselves, so it is better that we keep the power centrally.” The same is said to Members of this House. However, if the principle of devolution and the transfer of power and finances is agreed, local authority leaders have the ability, with good will and common sense, to sort out the exact arrangements for themselves. In that respect, the leaders of all parties in Greater Manchester have been markedly more pragmatic than those in this House sometimes show themselves to be through the arguments that they deploy.

[Lisa Nandy]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me, as somebody who is a Member of Parliament in Greater Manchester, that the public might also be involved in the conversation between local authority leaders and the Government that he has talked about?

[Robert Neill]

Local authority leaders are elected via their local authorities. We can talk about the time frame for having a directly elected mayor, but I am afraid that we are again allowing process to get in the way of the principle of fiscal devolution, which is the most important thing. When one looks at local authority systems in other countries where there is significantly more financial devolution, of which France is a very good example, the public participation at elections is significantly higher because people realise that their vote makes a difference. That is the main objective that we should be aiming for.

As a Greater London Member of Parliament, I also welcome the devolution package that was announced by the Chancellor and the Mayor of London. It does not go quite as far as the Greater Manchester package, but it is extremely valuable. It is worth noting that it was a Conservative Mayor and the Labour-led London Councils that agreed, in a pragmatic fashion, on a set of 10 principles for how London local authorities would use the extra devolved powers and the even greater devolved fiscal power that was recommended in the London Finance Commission report, which I hope will be adopted by the next Government—I hope of my complexion—in the next Parliament. Again, the hugely important point to make is that when local government is pragmatic, it delivers better.

The Prime Minister gave me hope in his speech in June. The Financial Times reported him as saying that

“devolving power and money from Whitehall to the cities…is the future. The debate now is about how far and fast it can go.”

I hope that in the next Parliament, we will see a significant increase in the amount of public spending that is devolved. We have made a valuable step, because some 70% of council income is now raised locally. That is a big improvement on where we were. However, council income is not the same as total spend.

That is why the pooling arrangements between health and adult social care in Greater Manchester are an important step forward. Anyone who has served on a top-tier authority, whether it is a county, a unitary, a London borough or a metropolitan district, will know that adult social care is one of the principal cost pressures. The ability to align it more closely with the health service makes obvious sense financially and in terms of better and more effective service delivery. As has been observed, local authorities are often better placed to nuance the delivery arrangements to reflect the needs of the population.

The Chairman of the Communities and Local Government Committee made a perfectly fair point about where we should go from here. I think that we should start to look at the further devolution of property taxes. That is the most obvious thing to do. We have made a start with the local retention of the increase in the business rate. He was kind enough to make observations about the methodology that was put in place. He was perfectly right that we always envisaged the methodology as being capable of improvement and refinement. It would be easy to increase the locally retained share. I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State talked at the Local Government Association conference last year about raising it to the high 80s or 90s. The Prime Minister has spoken in similar terms. Personally, I hope that we will move to make all the additional business rate retained in the next Parliament. We should aim, within not too short a period, to re-localise the whole of the business rate.

[Mark Pawsey]

My hon. Friend is making a strong case for increased devolution, which is exactly what we heard on the Select Committee. He has been a Minister in the Department, so what does he think are the obstacles within the institutions of government that prevent that devolution from taking place? Why has it not happened before now?

[Robert Neill]

There are two things. One is a practical matter that we must address seriously, which is the need for equalisation arrangements. As the Chairman of the Select Committee fairly said, we have a model already in place that could be adjusted to deal with that. I therefore do not think that we should allow the need for a measure of equalisation to fall in the way of further devolution. The question of risk of local authority failure is sometimes raised, but I think that it is overstated, first because of the public law constraints that are already there and, secondly, because in truth if we believe in devolution we must accept that sometimes, very occasionally, a local authority will fail. That is what democracy is about. Allowing failure as a result of a democratically elected body’s decision, provided there are sensible reserve powers that can be put in place, as the Chairman of the Select Committee properly and sensibly set out, is a sensible way forward. We could easily deal with that.

The final problem is the institutional inertia of a system in which so much has come to this place over the years that initiative at a local level is often stifled. The most talented in politics and business see London and Westminster as the centre of operations rather than driving forward their careers at a local level. In France, it would be perfectly natural for the mayor to be a significant political player. The combined authorities in France referred to by the Chairman of the Select Committee work exceptionally well and have done for some 30 years. They have delivered on social care and on major infrastructure improvements. That is a sensible and pragmatic way forward that can be tweaked to reflect areas and on that basis there is no reason why we cannot also consider similar but not exactly identical arrangements for the shire counties. My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) is absolutely right that they are capable of significant devolution too.

This is a most important debate. I am glad that we have had some thoughtful and constructive speeches and it is a good report. This is a piece of work that we must continue in the new Parliament, as we cannot continue with the current set-up. The Government are entitled to congratulations for what has been done so far, and I hope that it is work on which we can build.

17:17

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I want to speak as a partial and not wildly enthusiastic supporter of the Select Committee’s report and as a very long-standing advocate for devolution. In 1974, with the late Richard Wainwright, I formed the campaign for the north, back in the days of Redcliffe-Maud, beyond recall, in a first example of the Lib-Lab pact. When the Labour Government had the Prescott proposals for regional government, I was an enthusiastic supporter of the campaign for Yorkshire. It was unfortunate that the then Prime Minister, who was more enthusiastic for invading small countries than he was for giving us devolution, so watered down the proposals that they were not worth voting for. In the end, they were duly not voted for in the north-east.

That is my history of campaigning for devolution, but that does not make me enthusiastic about the caution of the Committee’s report or about the proposals for Greater Manchester. They seem to me to be something of a deathbed repentance by a Government who have centralised continuously in a country that is over-centralised already. We must be one of the most over-centralised countries in the world. We are more over-centralised than Monaco or Luxembourg, two capitals without countries. Cobbett’s Great Wen has always drained ability, money and investment away from the rest of this country and concentrated them on London and the prosperous south-east. That process has gone on for far too long. It has been heightened by this Government and needs to be reversed so that the rest of us can have a chance. It might be a mistake to start building the northern powerhouse on the wrong side of the Pennines—the wet side—rather than the hard-working, intelligent and serious side, but I do not begrudge regional devolution to Manchester, because what Manchester thinks today, Yorkshire certainly thought yesterday, and it deserves better than what it has been given.

What is proposed is not really devolution, but another example of Conservative tinkering with local government, which has been going on for so long. Their attitude to local government reform is like the hokey cokey—you put your whole self in, your whole self out, and then you shake it all about. They created the metropolitan counties, then they abolished them, and now they are bringing them back. They created Humberside, then they abolished it, and now they are effectively bringing it back.

What we need is serious thinking—the Select Committee has begun this, but it really needs to be done by both parties and into the next Parliament, when it will become more relevant—about what the framework of devolution should be and what exactly should be devolved. We need to think about what powers should go to local government, because we have to transfer them down from the centre to where the people can handle and control them democratically, because they know their needs far better than Whitehall does. That should be the process of devolution, but this is not it. This is another piece of tinkering, with an elected mayor—an eventually elected mayor, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) pointed out—sitting on top like the fairy on a wedding cake, with inadequate powers and no democratic control. That is not real devolution for Manchester. We have to think seriously about what real devolution is.

What is proposed is a coalition of 12 boroughs with minimal powers and financing and an elected mayor. I do not know whether the £6 billion will be enough to cover the cost of the health service or just enough to distribute blame downward when things go wrong, but certainly the powers and the financing are inadequate. There is no elective democratic accountability, because control is indirect through the coalition of boroughs, and that is not effective control at all.

If what is proposed is devolution at all, it is asymmetric devolution that will end up creating a patchwork of devolution, with different powers all over the country, a kind of one-winged bird that can flap but cannot fly. As other Members have pointed out, it leaves out large areas of the country. For example, the best and most important part—Grimsby—has nothing to gain from it. Huge rural areas such as Lincolnshire and north Yorkshire have nothing to gain from it. They all want more power, but they are outside this new system.

Therefore, we must first ask what we can learn from this Manchester situation for Yorkshire and then ask how we can create a national framework for devolution for those areas that want it. I am not saying that devolution should be forced on people, because it is more important to the north and to Yorkshire than it is to the south, to which all blessings flow anyway, but we must ask what example we can set that other areas will want to follow. What can be the framework for English devolution to turn this unitary state, in which some powers have been devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, into one of devolution all round in which Yorkshire can show the way? We could call it “devo-tyke”—I do not see why not, if we can have “devo-Manc”.

On the table at present are proposals for city devolution—city regions for Sheffield and Leeds and a big Newcastle-Tyne-Tees area—plus minimal proposals for Humberside. I would like to see greater Yorkshire as a devolved region. That would include Sheffield, Leeds and both sides of Humberside, because our interests on the south bank lie to the west rather than to the south. They lie with Yorkshire, and we are Yorkshire’s gateway to Europe. Greater Yorkshire would provide a firm, strong base which would be able to take on a variety of powers and functions over which we could have an elected government, which would control those functions for the purposes of the people—in other words, democratic accountability and democratic control—and which should have revenue-raising powers to finance what it wants to do.

A bigger area can take a broader view and be a firmer and more effective base than a smaller, more parochial area. That is the way we should go. The current proposals are a beginning, but no more than a beginning, which we need to follow up and build on in the next Parliament so that power passes from London, to which it has been so remorselessly transferred over the years, to the regions and to the people so that they can control their own destiny. In that way we will get the synergy and energy of democratic control of government functions in the north, where it belongs.

17:26

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

We are debating devolution in England, but if we are to have more devolution in England, we first need devolution to England. We must make sure that there is an English level of decision making for the strategic matters, and English Ministers who can then decide which matters could be properly devolved within their strategic framework.

If we take the case of transport, it is predominantly or wholly an English Department, yet it is treated as if it were a Department of the Union. But our Ministers have no control or influence over the roads of Northern Ireland or Scotland. They deal predominantly with English issues. In the new looser federation that we are going to create in the next Parliament, we need to identify the need for England to have rights and opportunities that equal these powers that the other parts of the country have already gained or will gain in the more generous devolution settlements now being offered to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

There is a good case for the English Transport Department to devolve some more powers to unitary, county and borough councils in the country. On the issue of railways, for example, we have a very expensive nationalised industry, which decides on the track, the track maintenance, the track investment and the principal train routes and is responsible for the signalling and most of the stations. These are very important issues for local communities. They are massive budgets, but I found it extremely difficult as a local representative to get the ear of Network Rail and to get the right attention paid to the railway line in my area, even though my voters are producing a great deal of tax revenue which is going into Network Rail. A case can be made that there should be more devolved power to counties, boroughs, unitaries and maybe even to MPs over railway budgets, which can have a very important impact on the face of the town, the nature of the countryside and the commuter and freight services available.

We must be careful not to devolve too much. For the roads system, it is right that there is a strategic highway network of motorways and larger trunk roads which is controlled at the England level, masquerading as the Union level, and that those decisions should be properly taken by an English Minister responsible to this House, spending moneys collected in the normal national way and going through the national budgets. I hope that in due course we will have a proper English devolved budget, just as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do.

In my area, we have a motorway that is a local road, and the council is responsible for it. It is a very useful and good motorway, but it stops at the boundary with Oxfordshire and Reading. Most of us want it to go over the river and on to more useful places as part of our economic growth and development. We are making a huge contribution in our area, with a lot of extra housing and jobs, and we need more road space, but Oxfordshire will not allow us to put a bridge over the river and take the road on to other parts of our burgeoning area and up towards Oxford. That may be a case where a devolved power should be given back. I think that my unitary borough would be happy to surrender control of the motorway in return for a promise from a Government Minister to finish the job and make the motorway go to other places so that it could take more of our traffic. At the moment, a very large amount of traffic has to go through the neighbouring constituency of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in the small and beautiful village of Sonning, which has a single-track bridge over a beautiful stretch of the river. That takes a massive amount of commuter and freight traffic that ought to go on a motorway-standard bridge, away from a place of such great beauty, but we cannot do that because of the way in which parts of local government relate to one another. Those are two examples: one where we could devolve more once we had the right powers in England, and one where we might want to devolve less to get a better strategic answer at the national level.

The health service is also primarily or wholly an English Department. It is called the Department of Health, but it should really be called the Department of English Health because its Ministers do not run the health service in Scotland, in particular—although in the recent debates on Scottish devolution some people seemed not to understand that and to think that Scotland’s vote would somehow have an impact on their health service when it has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament. If we are going to pursue devolution, English Ministers should ask the question that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has asked, and started to answer, in the case of Manchester. If it makes sense for Manchester to have more control over health budgets at local authority level to try to deal with the big border issues between social care and health, it must make sense for other parts of England to have exactly the same type of thing.

All my life in active politics and in government, as a local government Minister and in other roles such as Secretary of State for Wales, I was very conscious that there were always border issues between the UK-wide nationally controlled health service and local government, dealing with social care. Both sides were prone to blame each other. The health service would say, “We could get our costs down and put more people through our hospitals if only local government did a better job on providing care facilities for people who should leave hospital,” and local government would say, “Our budgets have been starved because so much money goes to health, but perhaps that isn’t the right priority, because it is a lot more expensive to keep someone in a hospital bed for a few extra days when they do not need the urgent care any more than it is to provide them with good care in a care home without all the medical staff and additions that you have in a hospital.”

There has always been that problem, and I look forward to seeing the more detailed work and the results of the negotiations, because it would be good if there could be a new solution. Once again, however, we need to make sure that the right things are defined at the England level, because it is still meant to be a national health service, although there are now going to be several different national health services because of Scottish and other devolution. In relation to England, I think that a lot of our voters in England want there to be national standards, a national level of service, national protocols and national agreements, so quite a lot needs to be settled by an English national Minister sitting in the English Health Department. However, we can see whether we can devolve certain things. It would be really good to have a new and novel solution to the cross-border issues between social care and health care.

The third Department that is already clearly an English Department is the Department for Communities and Local Government—the origin of this debate. The Select Committee has produced an interesting report to influence English local government Ministers. They must make sure that they have unrestricted English control over English local government, and I am sure that many of them, in this Government and successor Governments, will be interested in exploring the big issue of how many more things can reasonably be left to councillors and their serving officers to decide. I look forward to there being more things and I have suggested one, namely railways, but we need to be realistic and understand that people also want a national agreed level of service. They also want to know that, when a decision in one place has a consequence on other places, people above the fray of the locality will be making the decisions. Not all the decisions will go downwards; some will have to go upwards.

Above all, we need justice for England. We need English votes for English issues and to make sure that England has a voice and can decide the things that apply only to England.

17:35

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and his Committee on such an important report and on giving us the opportunity to have what I hope will be a much more thoughtful, detailed and nuanced debate about recent devolution proposals.

I want to reflect in particular on what is happening in my area of Greater Manchester. I am a passionate advocate of real devolution to people, communities and those who serve them. Before I entered Parliament, my experience of almost 10 years working with children and young people in some of the most challenging circumstances told me that we will not deal with the most intractable problems this country faces if we do not move away from a deficit-based model of dealing with people towards an asset-based model. That requires decisions to be taken much closer to people, with greater local accountability and people and their communities in the driving seat on decisions that affect them, their families and their lives.

I particularly welcome some of the decisions that are being devolved to Greater Manchester, including on transport, skills and the Work programme. Such issues are critical to solving our intractable problems. One of the great fallacies is that it is possible to solve local problems at national level. Too often, national policy fails not just because it does not identify the right solutions, but because it does not define the problems properly. That is because those problems differ not just from region to region, but from local area to local area, within constituencies as well as among them.

Devolution gives areas such as mine in Wigan and across Greater Manchester a considerable opportunity to draw on our strengths. It will give us the chance to move away from handing out big block contracts to the small number of private companies that are currently the only ones able to bid and compete for them, and instead to work with the charities and community groups that are the lifeblood of our local area and to draw on the talent throughout regions such as mine.

Given how incredibly centralised this country is, it is incredible that there has been so much local and regional success over the years. A particular example from my own region that springs to mind is when, finally, after years and years of pushing and lobbying, the regional development agency, working in partnership with Government and the media companies, managed to get the BBC to relocate to MediaCity. That has been an absolutely stunning success for many of my constituents and the region. It has brought a completely fresh perspective to the way in which our public debate is conducted, because the guests and presenters now come from a much broader area than a small few miles around the capital.

I am very concerned, however, about what has unfolded in Greater Manchester over recent months. The people of Greater Manchester have been treated with contempt, because they have been cut out of the process. Real devolution is based on the principle of consent, not contempt. My hon. Friend has said that one of the reasons he is so committed to the agenda is that it can re-energise the democratic process. I absolutely agree with him, but the problem in Greater Manchester is that, from the very day the process was leaked to the media and then announced at a press conference, the public have been entirely cut out of the conversation. I want to say, particularly to Ministers, that that cannot be allowed to continue. There is a significant opportunity to bring benefits to areas such as mine and others across the country, but not if the public continue to be cut out of the conversation.

We were denied a referendum about this plan, which came out of the blue, to impose a mayor who will be appointed, not elected, for between two and four years. Cutting the public out of the conversation was not a good start. When the people of the city of Manchester were given a referendum a few years ago, they said that they did not want an elected mayor, although the result was quite close, but my constituents in Wigan have never been asked that question. They may have voted for it, and if we had been given some detail about how the mayor would be held to account, I might even have campaigned and voted for it, but the truth is that we have been cut out of the conversation.

We will continue to be cut out of the conversation because the Government have confirmed to me that not only will the mayor be appointed immediately and rule until 2017, but that the term may be extended until 2019 by the same local authority leaders who negotiated the deal. That reminds me of Tony Benn’s five questions for the powerful, the most important of which are:

“To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?”

He said:

“If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.”

It is 2015, not 1815: people deserve the right to elect the politicians who wield enormous power over their lives.

I am not confident that the situation is going to get better. In a series of recent written answers, the Minister has confirmed that no thought whatsoever has been given to the ongoing scrutiny by or involvement of the public in these decisions. I had to ring three Departments to get the Greater Manchester health and social care devolution memorandum of understanding”, before the Government realised that it had been published by the first Department I had rung and pointed me to an obscure place on its website to find it. The document says this about April 2015, which is next month:

“Process for establishment of shadow governance arrangements agreed and initiated”.

My question is: by whom and with whom? From the document, it looks as though local authority leaders, clinical commissioning groups and NHS England will make up some kind of shadow governance arrangements, but we do not have any more details, even though it is all supposed to happen in the next four weeks. I must tell the Minister that he should be very concerned about that, given that every hon. Member has referred to the importance of local democracy and accountability. We have 10 local authority leaders and a huge range of appointed officials from CCGs and NHS England, with an appointed mayor, but no room for direct elections for another two to four years.

The consultation by the Department for Communities and Local Government ran for three weeks from the middle of January to the beginning of February. There were 12 responses, of which 10 came from the local authority leaders who negotiated the deal in the first place. I must say to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) that I very much share his concerns about the Healthier Together process: we were both heavily critical of its consultation process, but that sort of public engagement makes Healthier Together look like an absolute dream.

This consultation asked for the impact on communities, but according to the Minister’s own Department, it was not advertised, so there were no responses from the public. The document did not make a single mention of health care or the national health service; yet one week after it closed, we were told via a leak to the Manchester Evening News and then in a press conference that billions of pounds of public funding were being transferred. In the meantime, £13.5 million of public money—our money—has been spent on transforming Manchester town hall to get ready for the new bureaucracy. This is not the way to build power-sharing with people.

[Mr Redwood]

Would the hon. Lady agree with all this if the new mayor were directly elected to a quicker timetable?

[Lisa Nandy]

The right hon. Gentleman has helped me brilliantly to segue into what must happen next. The truth is that for Greater Manchester, this is where we are. We have been handed this model and, as many hon. Members have said, there are opportunities for the region if we can get it right, and it is important that we do not make the same mistakes again. The Government tell us that they are committed to rolling out devolution arrangements around the country, and we must get that right for the people of Greater Manchester. We need clarity about the role of local councillors who currently do not have the tools and resources they need to hold the leadership to account. When we devolve power upwards to combined authority level, the issue becomes even more pressing and critical. The local councillor is the link between people in my constituency on different streets and different communities around Wigan, and decisions that are taken miles away in Manchester town hall. As someone recently said to me in Wigan, “If I can’t hold any of these people to account, it’s the same to me wherever they are sitting.” We need clarity about the role of local councillors, and we must ensure that they have the tools and resources they need to hold power to account.

The memorandum mentions the principle of subsidiarity. I share a commitment to that, but we deserve to know what it means in practice. For example, there are huge benefits to be had from rolling together health and social care, and in my local area in Wigan that is what the local authority and CCGs have been doing because we face a wide variation in health and social care challenges across Greater Manchester. Mine is an older borough that contains lots of people with chronic health conditions and real geographical challenges—we are one of the biggest boroughs in Greater Manchester. The risk is that when we level up those decisions, we end up with serious problems because we ignore pressing issues in different local areas.

We should have, and deserve, direct elections if people are to make decisions that affect our lives, particularly if we are to concentrate power in the hands of one individual. A potential four years before anyone gets a say over who takes those decisions is ridiculous and shows utter contempt. Many people have said that this is not a London-style mayor. They are right, because at the very least the Mayor of London is directly elected and has to account to the Greater London authority, in public, for their decisions. There are no plans in Greater Manchester for similar scrutiny arrangements, which shows a complete and utter lack of respect for the public.

Finally, there is a huge gap around civil society, and I understand why this debate looks like a conversation between national and regional politicians from which the public have been excluded. Charities, community groups—nobody has been spoken to or consulted, and they do not have access to the information and data they need to hold power to account. The risk is that we are replicating the worst features of national Government at regional and sub-regional level.

This is not a binary choice between unaccountable power structures in London and unaccountable power structures in Manchester. We can do so much better than that: real accountability and real challenge in the system; meaningful tools to hold people to account; no more backroom deals; and real power sharing. The people in my region are our best asset. Let us build our public services with them, not without them.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Again I implore hon. Members for 10 minutes to mean 10 minutes more than are currently on the clock—it is easy to count.

17:48

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I will do my best to keep to your time limit, Madam Deputy Speaker.

This has been a welcome and interesting debate, and I repeat the thanks to the Select Committee for its report which contains helpful and useful recommendations. It is always welcome to take part in a debate with my own MP, the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), although I was slightly concerned about the number of times that he referred to Yorkshire rather than Lincolnshire.

The Scottish situation has developed with more and more powers being devolved. That is perhaps regrettable in many ways, but we can be thankful that it has spurred on the debate about how we devolve powers in England. Like most of my constituents, I regret the fact that the settlement with Scotland now means Scottish MPs have far too much influence over decisions. I welcome the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) in that respect.

There has been considerable devolution under this Government, and my own area has benefited greatly. Like the hon. Member for Great Grimsby, I was present a couple of weeks ago when the Hull and Humber region growth deal was signed. There is no doubt that that is particularly beneficial.

I note that paragraph 15 of the Select Committee report states:

“The power to raise, retain and spend money locally—fiscal devolution—is back on the political agenda. Local government wants more of it.”

I agree on unleashing more and more powers to our cities and towns. I emphasise the word towns: too much rhetoric in recent months has referred to cities. People in towns up and down the country feel somewhat left out. Towns make a major contribution to the national economy, and constant reference to cities has not been helpful.

On the present structures of local government, I am not entirely sure that they are particularly well designed to cope with more powers and responsibilities. In many cases, local government is in fact more efficient than central Government—the squeeze on budgets in recent years has delivered many necessary efficiencies. I was a local councillor for 26 years; 14 of those were on a district council and 12 on a unitary council. I wholly recommend the latter: unitary authorities are vastly superior. We have to recognise that district councils are dying. They are sharing more and more of their powers and responsibilities—joint chief executives, shared officers and shared delivery of services—and we have seriously to ask whether there is a role for the two-tier system in the future. My view is that a move to unitary top-tier authorities, supported by parish councils, is the way forward.

Reference has been made on a number of occasions to combined authorities. I share the misgivings of others that they are not particularly democratically accountable. I have yet to find an elector who has said to me, “I’m not going to vote for so-and-so, because I don’t think their contribution to the combined economic authority has been particularly helpful.” The reality is that we need a figurehead at the head of a unitary authority. I have always been in favour of elected mayors—I stress elected. A clearly identifiable person responsible and directly accountable to the electorate is the best way forward.

The report states:

“Enhanced local democracy offers the best possibility of a step towards addressing the challenges of the wider democratic deficit caused by the over centralisation of England.”

I am not, as I said, entirely convinced that combined authorities are the way forward. The relationship between unitary authorities and parish councils is crucial. Unitary authorities are the best way of creating a clearly identifiable structure that the electorate can identify with. We have all experienced the confusion in the minds of voters about who is responsible for various services. We have to recognise that people identify with their towns or villages and their counties. However, in many cases, counties, such as my own county of Lincolnshire, are geographically too large to cope with one local unitary authority. Authorities with 70, 80, 90 or 100 councillors are far too large. All parties have difficulty recruiting good-quality candidates to be councillors. We need slimmed-down authorities.

In my own area—the hon. Member for Great Grimsby referred to this—we suffered County Humberside for too long. We were dumped in it against the wishes of just about everyone in the locality, and suffered it for about 20-odd years. I have concerns about its possible re-creation, as we seem to be edging towards that. I acknowledge the hon. Gentleman’s comments, but I point out that it is the view of the Labour authority that a combined authority, which I would regard as a stepping stone to a larger unitary authority, should be to the south of the Humber. I think any edging towards the re-creation of Humberside is totally inappropriate. We seem to have an inferiority complex on the south bank about Humberside. The reality, however, is that the strength of the local economies, voluntary organisations and the councils themselves on the south bank are the equal of those on the north bank. Having said that, because of overwhelming public opposition, I do not think that is the way forward.

I urge the Minister to address the issue of perhaps edging towards more unitary authorities with elected mayors, and perhaps even to commit a future Conservative Government to moving in that direction.

17:56

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) on both his speech and his excellent chairmanship of the Communities and Local Government Committee. Wherever he or I end up after the general election, I shall be pleased and privileged to say that I served under his chairmanship. It is something I have learned much from.

Some people dream of becoming a politician because they love the fame and the glamour; some because they picture themselves as the next Gladstone or Churchill; and some, let’s face it, because they quite like the sound of their own voice. But I was different. I came into politics because I want fiscal devolution—that is the reality. It may come as something of a surprise, but it is true. Fiscal devolution sounds like an obscure and impenetrable topic, but for me it speaks to one very simple principle: that decisions should be taken as close as possible to the people who are affected by them. Belief in fiscal devolution has therefore always come down to simple faith: faith in local people, faith in local decisions and faith in local elections—and a healthy scepticism of central Government and Whitehall.

It seems that the public share that faith. The Local Government Association asked members of the public who they trusted to make decisions about their local areas: local councillors, MPs or Government Ministers. With apologies to those on the Front Benches, I can reveal that 72% of the public went for their local councillors, 11% for MPs and only 7% for Ministers. I can reassure hon. Members that I do not believe this is a reflection on their competence or integrity. I certainly do not think I have become less trustworthy since I left Blackburn council and took my seat in this place, although some hon. Members may disagree. It is not about personalities at all; it is simply that local people prefer decisions to be taken by their local representatives on the ground, rather than by remote mandarins in the capital. Many of my constituents would not understand why people who could barely point to Rochdale on a map should be taking decisions about their town. It is an understandable frustration. In principle, I want to see decisions made at a local level. The public seem to agree, but all hon. Members know that decision-making powers count for very little when they are not accompanied by control of the purse strings.

I have two young children. Often it is fun to let them make decisions about where we should go or what we should do, but I would never dream of giving them my credit card, because that is where the real power lies. For too long, central Government have treated local government as a wayward child—happy to devolve some powers, but never letting go of the credit card. I can understand that instinct. After all, it is not so long ago that a quarter of the world was quite literally run from this postcode. It must be quite a wrench for civil servants to consider giving up the power they have left. However, just as we left behind the era of empire, we should now abandon the era of the mighty central state.

Despite progress over recent years, the UK remains one of the most centralised countries in the world. Even here in London, our most autonomous city, only 7% of the taxes raised are kept by the Mayor. That compares with 50% in New York and 70% in Tokyo. In fact, the economies that are prospering at the moment, from the USA to Germany, are those with high levels of local and regional devolution. That is a point made in our report, which finds a connection between fiscal devolution and economic growth. Devolution is an idea whose time has come, and it is time that this country joined the modern world.

If devolution is the aim, how do we get there? That is the question, and I believe that the Committee’s report provides a good place to start looking for answers. Hon. Members will be familiar with the recommendations, but I would particularly like to lend my voice to the idea that we need to balance the desire for local authorities to keep as much money as possible with the recognition that money must also be fairly distributed across the whole country. I would also endorse the idea that fiscal devolution should happen within the local government structures that already exist. We do not need an English Parliament, creating yet another layer between people and power.

I do not want to go into detail about which spending powers should be devolved; that is for another time. What I would like to do is try to set out some broad principles. First, the process of devolution should not be uniform. The British state has often seemed obsessed with rigid uniformity, when the opposite is often more appropriate. If we look at Scotland or London, we see that devolution can often be quite messy. Instead of smooth sides, there are often sharp edges, but that is not something we should be too worried about. The mess of devolution breeds the innovation and energy that are the drivers of growth and prosperity. Nor should we be concerned if devolution happens at different rates in different areas.

That brings me to my second major point. With great spending power comes great responsibility. We need to make sure that the governance is in place to cope with new powers. This is something I have real concerns about. The Select Committee has recently seen a number of local authorities regarding serious failings, not least Rotherham council. One has to ask whether we would devolve more power to such an authority, yet there are clearly some local authorities, such as those in Greater Manchester—or Greater Rochdale, as I would prefer to call it—that want and deserve more control. The key will be to make sure that local councils can handle the powers that are devolved to them and that we manage to monitor their performance.

That brings me to the recent issue of devolved NHS spending in Greater Manchester. I should say from the start that I welcome the increased governance being given to the city region through a directly elected mayor, although I understand the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy). Elected mayors are something I have long campaigned for. However, I have a number of reservations regarding the latest announcement. The key to devolution is that the right powers are given to the right level at the right time. I have real questions about both the level of government and the timing.

Devolution on such a scale should be part of a long process and kept separate from party politics. To make such an announcement in the middle of an election campaign seems irresponsible and makes me question the motivation behind the decision. It seems to me that the announcement was designed to show that the Chancellor can appeal to northern cities in a way that some of his colleagues clearly cannot. The decision should not be driven by personalities, but by clear evidence and arguments. This cannot simply be a case of securing the legacy of Howard Bernstein, the chief executive of Manchester council; it must be about much more than that. Finally, I am worried that the decision will mean yet another structural revolution in health provision in Greater Manchester, when what we need is a focus on outcomes. This example goes to show that someone can be committed to devolution, as I am, but also cautious about going too far, too fast.

To conclude, I am sure that there will be disagreement in this House in the coming years about fiscal devolution. People will question individual settlements, powers and decisions; however, I hope our report shows that we can have those disagreements within a framework of consensus about the principle behind it. Personally, I favour a plan that is ambitious but also gradual. I do not want to see huge amounts of power and money thrown at local authorities that are not ready for it. That would not be good for local government or for the principle of devolution. I want to see a pragmatic approach that goes as fast as we dare, but does not overreach what is possible. I am not clear exactly how that will look, but I am comfortable with this unknown. The process needs to be organic, which will mean some confusion at points, but I am clear about what kind of country we will have once we devolve more fiscal powers: a country that is more open, free, democratic and prosperous. That is why we should all back this report.

18:06

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

May I begin by apologising to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the Chair of the Committee for missing the start of this debate? I shall read the Chair’s wise remarks in Hansard with intense concentration tomorrow. We have kept to the general rule of estimates day, which is a bit like “Fight Club”: the one thing we do not do on estimates day is mention the estimates, such as the £750 million on the Order Paper, which, like everybody else, I shall ignore.

The devolution we find easiest is devolving trouble—cuts, problems, hard choices. Wherever there is a good story, such as money for school dinners suddenly, we in this place rush to take the credit in one form or another. Behind it all there seems to be no genuinely guiding principle or absolute constitutional demarcation. In effect, we yo-yo between having ring-fenced, dedicated funds and giving direction where we want credit and there is money, and going back in harder times to rolling everything into some incomprehensible formula, when we want to dodge blame for cuts that are in the offing. In other words, we have no principle that we are following. We let councils make big, painful decisions on social care and housing, and then we fiddle around with their bins when we want to. I therefore warm to the idea of a genuine constitutional settlement—or at least a concordat for each Parliament—that lets each level of government know what it is supposed to be doing.

The assumption, shared across the Chamber in this debate, is that local government should try to do more and central Government should try to do less. That means in effect that local government has to have enhanced power and hopefully—and importantly—capacity. Clearly that is not generally the case, because some units are simply far too small, and even big units such as mets and unitaries have to band together to do new and bigger tasks. A solution might be a wholesale local government reorganisation. That is a brave choice that few Governments consider for long, so instead we have devolution on demand. However, we do not quite get it by demanding it; it has to be what the previous Government used to refer to as “earned autonomy”.

In effect, what happens is that central Government lays down some sensible conditions, such as evidence of co-operation, economic independence, officer ability and so on, and occasionally some silly conditions, such as elected mayors. But however central Government lay down those conditions and whatever they are, there are three hitches with the end result. First, it creates a patchwork quilt across the country, which some Members clearly do not think is a problem. Secondly, it leaves some areas completely and utterly orphaned—what, I ask often, will happen to places such as West Lancs, which are not in any city region whatever? Thirdly, it means that the whole issue of fair funding becomes a bigger nightmare and even more imponderable. As the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said, England still loses out at the end of process by comparison with the regions of Scotland and Wales.

There is one unexpected consequence, however, and I want to draw people’s attention to it today. It appears to me that existing local authorities are not best shaped to deliver the new agendas. Their boundaries often have little relationship with economic, transport or strategic priorities. My own borough of Sefton provides quite a good example in that it has hugely different priorities at either end. It has a seaside town at one end and Liverpool’s major dock at the other. The future of one end is bound up with the River Mersey and Liverpool, while the other end looks to the River Ribble and Lancashire.

How can one authority with limited representation on the city region fight for the interests of both? In a sense, it is diluted. Sefton has made a virtue of its oddness, which is down to two town halls, although at one stage it had five. It has often boasted that diversity is its strength. I have constantly pointed out that that did not work particularly well for Yugoslavia. Sefton has had two boundary reviews that have clearly indicated the severe problem here.

I conclude that if there is to be devolution on demand, there must be scope for local government reorganisation on demand, but there has been little scope for that recently. Were a clear case to be made, I think it could be positively helpful. We must have a permissive approach; otherwise, devolution—in the wrong shape and with the wrong organisations—will end up just as unpopular as centralisation.

18:11

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

It is a pleasure to respond to this interesting and constructive debate. In common with other hon. Members, when I am out and about visiting school and community groups, groups of elderly residents and so forth, I am often asked what it is like in Parliament and people share their disdain for how Parliament behaves, particularly at Prime Minister’s Question Time, for example. I regret that members of the public do not so often encounter debates such as this one, in which interesting contributions are made from all sides and a measure of agreement is reached about devolution, along with some significant differences about how to devolve power and how to engage the public in the debate.

The report that has provided much of the focus of today’s debate makes a strong and passionate case for further devolution in England. I found it telling that none of the submissions to the inquiry opposed further devolution. The case for localism in the UK is overwhelming, and the case for further devolution within England—the great unfinished business of Labour’s long-term commitment to devolution across the UK—is overwhelming, too.

The report identifies a shared consensus that we have reached a “high water mark” of powers maintained in Whitehall, and I agree with that assessment. The report identifies three key features through which changes can be made to the way in which local government is funded and to the powers it possesses. I agree with the first recommendation that

“any system of devolution should recognise need while balancing incentives for local areas to build up their economies.”

The debate has provided an interesting airing of the tension in the report between those two aspects, which I commend to anyone looking at how best to grapple with it. I agree, too, that

“power should be devolved to groups of local authorities, covering a recognisable large-scale area, that can demonstrate how they share, and work together as, a functioning economy.”

Thirdly, I agree that

“a strong, locally agreed governance model”

is required, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) strongly suggested.

The report, I think rightly, does not prescribe a particular governance model, unlike this Government who are determined to force metro-mayors on English cities—without, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) said, any proper public consultation. In fact, following public consultation some years ago, that very idea was rejected.

We broadly welcome all three proposals. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chairman of the Communities and Local Government Committee, and the other members of the Committee, many of whom have spoken, on their excellent work in producing this report, and indeed on all the excellent work they have done over this Parliament in scrutinising the work of the Department for Communities and Local Government as thoughtful advocates for localism.

I am disappointed that we have had to wait eight months for the Government’s response to this report. Why are we having this incredibly important debate just four weeks before this Parliament dissolves? Could it be that the Government have something to hide? It is noticeable that on the equalisation and redistribution recommendations, the Government response does not refer at all to the importance of having a needs-based element to the funding.

This Government have paid lip service to localism, but the rhetoric has not often matched the reality. Far from feeling empowered by this Government, councils feel emasculated. They have been consistently attacked by the Secretary of State, who vents his opinion on everything from the level of reserves councils should hold to how often the bins should be collected. At the same time, councils have been subjected to the biggest cuts of any part of the public sector, despite being recognised at the beginning of this Parliament as the most efficient part of it.

There is much talk of savings and efficiency, but we know that the reality in many communities around the country is of councils trying to do their very best, but now having to make serious cuts that impact on people’s lives. Core funding reductions in local government are an average real-terms cut of 40%, but the cuts were not spread fairly. Some areas have had huge cuts. Reductions in spending have hit areas with the highest needs hardest, and projections for 2017-18 suggest that by that time there might be a difference in cuts of nearly £1,000 per head between the least and worst-affected communities.

On many occasions we have debated the figures that the Government use to illustrate local government spending power, so I shall not focus too much on them today, other than to say that no one and nobody—not the Local Government Association, not the National Audit Office, not the Select Committee and not the Public Accounts Committee—believes that the Government provide a true reflection of the levels of resource available to local authorities, of the deep unfairness of those cuts and of the challenges that presents. This provides an important context for understanding devolution, but let me say that I think it makes the case for devolution even stronger. We must be thoughtful about how we implement it at a time when councils are under such huge strain.

I cannot agree with the assessment of the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) that the districts are dying. I see districts doing incredible work. My own local authority of Corby is doing great things in our local area—building new council houses, backing regeneration and working with me to improve the local labour market by trying to cut bad practice by agencies. Our districts are doing great work, as are all levels of local government, but they are faced with really difficult times.

What councils want, aside from a Government who treat them with respect, is fairer funding, to which Labour is absolutely committed. Councils also want help with longer-term funding settlements, as the report makes clear, so that they can plan ahead. Labour is committed to that, too. Thirdly, they want more devolution of power and funding so that they can work with other public services to get the most out of every pound of public funding.

[Mr Redwood]

Does the hon. Gentleman’s party have plans to devolve the right and the duty to raise more revenue by local government? If so, by which taxes and what powers?

[Andy Sawford]

I am not surprised that the right hon. Gentleman wants to tempt me down that path. What I am setting out today is a very radical plan for devolution of £30 billion of funding. Of course we recognise that there is a case for fiscal devolution, and we will allow local authorities and combined authorities to retain 100% of business rates. That is a welcome step forward in fiscal devolution, with which the right hon. Gentleman’s party is yet to catch up.

A Labour Government will introduce a proper recognition of needs into the funding formula—we are committed to that. How can it be right for the 10 poorest authorities to be hit hardest, while some authorities such as Wokingham have seen their budgets increase? The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) will doubtless have different conversations with his local authority, which has benefited from a budget increase, from those of many other hon. Members whose areas have faced huge cuts.

We will take steps to allocate resources much more fairly across local government. Over the medium term, we will give councils greater ability to make long-term plans by introducing multi-year funding settlements. This is supported by local government: we have heard those calls; we support them and we will act. We will devolve power down to local councils and communities—devolving decision making on transport investment and on bus regulation, for example. If those powers are good enough for people in London to exercise at a more local level, they are good enough for the rest of the country.

The public will know that Labour has a strong track-record of devolving power. We passed the Scotland Act 1998 and the Government of Wales Act 2006, and only a future Labour Government will be committed to an English devolution Act that will reverse a century of centralisation. Members have talked about the great early years of some of our cities, which provided pioneering solutions to the problems they faced in the 19th century, but also about how those powers subsequently drifted back to the centre. We intend to reverse that.

Our devolution Act will secure devolution for local communities in England, transferring £30 billion over five years and passing down power and resources for transport, skills, employment support, housing and business support. That is three times as much money as the current Government have said they will devolve in the next Parliament. We will also devolve business rates to city and county regions and combined authorities so that they retain 100% of the additional money that is raised, which constitutes an important fiscal devolution.

The current Government’s talk of devolution relates to limited powers for a small number of larger cities. I agree with those who have called for devolution throughout the country, to all the villages, towns and cities that we represent and that want an opportunity to take more powers and funding so that they can make decisions locally. For all the rhetoric about empowering northern cities, it is worth reminding ourselves that areas such as Liverpool and Manchester—some of the most deprived areas with some of the greatest needs—have faced the biggest cuts in the country. There is nothing empowering or localist about taking with one hand and giving far less back with the other. As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan, we need to involve people in this devolution, because they currently feel that decisions are made too far away from them. It is important for communities to be involved as we hand over power and resources.

We will join up commissioning between councils and the NHS through health and wellbeing boards to provide “whole person care” by means of a care budget for people with long-term conditions such as disability and frailty. I shall say something about the Manchester proposals in a moment. We will devolve commissioning for employment and skills so that those services are properly joined up. My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan said she felt that the public had been cut out of the conversation in her area, and that consent was needed for this devolution. She was absolutely right. We want to ensure that, as authorities come forward and explain how they will work together to take their new powers and make the most of them, they engage the public in that conversation.

I was extremely disappointed when my local county council announced its intention to explore a partnership with two neighbouring county councils. That did not make much sense to me, but I was more worried by the fact that neither the districts nor the public had been engaged. That is no way in which to build public consent for a radical devolution of power.

We have heard from some Members who represent county areas. I agree with their criticism that the Government have no plan for devolution to counties and county regions. They seem to have a blind spot when it comes to huge areas of the country. If we are given the opportunity to change the position, we will do so. We will offer economic devolution to every part of England.

The Government’s announcement that they will devolve the NHS budget to local authorities in Manchester is particularly topical, and many Members have been exercised about it today. After five years of making savage cuts in council budgets and five years of fragmenting and privatising, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has waited until five weeks before the end of the current Parliament to endorse—in many respects—Labour’s plan to integrate the NHS and social care. Moreover, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan and other Members, he has rushed into it without a proper consultation. The Government are really not doing this in the right way.

A key issue on which Members have commented is motive, which is what makes many of them suspicious. A Government who have, for instance, forced the part-privatisation of ambulance services on people in Greater Manchester are not a Government to be trusted with our NHS, and we question their motive when they make an announcement like this just before an election. Local leaders in Greater Manchester—who have worked with this Government and, in the interests of the people whom they serve, will work with the next—have said that they want an opportunity to develop NHS and social care integration. The leader of Manchester county council, for instance, played a big role in Labour’s local government innovation taskforce, which has championed ideas about the proper integration of health and social care.

The people of Greater Manchester want to be able to get on with the job of developing whole person care. However, before any final deal is signed, important questions about the new arrangements need to be answered. For instance, how much money is on offer, and will it be enough? Members have rightly speculated on the possibility that this is another example of the Government’s devolving the axe by handing over any responsibility for ensuring that a proper NHS and social care service can be provided in an area, and allowing local leaders to take the blame when that service does not meet public expectations.

We must all be vigilant in the face of the danger that the Government are trying to devolve an NHS funding crisis that they have themselves created, not least through their cuts in social care. Labour will offer a better deal. We will offer the NHS and councils more money, raised through our new mansion tax That will allow them to build an NHS that starts in people’s homes, looking after them there and ending the culture of 15-minute care visits. There will be money for the extra nurses, GPs, home care workers and midwives whom we need. Rather than creating new bureaucracies—that is a worrying aspect of the new structure—we will move quickly to devolve more power to councils and councillors.

Democratic accountability is very important, and local leaders must be seen to be in the lead, but we must also think about what additional means of holding people to account may work in different parts of the country. We believe that local public accounts committees could provide a way of including civil society. As other Members have said, we want to engage the public directly, but we can also engage them through civil society organisations.

[Mr Betts]

I agree with my hon. Friend that many questions about the deal in Greater Manchester need to be asked and answered, and locally elected Members of Parliament should be involved in that process. Is it not crucial, however, that if we are to join up health and social care, there should be accountability to local elected politicians for the spending of the money? Is that important issue not embedded in the whole process?

[Andy Sawford]

I entirely agree. There is an opportunity here. NHS England and the Department of Health at Richmond house are not necessarily providing the strongest form of accountability to the public when things go wrong. Any Labour plan for real devolution will be intended to create a much stronger feeling that those who provide local public services are accountable. That applies especially to our NHS, which we value so much, and which we need to protect from five more years of a Government who want to underfund, break up and privatise it.

Under this Government, people in cities and towns throughout our country are feeling the pain of the longest cost of living crisis in a century. That is why we need a Labour Government to spread power and prosperity across England, so that the economic recovery benefits all working people and not just a wealthy few.

18:27

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

I welcome the debate and the report, and I share the central tenet of the speech that we heard from the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). I agree that the role of local government and local leaders must be at the heart of any debate about English devolution.

Many reports have followed the Select Committee’s report. The Government published a Command Paper on the implications of English devolution in December, and we have now published our response to the Committee’s report. One reason for the delay in its publication is the publication of a number of other reports which we thought it appropriate to consider. However, I should have liked our response to be published earlier, and I apologise to members of the Committee for the fact that that was not possible.

I welcome the Committee’s support for the basing of decentralisation and further devolution on existing structures and groups of authorities rather than on a top-down reform of structures. Local areas are best placed to make decisions about joint working and stronger partnership. We will take further steps, which will include encouraging the establishment of combined authorities when they are appropriate.

We have undertaken the biggest ever transfer of powers away from Whitehall through devolution deals, to grow the economy in a balanced way and enable Britain’s cities and communities to be engines for growth. As several Members have pointed out, this is the first Government for a long time to halt the constant move towards centralisation and provide a path back to the empowerment of local people. We have removed centrally imposed regional policy, replacing it with local enterprise partnerships which define their own boundaries and priorities and bring together local business leaders with locally elected leaders. We have given local areas a very substantial share of increases in their local tax base, with areas keeping up to 50% of the increases they deliver in business rates and all council tax plus the new homes bonus, and we have made it clear that we want to go further. The Prime Minister has said a Conservative Government would enable authorities to retain some 66%, and the Secretary of State has said he would like to see 90% retained by 2020.

[Mr Redwood]

Where health expenditures and money is being offered to local government and local government representatives, what powers will they have to switch money either out of the health budget into the social care budget or out of the social care budget into the health budget?

[Kris Hopkins]

As I understand it, the accountability for the spend of that money will remain with the NHS and it will be a negotiated position with the local authority. As has been said, the key thing is that the money associated with social services will be driven and directed by local government, but the idea that local authorities, the NHS and the clinical commissioning group come together and shape the services required for their local people is a major step forward. The better care fund has been a path to some of this, but this step itself is fundamental.

I would like to point out some of the things that we have achieved. We have abolished the inspection regime and targets for councils. That regime was extremely costly and imposed huge burdens on local authorities. We have reduced ring-fencing for councils and have created new community rights, giving local people a greater say in shaping their community. We have enabled more decisions about social housing to be taken locally, making the system fairer and more effective, and we have reformed the planning system to cut red tape and interference from central Government, shifting the focus for local authorities to report to their local communities. Through neighbourhood planning, we have helped local people to play a strong role in shaping the areas in which they live and work and in supporting local development proposals.

We have also taken more ambitious steps through growth deals and recent devolution deals further to incentivise local leadership and growth. Some 28 city deals have been negotiated with the largest and fastest-growing cities and their wider functional economic areas outside of London. We should also recognise that 39 local enterprise partnerships will have £12 billion of local growth funding devolved to them over the next five years, with £6 billion having been agreed under the first wave. They are having a direct impact. They are locally led and locally driven, with local people making choices about where the money should be spent—on better roads and public transport, greater support for local businesses to train young people and enhance skills, faster broadband and more homes.

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

I wholeheartedly agree with the Minister about the benefit the growth funds are bringing to LEPs, but does he share my desire that there should be more democratic accountability for the spending of all this money?

[Kris Hopkins]

LEPs are a partnership between the local authorities and the business leaders who sit inside those groups, and it is up to them to negotiate that position and drive out the delivery of those services. I am confident that these emerging relationships—some of them are very strong at the moment; some still have a way to go—are giving a massive return on the limited amount of money we have to spend as a consequence of the economic situation we found ourselves in.

[Mr Allen]

I congratulate the Minister and his Government on the list of the measures to decentralise power that he has read out, but does he accept that any Front Bench may come forward with such a record of achievement in this area which could be imperilled by some future Government, and that the answer is to build in the rights and responsibilities of local government, and to entrench them beyond easy repeal on the whim of some future Government?

[Kris Hopkins]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good observation about the opportunity for a Government who are not as positive and decentralising as this one to follow another path, but I think that if local authorities are bold and understand what they want and ask for it, we will deliver that for them. I think that once they have been empowered they will be very reluctant to give up those powers.

The Government have built on the success of these approaches relating to enterprise zones and city deals to negotiate devolution settlements with cities. In November the Chancellor announced that Manchester will be taking advantage of greater devolution of powers and shortly will have its own directly elected, city-wide mayor.

[Lisa Nandy]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Kris Hopkins]

I did anticipate that.

[Lisa Nandy]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I question his use of the term “shortly” to mean two to four years, but I also say to him that if this agenda is genuinely about empowering people across entire city regions, it is important to get the language right. He just talked about cities and about Manchester, but my constituents in Wigan would not recognise that that relates to them. It is important that we get the language right and make sure people understand that this sort of deal could, if we do it right, bring significant benefits to city regions, not just to cities.

[Kris Hopkins]

I think I got off lightly, because I appreciate that language is important when we are talking about identity. Certainly, the Greater Manchester area has been extremely engaged in this issue for a long time, and I welcome the path it has taken. I just want to correct the point about two to four years. Elections are anticipated in 2017, and we want to see that. Primary legislation needs to be put forward to deliver that. The models for then holding the mayor to account will be debated in this House. There will be an opportunity for every Member who is re-elected to participate in the process, and I am very confident that we will have a democratically held to account mayor driving forward a very extensive range of services, including transport, housing, planning, skills, policing, welfare support and, of course, health.

Other cities have been engaged in this, including Sheffield city region, and there are continuing talks about Leeds. We believe there is scope for decentralising more funds, but the key is making sure that local authorities have an opportunity to grow their own local economy, and we have assisted in that through business rates retention and the new homes bonus.

[Graham Stringer]

Select Committee recommendation 49 starts:

“Growth in one area of England does not mean reduced growth elsewhere.”

Frankly, I did not understand the Government’s response to that recommendation. Can the Minister confirm that he agrees with the Select Committee recommendation, and that growth in one area will not mean less borrowing powers or less resources for another part of the country?

[Kris Hopkins]

That is certainly not my intention. My intention is to see every part of the country grow. The Chancellor has gone out there and supported the northern powerhouse, and we have gone to every corner of this country to make sure that this works. At the end of the day, however, growth will be locally led and individual areas will need to be supported in this process, but many will seize the opportunity to grow their local economies.

We have heard some good contributions from Members and I want to comment on them.

[Mr Betts]

I read out a quote by the Prime Minister, which I presume the Minister agrees with, about proposals for increased fiscal devolution in Wales. So far, he has not talked about fiscal devolution at all. The Prime Minister said:

“That means those who spend taxpayers’ money must be more responsible for raising it. This is devolution with a purpose”.

Does the Minister agree with that in principle, and if so, if it applies to Wales, why does it not apply to Manchester, London or Sheffield?

[Kris Hopkins]

It applies to England at this moment. We have given local authorities the ability to raise money, to drive their local economies and to build more houses and be rewarded for doing so. The decisions associated with that expenditure are now being taken at local level.

The tone of the debate has been really good, despite one or two glitches in some contributions. On the whole, people realise the enormous power that local government has and the massive contribution that it makes to society and to delivering public services. The report produced by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East recognises that the movement towards more decentralisation and ensuring that people at local level are more accountable is the way forward. That is certainly the desire of this Government.

My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) talked about a northern powerhouse, and about his desire to see his county step up and seize the opportunity for more devolved powers. He was right to say that. In contrast, the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) seemed to believe that it was up to central Government to come up with a plan for a local area. It is not about that. It is about groups of local authorities having the confidence to follow what they see as the route to economic growth. It is about their making those choices and coming to us. Our door is open to the authorities that make those choices.

My hon. Friend was right to recognise that the move from the better care fund towards more integration in our social care is extremely important. There is an issue with demographics, given the enormous growth in our elderly populace, and we have a responsibility to ensure that we deliver quality services efficiently. He also talked about waste, and about community housing policy. Those are two key areas in which local authorities can make decisions.

The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) brings an enormous amount of knowledge and expertise to the House and I congratulate him on his 30 years of public service. He has faith in local government; in fact, he has more faith in local government than he does in central Government. I, too, have huge confidence that local government can deliver what is needed. He mentioned the use on the radio of the term “grubby hands”. I, too, thought that that was appalling. People working in local government give up a huge amount of their time to make a contribution, and they do so out of choice. I applaud the work of many local authority leaders and councillors, and I think that the BBC should apologise for that comment.

The hon. Gentleman was right to observe that the health deal was negotiated—and will be negotiated further—with local leaders. I have confidence that the democratic process will win, and that people will seize these opportunities. The hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) has pointed to a lack of involvement by local people in that process, but the councillor who is the leader of Wigan is a local person, and those 10 people came together in a pragmatic way—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) said—and made a choice about this. We will also put in place primary legislation to ensure that there is a directly elected representative. The journey in Manchester has not happened just in the past four weeks. It is not something that has appeared just before the general election. It has been going on for a decade-plus.

[Lisa Nandy]

Can the Minister tell me why the three-week consultation that he ran in January did not mention the NHS once?

[Kris Hopkins]

The deals associated with the health authority still have a long way to go. The principle of joining the services together is the right one, and I have confidence that those 10 local authority leaders will be accountable for that devolved spend.

I know that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) is a passionate Yorkshireman. He talked about “devo-tyke” and “devo-Manc”, and he was right in what he said. As a Yorkshire MP myself, I recognise—as do Opposition Members—that there is an opportunity here. Sheffield has seized it and Leeds is having a conversation about it. This is up to local leaders. I remember this conflict from the time when I was a local leader: it is not easy for the different tiers of government to come together as one body, regardless of politics, to make choices about how to grow their economies and ensure that those in their most deprived areas can change their lives and become prosperous. I applaud the work of the all-party parliamentary group on Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, which has come up with some really good ideas on how to achieve these aims.

I want to go back to Wigan, just for a moment. I do not want to rub it in—well, actually, I do want to rub it in a bit, to be quite honest!

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Get on with it!

[Kris Hopkins]

I am getting on with it. The hon. Member for Wigan said that the new plans were not the way forward, but let us just think about the journey that we have made. We have moved from having an unelected regional development authority, a top-down obsession with centralisation and a target-driven system to a situation in which we have individuals making choices about the path that they want to take to economic success. That is the right way to do it. This is not about creating more bureaucracy or creating more politicians for the sake of it; it is about local people making a choice about devolution and seizing those powers and opportunities. That is a principle that everyone in this House can support.

Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).

Ministry of Defence

Defence and Security Review (NATO)

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Relevant Documents: Third Report from the Defence Committee, Towards the next Defence and Security Review: Part Two–NATO, HC 358, and the Government response, HC 755.]

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That, for the year ending with 31 March 2015, for expenditure by the Ministry of Defence:

(1) the resources authorised for use for current purposes be reduced by £618,573,000 as set out in HC 1019, and

(2) further resources, not exceeding £426,760,000 be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and

(3) a further sum, not exceeding £426,834,000 be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(Mel Stride.)

18:49

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I should like to begin by talking about the House of Commons Defence Committee’s report. The key element in the report, and in what I hope will be my relatively brief remarks, is that Russia poses a significant and substantial threat to Europe. That argument has been made in great detail by the Defence Committee and, in the months since the report was published, it has become increasingly evident that it is correct.

I remind the House that, while we were working on the report, we had a statement from the Foreign Secretary that he had been assured by Lavrov that Russia would not invade Crimea. Four days later, Russia invaded Crimea. We then heard a number of specialists and analysts say that Russia would not go into eastern Ukraine, but it then did so. We also heard people say, after the Malaysian airliner was shot down, that that would be the moment at which Russia would back off because it was embarrassed by what it had done. Russia did not back off. People then made it clear that Russia would not extend its activities to Mariupol or Odessa, but as we can now see, separatists with Russian support are moving towards those two cities.

What does this mean for the United Kingdom, the Ministry of Defence, NATO and defence spending? The House of Commons Defence Committee’s report focuses on two things: the conventional threat posed by Russia, and the threat that we describe as next generation warfare, ambiguous warfare or the asymmetric threat posed by Russia. Although those two things are related, it is worth analysing them separately.

On the conventional threat posed by Russia, the report argues that, through its Zapad exercise in 2013, Russia showed its ability to deploy almost 70,000 troops at 72 hours’ notice. The current estimate is that it would take NATO almost six months to deploy that number of troops. Russia has also displayed its ability to fly nuclear bombers to Venezuela and to exercise for a full amphibious assault on a Baltic state. It has upgraded its nuclear arsenal and it is committed to spending $100 billion a year on defence. All of that is taking place in the context of a decline in NATO defence spending.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I thank the Chairman of the Committee for giving way so early in his speech. One of the reasons that he has had to consider only two aspects—namely, conventional and unconventional warfare—is that our strategic nuclear deterrent is still in place, and if either the Opposition or the Conservative party has anything to do with it, that will remain the case. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be madness to think about disposing of our deterrent and ending our continuous at-sea deterrence? Is it not strange that there is not a single Member present who represents the party that proposes that we should abandon that continuous at-sea deterrence—namely, the Liberal Democrat party? [Interruption.] Oh, the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) has just appeared. I hope that he disagrees with his party on that matter.

[Rory Stewart]

That is an invitation to go into exactly this theme: in terms of responses to the Russian conventional threat, we have planned, for 20 years, for fighting enemies in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. We have planned on the basis of such expeditionary warfare. The planning assumptions at the base of Future Force 2020 or the strategic defence and security review were about being able to put 6,600 people—or 10,000, in the past—into the field and maintain them there for enduring stability operations. We have not really thought about taking on an enemy such as Russia. In the national security strategy, the threat of what we have seen done by Russia was marked down as a tier 3 or bottom-level probability.

That means a lot of things: it has implications, of course, for nuclear weapons; it has implications for many capacities that we have got rid of in Britain over the past 20 years, such as our ability to exercise at scale —in the mid-1980s we used to be able to exercise with 130,000 or 140,000 people, whereas last year we were exercising with about 6,600 people, at a time when Russia was exercising with about 70,000; it has meant that we got rid of our significant capacity in wide-water crossing—that is engineering; it has meant a reduction in armour, because we did not expect to be fighting tank battles; and, more relevantly to the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), it has also meant that we need to think much more seriously about ballistic missile defence, and about chemical, biological and radiological and nuclear.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I accept my hon. Friend’s Committee’s recommendation that as a minimum we have to spend 2% of GDP, but even at that level how many of these missing things could we put back into our capabilities?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very good question, which I hope to be able to deal with towards the end of my speech. The assumption of spending 2% of GDP on defence, which is essential because we organised an entire NATO summit around the idea of doing that, is of course the hope that as the economy grows, defence spending will grow and we can make the necessary five-year planning, which will return confidence to the armed forces and allow us to make some of these investments. The question is a good one, because we would still face significant constraints in relation to Trident and to operating our aircraft carrier. If we wanted to make significant investments in restoring armour capacity, even 2% of GDP would be pushing it.

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

I apologise for coming in late. About 30 years ago, when Denis Healey, as Defence Secretary, looked down the road at the defence needs, he said that modern warfare for the future would rely more on conventional weapons than nuclear weapons and that sort of thing. On the hon. Gentleman’s other point, although we may not have planned for any war with Russia, I imagine the United States has, because it plays “war games”, for want of a better term, and examines various scenarios. What does he think about that? Does he know anything about that?

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman rightly says that we have not been focused on Russia, and the United States certainly has more capacity, but it is striking that even the US significantly reduced its capacity to deal with an adversary such as Russia. There has been a lot of criticism within the entire Pentagon administration about the focus on counter-insurgency warfare, and a man called Colonel Gentile ran a huge campaign to try to get the US to focus more on conventional threats. Britain has got rid of a lot of our Russian analysis capacity. One thing my Committee’s report pointed out is that we got rid of the Advanced Research and Assessment Group, which did the basic Russian analysis, we sacked our Ukraine desk officer and the defence intelligence service reduced its Russian analysis. The same has been happening in the United States, although it is now building this capacity up rapidly, but when we go to Supreme Allied Commander Europe and look at the American capacity, we see that that Russian capacity is being built up from a very low base again, which is troubling.

I do not wish to speak for too long, because I know many Members wish to contribute, so let me return to the basic framework of my argument: conventional; unconventional; and what we should be doing. I have set out the conventional, so what should Britain be doing? The Committee believes we should be looking to exercise at a larger level, so we should begin to return to some of the kinds of exercises we did in previous eras, which involve exercising at least at a divisional level. Encouragingly, NATO is beginning to look at an exercise at a level of 35,000 people—we would like to see more of that, and we would like politicians and policy makers to be involved in that. We would like to see all-armed exercises. We are going to be looking closely at Norway 2018, which seems to be a big opportunity to do this.

We have to look carefully at this very high readiness taskforce. One thing the Committee recommended was the setting up of a deployable force under SACEUR like the allied rapid reaction corps, which could go out and respond rapidly within 72 hours to a Russian threat. It was a very good sign at the Wales summit that that commitment was made, but the details need to be improved dramatically. The framework nations are struggling to provide 5,000 people and they need to produce one brigade standing up, one currently in exercise and one standing down. We have not yet seen what is happening with the enablers. We need to see whether they will be able to move forward with ISTAR––intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance—and whether they are going to have the cyber-capacity connected. Here is another question, perhaps for the Minister: France has committed as a framework nation, but are we certain that it is committing its troops uniquely to SACEUR or are we in danger of a situation in which people are double-hatting? In other words, are the French retaining the ability to deploy their brigade to Africa when it suits them, so that this very high readiness taskforce will then be a second-order call?

But it is on asymmetric warfare that we need to focus most of all, because although Russian tanks crossing the border into Estonia would be a high-impact event, we estimate at the moment that it is a low-probability event. It is not one we should ignore, because of course were Putin to do it, we really would not know what to do. Were Putin to roll tanks across and take over even a mile or two of Estonia, NATO would be in a very serious problem. As the Swedish general Neretnieks has pointed out, it would be very difficult—it would require very considerable political will—to get Russia out of that situation. But the most likely move is asymmetric warfare first.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

On that point about capacity, it is interesting to note that in 1989 there were 5,000 US battle tanks stationed in Europe, whereas now there are 29. The capacity is not there, even if we look just at what the Americans are providing, never mind our failure to provide.

[Rory Stewart]

That is a significant point. It is true that, ultimately, the theoretical NATO capacity dwarfs that of Russia, but a lot of this stuff is extremely difficult to deploy; many nations are very reluctant to pay the money required to exercise; a lot of this money is absorbed in pension schemes; and our problem is that we are defending an enormous, multi-thousand-mile border, where Russia could, should it wish, cause trouble all the way from the Baltic to the Caucasus. We have to deal with that entire area, which may be very difficult to do, even with the 3.3 million troops we currently have in NATO.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman referred to Estonia. Clearly, under article 5 of the NATO treaty all the other 27 member states would have an obligation to respond to an armed attack on Estonia, but there is a level of ambiguity, given the hybrid warfare that the Russians are engaged in and have been engaged in—cyber-attacks and others. Given that Putin does not necessarily wish to invoke a major military conflict, how does NATO deal with those hybrid attacks?

[Rory Stewart]

The hybrid attacks are exactly what I was getting on to: the asymmetric and next-generation warfare attacks. As the Labour former Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee has just pointed out, the conventional attack is a low-probability, high-impact event. Much more probable is this asymmetric, hybrid warfare. In other words, we are more likely to find cyber-attacks of the kind we saw in Estonia in 2007, and separatists popping up claiming that they are being abused or that minority rights are being abused in places such as Narva, in eastern Estonia. As we saw, 45% of the Russian population of Latvia supported the Russian occupation of Crimea in a survey at that time. So what are we supposed to do? The answer is: it is really difficult and we absolutely need to raise our game in three areas. As has been indicated, those are cyber, information warfare and special forces operations.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. The Defence Committee, which completed its report on deterrence just before he assumed the Chair, made it clear that in the event of a cyber attack we should be prepared to say to a potential adversary such as Russia, “We will not necessarily wait for 100% proof before we enact counter-measures.” We should do that despite the fact that it might have tried to create some uncertainty and ambiguity over the exact emanation of such an attack.

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise that point about cyber-attacks. Crucially, very few of us in this House—I certainly include myself in this—understand cyber in detail. We are taking it on faith that we are developing a significant cyber-capacity. It is extremely difficult for us to be confident about what we are doing in this regard. I have two questions on cyber that I would like to put to the Minister. One is to do with NATO’s cyber-capacity. The members of the Committee visited the cyber-centre in Estonia and discovered that there were only two UK personnel posted to that site. It was very difficult to be confident about what deterrent effect that kind of cyber would involve.

My second question is to do with doctrine. Are we prepared to threaten a cyber response as a way of deterring a Russian cyber-attack? In other words, if Russia were to mount a cyber-attack against a NATO member state, would we respond with a cyber-attack in kind?

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I agree with everything my hon. Friend has said, particularly with regard to the importance of cyber. He will remember that in the SDSR 2010 one of the Secretary of State’s “up arrows”—areas in which we need to invest—was cyber-security, where we set aside £650 million over four years. Part of that was cyber-attack.

[Rory Stewart]

That is very important. The thing about cyber-defence that is difficult for us as a Committee to deal with—given that when we look at cyber we are often told that much of it is the job of the Intelligence and Security Committee—is just how good it is. Clearly, the Government have committed a lot of money to it, but at the same time, many Members come to us having spoken to the Ministry of Defence which is concerned about our cyber-capacity, and are not confident that we have really got to where we want to be or that we fully understand what the technology is.

The second issue is around information operations. It is very clear that the basic problem for Russian minorities in the Baltic states is the fact that they watch Moscow television. We need to ensure that we have the ability to project television into the Baltic states in the Russian language that is entertaining and engaging, that the minorities in those areas are prepared to watch, and that counters propaganda not with propaganda but with the truth. Such broadcasts must provide an objective, truthful and honest conversation about what is going on in the world and, above all, that is able to draw attention to the things that Putin is doing. That means that centrally we must invest in the BBC World Service. We spend a lot of time talking about this, about Russian-language television, but the reality is that we have yet to see the evidence from this Government, or from the United States, that the real investment is being made to create a genuinely watchable, attractive Russian language service that could be watched by Russian minorities around the edge of NATO.

The final and most difficult thing is dealing with special forces, insurgents, “little green men” and exactly the kinds of events that we saw in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. The reason that that is the most difficult of all is that it is a challenge of understanding not only for us and the Ministry of Defence, but also for the Foreign Office and the intelligence agencies. If Putin does something, the first question will be one of interpretation or understanding. He will operate under the thresholds. As the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), who was the Labour Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, pointed out, Putin will not initially do something that crosses the article 5 threshold. Let me provide a couple of examples to illustrate the threats. If, for example, the Polish electricity infrastructure were to go down, there might be an immediate claim that it had been taken down by a Russian cyber-attack. Britain would need very rapidly to be in a position to know whether that was in fact the case and to determine how to respond. In order to do that, we would need to have what we currently do not have—namely, the people on the ground in Poland with the necessary relationship with the Polish electricity Minister to get to the bottom of the matter very quickly and to pass the information through to us. We lack intelligence and information at every level from the strategic political level all the way down to the ISTAR level of watching Russian kit moving around.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is quite rightly focusing on the clear and present threat of Russia, but when looking at asymmetrical war, we should also be looking at the threats from the middle east and considering how to deal with those challenges. There are also cyber-threats from China and North Korea. We should be cognisant not just of the Russian threat but of other areas of the world that pose a direct threat to the UK.

[Rory Stewart]

That provides me with a good way to drive towards a conclusion. As my hon. Friend has just pointed out, the kind of threats that Russia or Putin can bring will be very unpredictable. I will be humiliated by what Putin does over the next five to 10 years. It is very difficult to guess what he will do next. What is clear about Putin is that he has been thinking very hard, since at least 2008, about how to unsettle or unbalance NATO. He will be pulling levers and pushing buttons that we cannot yet anticipate.

I imagine that he will be tempted to do things in relation to Iran—perhaps in relation to the Iranian nuclear negotiations. We have already seen Putin’s very direct contribution to the civil war in Syria through the protection of Bashar al-Assad. We can see his control over the gas supplies in Bulgaria. It is not very difficult for us to imagine how he could cause trouble in Narva, or how he could put a few Spetsnaz troops in a forest in Latvia, just sit them there and wait to see what we do. If we are dealing with threats along that arc, we need to change the way we think in the Ministry of Defence. We cannot rest in the comfortable world we have been in for the past 20 years—imagining that we will have a neat deployment of 6,600 soldiers on an expeditionary warfare campaign, that they will stay there for five to 10 years doing stabilisation operations and then come home. We will have to respond to very nuanced, ambiguous and unpredictable attacks all the way along an arc between the Baltic and, potentially, Iran. In order to do that, we need to invest very heavily in Russian language expertise, defence engagement, and defence attachés in all those countries. The United States currently has three defence attachés in each Baltic state; we have one defence attaché covering three Baltic states. That is not enough.

The Ministry of Defence would not be able tell us whether the defences in Mariupol were adequate to deal with a Russian advance because the defence attaché currently in Kiev is not permitted to travel up to the front line. We need to invest in defence intelligence staff in the Foreign Office. To do that—this is what I will conclude on—we must make this investment of 2% of GDP in defence. We need to do that for many, many reasons.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I do not want the Chair of the Select Committee to ignore one part of the world. With regard to all the countries that he has mentioned we can act as part of the NATO family, but what about the Falklands? He will be aware that Argentina has not given up its ambitions, but who will support us down in the South Atlantic?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very significant question. It is definitely worth thinking about in the next SDSR. As the hon. Gentleman points out, many of our assumptions are based on the fact that we will operate with the US coalition, but in relation to the Falklands we cannot be so confident that that will happen.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

The figure of 2% is just a number that has been dragged out of the air, but it happens to be the level of our defence expenditure—about 2.07% of GDP. The conclusions of the summit in Wales seemed remarkably similar to the British posture of what NATO’s targets should be. The fact is that Russia has taken a disappointing divergence from the path that we had hoped it was on after the end of the Soviet Union. That is now beyond contradiction, and we are back to where we were in 1977. Regrettably, we should now be preparing for conflict, and 2% does not cut it.

[Rory Stewart]

I am very supportive of the idea that we should be spending even more.

[Mr Andrew Robathan (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

So am I, if I may say so. My hon. Friend is giving an excellent analysis of the situation. At the NATO summit, Britain was at the forefront of demanding that all NATO countries use 2% of GDP for defence spending. I absolutely support the Prime Minister on this. We want to spend 2% of GDP. Personally, I would rather go further and spend more.

[Rory Stewart]

To come to a conclusion, I am giving the four reasons why we need to spend 2%. The first, which has just been pointed out by the former Defence Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), is UK credibility. The UK led the push for 2% at the Wales summit only six months ago. We stood alongside the United States and went around every other country at the summit saying, “If you’re going be serious, you have to commit 2%.” We emphasised again and again that we were spending 2% of our GDP on defence and that they should spend 2% of their GDP on defence. That was very important in getting a range of countries to commit to spending 2% of GDP on defence over the next five to 10 years. The first reason why we must do it is simply out of a sense of shame. The honour and credibility of the United Kingdom are bound up in this.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

The Chairman of the Select Committee is giving a fantastic analysis of the situation. May I add my concern that 2% simply is not enough for the commitments that we will inevitably have? Our forebears fought and died for freedom and democracy. What concerns me even more is that some people do not seem to appreciate that it takes years to get ships and aircraft carriers, and to get groups and battalions reformed and retrained. Once they are gone, if we are called to action we simply will not have the manpower to deal with it.

[Rory Stewart]

That is the second point that I was coming to. The second reason why we have to spend 2% of GDP or more on defence is that we have concrete tasks that we need to perform. There are some real requirements if we are to deal with the new threat. The problem with the threat assessments since the end of the cold war is that they have been done in a vacuum. Now that we can see a threat in the form of Putin, we realise that there are considerable capacities that we need to rebuild. Those capacities cost money, so we need to invest in them.

The third reason is that deterrence is about psychology. Deterrence is about will-power and confidence; it is not just about kit. The 2% is about what Putin thinks of us; it is about whether he thinks that we are serious. Often, we think that the way to deal with a Russian conventional threat is with a conventional response, and that the way to deal with a Russian unconventional threat is with an unconventional response. Of course, the Russians, particularly Gerasimov, the chief of staff, use the phrase “asymmetric warfare”, which means that they understand very well that often one should deal with a conventional threat with an unconventional response and vice versa. One of the best ways of deterring Putin from mucking around either conventionally or unconventionally is to let him see the confidence of that NATO commitment towards 2% of GDP. As he begins to see the exercises, the spending and the increasing confidence of our armed forces, that will act as the deterrent.

That brings me to my last argument for why spending 2% of GDP on defence is central: it will provide a fantastic framework of planning for our armed forces for the next five years. The fundamental problem in defence and foreign affairs is, of course, that the electoral cycles and financial cuts of modern democracies simply do not operate in sync with the realities of the world and its crises.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Is it not also the case that the rigour of the SDSR process needs to do justice to the nature of the threats we face? It should not be an argument about 2% or bust; it should be about correctly assessing the world as it exists today and as it will exist and ensuring that we have the capabilities to meet the threats that will exist over the next 10 years.

[Rory Stewart]

The process will be led—must be led—by the SDSR. The entire problem that we face starts with the fact that the SDSR put the Russian threat down at tier 3. It will be impossible in the system to argue for more defence spending unless the Foreign Office and the agencies agree with our assessment that Putin represents a significant threat. We must make that absolutely central to the entire debate in the House today to establish that we really believe in this threat and that it is not a joke threat; that this is not special pleading by the Ministry of Defence, nor an attempt to sneak resources in by the back door, but that what Putin has done since the moment he entered Crimea—in fact, probably since the moment he entered Georgia—is to demonstrate the reality that to hold the order of Europe, to maintain NATO and to deter future Russian expansion, we must have the credibility, the capacity and the confidence.

To come back to the final point, the 2% will allow us to step away from the political debates and say to the armed services, “Your budget is protected. You can plan over the next five years on the assumption that your budget will rise in real terms. If the economy rises by 3%, your budget will increase by £1 billion a year. You will be able to use that money to make the investments we need, whether in cyber, in ballistic missile defence, in CBRN or—as I have been trying to argue—“in the massive panoply of intelligence, defence engagement and assessment, which allows us to work out what is happening in the world.” It is that which will draw a new generation of soldiers and officers into the armed forces, because they will see that confidence. Above all, it is Russia and our adversaries who will see that confidence and who will see that, at a time when the world is becoming increasingly dangerous and unstable, our commitment to collective security is generous, clear and long term.

19:09

[Sir Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Perhaps I should start by looking at the Order Paper. We are being asked tonight to approve for the current year a reduction of defence expenditure—or, I should say, a further reduction of defence expenditure—of £618 million. I hope that, in his response, the Minister will say on which capabilities the Ministry of Defence was planning to spend at the start of the year have now been dropped. Looking at the second and third paragraphs of the motion, I hope he will also say what additional expenditure there has been this year for capital purposes, for which there is a considerable increase, and operations. How will those additional resources be spent?

The Defence Committee produced a good report before the NATO summit and any sane person would agree with many of the points that the Government made in their response. However, there was a lack of clear commitment and candour in the response on defence spending, which the Chairman of the Select Committee has just talked about.

It has become clear over the past year, if not longer, that we face new and challenging security threats from Russia, which the Chairman of the Select Committee also spoke about. There is not just the annexation of Crimea and the intervention in eastern Ukraine, but a new Russian foreign policy doctrine that reserves to Russia the right to intervene in other states where there are Russian-speaking minorities when the Kremlin believes it is in their interests to do so. There has been a continuity of policy going back to Georgia and, indeed, Transnistria. There are still Russian troops in northern Moldova. We have also, in the past year or so, seen new and complex threats in the middle east from ISIS or Daesh.

In the face of new and growing security threats, we clearly need new capabilities and strategies to deter our enemies and defend ourselves. We need as soon as possible a new NATO very high readiness joint taskforce and we need to be able to deploy it quickly. That will mean that this House must consider how political authority will be given for use of the first very high readiness brigade and the reinforcement brigades.

We need to discuss with our allies how other Parliaments, especially those that have a constitutional requirement for a vote in Parliament before forces are deployed, will ensure that a very high readiness force, to be deployed within 48 hours, can be deployed within that timescale if needed even though their Parliaments cannot meet within that timescale. We will need either some pre-authorisations, as we had in the old days of the cold war, under which SACEUR—Supreme Allied Commander Europe—could mobilise his assets, or acceptance that parts of NATO will move within 48 hours, even if some allies will take longer to make decisions.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

Given my hon. Friend’s extremely important work in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, does he think that the House probably has not of late taken sufficient note of the debates at the Parliamentary Assembly?

[Sir Hugh Bayley]

I would always like greater attention to be given to the Parliamentary Assembly’s work, but there is a good crossover of membership between our UK delegation to the Assembly and the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Select Committee on Defence and the Select Committee on International Development. As a result, there is a cross-fertilisation of ideas and I know that colleagues on the Defence and Foreign Affairs Committees who are alerted to particular information through the NATO Parliamentary Assembly meetings have been able to take that information to their Select Committees. There is, of course, movement of information in the other direction, which is a thoroughly good thing.

We need to consider not just how we deliver a very high readiness joint taskforce but how to improve our strategy for dealing with cyber-threats, our response to the propaganda war when it is waged against us and our response to the use of irregular personnel, whether that means little green men or jihadists in the middle east. We must be clear that if we and our allies are going to develop new capabilities and strategies, that will cost money. If we want to improve our defence, we must will the means to do so.

Before the NATO summit last September, the Prime Minister quite rightly called on the majority of our NATO allies who do not spend 2% of their GDP on defence to do so. At the summit, as one can read on page 10 of the Government’s response to the report:

“All Allies agreed to halt any decline in Defence spending, aim to increase it in real terms as GDP grows and to move towards 2% within a decade.”

Some of our allies have responded to that declaration since the summit. Poland agreed on 18 February to increase its defence spending to 2% of GDP by 2016. Romania, through a pact signed between the political parties on 13 January, pledged to reach 2% by 2017. The Czech Republic, while not making a pledge to reach 2%, has pledged to increase its spending from 1% to 1.4% by 2020. Lithuania has pledged to meet 2% by 2017 and Latvia by 2020. Estonia, which is already at 2%, has increased its defence spending slightly to 2.05% this year. Overall, however, western European allies are still cutting their defence expenditure, on average by 2% a year since 2009 according to Jane’s defence budgets global defence assessment. Last year, in 2014, Germany cut its defence spending by 3.9% and we in the UK cut ours by 2.3%. France cut its by 0.8%. Meanwhile, Russia has been increasing its defence spending by some 10% a year for the past five years, a 50% increase. We ought to question why we did not pick that up sooner. No one increases their defence spending by 50% unless they have some plan to use those assets.

We should also look closely at UK defence spending. According to the public expenditure statistical analysis produced by the Government in 2014, at table 4.2, in the year I entered the House, 1992-93, defence spending was £23.8 billion or 3.5% of our GDP. By 1997-98, when there was a change of Government, of course, defence spending had fallen in cash terms to £21.7 billion, and by more in real terms. At that point, it was down to 2.5% of GDP. Throughout the period of the previous Labour Government, defence spending remained at 2.5%. The Ministry of Defence’s statistical analysis shows an increase, but if we remove the increased spending on operations it remained at 2.5%.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

In his last few words, the hon. Gentleman said something that contradicted my memory of events. The point I wanted to make to him was it was often said, particularly by Tony Blair on leaving, that under the previous Labour Government spending had remained roughly constant at 2.5%, if the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq were included. In opposition, we used to criticise that, as we said that it was sleight of hand, so the hon. Gentleman can imagine my embarrassment now that we are in government to find that there is no sign of our sticking to the pledge when we criticised the Labour party in government for massaging the figures.

[Sir Hugh Bayley]

I have had an interesting conversation with the statisticians in the House of Commons Library this afternoon. They provided figures for me in April of last year that showed spending as a proportion of GDP increasing from 2.48% in 1997-98 to 2.81% in 2009-10. Those are the Defence Analytical Services and Advice, or DASA, figures produced by the Minister of Defence. More recently—[Interruption.] I shall come to the point made by the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) in a moment. More recently, the Library has given me the PESA, or public expenditure statistical analysis, figures, which show defence spending at 2.5% at the start of the Labour Government and 2.5% at the end of the Labour Government. I think the difference in the figures is covered by precisely the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. If we include the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq, there is an increase in real terms. If we discount them, there is no change in real terms.

In 2013-14, according to the Government’s figures, spending was at 2.1%. That is counterintuitive. I do not think that many members of the public would recognise that the Major Conservative Government substantially reduced defence expenditure in real terms, that the Labour Government maintained it and that this Government have substantially reduced it, but that is what the Government’s own PESA figures show us.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman’s powerful endorsement of the Prime Minister’s commitment to 2% at the NATO summit last September. Has he spoken to his own Front Benchers about whether an incoming Labour Government, if there were to be such a thing, would or would not maintain defence spending at 2%?

[Sir Hugh Bayley]

Yes, of course I have had that conversation—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am going to have to put a time limit on speeches, because we are drifting, and it was suggested earlier that Members should speak for up to 10 minutes. Sir Hugh, I assume that you will soon be coming to the end of your speech.

[Sir Hugh Bayley]

I will crack on quickly, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I have put my name to the early-day motion drafted by the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Sir Peter Luff), which calls for the 2% commitment to be maintained. However, like the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), I do not believe that that is enough. I believe that we should be increasing our defence spending as a proportion of GNP. I have of course raised that with Opposition Front Benchers. I seek a commitment tonight from the Minister and the shadow Minister that the strategic defence and security reviews that they would respectively commission, depending on who wins the general election, will be led by concerns about security and will not be cost-driven, which was a criticism that many people made of the 2010 SDSR.

It is five years since NATO adopted its new strategic concept. It was intended to last for 10 years, but the security threats we face are clearly changing, so it needs to be reviewed. Therefore, another question that I wish to put to both the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) is: would their respective strategic defence and security reviews consider whether NATO’s strategic concept needs to be reviewed?

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The time limit is nine minutes.

19:31

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

May I start by warmly congratulating the Chair of the Defence Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), on what I thought was a masterly speech, both in detail and in content, and with which I agree entirely?

I think I can leave out the stuff about how we all agree that defence and security is the most important responsibility of any Government, because we all know that is the case and, by and large, we all agree on it, but the character of conflict has changed profoundly and new threats have arisen. As we look to the future and prepare for it over the next several years, we really must prepare ourselves to meet some very different challenges.

As in any other area of our public obligation, if we have a strong economy—and we do—that will enable us to build strong armed forces and obtain the structure we need. There is absolutely no point pretending that it would be sensible, wise, prudent or in the national interest not to commit to spending the 2% target. Indeed, I would go further and say that failing to do so would be a terrible slur on Britain’s honour.

The question of the threat is quite clear. Threat consists of capability and intent. So what threatens us, our way of life and our prosperity? The world wars and the cold war of the 20th century were waged between states or by sponsored surrogates. They defined our capabilities. The emerging challenges of the 21st century that threaten us, our way of life and our prosperity are not so much Médecins sans Frontières, but Menace sans Frontières. They are transnational forces such as fascist theocracies, little green men, organised crime and cyber-anarchism, and they are not defining our defence capabilities; they are merely defining our attention—and a short attention span it is, too—while our political and public intent is watered down and neutered, since today, alas, perception is reality.

The world is increasingly connected—iPads, iPhones, the internet and social media—but it is not at all well informed. The power of propaganda, mischief and misinformation allows faceless entities to shape the debate and, alas, our will. Our current narrative, I regret to say, is clumsy, outdated and thoroughly outmatched.

This last century we sought capability dominance that would overmatch our enemies, and in the round we achieved it. This century has already demonstrated possible enemies who have successfully achieved capability avoidance and are moving our best defences rapidly towards capability irrelevance. For example, strategic deterrence kept the world from war for 40 years because it deterred. Today the threat of use in North Korea and even the threat of ownership in Iran allows small nations to gain great leverage with tactical capabilities, whether real or perceived. Frankly, neither country is seriously deterred by our strategic forces, and the future holds every possibility of small-scale tactical nuclear use.

The operating environment has shifted from one of near certainty, in the cold war, to a period of uncertainty, in the war on terror, and it will move further left towards the unknown. In that space, investment in people and technology, with genuine blue-sky thinking and leading-edge research and development, will be absolutely essential while maximizing our existing equipment and capabilities through innovative integration. Colossus and Ultra shortened the second world war by two years. Who foresaw and invested in those as war weapons in 1939? Our universities and science laboratories provided the knowledge and advancement that allowed us rapidly to blend national expertise to defeat Germany. I recommend that anyone who has not yet seen the “Churchill’s Scientists” exhibition at the Science museum to do so. Today, robotics, advanced computer studies, telematics, teleonomics and bioscience offer the same, but they are not seen or really much supported by defence.

We must express the new defence challenge in terms that people can understand. There is of course a need to have contingent forces capable of operating to the old threat of war or proxy war, but that should not be the main effort. The present challenges require us to prepare for how we anticipate them to evolve, using current capabilities adapted and integrated for best use in the near term.

The future threats to our country are truly wicked, and they continue to evolve and challenge us. Investment in people and advanced science, in close collaboration with our closest and most reliable ally in this field—the United States—should determine the course that defence must now take.

19:32

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow such esteemed Members on both sides of the House, particularly the Chair of the Defence Committee, of which I am a member. I wholeheartedly endorse what he said about the threat from Russia. He talked about the arc of unpredictable threats that we could face from Putin, but he also put his finger on the overall problem that, whatever those threats are, a common feature of our response and posture is that we are signalling to Russia and to President Putin that we are simply not up for the fight. The longer that goes on, the longer we will give a sense that we will do almost anything to avoid confrontation.

I do not know whether the Minister for the Armed Forces is going to get to his feet later and repeat what his boss the Defence Secretary said last week, which was that there is only a diplomatic solution to the crisis. President Putin does not think that. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Sir Hugh Bayley) rightly pointed out, President Putin is increasing his defence investment and capability enormously, and he is doing so precisely so that he can potentially bring about a military confrontation. The longer we maintain this stance of cowering in the face of that threat, the more likely it is that we will face a military confrontation. The longer we delay, the worse it will be. I hope that the Government will get the message that we cannot go on like this, with the scale of cuts in defence expenditure. Frankly, it is a disgrace that we have a Prime Minister who so recently was trying to convince all our NATO allies to maintain the 2% commitment but who will not make it clear, when asked repeatedly, that a Government led by him would maintain spending at 2% over the next five years.

[Mr Gray]

rose—

[John Woodcock]

Of course I give way to my colleague on the Defence Committee.

[Mr Gray]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman; he is extremely kind. We on the Government Benches entirely agree with him—we must hold our Prime Minister’s feet to the fire and insist that he live up to the 2% target. The more important question is whether the hon. Gentleman has had any indication from the Labour Front Bench that in the event of a Labour Government, Labour will go for 2%.

[John Woodcock]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s honesty when he says that that is the more important question. Of course this Government are on their last legs and will soon be replaced. Suffice it to say that when a Labour Government take office, I shall be as vociferous in calling for the defence uplift as I am at present.

In debates on the strategic deterrent, people who have long wished the UK to scrap its nuclear weapons came up with a line that had a certain ring to it a little while ago—the cold war is over; who are we supposed to be protecting ourselves against? The rise of Putin has proved what folly that policy would have been, had the Labour Government followed it and not done as they did, which was to set in train the programme of renewal of our deterrent submarines. There is a strong argument that if we are not already in a situation of renewed cold war, a cold war is the most optimistic outcome in the current environment, such is the level of aggression being shown by President Putin. If we do not step up and re-engage with his current activities, the alternative is a full-blown war on Europe’s borders or potentially even within the European Union. We have to wake up to that.

There are clear reports that part of the increase in defence investment in Russia is going into the secret cities which some time ago people reported were at only 50% capacity. They are now running at full capacity to upgrade Russia’s nuclear threat. The idea that we should do anything other than keep to the current programme of renewal of our deterrent submarines would be madness in these circumstances.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman knows that he and I are as one on the question of the future of the deterrent. He also knows that if there were a Labour Government pure and simple, or a Conservative Government pure and simple, the future of the nuclear deterrent would be assured. How confident is he that if the Scottish nationalists held the balance of power and offered the keys of No. 10 to the leader of his party, his party would say no rather than abandon the nuclear deterrent?

[John Woodcock]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman asked me that. I am completely confident. It is a shame that not a single MP from the Scottish National party has bothered to turn up to the debate. It gives the lie to the idea that they care about the future of our country’s defences.

I am absolutely confident about that. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we were the ones who took the difficult but necessary decision to start the programme of renewal, we have remained committed to it throughout our time in opposition, and we will finish it if we are elected to government. In the words of the soon-to-return Member, Alex Salmond, it would be unpardonable folly for either side to listen to the minor parties. We will not compromise the future security of our nation. They may ask, but the answer from our side will be no. I know that if the hon. Gentleman has breath left in his body, the answer on his side will be no as well.

The Defence Minister has been worried, I know, and his boss, the Secretary of State, has also been worried about some remarks made by the Leader of the Opposition in a question and answer session, when he said that the Labour party wanted the cheapest form of deterrent. That seemed to get to the Minister. He thought that “cheapest” meant something different from “minimum” and he has asked repeatedly about this. I want to set his mind at rest if I can.

I have the words of the Leader of the Opposition at a similar question and answer session—he does lots of those. Just in case the Conservatives did not send one of their secret scribblers with their Dictaphones to the event, I want to read out what the leader of my party said on 15 January this year at a question and answer session in London, so that it is on the record. He said:

“Personally, because you asked about nuclear weapons, I want the minimum deterrent that will keep us safe.

We’ve always been a nuclear power. We are recognised as such in the non-proliferation treaty.

From what I’ve seen the best answer to that is the replacement of Trident.

Other people have said that there are other alternatives, but when they have looked at those alternatives actually they haven’t come up with better or more cost effective alternatives.”

There you have it. I can set the Minister’s mind at rest. There is a settled consensus on the issue. We are now down to the detail of the programme.

Admiral Lord West in the other place raised important issues about the potential slowing of the drumbeat of the Astute programme in Barrow shipyard. I hope that when the Minister replies, he can reassure the House that it is not his Government’s plan to stretch out the Astute programme to such an extent that the seventh boat is no longer necessary. We have reduced our nuclear submarine fleet from 14 attack submarines right the way down to six. That seventh submarine is important, particularly in an environment where Russia is increasing its activity and its investment.

The Minister knows, and I hope he will be good enough to confirm, that because of the delay in the programme as a result of the pretty shoddy deal that he did with his coalition partners to delay main gate until 2016 and to slow down the programme of building an enormously complex enterprise—the first new deterrent submarines that this country has had for decades—there is now precious little contingency in that programme. The delay imposed by both coalition partners at the beginning of this Government will not be available this time. Main gate needs to happen in 2016. I hope the Minister can confirm that he recognises that, and that he will stick to the timetable that he set out and not delay it once again.

On the submarine programme and the renewal of the UK’s deterrent, an intervention from the Liberal Democrats, which we thought unhelpful at the time, has turned out to be very helpful. Now that they have explored their own options using taxpayers’ money and found them to be complete nonsense, we have understood that we are faced with a binary choice: we continue with this investment at a time of renewed aggression from our old adversary such as we have not seen for many years, or we abandon it. Labour Members will continue the programme that we started, and I hope that those on the Government Benches will do likewise.

19:48

[Mr Keith Simpson (Broadland) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) on introducing the debate with such clarity and depth of knowledge.

This autumn the Prime Minister, whoever he is—no doubt it will be my right hon. Friend—will revisit the strategic defence and security review. He is on record as saying that he thinks it just needs a light touch. With the greatest respect to my right hon. Friend, I think he is wrong for every reason that my hon. Friend and other colleagues here have pointed out. It is a horribly complex situation.

I remember, in the early 1970s, going to seminars on military history, defence and international relations at the Institute of Historical Research, where one sat at the feet of Professors A. J. P. Taylor, Donald Cameron Watt, and Sir—as he is now—Michael Howard. A lot of the talk was about rearmament and appeasement in the 1920s and ’30s, and I used to sit there and think how naive and stupid were the chiefs of staff, the politicians and most of the advisers of that time. In the past 20-odd years, I have gained more sympathy for them, because they were faced with financial collapse and a multiplicity of threats. The armed forces had been reduced in number, most Government expenditure had been reduced, and the armed forces themselves could not agree on priorities. In relation to the Ministry of Defence’s budget, the armed forces—I say this with regret—have been log-rolling for decades, often wasting billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

In the few minutes that I have, I want to emphasise the fact that we should have a national security policy. That is of the things that the Government should be addressing this autumn. I hope that the discussion will not just be confined to Government Departments and to Parliament but open to wider outside expertise, as happens in the United States of America, Canada, Australia, and most European countries. That is absolutely crucial. Although this debate has—rightly given the nature of the publication—concentrated on the defence aspects and highlighted the threat from Putin, we all know that in fact we face a multiplicity of threats. If anything, the situation is more challenging for a Government now than it was even for the Governments of the late 1930s.

In looking at a national security policy, we must think not only of the threats that our country faces and is going to face, which have been outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border and others, but what the market will bear in terms of the money that is going to be allocated. It is a sobering thought that, looking at the national security budgets in the round, one of the poorest Departments is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, with £1.72 billion. The Department for Work and Pensions could lose that kind of money in an afternoon, and Government IT budgets have invariably done so. The MOD’s budget is £34.34 billion, and the budget of Department for International Development, which I would include in the national security budget, is £9.89 billion. I will not go into the arguments about whether DFID’s budget should be reduced.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

The latest figures I have indicate that the figure is actually £13 billion—it has gone up from £8.5 billion.

[Mr Simpson]

I am using the latest figure provided by the House of Commons Library. There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. The fact is that if we put together the budgets of those three Government Departments, that part of the national security budget is about £45.95 billion. If we throw in, say, another £5 billion to £10 billion for the intelligence services and GCHQ, we have about £55 billion. That is not a vast sum of money, but it is quite large. We need to consider whether we are spending our national security budgets correctly. They are in separate silos, and it would be much better, in the modern world, to look at them in the round.

In outlining the threat of Putin and all the other threats, we need to think about how we get public opinion alerted to this, and whether public opinion is prepared to see more money spent on national security. The latest polling done this weekend by YouGov shows what the public think about the amount of money spent on defence: 49% think it is too little, 20% about right, and 16% too much. Yet if we drill down into the 49% and tell those people that to get the extra money we must either, in simple terms, put up taxes or cut other areas of public expenditure—some will say “Transfer the money from DFID”—they do not much like either alternative.

Another aspect of the poll—this relates directly to what my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border has been saying—showed that 52% of those asked believed that resources on defence should be focused on dealing with the threats from Islamic terrorism rather than threats from states like Russia: in fact, only 18% thought that we should allocate resources to that. We can play with statistics, and public perception changes. In September 1938, the overwhelming majority of people welcomed the Munich agreement, but by April 1939 they had changed their views completely. Things will always change. The challenge that we all face is in being open in our debate and in getting public opinion to think about this, but also in getting the Government to move away from what can only be seen as cold war thinking in relation to cold war structures of the sort that still exist today.

To be fair to the previous Government, and our own Government, they did, between them, set up the National Security Council. Things are much better co-ordinated than ever before, according to everybody I have spoken to, including Opposition Members. The success of the National Security Council depends on the personality, interest and drive of the Prime Minister. Although one might disagree with some of the decisions that the current Prime Minister has made, he has provided that drive by regularly attending the National Security Council. There is nothing set in concrete to say that another Prime Minister would do that. As with Departments, once we remove a Minister who takes real, direct action, we can see things drift.

This has been an important debate. The national security budget and the strategic defence and security review do not need a light touch, but some serious thinking. We should have a debate not just about whether we spend 2% of GDP on defence but about how much we spend in total on national security and whether we can move any of that money around between Departments.

19:57

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

In July 2011, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said:

“Washington will not always take the lead when it comes to power projection. The United States will demand…that Europeans assume their responsibilities in preserving order, especially in Europe’s periphery.”

That is one of our greatest challenges. We have taken peace for granted, we have taken a status quo for granted, and we have taken American support for granted. Increasingly, we are, first, ignoring what is happening in Russia, secondly, cutting back, and thirdly, finding that America turns to the Pacific and has to justify to itself why it should support the Europeans in a pursuit that it regards as our job. That means that the situation becomes very difficult.

A war of information and propaganda is going on that we are singularly losing in the west but Putin is winning on his home ground. If we look at Russian opinion, we can see what Russians think. In 1997, they were asked:

“Are the big Western countries…partners or opponents of Russia?”

Then, about 50% regarded the US, Germany, Japan and Great Britain as partners of Russia. Now, 79% of the Russian population say that they think we are their enemies. If they are then asked whether Russia has the right to annex territories, the answer is interesting: 54% say that generally Russia has the right to annex territories, but the additional 34% who would usually say, “No, not generally”, will say with regard to Crimea, “Yes, of course it can do that.” That statement is as absurd as it would be if Angela Merkel in Berlin suddenly said, “Germany will annex Königsberg because it has traditionally always been German.” We would say that that was a totally, utterly bizarre argument, yet we are accepting it in relation to Crimea. We are also accepting, with a stunning silence, the fact that Putin has single-handedly redrawn international boundaries for the first time since 1945. We are all saying, “Well, he really shouldn’t be doing this, should he?”, but not offering options of any kind.

It is worth looking at what Putinism may actually mean. Strobe Talbott says:

“Putin’s aggression only makes sense against the backdrop of what has been the defining theme of his presidency: turning back the clock…Therein lies the most malignant manifestation of Putinism: it violates international law, nullifies Russia’s past pledges to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors, carries with it the danger of spinning out of control and sparking a wider conflict, and establishes a precedent for other major powers to apply their own version of the Putin Doctrine when convenient”.

This is not just about Putin’s single-handed redrawing of international boundaries, because a number of other countries would be very happy to do the same thing. Once he is allowed to do that, they will feel that they are being given the green light to do so as well.

When we discussed the Greek euro crisis, it was staggering to hear how relatively relaxed people were about Russia offering Greece money. That should have set just about every red light raging, because it represents an extension of influence and, if we do not challenge it, it will simply continue. Putin is not acting out of strength, but out of the fact that he is terribly weak at home and therefore has to make enemies abroad.

[Mr Gray]

To enforce the hon. Lady’s point, is it not chilling that 75% of all of the equipment used by the Hellenic forces is supplied by Russia?

[Ms Stuart]

Indeed. It is an incredibly malign force, but we are not prepared to describe it as such, not only because of the historic reason that at one stage we thought Russia could become a partner, but because we now feel there is nothing we can do owing to its size and perceived power. Our debate about the 2%, what it means and how we respond has to go much deeper and address the roots of the issue.

In idle moments over the past few weeks I have been reading a biography of George I. Interestingly, it says that when George I took the throne 300 years ago the Great Britain of which he became ruler was one of the great European powers and intimately involved with the continent, and its island position rendered it immune to invasion. It was assertive and knew that it could strike its own bargains in Europe—it did not need anybody else’s permission. There was also a big divide whereby the Tories advocated concentration on seaward expansion to the West Indians, while the Whigs thought that we should go into mainland Europe.

[Mr Jeremy Browne (Taunton Deane) (LD)]

Grand coalition is what you need.

[Ms Stuart]

It is so good to have a second Lib Dem here so that we can get some commitment for a nuclear deterrent, although the hon. Gentleman is not going to be here for much longer.

Essentially, we were able, even at that stage, to define what we thought Britain’s role in the world was. We had a strategy that allowed us to say what our foreign expansion and defence should be like.

How will the Great Britain that the next Prime Minister takes over on 8 May be described in 300 years? I think the answer will be that it was a country that had more seats than any other country at international tables and that is was a member of the P5 at the UN, and of the European Community and the Commonwealth, but that it did not know what to do. It kind of still wanted to project power, but it could not make up its mind whether it was a greater Denmark or still a serious member of the P5. It was singularly incapable of defining which threats it was meant to meet. It could not make up its mind whether its foreign policy was a 19th-century-type mercantile protecting of trade routes, or whether it should at times be a necessarily aggressive force for good. It took its allies for granted, particularly the United States of America, and it would host huge summits in which it would lecture other countries and the rest of the NATO members that they should not drop the 2% target.

What are we doing now? The Government sit here complacently and Ministers feel not the slightest bit ashamed that they do not stand at the Dispatch Box and say, “We are still complying with our commitment to 2%, as we said we would in Wales and as we urged other countries to do.”

Americans once referred to Great Britain as “no good, crummy allies.” It is absolutely right that the arbitrary figure of 2% not only says to the rest of the world, Putin and any other putative Putin that we are serious, but tells our allies, “We are reliable. We will stick to what we have said we will do and we expect exactly the same from you.” We cannot go on criticising the United States of America and telling them, “You guys just keep trotting around the world being its policeman,” but then, when they are no longer there, say, “Where are they?” If we want to be the grown-up country we have been for a very long time—a country that sits with a veto at the P5 and a nuclear power—we have to be absolutely clear about the role we wish to play in the world.

When the Prime Minister elected on 8 May—I hope it will be my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband)—commissions the strategic defence review, it will have to start by addressing our role, what we wish to do and what the financial commitments will be. One thing is for sure: the 2% will be the absolute minimum. It will probably not be enough, but it would be shameful if this House did not continue to press for us to stick to our commitments and to those we expect of others. Rather than being a no good, crummy ally, we should be reliable, effective and clear in our purpose.

20:06

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to take part in this debate, not because I am a member of the Defence Committee or a former Defence Minister, but because I represent an area, Gosport, with such a proud military heritage. As far back as the Crimean war and beyond, my constituency supplied the Navy with explosives, fuel, food, equipment and people. Indeed, sailors injured in Crimea were attended to at the Haslar hospital, while others returning to Gosport from the campaign formed the naval lads brigade, which is today known as the sea cadets, to help orphans created by the conflict. Now, 160 years later, my constituents and our neighbours in Portsmouth harbour are still proudly serving our armed forces and once again find themselves concerned by events in Crimea.

As the excellent Defence Committee report sets out, the Russian invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine has created the need for a fundamental shift in calculations about European security. I fully support the recommendations regarding improvements to NATO’s rapid reaction force and the need to undertake large-scale military exercises, and I of course welcome the recommendations regarding preparations to defend the Baltic states from what they refer to as ambiguous warfare.

It will come as no surprise that I want to focus on the Prime Minister’s NATO commitment to spend 2% of our GDP on defence. Why does it matter? Quite simply, it matters because failing to hit the 2% target would degrade our armed forces, damage our standing with our allies and hit our credibility as a major player in NATO and on the world stage. Above all, it would clearly limit the ability of our armed forces to project and protect our interests around the world. As Professor Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute says, it would have an obvious and overwhelming impact on the kind of military we can afford.

We already do not have enough combat aircraft, and yet, given existing spending commitments and the necessary replacement of Trident, there would probably be a fall in the overall number of combat aircraft for the RAF and the Navy. The Navy now has just 18 major warships and it may struggle to order the 12 or 13 new Type 26 frigates it had planned. The Minister will say that our naval ships are now better equipped and more advanced than ever before, but they still have not mastered the objective of being in more than one place at the same time.

The proud military heritage of my area on the south coast has sadly already suffered job losses as a result of BAE’s decision to terminate ship building at Portsmouth, and further jobs are now threatened by the early withdrawal of the Lynx helicopters, because Vector Aerospace, which maintains and repairs them, is the largest employer in my constituency. Further cuts to the armed forces could have a devastating impact on communities on the south cost.

The impact of failing to meet the 2% target goes far beyond the denuding effect it would have on our armed forces and the communities that support them. As the Government acknowledge in their response to the Committee’s report,

“the proportion of GDP devoted to defence is an important indicator of how seriously members view collective security.”

The 2% is not just about the additional troops, tanks, fighters and frigates that it will secure; it is a symbol, both to our allies and to our enemies.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

My constituency, like that of my hon. Friend, has a strong military history. Does she agree that one of the great insights in the report is that this is not only about the percentage of defence spending, but about the allocation of spending in a world where high technology and asymmetric techniques are used in modern warfare?

[Caroline Dinenage]

As the Chairman of the Defence Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), has already pointed out, we face a more uncertain world than ever. The 2% level not only secures the right equipment, but is a sign of our willingness to back up our words with action. If we fail to meet the target, our credibility as a major player on the international stage is in question.

Teddy Roosevelt famously described his foreign policy by saying:

“Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

At the summit in Wales, we explicitly encouraged other nations to aim to spend 2% of their GDP on defence. If we fail to meet the 2% target, having stated our intention to do so and encouraged our allies to follow suit, we run the risk of shouting our heads off very loudly while brandishing a very unimpressive stick. There would be other repercussions. We are the lead military power in NATO Europe, so if we fail to meet the 2% target, other European NATO countries will follow our lead and cut back their own defences. Why should they invest when we are cutting back? It would also damage our reputation with one of the few other countries currently hitting the 2% target, the USA. As we have heard today, the head of the US army has said he is “very concerned” about the potential failure to meet the 2% target. Further cuts to our armed forces will undermine our credibility as an effective partner and ally.

Such a move would not go unnoticed elsewhere. All the strategies to protect the Baltic states will be meaningless —crucially, they will be seen to be meaningless by potential adversaries—if they are not properly financed. Russia’s defence spending has increased by an average of 10% a year since the invasion of Georgia in 2008. When we need to show strength to deter aggression, we cannot afford to cut back our military capability.

It is important to have both clarity and candour in this debate. There are those who believe that we no longer have a significant role to play in the world, and consequently that spending on defence is not a priority. I think that the nature of the threats we face from an aggressive Russian dictator who rips up the international rulebook, as well as those from ISIS and other terrorist organisations, means that now would be the worst possible time to cut defence.

There is at least a flawed logic to arguing that if we do not want to be a major player on the world stage, we do not need strong armed forces. What we absolutely must not do is kid ourselves that we can deprive our armed forces of the resources they need, but still hope to retain the same level of influence and security. We need an open and honest debate about what we want the armed forces to deliver and what we want their future to be. If our ambitions are smaller, then we need to come clean and say how many thousands of troops we are prepared to lose, how many frigates we are ready to scrap and how many job losses we will take. The worst thing we could possibly do would be to end up with armed forces that are shrunken and deprived of the resources they need but which that still expected to operate at exactly the same level.

I do not believe that we should retreat from the world. We are the fastest growing economy in the developed world, with a seat on the UN Security Council, one of the most extensive diplomatic networks and the best trained armed forces on the planet. We have consistently stood up for human rights, democracy and the rule of law, and the world would be worse off were we to shrink from that role. More importantly, I do not believe that we can retreat from the world. We cannot opt out of the threats posed by Russia, ISIS and others. Putin wants to take Europe back to the 19th century and the days of spheres of influence, and ISIS wants to burn western civilisation in the fires of an Islamist caliphate. Spending 2% of our GDP on defence is not a vanity; in a world that has not felt more unstable in my lifetime, it is the best way to preserve the peace and stability that our fathers and grandfathers fought so hard and sacrificed so much to achieve.

20:10

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage). I agree very much with what she has just said. There is broad cross-party agreement in the House about the importance of the NATO alliance, defence spending and Britain’s role in the world. There are of course a few Members—sadly, they are not in the Chamber for me to provoke—who would disagree. Some of them might be happy to appear, through Freeview, as a modern-day Lord Haw Haw on Russia Today or on other channels putting out Putin’s propaganda into everybody’s front room.

The Chairman of the Defence Committee, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), referred to the BBC World Service. I absolutely agree that it is of fundamental importance, but there is a serious long-term threat to its future on the horizon. In the past few days, we have started to discuss possible changes to BBC funding arrangements. On 1 April 2014, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office transferred World Service funding to the BBC. No longer is there a grant from the FCO to fund the World Service. As a result, as we move towards the next settlement for the BBC, people might argue that they would rather spend money on reality television shows or sport than on BBC language services, which are an important part of our soft power and influence in the world. The House needs to revisit that question.

The issue was flagged up in Foreign Affairs Committee reports last year and again recently, and it should be part of the discussion of the defence and security review. There has to be a fundamental foreign policy and soft-power aspect to that review. The hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson)—sadly, he is not in his place at the moment—made that point very well. We need joined-up Government and a joined-up approach to this matter. As with the review carried out after the 1997 election, in which Lord Robertson played an important role, I hope that we will have a serious, in-depth review after the coming general election, not one pushed through quickly by the Treasury for some other agenda. We need to look at Britain’s role in the world, our alliances, our involvement, our role on the Security Council of the UN, our partnership with others in Europe and so on.

In the time available, I want to concentrate on a few points. The first is that Putin has not suddenly come to behave very badly. If we look back at reports published by the Foreign Affairs Committee in 2007, we will recall that the British Ambassador in Moscow, Tony Brenton, was harassed and threatened by a group called Nashi, young supporters of Putin, and there was the murder with polonium of Alexander Litvinenko in London. Actually, there was a series of murders from 2002 onwards. A report today says that probably 12 people—some of whom have been prominent internationally, such as Sergei Magnitsky and Anna Politkovskaya—have died in mysterious circumstances, several of them having been shot in the street close to the Kremlin. The Putin regime has operated in that murky world, where the intelligence services have undertaken unattributable actions against the regime’s opponents internally and abroad. We are now seeing how they are behaving in Ukraine.

There is another aspect to the agenda of Putin’s regime: they are not just trying to get useful idiots in the west to pursue their agenda; they are bankrolling people who will undermine the cohesiveness the people they perceive as their opponents. A guy called Alexander Dugin, a far-right ideologue close to Putin, has organised conferences of Nazi, neo-Nazi and far-right groups in Moscow and elsewhere. Putin, via a Czech bank, has been bankrolling the National Front in France, and there is an agenda. People who are against the European Union or collective defence—Putin and those around him perceive such things to be a threat to his project—are supported. Great efforts were made to undermine the association agreement between Armenia and the European Union, and following that, similar efforts got greater opposition in Ukraine. Reference has already been made to attempts to provide financial assistance to countries that might take a different view within the European Union. Greece has been mentioned, but we can also look at loans that were given to Cyprus at a particular time. It is all part of trying to build influence and undermine perceived threats.

It is not just NATO that is seen to be a threat: entirely peaceful commercial relationships that countries might have with the European Union are also seen to be a threat to Putin’s world view, which is to create a Eurasian union and to try somehow to reconstitute elements of what used to exist in the Soviet Union. Why is that? Putin is on record as saying that the collapse and end of the Soviet Union was the “greatest geopolitical disaster” of the 20th century. Think about that. It was not the Nazi invasion of Russia, the Holocaust, or the tens of millions of people killed by Stalin. If he wished to criticise other countries he could have mentioned the dropping of nuclear weapons—there could have been all kinds of arguments. However, he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest disaster of the 20th century, and that is the mindset we are dealing with.

After the drunken Yeltsin regime, we had illusions and thought that at last there was stability in Russia and that somehow there was someone we could do business with. Unfortunately not. The world we are facing today means that we can have no illusions, and I suspect it will be many years—potentially decades—before we can go back to the benign thoughts that we had when Mikhail Gorbachev was there and the Soviet Union was peacefully ended. Let us be clear: we must not recognise the seizure of territory, and just as we stood by the Baltic states and never recognised their seizure by the Soviet Union, so we must not accept the seizure of the territory of Ukraine.

20:23

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I join other Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). He has unquestionably set the tone for a seriously instructive and intelligent debate, which I hope receives wider coverage than simply in here. The hon. Member for York Central (Sir Hugh Bayley) took his cue from the massive tome on the estimates, but I will take mine from the Defence Committee’s report that was introduced by my hon. Friend.

The role of NATO has been developing and is hugely important. After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, there was no clarity about whether NATO had any role to play. It is a great tribute to it—particularly to Anders Fogh Rasmussen in recent years and Lord Robertson of Port Ellen before him—that NATO has developed an important role in stabilising other parts of the world, as well as looking after the defence of Europe. NATO did well in the way the international security assistance force operation was conducted, whatever the criticisms of the strategy, and the Secretary-General assembling a team to bring together not just NATO members but non-NATO members in the Libyan operation was a tribute to him.

The key thing that has happened is that a resurgent Russia has changed the outlook dramatically. The annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008 was perhaps seen as a one off, but the annexation of Crimea last year has been a wake-up call. Paragraph 2 of the Committee’s report states:

“However, events in Crimea and Ukraine represent a “game changer” for UK defence policy. They have provoked a fundamental re-assessment of both the prioritisation of threats in the National Security Strategy and the military capabilities required by the UK. The UK's Armed Forces will need now also to focus on the defence of Europe against Russia and against asymmetric forms of warfare. This will have significant implications for resources, force structures, equipment and training.”

As others have mentioned, the new Putin doctrine is instructive. Writing in Jane’s Defence Weekly, Dr Mark Galeotti said on 11 February that Russian policy

“reflects a developing theme in Russian military art, demonstrated in Ukraine, where a combination of direct military intervention—often covert or at least ambiguous and denied—as well as the operations of proxy forces and intelligence assets have been blended with political leverage, disinformation campaigns, and economic pressure.”

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most dangerous aspects of all this concerns what President Putin is doing to improve greatly on the way Russian forces acted in Georgia, which was not a great success from their point of view? He is trying a whole lot of new tactics, forces, weapons and structures in a wholly or partially deniable way.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My right hon. Friend is right, and it is significant how Russia has behaved, particularly with the annexation of Crimea. I remind hon. Members that I questioned the Foreign Secretary before Russia invaded to see whether he had heard any indication from Lavrov that it had no intention of using military force, but four days later, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border said, it did.

Recently, a whole raft of people have been drawing attention to what is going on. The Defence Secretary spoke of Russia as a “real and present” threat, and the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Sir Adrian Bradshaw, also warned us and said there was a danger that Vladimir Putin would try to use his armies to invade and seize NATO territory, calculating that the alliance will be too afraid of escalating violence to respond. Sir John Sawers, former head of MI6, has said that Russia poses a state-on-state threat. He also suggested that we must have dialogue with Russia. I find that idea attractive, but I do not see how we can possibly have dialogue with a man who is intent on redrawing the map of Europe.

It is not just in Europe that we face severe challenges. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) said, we face a multiplicity of threats. We can all see what is happening in the middle east. Syria is on fire and the Arab spring has left turmoil in north Africa. Now ISIL is running rampant in Iraq—thank goodness we have intervened there to check its advance, because if Iraq and all its oil revenues had fallen to it, that would have been hugely damaging to the whole world, not just the middle east.

Iran is still declaring its ambition to achieve nuclear weapons. That matter is still unresolved. We know North Korea’s filthy weapons are available to anybody who wants to pay good money to buy them. China is ramping up its military activities. I do not know how many right hon. and hon. Members have seen what is going on in the South China sea. I refer again to Jane’s Defence Weekly—this is not a particular plug for it—which has been running a hugely instructive series of articles on what China is doing in the South China sea: creating runways and port facilities on a whole raft of disputed uninhabited islands. The most significant land building in the Spratly Islands is on Fiery Cross Reef. It is shaping up to be the site for China’s first airstrip in the Spratly Islands. James Hardy, the Asia Pacific editor, writes that the area

“was previously under water; the only habitable area was a concrete platform built and maintained by China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy…The new island”—

first seen in November 2014—

“is more than 3,000 metres long and between 200 and 300 metres wide: large enough to construct a runway and apron.”

We can see what China is up to. The United States recognises that. The former US Defence Secretary Hagel said that Beijing is taking

“destabilising, unilateral actions asserting its claims in the South China sea.”

He warned that the United States would

“not look the other way when fundamental principles of the international order are being challenged”,

although I do not see any evidence that the United States is doing that.

I have referred to the criticisms that have been made at home. Criticisms are now coming from the United States, on which we find ourselves heavily dependent. We heard General Odierno today repeat not so much criticisms but the warnings he gave two years ago about the capacity of the United Kingdom to deploy alongside the United States. We should take these warnings seriously. The President of the United States has written to our own Prime Minister to express concern. This is our closest ally. We stand shoulder to shoulder. We have beliefs that are completely in common. We share intelligence. We understand all these things. We share nuclear deterrents. We believe in all those things, yet our ally is saying, “Hold on, I am concerned.” When I went to Washington in November, the discussions I had there really did rock me. Americans were saying, “Britain is now just regarded as another European country.” That is fundamentally damaging to the United Kingdom. It is not a matter for defence buffs; it is a matter for the whole nation if we are seen to be diminished, which I believe we are.

The state of our armed forces has been mentioned. This is a very serious matter. The Army is going to be cut from 110,000 to 82,000 regulars. I know we are going to have 30,000 reservists, but that is not the same thing. The Navy has been cut by 5,000, and the Royal Air Force cut similarly. We are down to 19 frigates and destroyers, when in 2001 we had 33. In 1990, we had 33 fast jet squadrons. We are now down to seven.

We face a very serious state of affairs. It is true we are committed to deterrent, and that, as far as we can understand, the Opposition are too. We are investing in cyber. My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border is absolutely right about that. As I mentioned to him, cyber attack is an important dimension. We have to advertise, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond) the former Secretary of State for Defence made clear. We need to carry a big stick, as a number of hon. Members have said. Part of that big stick is our 2% minimum commitment to maintain our credibility with NATO. For if we do not, we will appear to be weak.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

That could, of course, be linked to our 0.7% commitment to international development, as per the amendment in the House of Lords.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for provoking me. I think most people in this place know that I find it extraordinary, as a Conservative, that our party should be committed to enshrining in law that we spend 0.7% of our national income on overseas aid yet refuse to give a commitment to spend at least 2% on defence, which is part of our NATO obligation. As everybody has said, the Prime Minister made that clear to others last September at the NATO summit.

We are in danger of being diminished. We are in danger of sending out the wrong signals that we are not serious about the defence of the realm and our wider interests. The SDSR must be strategic. It cannot be a light touch. We have got to seize this opportunity, which we could not take in 2010 because we had to have a Defence review driven by the Treasury to put the nation’s finances back in order again after they were destroyed by the former Prime Minister.

I will leave the House with this thought. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said in 2009 that a Conservative Government would wish to help to shape the world in which we find ourselves, not simply be shaped by it. If we are to do that, we have got to commit to the defence of the realm.

20:34

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

In a world of rapid change, disorder and insecurity, the men and women of Her Majesty’s armed forces remain our most important asset. Yesterday I visited the Imperial War museum at Duxford, which is also the home of the Royal Anglian Regiment museum. I ask myself: are we, today’s generation, betraying their memory? There are the new threats and the old threats—as well as forgotten threats—among them, as we have heard, Iraq and Syria, and the middle east generally, Russia and Ukraine, Russia and the Baltic states, and how article 5 of NATO’s obligations may impact on the UK. I intervened earlier to say that I had visited the Falklands last month. Argentina still has its sights on those British overseas territories. Something else that we must continue to address is the defence consequences of the continuing danger of Scotland breaking away from the United Kingdom.

This evening’s debate is on the next defence and security review and NATO. Included in the motion is an item that says that

“resources authorised for use for current purposes be reduced”

by £618 million. There is a growing concern among senior British defence and security experts over the insistence on cutting defence expenditure. General Sir Peter Wall, the former head of the Army, has called for all parties to commit to the 2% target to help Britain to deal with unforeseen threats. The right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), the former Defence Secretary, is quoted in today’s Daily Telegraph as saying:

“I think people feel that the Government’s first duty is the protection of the United Kingdom. We have to do what we need to, to make that happen, and I think that we have a commitment to Nato as part of our international treaty obligations to spend that 2 per cent.”

The Prime Minister was in my constituency today. I am told that he spoke from a normally empty warehouse belonging to a property marketing company. His big theme was housing—but not, sadly, the housing of our brave military personnel and their families. The Prime Minister is not strong when it comes to defence. On his watch, the size of the British Army will be reduced to what it was 200 years ago, at the time of the battle of Waterloo. It will be cut by a fifth by the end of this decade, to 20% smaller than it was five years ago, from 102,000 regulars in 2010 to 82,000 in 2020. However good the reserves are—and I strongly support the reserves —reducing the size of the regular Army is not in Britain’s national defence interests either at home or overseas.

Although the Prime Minister talked today about building new homes—in a town where the public are aghast at seeing so many green fields being lost to development—he was silent about the housing of families at Colchester garrison, five miles from where he spoke, on an industrial estate on the northern fringe of my constituency. The modernisation of military housing has been stopped across the UK, not just in Colchester. Last week the Deputy Prime Minister was in Colchester to announce financial support for housing for single former military personnel. What a pity the Prime Minister did not today announce the lifting of the halting of the modernisation programme of housing for the families of our brave soldiers, sailors and air force personnel. I have raised this issue in the House before and at meetings of the Select Committee on Defence, on which I serve, but halting the modernisation programme is a scandal, particularly when it is known that when the programme recommences, there will have been further deterioration, with the consequence that the cost to the public purse will be considerably greater. In the meantime, the families of our military live in housing whose condition is not always to the standard to which they are entitled.

In my constituency, I successfully argued that empty houses on the Army estate should be made available to house civilian families. That was done. The Government, via the Department for Communities and Local Government, funded a major modernisation programme of the former MOD houses and new build, for which there should be rejoicing. However, on the other side of the road there are Army houses, lived in by families of our soldiers, many of whom served in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have not been modernised. This is an insult and a disgrace. If the Government can find the money to modernise former military housing, why not the housing of serving military personnel? It is a moral obligation; the Government should do it.

The argument that the Government cannot afford this needs to be addressed head-on. I can identify how it could be funded—from the proceeds of the sale of radio spectrum that the Ministry of Defence no longer requires. Instead of the proceeds going to the Treasury, given that this is the sale of an MOD asset, why not allocate the money to pay for the modernisation of the houses of our military families? I repeat: the men and women of Her Majesty’s armed forces remain our most important asset. They and their families deserve to have decent housing to live in, and it is a disgrace that the Ministry of Defence and this Government have failed so many families.

20:40

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell), who speaks with passion for the military people of Colchester—nobody speaks better of them than him. He added to what has been a wide-ranging, interesting and well-informed debate of various topics, some broadly associated with the report on NATO that the Select Committee produced.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), the Chairman of the Defence Committee, ably set the tone of the debate. I stood against him for the chairmanship, but let me say in public that I am extremely glad that I lost that particular election. I am glad that he won it, and I am pleased to stand behind him now and will do so in subsequent Parliaments.

We meet in what can be described only as interesting times. There is a strange coincidence—or is it a conspiracy—of events happening in the world. We have talked extensively, of course, about Russia, Ukraine, Crimea, threats to the Baltic states and the assassination of Nemtsov over the weekend—and who knows what the consequences of that will be, what it means or who did it? We have talked about ISIS, or Daesh as we prefer to call it. An important assault on Tikrit is occurring as we speak, and again, who knows what the consequences will be? We look forward to the much anticipated assault on and retaking of Mosul—potentially later this year, although I sometimes find it hard to imagine that it will actually occur.

We have heard from others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth), about events in the South China sea, and about cyber-warfare and so many other aspects of the world that are extraordinarily worrying and dangerous, but also extremely unknown. We simply do not know what is occurring in most of the world, and we do not know what we are going to do about it. I find it concerning that we in the UK, leaving aside NATO as a wider force, seem to be so unclear about what we are planning to do.

Several Select Committee reports over the last months have touched on this failing. Our report on Daesh, for example, said that our contribution to the opposition to ISIL was lamentably small. We are responsible for something like 6% of the airstrikes, which is of course useful—it is important that we are doing it—but it is none the less an extremely small contribution. We have a tiny number of soldiers in Iraq. I heard the other day that the number of our personnel helping to train in Sulaymaniyah in north-east Iraq, which we visited, is being further reduced rather than increased, despite their ambitions.

We have no real idea why we are doing things in Syria, but not in Iraq—apart from the fact that is what the motion in the House lay down. We have no real plan: we do not quite understand what we are seeking to do against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. We know they are bad people; we know we do not like the atrocities that are being carried out; but we do not really have a grand plan for what we intend to do about them.

The same applies to Putin. We know he is a bad man; we know he should not have redrawn the boundaries of Ukraine; we know that the Baltic states are under threat. When General Sir Richard Shirreff was recently in front of the Select Committee—he was either still serving or had just stepped down as Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe—it was interesting to hear him say so plainly that we should have permanent forces deployed in the Baltic states. He thought our people should be there permanently and at the very least that a large-scale exercise should take place there with equipment delivered to the Baltic states and so forth. That afternoon, my right hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond), then Secretary of State for Defence, said that Sir Richard was absolutely wrong and that we should have no troops in the Baltic states. We should not worry ourselves about that, he claimed, as the main threat to the UK remained a terrorist threat. He stood by the tier 3 categorisation of state warfare as described in the strategic defence and security review in 2010.

So I was astonished when, very recently, the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the Secretary of State for Defence disagreed in the course of a single day on what our policy should be on the defence of the Baltics. That raises an issue that will be the subject of a forthcoming Select Committee report, namely our distinct lack of understanding of who we are in the world, what our purpose is, what we want to do in the world, how we are to achieve it, and what kind of armed forces we need in order to do that.

The 2010 SDSR is woefully out of date. It downgraded all the threats that we now face, judging them to be potentially insignificant. The national security strategy, which was published on the same day as the SDSR, did not have a clue about what we are doing today. I was disappointed to hear the Prime Minister say recently that he thought that it was worthy of “tweaking” in respect of a few details. I think that he was absolutely wrong. I think that the Arab spring, the Russians, ISIL, events in the South China sea, and so much else that is happening in the world today require a fundamental rewriting of the national security strategy from scratch. We must identify what is wrong in the world, and say what we are going to do about it.

The notion that we could produce a new national security strategy—tweaked, as the Prime Minister had it—a few weeks or months after a general election and produce an SDSR at the same time strikes me as laughable, as does the notion that we should link the two in a strategic spending review, thereby handing all the controlling levers to the Treasury. The idea that we should say to the Treasury, “You tell us how much we can spend” , and the national security strategy will then be tweaked in an attempt to make it fit in with how much we can spend—and, incidentally, we will continue to cut our armed forces for that purpose—seems to me to represent a fundamental misunderstanding of the way in which we should consider how we intend to position ourselves in the world.

Surely it is entirely reasonable, basic and straightforward to ask, “What is our role?”, and we as a nation should be asking that question. Are we to serve as part of the American forces, as the American chief of staff was quoted as suggesting in The Daily Telegraph this morning? Most definitely not. Are we to do as President Obama suggested in his letter to the Prime Minister, and say that we are a second-rate nation that no longer pulls its weight in the world? No; for my money, we are not. But if we are to fight our corner in the world, we must know how we are to do it, and we must do it through an absolutely clear national security strategy which sets out, not vaguely but precisely, what our aims are and how we are to deal with ISIL. Will we deal with ISIL by means of containment, destruction or defeat? We do not know. We need to set out precisely how we view President Putin and what we intend to do about that, precisely what we intend to do in the Baltic states, and precisely what we intend to do about so many other things.

Some time after the publication of the national security strategy, we must have a defence and security review specifying the assets that we need in order to realise the vision in the strategy, and some time after that, the Treasury must come along with a fundamental spending review and say, “Here is the money that you require in order to realise that vision.” I know that that will not happen. I know what will happen after the general election, whether we have a Labour or a Conservative Government: the spending review, the defence review and the national security strategy will be rushed out as they were before, entirely driven by mandarins in the Treasury. However, I think that it is worth our recognising, and worth the Select Committee’s stating, that we think that that is the wrong way of going about the defence of the realm.

We think that Britain is probably in a more dangerous state today than at any time since the second world war. We think that the nation hangs on the edge of a precipice over which it may fall, and that we, the United States and our colleagues in NATO must act urgently to do something about it. Tinkering around with 2% or not 2%, tinkering around with the current sclerotic decision-making processes in the Ministry of Defence, and tinkering around with cutting our armed forces and trying to patch them up here and there is not the right way in which to proceed. We are in an incredibly dangerous place. We as a nation, and we as a House of Commons, must act now and act decisively to put that right.

20:49

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

This has been one of the best debates in which I have taken part during my few years in the House. It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), a fellow member of the Defence Committee. As he said in his powerful speech, the tone was set by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), who produced an outstanding summary of the difficulties that we face. If I could pick just one other speech, it would be that of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who said things that were so similar to what my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border said to the Conservative dinner in west Berkshire in January that it makes me wonder whether she was there. It was a fantastic speech and I agreed with it.

At the same time as President Putin was exerting his pressure on Crimea, my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) gave me the speech that his grandfather had made in the Munich debate in 1938. I urge all Members to read that speech and to take out certain place names and individuals’ names and replace them with more contemporary ones. If they do so, they will see how prescient that 1938 speech was, and how it applies to the crescent of instability that faces us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border spoke about an arc of instability around the eastern borders of Europe, but I would suggest there is a crescent of instability that starts in Nigeria and goes through the Sahel and the Maghreb. It includes parts of the horn of Africa and east Africa, and, of course, Iran. It then goes through to the tragedy of Syria and Iraq and up to the difficulties we face on Russia’s western border and the threats we have to consider in an article 5 sense in terms of the Baltic states. That is a sobering canvas for us to consider in our debate.

On Ukraine and the Baltic states, in President Putin we have the leader of a powerful nation that has surrendered all pretence of adhering to the concept of rules-based governance. That is profoundly worrying.

I agree with my hon. Friend that the world is in perhaps the most dangerous state it has been in for decades, and it is in that context that we encourage a future Government to look at our defence posture in the years ahead. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) said, this process cannot, and should not, be driven through the silo of the MOD and how it is funded. It has to be looked at across whole area of government and beyond—not just in terms of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, our intelligence services and the Department for International Development, but in the context of our alliances, certainly with our most important neighbour, the United States, but also with France, our closest neighbour. I am particularly interested in that alliance. I am not as hopeful about that as I would like to be, but I believe we should be looking at that in the context of the Lancaster House agreement. I have learned profoundly to respect France’s defence forces. I have seen them operating in places like Mali. France has its own economic problems, but I feel there is the makings of a good strategy, as it has a footprint in certain parts of Africa and elsewhere which we should be supportive of, and we have a footprint in certain places, such as the Gulf, where we can take a lead, and together we can work in ways that benefit both of us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border, the Chairman of the Select Committee, mentioned a point to do with languages, and it is something that I go on about. I strongly believe that we should make that a virtue in the armed forces, particularly among those who want to acquire staff rank and beyond: they should be rewarded if they master a language, whether that is French, Arabic, Russian or something that we feel we may have need of in the future. There has been a lamentable lack of language skills in the past; we seem to have forgotten about that. To the credit of the Foreign Office, it is now trying to encourage our diplomats to speak many more languages, and we should do so among our armed forces as well.

My hon. Friend spoke about the two types of warfare that we face. We will not only face asymmetrical conflicts versus the al-Qaeda franchises that exist around the world—to which I would add extortionist campaigns by terrorist based organisations, perhaps in failed states such as Somalia, and the piracy conflict, which will be ongoing—but face what, for want of a better term, I shall call a conventional threat. My hon. Friend described that threat much more eloquently than I ever could. However, I suggest that there could be a third element, which I would describe, almost oxymoronically, as non-kinetic wars.

On the asymmetric counter-insurgency conflicts, there is great thinking—perhaps in the Government, perhaps in our normal institutions, but also in academia—about how we can fight using smarter, shorter and more intelligent interventions. We are unlikely to go in again in the way we did in recent conflicts. We are unlikely to build another Camp Bastion in the desert and remain there for a decade. We shall need less mass in terms of personnel, and that mass could be proxied to the host nation. The deployments will be shorter, but they will require certain skills that we are very good at delivering, including training, equipping, mentoring and carrying out humanitarian work. They will also involve the intelligent use of special forces and of specific equipment such as drones.

On conventional warfare, I entirely agree with the pervading consensus in the Chamber about the need to respond dramatically in regard to thinking, to equipment and to matériel in the context of an article 5 response. If there is one thing that should keep us awake at night, it is the threat from the extraordinary recent developments on Europe’s eastern border.

Non-kinetic warfare involves carrying out defence activities now so that we do not have to fight wars in the future. It is about looking at countries in which instability could emerge, and about engaging with them across a whole spectrum of activities—not only through the use of military personnel but through diplomacy and intelligence and the use of the private sector, non-governmental organisations and our aid budget—to stabilise them so that they do not descend into the kind of instability that would require us to fight an expensive war in the future. It is with pride that I say that the new 77 Brigade, which is based in my constituency, is starting to develop an interesting new style of combating this kind of threat. It is built on the finest traditions of our armed forces: let us remember the work of T. E. Lawrence and Orde Wingate and how we rebuilt parts of France and Germany after the war.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, but must not those forces also have a clear sense of what they are fighting for, what they believe in and what they stand for? The new 77 Brigade, which is a great idea, will not be effective if we in this place do not give it a clear sense of why it is carrying out its activities.

[Richard Benyon]

I entirely agree with the hon. Lady.

Non-kinetic warfare also involves thinking about the way in which the great figures of the past behaved. To use modern management-speak, they thought outside the box. Sitting in some techie office in London, there is probably a 20-stone IT expert who knows more about social media than anyone in the armed forces ever will. He will never pass a battle fitness test, but he might be just the person to destroy the kind of social media development that we have seen Daesh operating in parts of the middle east. I really hope that that kind of innovative thinking will be carried forward.

I also hope that we concentrate on the need for intelligence gathering and recognise the lamentable failings of the past 50 years—relating, for example, to the Falklands war, the Arab spring and 9/11. There have been failings in almost every conflict, and it is not just us: let us not forget the Yom Kippur war. None of those attacks was foreseen, and our intelligence forces need to be better equipped and better skilled.

I agree entirely with the figure of 2%, although it is of course a political construct. We could achieve a figure of 2% by having more military bands and spending money in silly ways. Also, 1.9% well spent might be better than 2.1% badly spent. It is a line in the sand, however, and it is one that our friends and our potential enemies will see as vital as we tackle the crescent of instability that surrounds Europe’s southern and eastern borders.

21:00

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I only hope that the speech I am about to make can begin to get close to the excellent contributions we have heard from hon. Members from all parts of the House—it really has been an excellent debate. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) that the speech by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) was extremely instructive, and I want to take it as my starting point, because it is essential that we identify what our role in the world is. We have avoided doing that ever since the end of the cold war and we have tried to fudge things. We are now living with the price of trying to “punch above our weight”. That may have sounded sensible when Douglas Hurd said it 20 years ago, but 20 years later, after all the conflicts that have happened in between, we have been left with the consequences: the tactical and strategic failure in Basra and in Helmand, where we simply were not prepared to commit sufficiently in order to carry out the military operation and deliver the political objective by the military means we put to it.

The hon. Lady threw down the challenge: what is our role in the world to be? I am an unashamed dove; it is my belief that our continuing aspirations to play some great power role in the world is a conceit, and a misleading and expensive one. So in the terms she put it, I am looking at greater Denmark and a mercantile policy to support British interests around the world. From that base, my conclusions ought to be instructive, although I understand that many of my right hon. and hon. Friends come from a different place.

The world has significantly changed since the end of the cold war. I would be the first to defend the peace dividend referred to by the hon. Member for York Central (Sir Hugh Bayley), pointing out the drop in defence expenditure after the end of the cold war. Absolutely the right thing to do in the circumstances of the time was to take those savings and reduce the defence budget from 3.5% of GDP when I was a soldier to 2.5% by 1997. But what has happened since then to Russia and what is now happening with ISIS and the rise of Islamic fascism—there is also the open question of China and its role in the world to consider, but this is particularly about the first two things—should give us serious pause for thought.

Churchill said in October 1939:

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”.

Knowing that my historian friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson), is with us, we should point out that Churchill went on to make a prediction in that statement, saying:

“I will proclaim tonight my conviction that the second great fact of the first month of the war is that Hitler, and all that Hitler stands for, have been and are being warned off the east and the southeast of Europe.”

That was triumphantly wrong.

What should give us real pause for thought is what is happening in Russia now. If ever there was a wake-up moment, it is not just Crimea and what the Russians are doing in Ukraine; it was the murder of Boris Nemtsov last Friday night and the fact that only a few tens of thousands of people went on to the streets of Moscow. What happened there was the dying gasp of liberal Russia. We have seen the same thing before; it was what Mussolini did to his opponents in fascist Italy. The alarming thing is the popular support that Putin enjoys—the statistics were given again by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston. He is a popular ruler and one in difficulty, which is why he is exploring the execution of power in the way he has been doing. That has taken us away from where we would have hoped Russia would have been, within the family of nations and with the basic agreements of how to conduct international diplomacy.

Alongside Russia, we face the rise of Islamic fascism. That is now on a scale far beyond the consequences of 9/11 and the activities of al-Qaeda; ground is now being occupied. We would do well to remember just how attractive an ideology fascism was, and in its guise as Islamic fascism it is proving attractive to members of our own population and to people from around the region, who are flocking in vast numbers, alarmingly, to put their lives on the line to support it. We underestimate the nationalist popularity of Putin’s strategy and Russia, and ISIS and the images it presents, at our peril. That means we now have to take these threats extremely seriously.

I wish to focus now on what posture we should take. Having said that I do not want the United Kingdom to play a great power role but a more limited role, it is absolutely right that we face up to our responsibilities as a partner in NATO, which is what this debate is about. I understand the politics behind the 2% figure: we need to get NATO expenditure to a level that is at least rising for most of its members. However, 2% is an artificial number and, given the threats that we face now, it is inadequate. Whether we are aspiring to play a great power role or to pursue a mercantile role with no imperial pretensions, our strategic posture as the United Kingdom is woefully insufficient. The moment that we lost the maritime patrol aircraft from the strategic defence and security review at the beginning of this Parliament was the moment that we ceased to have the right suite of powers and intelligence capability to hang together. We have acquired the aircraft carriers and we will eventually acquire the aircraft to go on them, so we will have some status there, but we need to work out how they will form part of our strategy.

I come back now to the decision that we face in 2016, to which the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) referred. He complained about the lack of Astute submarines, but we are committed to programme expenditure worth some £109 billion with the renewal of Trident. I have been very impressed by the new report from CentreForum about retiring Trident and looking for an alternative proposal. It demolishes the case for the Trident alternatives review, saying that it was based on a false premise. We need to look at the idea of going back to a free-fall bomb. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) wants to intervene, I will happily give way.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

indicated dissent.

[Crispin Blunt]

I—

[Dr Julian Lewis]

May I say to my hon. and gallant Friend that it is no good contrasting the building of the Successor-class submarines with the Astute-class submarines, because if we do not build the Successor submarines—I am not saying that that is a reason to have a deterrent when we otherwise would not have one—there will be a huge gap between the ending of the Astute hunter-killer programme and the next hunter-killer programme, in which all skill in building submarines will be lost?

[Crispin Blunt]

That is the point I wish to address. We will invest an enormous amount in one weapon system for one task only. If we choose to invest in a free-fall bomb and 48 strike attack aircraft in order to deliver that bomb, it would at least put doubt in the mind of our opponent because we would have a capability that we can deliver in extremis. Although we would not have the total protection that a submarine launch system would give us, it would be enough. When it comes with the potential to have five additional Astute-class submarines, four additional Type-26 frigates, six airborne warning and control systems and eight long-range maritime patrol aircraft, we should think about the capability that we will not have if we commit to Trident. If we have a deterrent that is suitable for the future role of the United Kingdom, we will ensure that we have some of the conventional capability that will be absolutely necessary.

There was a very good piece in The Times on Saturday by Matthew Parris. His chilling conclusion, with which I agree, is that we must now prepare seriously for war. We have not been in this position or seen the scale of engagement that will be required since the cold war, so 2% does not cut it. Mis-investing our limited resources, as we will be doing if we keep the deterrent in the way that is proposed, does not cut it. If we are going to put our soldiers into action, there has to be certainty that they will be properly equipped, capable of acting and capable of doing so in collaboration with our NATO partners. That is why the recommendations of the Defence Committee about forward basing and looking again at something like the Allied Command Europe mobile force must be looked at by the Government. I am afraid to say that the resources that we are putting towards our strategy are simply not enough.

21:10

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), although I disagree with his conclusions about Trident. We need a deterrent of that type. I hope we will never need to use it, but having it will probably ensure that we do not need to use it. That is the key point about the deterrence of Trident. I am firmly of the view that the Government are right in the course of action they have adopted.

I agree with other hon. Members that 2% of GDP should not just be a target, but should eventually be exceeded. The Chairman of the Defence Committee is right to link 2% to growth. Of course, when there is growth, that 2% becomes bigger. The key point to bear in mind is that if we do not get our economy right, we will not have growth. Defence will therefore suffer if our economy plunges again. The actions that we are taking through—dare I say it—the long-term economic plan and in reducing the deficit are part of our security, because they enable us to afford the things that we want and need in terms of defence.

The second important argument for spending 2%, as most people have noted, is that we must provide leadership to our fellow NATO members. Pledging 2% and encouraging others to meet the 2% target is part of our defence strategy and should remain so. We are right to spend 2% for those two reasons and probably a whole lot more.

What we spend the money on is also important. I have been struck in the course of the debate by the number of people who have said, “We did not think that was going to happen,” or, “That came as a surprise to us.” Our defence expenditure therefore has to have flexibility built in. We have to bear it in mind that we might have very different enemies from those we have had in the past in terms of capacity, style and objectives. That certainly applies to Russia, which has various different strategies and ways of challenging and testing us, as has been said. Islamic State presents a completely different challenge that requires a response that is quite out of the ordinary in terms of defence activity. In spending the 2% of GDP, we must bear in mind the importance of flexibility.

That point was well made, in a slightly different way, by my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson), who linked defence, international development and the activities of the Foreign Office. That is a big sum of money in total. It is wise and strategically sensible to think about the whole security budget, because each part of that budget relates to a meaningful way of protecting Britain’s interests. With reference to the Foreign Office, it is important that we know what is going on. We therefore need our diplomatic representatives and everybody else connected with our embassies, and we must ensure that our embassies are properly equipped and staffed. Again, the Chairman of the Defence Committee made that point very well when he talked about the Baltic states.

The key question is: what are our strategic interests? I do not think that we have yet settled what they are. As we have already noted, things happen and they are surprising. We need to find a strategic plan that defines where we want to be, the kind of responses we should have and the objectives we want. That can only be done in conjunction with our allies. I am thinking not just about the United States of America, which is, of course, a natural ally, but about our allies in Europe. The threats we are discussing are to Europe as much as to us and we therefore have a responsibility and a duty to engage with our European partners to ensure that their strategy is not dissimilar to ours. Arguments in front of an enemy between allies that are supposed to be dealing with that enemy always end up in confusion and a lack of capacity.

We need to define our geographical area as well as our capacity. By this, I mean that we must think about the middle east, northern Africa and beyond. I have learned over the past few years the value of simply being around and paying attention. That is certainly the case with the Falklands and Antarctica. Britain’s presence there guarantees a powerful role is an important geopolitical area. That is a maxim we should apply elsewhere, but to do so we must understand our strategic objectives. That is why I think it is critical that any review in the not-too-distant future bears in mind that situation.

This is a basic point, but we must always think about the politics when we think about engagement with armed forces—not about the politics here, but about the politics of where we are. We have learned that often in the past. We were very clear about what we wanted to achieve in the Falklands. There was no political dispute; we had to retake the Falklands, period. We had a clear objective with a clear political outcome and it worked. We have been less successful when we have been less clear and sure about our strategic objectives. The obvious example is Iraq. We should not have gone in in the first place and when we got there we started making even more mistakes in the implementation of the strategy for the responsibilities we took once we had removed Saddam Hussein. The difficulty that Iraq and the region still face is that we were not sure enough about what we were doing, we lacked strategic certainty and we therefore left a problem that was either bigger or still big enough, and that has had ramifications ever since.

In short, yes to 2%; yes to a full commitment to NATO; yes to a recognition that we must have a defence force that is flexible, modern and bristling with high-technology and that there is fluid enough military thinking to be able to respond to the challenges that emerge on an irregular and often surprising basis; and yes to defining, understanding and seeing through our political objectives.

21:18

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It is always the peril for the last ship in the convoy that it is the most likely to be torpedoed. As the last ship in the Back-Bench convoy in this debate, I shall resist the temptation to be diverted from holding on to my strategic aim—even though I am sorely tempted by the contribution of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) to use up the entire remaining eight-and-a-half minutes talking about Trident. Instead, as an effort in intellectual discipline I shall keep that subject to last to see whether I can get through the other items on the agenda, which are three: the question of process; the question of resources; and the question of content.

First, on the question of process in relation to the strategic defence and security review that is due in 2015, why should it be in 2015, how long should it take and who should do it? We have two recent examples of strategic defence reviews: one in 1998 and one in 2010. The one in 1998 was strategic but unfunded. The one in 2010 was funded but unstrategic. We do not need another unstrategic review, but that is what we will get if we rush the process. Something that the Labour Government were very right to do when they came into office in 1997 —I am delighted to see my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), a former Defence Minister, agreeing with this point—was to take about 18 months to draw up the strategic defence review, as it was then called; and they did it comprehensively and inclusively. There was nobody with something worth contributing to the process that led to the review who was not given an opportunity to do so, and we should do that next time too.

[Sir Bob Russell]

Can my hon. Friend recall whether on that occasion the Treasury intervened and tried to trump what the review sought to achieve?

[Dr Lewis]

I am doubly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for asking a question that I cannot possibly answer, having been in opposition at the time, because it gives me extra time and allows me to direct him to the shadow Minister, who I am sure will be able to answer it when he sums up.

The next question is who should do the strategic defence and security review? I must say that I disagree with my hon. and very learned Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson)—“learned” in the academic sense of that word—when he paints a picture of how wonderful the process of the National Security Council and the national security strategy is. Frankly, I am not impressed with it. I thought that the strategy document itself was apple pie and motherhood. I did not see much in it other than a ranking of tiered threats, most of which were fairly obvious, and those that were not may well turn out, in relation to state-against-state conflict being ranked in the third tier, to be absolutely wrong.

I am concerned about the decision-making process in defence. I will not go into that too much now because, as the Chairman of the Defence Committee, which I have recently had the privilege of joining, is well aware, we are about to produce a report on that very subject. Yet I would like to flag up something that I hope will appear in his draft in due course, and it is this: when we are trying to work out a sensible, comprehensive, coherent and well-informed strategy, it is useful to have substantive contributions from Ministers and civil servants, but we also need contributions from the military.

We appear to have dismantled the collective giving of military advice on strategy to politicians by the chiefs of staff, along with the healthy tension between them and the politicians that contributed so much to the outcome of successful campaigns in decades gone by. I am not impressed when we find that the whole burden of giving military advice on strategy to the Government falls on the shoulders of the Chief of the Defence Staff and the immediate chain of people below him, when in fact that used to be the collective responsibility of the heads of the armed services. I am not impressed when we find that the civil service has done away with what has been termed “domain competence” at the highest levels. We can find ourselves, as I do on the Defence Committee, facing a permanent Under-Secretary of State, the head of the Ministry of Defence, with next to no background in defence himself, and hearing him tell us with great pride that the new head of the Army is pleased to look on himself as a chief executive officer for his service. We are not going to get sufficient military input from that sort of configuration. We are getting non-specialist civil servants, we are getting the military insufficiently included in the process, and we are getting politicians flying by the seat of their pants. It is not good enough.

In his own excellent speech, my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Mid Sussex did not have time, I am delighted to say, to refer to an article by Max Hastings which appeared in The Guardian on 8 November 2005. It is headed “Our armed forces must have a voice in how to defend us” and it states:

“strategy in its proper sense—a doctrine for the prevention and prosecution of war—has been allowed to atrophy. Very few people in uniform or out of it, within the Ministry of Defence or beyond it, devote intellect and energy to anything much beyond saving money and getting through today. And those who do so are firmly discouraged from allowing any hint of their ruminations to escape into the public domain, to fuel an intelligent debate.”

Given that the entire strategic role is now devolved on to the shoulders of just the Chief of Defence Staff, it was disturbing to me to read—I do not know whether it is true—that the CDS was instructed by his political masters not to deliver a lecture. If that is true, it is appalling. [Interruption.] I am delighted, again, to have that sedentary endorsement from my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Mid Sussex.

On resources, I am thrilled that there has been such unanimity about recommending us to put forward the NATO minimum contribution of 2% of GDP for defence. Can hon. Members imagine anything worse than signalling to a powerful adversary that we are going to send 75 military personnel as advisers into a non-NATO country which we are not able and not obliged to defend, much as we sympathise with it, but for the first time since the 2% formula was set, we are in danger of not meeting it ourselves?

[Sir Hugh Bayley]

I am getting slightly tired of Government Members talking up 2% as if it were a great achievement. Five years ago it was 2.5%, so the defence budget has been cut over the past five years by 20%. When Labour came to power it was £22 billion. When we left power, the defence budget in cash terms was £39 billion; now it is £34 billion—a real-terms cut. When are these cuts going to stop?

[Dr Lewis]

I entirely agree with the thrust of that intervention, although as I stated in an intervention on the hon. Gentleman, I well remember Tony Blair saying in, I think, 2007 that over the 10-year period that he had been in office, the defence budget had remained fairly constant at 2.5% of GDP, if the cost of the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan was included. The situation is therefore even worse than the hon. Gentleman thinks, because in effect core defence expenditure also declined under his Government. Nevertheless, the thrust of what he says is on the right lines.

I shall quote very briefly from the Government’s response to the report that the Defence Committee produced before I joined it. The Government replied on 27 October 2014:

“NATO Allies have also collectively agreed to reverse the trend of declining defence budgets and aim to increase defence expenditure in real terms as GDP grows and direct defence budgets to be as efficient and effective as possible. Allies currently meeting the NATO guidelines to spend a minimum of 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence will aim to continue to do so. . . Allies whose current proportion of GDP spent on defence is below this level will halt any decline in defence expenditure; aim to increase defence expenditure in real terms as GDP grows; and aim to move towards the 2% guidelines within a decade with a view to meeting their NATO Capability Targets and filling NATO’s capability shortfalls.”

When the Prime Minister came back from that NATO conference in Wales, he made a statement from the Dispatch Box, speaking very much along those lines. So I thought, “I have not always been as immensely helpful to the Prime Minister as I might have been, because he has done some things I really couldn’t stand, such as putting off the decision to sign the Trident main-gate contracts till 2016, when they should have been decided in this Parliament. So I’ll ask him a helpful question.” I asked, “Will the Prime Minister then give an undertaking that, as long as he remains Prime Minister, that 2% target will be met?” To my dismay, I found that that was not a helpful question at all. It was an unhelpful question, so I have been asking it time and again ever since.

I will now be unable to get on to the content of the next strategic defence and security review, which will have to wait for other debates. I will not even be able to rebut in more detail what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Reigate said about Trident, but I am glad that the House did not agree with him. I simply point out that this 2% issue is not going away. We will have another debate on 12 March, and I hope that everyone who has spoken today will come back then to continue the argument.

21:30

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

This has been a very well-informed debate in which we have had 15 speakers. I congratulate the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) on his opening remarks, which showed that the House made the right choice in selecting him as Chair of the Defence Committee. He not only put forward his usual well-informed arguments but made a very convincing case for why we are facing certain threats from Russia, in particular.

The main issue has been spending 2% of GDP for our NATO commitments. That was mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, by the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), by my hon. Friends the Members for York Central (Sir Hugh Bayley) and for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), by the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), by the hon. Members for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) and for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), and by the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who called the 2% figure a line in the sand. The hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) also spoke in favour of it, as did the weaponised dove, the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), who argued for more than 2%, and the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael).

[Crispin Blunt]

I am interested in exploring what Labour would do. In 1977, even when the economy was a disaster, a Labour Government committed to a 3% year-on-year increase in defence expenditure at a time when we were facing a similar threat scenario to that which we face today. Is Labour committed even to a 2% floor?

[Mr Jones]

If the hon. Gentleman lets me get on with my speech, I shall tell him what our position is.

Every Conservative Member has called for 2% or more, but in a few weeks’ time they are going to stand for election on a manifesto that would see a cut in our defence expenditure. I refer to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s autumn statement, which clearly ring-fenced spending on schools, health, and overseas aid. The hon. Member for Aldershot mentioned overseas aid, which I know is dear to his heart. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, 60% more cuts have got to take place, so if we take the ring-fenced spending out, we see that the rest of the cuts that will have to be made amount to about £86 billion. Of that, it is estimated that £9 billion will have to come from defence—some 36% if we take the figures up to 2020. Some are saying that the figure may be in the region of 8%. The Conservatives have form on 8% margins, because that is the level at which the coalition cut defence expenditure when it came to power.

We have heard it argued that the Prime Minister gave a commitment to, and lectured others about, the 2% NATO target. I understand that today he has been in the constituency of the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell), where he was asked about the commitment to 2%. As we expect from the Prime Minister, he dodged the question. He said that the equipment budget would be increased by 1%. He also made the remarkable statement that there would be no further cuts in the size of the Army. In that case, the situation for the defence budget is even worse than has been said, because the 9% cut that the Chancellor is arguing for will fall on only 55% of the budget. If the equipment budget has been protected, there are only two ways of keeping the Army intact while cutting 55% of the defence budget by 9%—by taking out of service equipment that is there today or by reducing the number of personnel.

The Prime Minister needs to level with the British people and be honest about what is being proposed. This is a charade. I do not doubt that the Conservative Members who have spoken—I know them all very well and they are very strong defence advocates—genuinely believe that more money should be put into defence or that the 2% NATO commitment should at least be met, but they need to challenge the Prime Minister on the figure. There is no way that the Chancellor’s cuts can be met by 2019-20 without affecting the 2% we currently give to NATO.

[Mr Gray]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is looking forward to being the Minister for the Armed Forces in the incoming Labour Government. Talking of levelling with the British people, would a Labour Government not do what he says we are about to do?

[Mr Jones]

I will level with the hon. Gentleman. What I will not do is what the Prime Minister and the then Members of the Opposition did at the last election by promising larger armies, more ships and more expenditure on the armed forces. The first thing they did when they got into power was cut the size of the army. Our position is very clear: we will meet the figure for 2015-16, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Central has said, that is still a reduction of £600 million according to the figures under discussion. Moreover, if we look at what the Defence Secretary has been good at, we will see that some £400 million has been given back to the Treasury over the past five years. That money was not even spent, which begs a question about the commitment.

Our strategic defence review will look at what most people want, as we did in 1997. It will be a proper defence review that looks at the bigger questions that many Members have raised today about our role in the world.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I am grateful to my good friend the shadow Minister for giving way. The reason we are in this pickle is that we inherited a budget deficit of £156 billion. I wonder whether he would accept that putting the public finances back in order was the immediate priority and that we have been successful in doing so. [Interruption.] We now have the fastest growing economy in the western world and that is why we want a 2%-plus increase in defence.

[Mr Jones]

But the hon. Gentleman needs to be honest about the time scale. I thought he was going to refer, as one Member did from a sedentary position, to the mythical £38 billion black hole, which was designed to disguise the Government’s 8% cut. The Defence Committee’s report of November 2011 says:

“We note that the MoD now state the genuine size of the gap is substantially in excess of £38 billion. However, we also note the”

former

“Secretary of State’s assertion that the ‘for the first time in a generation, the MoD will have brought its plans and budget broadly into balance, allowing it to plan with confidence for the delivery of the future equipment programme’. Without proper detailed figures neither statement can be verified.”

I have challenged numerous Ministers on that. It is one of those things that was thought up in central office during the election and then kept getting repeated.

Serious points have been made in today’s debate about Britain’s place in the world, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston and the Chair of the Committee. We need to ask the question that we asked in 1998: what is our role in the world and is there a wider debate to be had with the British public? I think there is, but this Government are not conducting the latest defence review in a constructive way. In 1998, as the hon. Member for New Forest East has said, we had a broad, inclusive debate. Even in 2010 we produced a Government Green Paper setting out the issues, but as soon as the coalition got in the Treasury-led review was completed in record time. This time the process needs to be thought out.

Things do not bode well, however, because the Ministry of Defence will not even tell my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) what questions it will ask in the review, while the Prime Minister’s view is that all we need is a light tweak. We live in a very changeable world—we have had a very good debate today about Russia and the threats we now face from Islamic terrorism—and the idea that all we need is a light tweak is a huge mistake.

[Neil Carmichael]

Will the shadow Minister tell the House whether or not the Labour Opposition agree with the 2% target?

[Mr Jones]

I have made that clear. I will not promise things I cannot deliver, which the hon. Gentleman’s party did at the last election. He will have to stand up in front of his electorate in Stroud in May and say that he disagrees with the Prime Minister and will not sign up to the austerity Budget outlined by the Chancellor in the autumn statement. He needs to be honest with his constituents by saying that, because that is what will happen to the defence budget. He can make all his points about our position, but we have been very clear that we will meet the 2015-16 targets.

The hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson)—I will call my fellow war graves commissioner my hon. Friend—made this point about those in the Ministry of Defence. I think he said that they were rolling the logs along the path, and they have in certain ways. What is needed, and this is part of our zero-based budget review, is to look in detail at exactly how our defence budget is spent. There is an argument for efficiencies that can be made, and they will be made.

The defence review must involve the largest possible number of people; otherwise it cannot be done. If the Treasury is just let loose, as it was in 2010, it will have the same result. I will say something that is perhaps out of character, but when he was Defence Secretary the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) did at least try to keep the Treasury dogs from the door, although he unfortunately failed.

[Mr Keith Simpson]

Does not the hon. Gentleman, as well as my hon. Friends, accept that we can all caricature the Treasury for obvious reasons, such as in 1998 and 2010, but if we sat in the Treasury and looked at the way in which the Ministry of Defence under successive Governments has been totally incompetent—in handling budgets, the overruns and the way in which individual services have competed with each other—to the detriment of national defence, surely we would agree that decisions should be collective? The Treasury does not necessarily have to have a veto, but it has a point of view and should be listened to.

[Mr Jones]

I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman. When I chaired the value for money group in the MOD during the previous Government, it was certainly my experience that the Treasury can make a contribution. Unfortunately, it sometimes has a very blinkered view of the world, but it has to ensure that every defence pound we spend is actually well spent.

May I turn to the issue of soft power, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South and by the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border? I always think “soft power” is a strange use of words because when we look at what is happening in Russia, we can see that its use has been very effective. Soft power is part of the Russian strategy not only in changing the complete news agenda on the invasion of Crimea, but in continuing to do the same. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South made his point in relation to the World Service, which is again a case of a short-term saving having long-term consequences. We need to address the issue that what might be seen as public relations or news management is clearly part of the Russian armoury for changing the agenda on Ukraine and other parts of the world. We need a similar type of force to make sure that we not only influence the debate, but can react very quickly to events as they happen.

The hon. Member for Colchester raised issues about the Falkland Islands. The Labour party is certainly committed to ensuring that the people of the Falkland Islands determine their own future, but that must be taken into account in the future defence and security review. Given his long-standing interest in housing, I am surprised that he has not thanked the Labour Government for the investment they put into Colchester and Army housing. It was sad that when this Government came to power they stopped the modernisation programme as well as the scheme that allowed members of the armed forces to buy their houses, although I know that has now been resurrected under a different heading.

The threats we face are numerous. Can we predict the future? No we cannot. We must ensure that the armed forces at our disposal are linked not only to our security networks and to MI5 and MI6, but to our homeland defence. That can be achieved only if a proper security and defence review in 2016 covers all those aspects, so that when we need the brave servicemen and women on whom we rely, we can ensure that they have the equipment and training to carry out that role. We must also deter aggressors who are clearly working to affect the way of life that we have all come to respect and take for granted.

21:46

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Mark Francois)]

I, too, thank the House of Commons Defence Committee for producing this important report and giving us the platform to discuss some of the key defence issues facing the alliance and the United Kingdom today. The Chair of the Committee introduced the debate in characteristically eloquent fashion, on which he was complimented by a number of hon. Members. I will add to those compliments and point out that I think he gave a very forceful opening speech.

The report makes interesting reading. It argues in paragraph 102 that events in Ukraine were a “wake-up call”, and for reasons that I will come on to, I agree. As the Committee acknowledges in paragraph 97, these issues are not just a matter for the Ministry of Defence, but for the whole Government. The pan-governmental national security strategy will need to be updated to take account of changes to the international situation over the last five years. The importance of the NSS was referred to by the Committee Chair, as well as by my hon. Friends the Members for Broadland (Mr Simpson), for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) and for Stroud (Neil Carmichael). Although this debate has understandably focused on the strategic defence and security review, the next SDSR must also take account of any changes to the NSS into which it should dovetail. As the Committee recognises, events in Ukraine have shone a light on different types of conflict that the NSS must take into account as it develops strategies to mitigate the challenges we face.

The last SDSR was written while our forces were heavily engaged in Afghanistan. We have now brought our combat troops home, but as we move to an era where there is a continuing challenge to the rules-based international order, we must examine the full scope of defence to ensure that we are best prepared. Equipment, people and investment are key elements, but mindset is important too.

Arguably, the last 10 years or so have seen us become increasingly proficient at conducting combat operations with a counter-insurgency element, at reach, against a technologically inferior but none the less determined enemy. In that context I pay tribute again to those who served us in Afghanistan. We asked much of them and they did us proud. I was at the last homecoming parade into the Palace of Westminster for the troops of 102 Logistic Brigade and the 20th Armoured Infantry Brigade. It was a humbling experience and I pay particular tribute to the 453 service personnel who lost their lives in that conflict. Across the whole House we will surely agree that they must never be forgotten.

We now need to rebalance and become highly proficient in a range of potential operations across the globe, and against a range of potential threats. We will need to think differently; we may need to react quicker. We will need to look into the future and seek to prepare now. The world does not stand still and events will not give us rest: there is ISIL in the middle east, referred to by several hon. Members; Boko Haram in Africa; and of course our commitment to combat Ebola in Sierra Leone via Operation Gritrock. Having visited our troops just prior to Christmas—the Secretary of State visited more recently—I place on the record my enduring admiration for our armed forces personnel. They have been prepared to take risks in deploying to west Africa to fight this awful disease, not just to defend the Sierra Leoneans but us here at home.

On the defence review itself, there is an old saying about how to get to Dublin. In short, I would rather start an SDSR from where we are now than where we were in 2010. The chaos we inherited from Labour has gone and the budget is now back in balance. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones)—he and I have been sparring partners for some years—refused to commit the Labour party to spending more than 2% on defence beyond 2015-16, if it was elected. In that sense, he does not go beyond us. The giveaway was when he said that Labour would conduct a zero-based review. In essence, that means he cannot commit to anything. That is what a zero-based review means. He told the House on the one hand that he would not promise anything he could not deliver, but on the other hand he said that his party would conduct a zero-based review, in which it cannot really promise anything. It is important that the House understands the distinction between the positions held by the Opposition and the Government.

Our equipment programme—a substantial investment of some £163 billion over 10 years on equipment and support—will ensure that our armed forces retain a formidable range of cutting-edge capabilities and the ability to project power across the globe. This investment is not only securing the best possible military capability, it is also helping to secure UK jobs and growth. The UK defence industry indirectly employs more than 160,000 people, with a turnover of £22 billion.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

A zero-based budget looks at efficiencies and how to spend money better. Does the Minister agree with the Chancellor’s figures for 2016 to 2020, when something like £9 billion has been projected to meet the cuts—[Interruption.] The Whip has not been here, so he can stop chuntering from a sedentary position. Does the Minister agree with the Chancellor, yes or no?

[Mr Francois]

What I agree with is that we inherited a chaotic defence budget from the Labour party. That is what it bequeathed to us and that is what we have had to deal with from day one. I will come on to our position on the 2% commitment, which I believe is superior to the hon. Gentleman’s position.

Crucially, we are making full provision for the successor deterrent system. It is a shame that the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) is no longer in his place, as I wanted to tell him two things. I will be visiting Barrow very shortly. We will confirm the date with him in the usual way, but I want to see Barrow for myself. He also asked for a commitment, which I am happy to give him, to the seventh Astute submarine. We are determined that we will complete the seven boats in the Astute programme before transiting to a successor programme based on continuous-at-sea deterrence with four deterrent submarines.

We are also significantly increasing our investment in cyber-security, an issue raised by a number of hon. Members. I can assure the House that this does not relate only to defensive cyber. We need to ensure our armed forces are equipped with cutting-edge capabilities across all environments.

On the NATO summit and events in Ukraine, we have deplored Russian aggression in Ukraine from the outset. We urge all sides to take the necessary steps to implement the second Minsk agreement of 12 February, which provides a framework for stabilising the situation in eastern Ukraine. Russia must abide by its commitments at Minsk. This means making the separatists withdraw their heavy weapons, stopping continued separatist attacks so that an effective ceasefire can take hold, and allowing effective monitoring to take place. There have been some early encouraging signs over the past few days, with a lull in the level of fighting in the east and some heavy weapons relocated, but we have seen this pattern before. We will continue to monitor the situation and hope that it is not reversed. It is important that we look at actual deeds in this context and follow them closely.

Unity in the alliance is the best response to these challenges. We demonstrated that at the Wales summit, in particular with the readiness action plan, including the development of a very high readiness joint task force. On 5 February this year, at the NATO defence ministerial, the UK committed to lead the VJTF in 2017, as one of six framework nations, alongside France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain. The Wales summit saw the alliance commit to assurance measures for our eastern allies. Our contribution will be even greater in 2015 than last year, with over 4,000 UK personnel set to deploy on various exercises in eastern alliance territory. In particular, Exercise Dragon will be a divisional level exercise in Poland—something that I note the Chairman of the Select Committee called for in his speech. It is due to take place in September and the UK will contribute 1,000 troops, plus armoured vehicles. We will also participate in Baltic air policing. Four Typhoons will operate alongside Norwegian aircraft between May and August 2015, working to secure NATO’s airspace over our Baltic allies, demonstrating alliance solidarity in practice.

The Wales summit also committed NATO allies to reverse the decline in defence spending. The UK is one of the few NATO nations to have consistently spent 2% of GDP on defence. Importantly, we also exceed the target to invest more than 20% of our budget on equipment. We have the second biggest defence budget in NATO and the largest in the European Union. These are important points that we should not forget. In financial year 2015-16, we will maintain that 2% of spending. Following 2015-16, that will be subject to the next spending review, which is due to take place after the election, but it will not be a zero-based review, in the way that Labour argues.

[Mr Jones]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Francois]

No. The hon. Gentleman has already had his go and I have three minutes left.

The UK has committed to providing additional non-lethal support to the Ukrainian Government to help their forces deal with the pressures they are facing. Such support is not new, with the nature of the UK’s support remaining non-lethal. This forms part of a wider Government effort to support Ukraine and ensure a robust international response to Russia’s aggression. It is imperative that the United Kingdom stands by its NATO allies in delivering a unified message to Russia about its unacceptable behaviour and disregard for the international rules-based system.

Let me conclude by saying that it is important to remember that the Committee’s report was written last July, prior to the summit, but recent events in Ukraine have indeed been a wake-up call. I reiterate that in the light of this we must look at the SDSR and the NSS. We need to update both, and they must be complementary. The Committee recommended changes in the alliance, some of which have already been implemented. The Committee sought improvements on NATO’s rapid reaction force; the VJTF will contribute to this aim. The Committee wanted large-scale military exercises; Exercise Dragon this autumn will be a divisional sized exercise, consisting of 10,000 alliance personnel, 1,000 of whom will be British, who will be supported with a range of armoured vehicles. The Committee recommended that NATO address its vulnerability to asymmetric attack; work is in train that is seeing NATO significantly improve its resilience to hybrid warfare, not least in cyber, as I have already explained. Units such as the 77 Brigade, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) referred and which is based in his constituency, will also play an important part in that, ensuring that such threats can be covered off.

The Committee is quite right to draw the House’s attention to what has been happening in Ukraine. It is right that we watch these events closely and take nothing for granted. Defence is, and remains, the first duty of Government, so now is not the time to slacken. We must stay the course, implement the decisions from Wales and demonstrate our commitment to NATO. We must at all times remember the importance of solidarity in the NATO alliance. NATO has formed the bedrock of our security since 1949. It still does. We remain fully committed to our NATO allies, and everyone should understand that. NATO has helped to keep us safe and free. It has been committed to us, and we remain committed to it.

Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).

Warm Home Discount Scheme (Northern Ireland)

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mel Stride.)

22:00

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I was delighted to secure this very important debate on the extension of the warm home discount scheme to Northern Ireland. I am pleased that the Minister is in her place to respond. The rate of fuel poverty is higher in Northern Ireland than in any other part of the UK, representing 42% or 294,000 homes, with the figure rising to 62% for elderly people. I would like to outline the extreme toll that fuel poverty takes on people.

Only last week, I received an e-mail from the Contact a Family organisation. It told me that Ellen Johnston from Belfast, whose six-year-old son Cole has global developmental delay, low muscle tone, epilepsy and cannot speak, said:

“People don’t realise that it can cost so much more if you have a child with a disability or special needs. I used to work before Cole was born and tried to work from home but it was just too difficult to do this and deal with Cole’s needs and medical appointments at the same time.”

That serves to illustrate the cost and the burden on that poor lady of heating her home, particularly with a disabled child and particularly when she was relying on benefits and had no other source of income.

Many of us take a warm home for granted, but many people, particularly the elderly, do not have the comfort of a well-heated home. It is also worth noting that retired people are for obvious reasons at home much more of the time and therefore require the heating to be on for much longer periods than those still in work do. For them, heating their home becomes an enormous financial pressure, leading many to be left with the reality of living in extremely cold conditions. This is not just a matter of simply adjusting the thermostat or putting on a jumper, as a previous Energy Secretary suggested—it is often a matter of life and death.

Under the Government’s own criteria, an estimated 6 million households are living in fuel poverty, and this winter a reported 40,000 extra winter deaths occurred in the UK—a rise of 29% on the previous year. According to the Office for National Statistics, from the beginning of December until 16 January this year, there were 8,800 more deaths than the average of 25,000. The rate rocketed by 33% in the week up until 16 January, when there were almost 15,000 deaths as an extremely cold spell took hold. An additional 3,000 deaths are expected and by March 31, the end date for Department of Health winter death totals, numbers will have surpassed the flu-hit toll of 36,450 in 2008-09, making it the worst since the peak of 48,440 deaths in 1999-2000.

The figures for Northern Ireland are at least as grim, if not worse, with approximately 600 excess winter deaths recorded in 2013-14—up by about 20% from 2012. It is important to note that not all those deaths represent the “very elderly”, with approximately one in five under-75s and one in nine under-65s in the last year for which records were available in Northern Ireland.

Low interior temperatures also lead to a range of other medical conditions, from bronchitis and other respiratory diseases to heart problems, not to mention the extra psychological toll that they can take. The World Health Organisation recently reported on the extreme danger that cold and damp homes, which often have poor or shoddy insulation, can pose to people’s health by causing respiratory illnesses. One of my party’s councillors, Brian Heading, has taken a great lead on the issue, and is trying to raise awareness of it in councils in the UK and in Ireland. It puts enormous pressure on an already hard-pressed health service and on individual families.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

Fuel poverty is a very serious issue in Northern Ireland. I should like to know why Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom to which the warm home discount scheme does not extend. Did the Westminster Government not pay for it, or was money allocated but not spent in the proper way by the Northern Ireland Executive?

[Ms Ritchie]

I may be able to explain that later in my speech, but suffice it to say that Northern Ireland is the only region to which the scheme does not extend and in which there are particular market conditions. Our climatic conditions are probably similar to those in Scotland, and we have similar levels of fuel poverty, but the war home discount scheme extends to Scotland and not to Northern Ireland.

I understand from Age Sector Platform that the scheme could be administered centrally by the United Kingdom, and that the costing could be executed by the utility companies. In fact, one of the utility companies that operate in Britain, SSE, also operates in Northern Ireland, through its agent Airtricity. I imagine that if the Minister approached the Northern Ireland Executive and, in particular, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, as well as the utility regulator and the other utility companies, a resolution might be found.

In Northern Ireland, the problem of cold and damp is exacerbated by the fact that people have no access to the warm home discount scheme. The scheme was introduced in April 2011 by regulations made under section 9 of the Energy Act 2010. It provides a £140 rebate on household energy bills for eligible groups, namely pensioners receiving guarantee credit, who are known as the core group, and other low-income households, who are known as the broader group. Some further payments were made on the basis of other criteria.

More than 2 million low-income and vulnerable households in England, Scotland and Wales have been helped each year, and total payments were expected to reach £1.1 billion by March 2015. The Department for Work and Pensions estimates that approximately four out of every five households claim this entitlement. While it is obviously desirable to maximise the figure and promote better awareness of the scheme here, it is worth repeating yet again that no one in Northern Ireland has access to it. The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) made that point a few moments ago.

The scheme is administered by Ofgem. The Department for Work and Pensions has a monitoring role, and the administration costs are carried by the UK Government. Could the arrangement not simply be transferred to Northern Ireland, with the administration being carried out centrally here in Britain? It is financed by levying around £11 per annum on consumers, and Age Sector Platform has estimated that Northern Ireland could be covered by the scheme with the addition of just £1 per customer per year. This scheme was designed specifically, in the words of the Department of Energy and Climate Change,

“to reduce fuel poverty in the UK”,

with no mention of excluding Northern Ireland, and indeed has been set up with a mechanism to ensure that no supplier is left footing a disproportionate burden owing to the uneven spread of fuel poverty across the UK. Surely the north of Ireland should not be excluded from this.

While the Minister in response to written questions has maintained that fuel poverty is a fully devolved matter, in DECC’S own fuel poverty statistics guide it is described only as a partially devolved matter and it is acknowledged that devolved Administrations do not have the capacity to

“affect certain aspects of fuel poverty policies”,

such as incomes and market conditions. Fellow Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies who are present tonight will recall that we met Age Sector Platform in this building on 4 November and it referred to that specific point. We were under the illusion—including me, a former Minister for Social Development—that it was a totally devolved matter, but that document from DECC clearly shows that it is only partially devolved and therefore the UK Government centrally do have a responsibility in this matter. It is on that point that I and other Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies are seeking answers.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. I agree entirely with what she is saying and she is right to highlight these matters to the United Kingdom Government. I ask that she and the House be assured that there is consensus among all the parties in Northern Ireland and the Members here on this issue, and we will continue to work together both here and at home with our Executive colleagues to try to bring about an answer and a solution for the people affected by fuel poverty in Northern Ireland.

[Ms Ritchie]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. He is absolutely right: there is cross-party consensus on this issue in Northern Ireland and we want to continue working during this debate, and particularly after it, to ensure that a solution can be found that mitigates the impact of fuel poverty on some of the most hard-to-reach households in both urban and rural communities.

There is consensus on this issue across the parties in Northern Ireland. That point was reiterated at the meeting with Age Sector Platform on 4 November in this House. It intends to hold a cross-party Parliament meeting for older people shortly, and before the election; I have just got word of that today.

Age Sector Platform has also submitted a strong response to November’s consultation, advocating our inclusion in the scheme. It has also suggested that as Power NI, one of the utility companies in Northern Ireland, meets the threshold for mandatory involvement in the scheme in the UK, with 250,000 domestic customers, it should be included, along with Airtricity, which is a subsidiary of SSE, which is already involved in Britain. I would be most grateful for an updated assessment of this situation from the Minister.

I am aware that the Minister of State’s response to written questions on this issue has been that fuel poverty is a devolved matter, and obviously I am aware that Ireland has a separate energy market with different providers. However, as I have said, there has been an acknowledgment and awareness from the Department that we face the same problems with fuel poverty, but do not have the same toolset to deal with them. Surely there is a role for the UK Government in providing, or at least enabling or facilitating, the scheme in Northern Ireland.

The Minister’s answers on this question have so far been fairly blunt, but will she commit this evening to taking a more positive and perhaps more nuanced view of the issue? Will she work with the Northern Ireland Executive whenever possible to explore the options to extend the scheme, or a comparable variant of it, to Northern Ireland? I am calling on her to do the right thing and to work with the Executive at Stormont to protect the elderly and disabled members of our population and some of the most vulnerable families in hard-to-reach communities.

We are also looking for an extension beyond April 2015 of the landlords’ energy-saving allowance, which would help to further mitigate fuel poverty in the private rented sector. I am calling on the Minister to do the right thing this evening. If the warm home discount scheme is extended, pensioners and other elderly people in Northern Ireland will be spared freezing in their homes next winter.

22:16

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) on securing the debate on extending the warm home discount scheme to Northern Ireland. Fuel poverty remains a huge challenge, as she rightly says, and the coalition is committed to tackling the problem and to helping the people affected, especially those on low incomes and in vulnerable households.

To help us to meet the challenge of fuel poverty head on, the Government have introduced a new, more accurate “low income, high cost” measure of fuel poverty in England. This enables us to deliver effective policies that can cut bills and increase comfort for those on low incomes living in the coldest homes. We have a range of policies in place, including the warm home discount, that address the contributing factors of fuel poverty through either increasing income or reducing energy bills.

I want to provide some context for the warm home discount scheme and tell the House how it operates in Great Britain. The powers for the warm home discount scheme are set out in primary legislation—the Energy Act 2010—and it is delivered by suppliers within Great Britain. Introduced in 2011 through secondary legislation, the warm home discount scheme requires electricity suppliers with more than 250,000 domestic customer accounts to provide financial support in respect of energy costs to their vulnerable customers. This winter, the customers eligible for that financial support received a £140 rebate on their electricity bill.

Since we launched the scheme, around 2 million households in or at risk of living in fuel poverty across Great Britain have benefited from lower energy bills each year. As a result of the success of the warm home discount, this Government have extended support to 2015-16, with a spending target of £320 million. This is in addition to the £1.1 billion that has been spent over the first four years of the scheme and will continue to support the people most in need.

Fuel poverty in Northern Ireland is devolved to the Northern Ireland Executive, who decide their own fuel poverty objectives and policies. However, in looking at the feasibility of extending the warm home discount scheme to Northern Ireland, we can see that a number of factors would affect that arrangement. As I said, the powers for the warm home discount scheme were set out in primary legislation in the Energy Act 2010. However, the powers extend only to Great Britain, so any extension of the scheme to Northern Ireland would require a change in primary legislation.

The energy market in Northern Ireland is different from the one that operates in Great Britain. There is also a difference in the nature and number of customers in fuel poverty. Northern Ireland operates in an all-island energy market that is separate from that of Great Britain. It is at a different stage from the GB market in terms of energy market regulation and competition.

The warm home discount scheme applies only to the largest suppliers, based on their domestic market share across Great Britain. The same rules apply in all regions so as not to create market distortions. In Northern Ireland, only the largest supplier would meet the current participation threshold for the scheme. That would mean customers of smaller suppliers would be ineligible, which could lead to a distortion of the single energy market.

I also want to highlight the importance of maintaining a balance between helping those in fuel poverty and ensuring that energy costs are kept as low as possible for everybody. The warm home discount scheme is funded by energy suppliers, which we expect to pass the costs of the scheme on to customer bills. The question from the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) was about the source of funds, and the simple answer is that the funds are only collected from bills in Great Britain—they are not currently collected from the Bills in Northern Ireland, which is unique in the UK in that respect.

Replicating the GB scheme in Northern Ireland could be done but would pose particular problems. Given the high proportion of households in fuel poverty in Northern Ireland, making them all eligible would have a high overall cost. For example, if Northern Ireland were to replicate the impact of the warm home discount scheme in Great Britain, for one in 13 households benefiting we could expect an increase in energy tariffs of 2%. However, if coverage of the scheme extended to include all fuel poor customers in Northern Ireland, the costs of the scheme would add almost £59—a 9.8% increase—to each household electricity bill.

A different means of funding such a scheme may be needed for Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland already has a number of schemes in place that provide support to the fuel poor, including the sustainable energy programme, the warm homes and affordable warmth schemes, and the boiler replacement scheme. Those are in addition to the availability of cold weather payments and winter fuel payments. Also, the recent downward pressure on oil prices will come as welcome relief to the many customers in Northern Ireland using oil for heating purposes

I understand that Power NI, the main supplier in Northern Ireland, has announced a tariff reduction of 9.2% to take effect from 1 April 2015. This will be a two-year tariff and is estimated to reduce a typical domestic consumer bill by approximately £50 per year. Alongside the downward pressure on heating oil and gas prices, it should result in a reduction in the extent and severity of fuel poverty.

The hon. Member for South Down raised the issue of covering administrative costs. For her information, the Department for Work and Pensions administrative costs cover only a small proportion of the cost of administering the scheme. Most costs, including the administrative costs, are borne by the suppliers. My officials in the Department of Energy and Climate Change regularly meet Northern Ireland Executive officials to discuss fuel poverty issues. However, as fuel poverty is devolved to the Northern Ireland Executive, they decide their own fuel poverty objectives and policies.

Fuel Poverty remains a huge challenge in both Great Britain and Northern Ireland and needs to be tackled. However, the differences between our energy markets and the way we measure fuel poverty mean that we need to consider different policies to best meet the needs of those we are trying to reach.

[Ms Ritchie]

The Minister has clearly stated that her officials meet Northern Ireland Executive officials to discuss fuel poverty and fuel poverty objectives. What specific issues have been discussed in the recent past between her officials and officials in the Department for Social Development in Northern Ireland about the mitigation of fuel poverty?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank the hon. Lady for that question. Obviously, the key point that is relevant to what we are talking about is how we could advise or assist in some equivalent measure, which is exactly what she has raised with us today. In preparation for this debate, we had further discussions. The hon. Lady talked earlier about trying to keep the dialogue open, and I wish to reassure her that we are always keen to work with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland and to share with it all that we have learned about trying to administer this scheme in the best way to reach the constituents who, as she has clearly set out, are so vulnerable to high energy costs: the vulnerable, the disabled and the pensioners, who often do not go out.

Although I do not have the answers here today about how the scheme could be extended to Northern Ireland, because, as I have said, it is a devolved matter and has separate payments, I would like to reassure the hon. Lady that we are always keen to work with our counterparts in Northern Ireland and we will be keen to continue to do that. I hope I have shown that we will work with them wherever we can to make sure that fuel poverty is eradicated in Great Britain and Northern Ireland by any means possible. I commend her for raising this issue today.

Question put and agreed to.

22:24

House adjourned.

OBSERVATIONS

Monday 2nd March 2015 Petitions

Accident prevention measures for Redbridge roundabout

Monday 2nd March 2015 Petitions

The Petition of residents of Ilford North,

Declares that the Petitioners are extremely concerned at the high level of reported accidents (which averages at one accident per week) as well as the potential for more fatal accidents on the Redbridge roundabout (LBR); further that this is a major road junction on the east of London which carries heavy traffic from the M11, North Circular Road and the A12; further that it is reputed to be one of the busiest and most dangerous road junctions in Europe; further that all connecting roads on the gyratory have traffic lights apart from one road, Redbridge Lane East; further that traffic from Redbridge Lane East is unable to safely join this constantly busy roundabout and only two or three cars can enter the roundabout on each cycle of the lights; further that this causes up to 45 minute delays on reaching the roundabout, generates pollution levels above safe limits, causes inconsiderate driving by frustrated drivers and results in stress and anxiety experienced by drivers contemplating taking the high-risk strategy of attempting to get across the roundabout without having an accident; and further that a local petition on this matter in the Ilford North constituency and the surrounding area was signed by 2187 individuals.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to direct Transport for London to install traffic lights at the Redbridge Lane East junction or to at least put measures in place (such as adjusting the existing traffic light timings) so that at least 6 or 8 cars can safely get onto the roundabout on each traffic light cycle.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Mr Lee Scott, Official Report, 10 February 2015; Vol. 592, c. 748 .]

[P001432]

Observations from the Secretary of State for Transport:

The Petitioners request that the House of Commons urges the Government to direct Transport for London to install traffic lights at the Redbridge Lane East junction or to at least put measures in place (such as adjusting the existing traffic light timings) so that at least six or eight cars can safely get onto the roundabout on each traffic light cycle.

I recognise the importance of adequate measures to manage traffic flow, reduce congestion and improve road safety. Local highway authorities are responsible for managing the highway network in their area. They have a statutory responsibility to provide appropriate traffic management schemes for their roads and powers (under section 122 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984) to take whatever measures they see as appropriate to manage traffic flow, reduce congestion and improve road safety. The Department for Transport (DfT) is responsible for setting strategy and policy context, and establishing and managing relationships with organisations that are responsible for delivery.

The DfT has published (Local Transport Notes (LTNs)) providing guidance on a variety of traffic management measures including traffic calming, the installation of traffic signals, and signal controlled roundabouts:

LTN 1/07 ‘Traffic calming’

LTN 1/98 ‘The installation of traffic signals and associated equipment’

LTN 1/09 ‘Signal controlled roundabouts’

These publications are available on the Department’s website at:

www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-transport-notes.

In line with the coalition Government’s commitment to localism, Ministers and officials have no remit to intervene in the day-to-day affairs of local authorities except where specific provision has been made in legislation.

Westminster Hall

Monday 2nd March 2015 Westminster Hall

Monday 2 March 2015

[Andrew Rosindell in the Chair]

Backbench Business

Monday 2nd March 2015 Westminster Hall

Harvey’s Law

Monday 2nd March 2015 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the e-petition relating to Harvey’s law.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for finding time for this important debate. It is good to see that its Chair is here and will take part in the debate.

A lot of people around the country will be following this important debate. We are a country of dog lovers and animal lovers, so a lot of people are interested in it. I am grateful to my constituent, Mrs Pauline Krause, and her fellow campaigners—in particular, Nina Blackburn, who has been leading the campaign—for their help and guidance, which has enabled me to raise this issue in Parliament. They have shown great energy and enthusiasm in setting up the petition and travelling around the country lobbying various MPs, some of whom are here today. It is a great example of democracy in action and how it can work—a constituent goes to see their MP and raises the issue, other members of the public raise it with their MPs and we end up with a debate here. Hopefully, the Minister will go one further and complete the democratic process by agreeing to what is being asked for today. We will hear from him later.

I do not own a pet and have never owned one, but I know from family members, friends and colleagues about the love and care that so many owners have for their pets. As I said, we are a country of animal lovers. Pets can become important parts of families, and deep attachments are commonplace. The loss of a much-loved pet is traumatic for all concerned, and for many families it can lead to a lot of grieving. The fact that more than 100,000 people have signed the e-petition shows the extent of the concern about this issue, and many people are interested in the outcome of the debate. Many families have pet dogs, cats and other animals. The campaigners tell me that about 24% of households in England own a dog, which is a remarkable figure. I imagine that the figure is similar for cats, although I do not know it off the top of my head.

The first I heard about Harvey’s law was when my constituent, Mrs Pauline Krause, came to my surgery in July 2014. Who would have guessed then that I would end up leading a debate on the issue? Pauline explained Harvey’s story. We are here today because of what happened to Harvey, so I will relate that story and give one or two other examples.

Harvey was a beloved pet of Jude Devine and Shaun Robertson, who are from Sheffield but were visiting friends in Rainhill, which, by coincidence, is next door to my constituency. Harvey bolted through an open door on 23 November 2013 at about 10 pm. He was killed on the M62, which was just 21 minutes away. Harvey was chipped and was wearing an identification badge. His owners contacted all the relevant bodies, including the Highways Agency, on an almost daily basis, and they were always told that no dogs had been collected from the road. Harvey’s owners, along with many others, searched for him for nearly 13 weeks, believing that he was still alive. They spent thousands of pounds during the search on flyers, banners, newspaper adverts and articles, in the hope that he would be found.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

On that point, people spend a lot of time phoning up the Highways Agency, the local authority and local vets, and it costs those agencies money to deal with the phone calls. This debate is about not only grieving pet owners but public money, and the measures that we want to be introduced will save money for the public purse.

[Derek Twigg]

As usual, my hon. Friend makes an important point. There is a cost to the owners of the pets, but the cost to the public purse can be also be substantial, because it takes time to contact the individuals and chase them up. That is not a good use of public time. If the law we are debating today were introduced, the situation would be much better.

Harvey’s case was tragic, and I want to give a few more examples, because the tragedy can be unbelievable for some families.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend rightly paid tribute to his constituent, who raised this issue with him. Will he commend the efforts of my constituent, Teresa Hughes, who has worked hard on this campaign and brought it not only to my attention but to the attention of many other people? She has raised the issue in the local media and ensured that it has had a much higher profile in Dudley, the black country and the west midlands.

[Derek Twigg]

I absolutely will. It has been a team effort, and many of the people concerned are here today listening to the debate. Their energy and drive brought us to where we are today. My hon. Friend makes a very important point.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I join the hon. Gentleman in congratulating all the campaigners who raised this issue, which is very important to pet lovers. For most of my life, I have had a pet. Sadly, two of them got run over close to our house, and we found them not very well or dead. However, it would have been much worse if we had not known what had happened. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would not be difficult for the highways authorities in local government or the Highways Agency to do what we are asking? It is regrettable that the Highways Agency’s procedures are being changed.

[Derek Twigg]

I agree. I am sorry for the hon. Gentleman’s loss of two pets, which is difficult for any family. His point is well made, and it is why we are here today. We want the procedures of the Highways Agency to be changed back, and we want some legislation to ensure that they will not change again. I will come to that point later.

I will give two more examples, which will put into perspective the tragedy that people face. The first is Shiver’s story. Shiver bolted away from his owner during a thunderstorm and was killed on the M60. Shiver was chipped and was wearing an identification tag. His owners contacted the Highways Agency daily for information, but they were constantly told that no dogs had been retrieved from the highways. They continued to search for him for 19 days. They persisted, and a temporary staff member of the Highways Agency confirmed that Shiver was in cold storage. His owners were given two hours to collect his body before he was cremated. They rushed to the depot and were made to go through two freezers full of dead dogs to retrieve Shiver’s body. Shiver was in a plastic bag with an identification tag still attached. He also had a cannula in his leg, indicating that he had been with a vet.

The second example is Jester’s story. Jester went missing while out on a walk with his owner in 2005, and he was killed on the A1. As no procedure was in place, no one scanned Jester for a chip or took details from the tag he was wearing. No one alerted other authorities or logged the incident, so Jester’s owner was not notified of his fate. Jester’s body was removed and sent straight to a rendering plant. His flesh was stripped to make fuel for energy plants and his bones were crushed to make garden compound. His owner’s desperation for closure was so powerful that she collected blood from the A1 and sent it and a toy belonging to Jester to California for a DNA test. The test confirmed that it was indeed Jester who had been killed on the road that day. Distraught by the way Jester had been treated, Nikki campaigned tirelessly until the Highways Agency agreed to introduce area management memo 67/05, to which I will return. That procedure is set out in chapter 7.17 of the Highways Agency’s network management manual. As I said, those are terrible stories.

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

That story perfectly demonstrates that this problem is not about stray dogs, but about loved pets who are cared for by responsible owners who have done the right thing by having them chipped and tagged. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is essential that we show the same compassion and commitment to those owners as they showed to their pets?

[Derek Twigg]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point, and I think everybody would agree with it.

Let me return to Harvey’s case. By chance, an employee of the contractor used by the Highways Agency saw one of the fliers that had been distributed about Harvey. She contacted the owners via a message on Facebook and said that she had collected Harvey’s body on the M62. It was only by chance that the owners were given that information.

In 2010, the Highways Agency took the decision to withdraw the routine scanning of domestic pets from highways so that their owner could be identified and notified. Area management memo 67/05, which is being phased out—this is what we have been talking about—states that highways contractors are supposed to scan a domestic pet for a chip, check for other details and contact the owner if possible. They should complete a log with all the details and notify the relevant authorities. The animal should also be kept in cold storage for a period of seven days or until the freezer is emptied, whichever comes first.

There is an odd situation, therefore, in that the Highways Agency is changing that practice, whereas the Government—rightly so—are implementing a policy of compulsory microchipping for dogs from April 2016. One Department is rightly ensuring that there is a legal requirement to have a dog microchipped, whereas the Department for Transport is taking a different view that does not really sit with that policy. It is quite bizarre.

As we have heard in various interventions and seen in the information that we have all received, the death of a pet is traumatic and deeply upsetting for an owner in any case, but when an owner does not know its fate—when the pet has gone missing—the situation is made much worse by not knowing whether their pet is alive or dead. They spend time looking, which, as we have heard from case studies today, can turn out to be wasted. That is obviously very costly, and it also makes the situation all the more unbearable for the families and owners concerned.

Hundreds of pets—probably thousands—are killed on our roads each year. Apparently, the figure is more than 300 for Highways Agency-managed roads, although I think that is an underestimate. As a result of my discussion with Pauline Krause, I wrote to the Minister to raise concerns about the Highways Agency’s stance on notifying owners about the change in policy. The Minister wrote back, saying:

“The Agency is currently phasing out contracts which include the Area Management Memo 67/05 to which your constituent Ms Krause refers. More recent contracts no longer mandate Agency contractors to scan or record pet identification details, or to contact the owners and the pet identification organisations. I know this current position will be hugely disappointing for all those involved with Harvey’s Law e-petition.

Increased investment in the Strategic Road Network brings the opportunity to focus more on the service we deliver for our customers. This could include a review of our current policy around this issue so potentially there may be an opportunity to change contractual arrangements in the future.”

I will come back to this point, but I hope that the Minister will change those arrangements now. When he talks about “delivering for our customers”, I think pet owners can be put in that category.

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

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful case. Does he not agree that it seems contradictory for the Government to be mandating that pets should be microchipped—something that I very much support—but also instructing the Highways Agency that it is no longer a requirement for its contractors to notify the responsible authorities? If the Highways Agency does not have the scanners needed, it is easy to contact the local authority’s local dog warden service, which almost certainly will.

[Derek Twigg]

Again, I cannot disagree, but as I will come on to point out, the Highways Agency does actually have a lot of equipment. However, my hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I know that he takes a particular interest in this issue.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

If the Government require dog owners to have dogs chipped, responsible dog owners have their dogs chipped. It is surely not beyond the wit of man or the Highways Agency to locate the owners of dogs without there being a great increase in work load or cost. It is ridiculous; are we really saying that this Government is now becoming one which does not care about pets and their loving owners? It is outrageous.

[Derek Twigg]

I know that my hon. Friend feels passionately about this subject. She makes an important point about costs. We really are talking about a very small amount of money, but I shall come back to that later.

Going back to the petition, I want to draw the House’s attention to the response that it received when it reached 10,000 signatures. That response that it got from the Highways Agency was unfortunate, and let me relate to hon. Members what was said subsequently. In a letter to Ms Blackburn, the Highways Agency stated:

“The statement in response to Harvey’s Law e-petition when reaching 10,000 signatures was provided by the Highways Agency. Our response was unclear as it did not accurately reflect the Agency’s changing approach and was taken from the policy of older contracts which are being phased out nationally. I am sorry that the statement in response to the e-petition didn’t clearly explain the changing situation. I am investigating whether this clarification can be issued as an update on the e-petition website.”

That is pretty appalling. E-petitions are part of our democratic process and have been embraced by large portions of the population, who should not have to put up with a situation such as that one, in which incorrect information was given. As has been pointed out to me, the clarification was a bit late in that day. It left a number of unanswered questions, such as how many more signatures the e-petition would have gained if the original response had not been put on the website. That is conjecture, but we just do not know.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), I lost a dog on the road when I was a child—a Great Dane called Max. I have never forgotten him, but at least we knew within 24 hours or less, which saved a lot of additional heartache. I know my right hon. Friend the Minister to be a man with a huge regard for family, and I want to re-emphasise the point made earlier by the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) that pets, especially dogs and cats, are part of the family. That is the most important reason to get this matter rectified with the national Highways Agency and other relevant authorities.

[Derek Twigg]

I agree with the hon. Lady. Her passion about this issue comes through, and I thank her for making that point.

Going back to the information I was talking about, the other question that needs to be asked is whether something would have been done to address the issue sooner if the facts originally given had been correct and not so misleading.

What do we want to see happen? We want to see the compulsory scanning of all domestic animals retrieved from the highways, and a log report filed and circulated to both the police and dog warden, which goes back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne). We also want to see photographs of the deceased being held with the log report to be used for identification purposes.

The desired outcome is clearly legislation to make that activity compulsory, but we would see the alternative outcome of simply adding scanning back into the Highways Agency’s procedures as a good start and a positive move forward. However, that could leave the system open to abuse, and it could fall foul of any cuts or savings that any future Government want to make. That is why enshrining the requirements in law is important, but reintegrating the scanning procedure would be a step forward.

If the Minister does not say today that legislation will be introduced, but does say, as we hope, that the procedure will be changed back, some questions will still need to be asked, and he may want to consider them. If there is no legislation, how will the issue be policed and regulated? Who will inspect whether the procedures are being adhered to and how frequently? Who will train the staff to scan correctly? That is an important point, because the entire body needs to be scanned, not just the neck area, as chips can migrate in an animal’s body. The whole procedure takes only a matter of seconds; it is not something that will cause a lot of problems.

I am also informed by Harvey’s law campaigners that legislation is fully supported by a significant number of high-profile organisations, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Pet Industry Federation, Agria Pet Insurance, Vetsonline, Lostbox and so on, as well as a whole host of pet publications, including Life With Pets and Dogs Today.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and thank everybody who has lobbied me in support. As a pet owner, I am delighted to be here supporting the e-petition today. I visited Battersea Dogs and Cats home recently, and the staff impressed on me just how important this issue is. Similarly, when I visit Freshfields animal rescue centre in my constituency, the staff there make the same point. We heard from the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) about the importance to humans of pets, but I think many people misunderstand how strong the emotional ties are and just how much bereavement people go through. I take this opportunity to impress on the Minister that the debate is probably more about the emotional well-being of people, and their attachment to their pets, than anything else. My hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) has made the case for why that is so important, and I hope that the Minister will respond in that vein.

[Derek Twigg]

I thank my hon. Friend. He brings passion to the debate, and I know from previous conversations how desperate he was to ensure that he could be here today. He makes the point about the impact on the well-being of pet owners of a loss that is made worse by the tragic circumstances that we are discussing.

Costs are a bit difficult to pin down, but clearly the Highways Agency already holds much of the relevant equipment, so there really cannot be a massive extra cost for it. Unfortunately, it will still have to remove pets from the road, take them away and deal with them as it would normally.

[Sir Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)]

If it comes down to a question of cost, it is important to remember that the vast majority of pet owners are taxpayers.

[Derek Twigg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct about that, but, as I said, I fail to see how there can be a great cost, because of the equipment that the Highways Agency currently holds and because it will have to remove the body, take it away and deal with it anyway. Harvey’s law campaigners believe that most of the additional cost would be in paperwork. The campaign has done a lot of work on the matter and estimates that that might be in the region of £15,500. Even so, that is a small amount of money given the size of the overall problem, but I stress that it has been difficult to pin down costs. At the end of the day, all the work needs to be done anyway, so I find it difficult to understand why the change has been made on the basis of a cut. That does not seem to add up, and I think that the Minister needs to have a look at that.

Finally, constituents have asked me to raise the issue of cats as well—some of my hon. Friends who are in the Chamber are cat owners. Although there is no legislation in place for the compulsory microchipping of cats—the onus is on the pet owners—they should be afforded the same dignity as dogs in the procedure for scanning their deceased bodies, with every effort made to contact the owner.

To conclude, what we are asking for is both reasonable and morally the right thing to do. It is not unreasonable or ridiculous.

[Mr Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South) (Ind)]

I apologise for missing the start of the hon. Gentleman’s speech—I was detained elsewhere in the House. If we go for legislation, does he have any idea how long that will take? I have had letters from people saying, “Isn’t it better to get a promise from the Government to do something?” To wait for legislation might mean that the wait is too long.

[Derek Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but he might have missed the part of my speech where I referred to that. We want the procedures put back in place, so that scanning takes place and can be done pretty quickly.

[Mr Hancock]

Immediately.

[Derek Twigg]

Exactly, very quickly indeed, but we also want legislation. We can do both those things, which is what I urge the Minister to do today. As I said, that does not appear to be overly expensive. By allowing the change in the procedure, we could appear heartless. There is no need for that, or for causing massive additional anguish and grief to those who have lost their beloved pets in such tragic circumstances. Although I am not a pet owner, when I speak to pet owners who have lost their pets I find it difficult to understand the anguish that they have gone through. It is palpable, and we should keep that in mind.

I hope that the Minister will listen to the strong case that the campaigners have made and that Members will make today in the debate. I was disappointed by the reply that I received from him by letter, but previously he has always been helpful and gone out of his way to try to help, particularly on constituency issues. On this wider issue, which is of national interest, I am sure he will be equally interested to try to do his best. I hope that he will do that and that we will get some good news.

16:54

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on securing the debate on this important issue.

I do not think that anyone—at least anyone with a heart—could fail to be moved by the sad story of Harvey. It is made only worse by the knowledge that what happened to Harvey happens far too often. For those of us who have brought pets into our homes and made them a part of the family—I am of course talking here about many of us—it is simply inconceivable that, in death, killed on a road, they can simply be chucked to one side because the Highways Agency cannot be bothered to do the decent thing and report that, as its guidelines currently require.

Now there are suggestions that the guidelines might get changed later this year so that it will no longer be necessary for the death of identifiable animals on the roads to be reported to owners. I certainly hope that those remain just suggestions. It is bad enough that the guidelines get ignored while they still exist, but it would be intolerable to turn that practice into the norm. Instead, I believe that the guidelines should be beefed up, so that the Highways Agency is obliged by law to do the right thing and ensure that deaths are reported to owners when and where the animal’s ownership can be identified.

I frequently get tweets from constituents whose pets have gone missing, asking me to retweet the pets’ photos and the details of where they were last seen. I am always happy to do so when I can, because I know just how painful and miserable it is to lose a pet and wonder what on earth has happened to it. Most people would prefer to know—

[Sir Tony Cunningham]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Angie Bray]

I will.

[Sir Tony Cunningham]

It is quite enough to lose a pet, but the real cruelty is in just not knowing.

[Angie Bray]

Indeed. The hon. Gentleman caught me mid-sentence, just about to make that point. I was about to say that most people would prefer to know the worst, so at least they could come to terms with that, rather than worrying, with the most appalling imaginings, about what might have happened.

I remember when my dog went missing in Hyde park. I called her Tuppence after I rescued her from Battersea dogs home. She went to the park every day with a friend who looked after her while I worked at LBC radio. Only one day when I came home she was not there. Instead there was a tearful message on my voicemail to say she had run off as soon as the cannons were fired in the park to practise for a forthcoming royal birthday celebration. I went straight back out with a friend to drive round where I could in Hyde park to no avail. I then spent a truly horrendous night worrying about where she might be and what was happening to her. I worried that she was miserable, cold, wet and frightened; then, worse, that she was being teased and tortured by a gang of youths who had found her somewhere. I did not sleep a wink.

Eventually, late the next afternoon, my friend rang to say that she had been found. I will not go into the complicated story—believe me, it is quite complicated—but it seems that a family who had found her and rather wanted to keep her had decided to take her for a check-over at their local vet who also happened to be Tuppence’s local vet. He said, “Ah, you’ve brought Tuppence Bray in. We’ve been looking for her.” I was lucky, as was Tuppence, but the point I wanted to make was that the agony of not knowing was truly awful and there would have been a point when I would rather have been told that she had been found dead than never to know at all what happened to her. That would have stayed with me and continued to haunt me.

It must be borne in mind that those who choose to share our family life with a pet are making a pretty big investment. Obviously, there is the financial cost of food, heating, vet fees and perhaps insurance, but there is also a major emotional investment for most of us, too, just as there is in all family members. I always assumed that that investment was properly recognised, which is why it has always been considered incumbent on organisations such as the Highways Agency to do the decent thing and report a pet’s death to its owner, wherever possible. Not to do so is not only a poor indication of the attitude of officialdom towards us all, but it smacks of carelessness and diminishes the quality of service that we should be able to rely on. Moreover, we should not forget that there is already a legal obligation on us all, as citizens: if we unfortunately kill a dog on the road, we should report that to the police so that they can inform the owner where identification is possible. We must not loosen that requirement—often traumatic but, nevertheless, essential—on ourselves either. We must all play our part.

There is even less excuse now for failing to inform owners than there has been in the past. As many hon. Members have said, we are all being encouraged, and in some cases required, to take advantage of technology and to microchip our pets—certainly our dogs—so that they and their owners can be more readily identified. I thoroughly support that, but when we are using modern technology to make identification easier, it would seem strange to decide that we cannot be bothered to use it for the most basic civility. We most certainly should expect publicly funded agencies such as the police and the Highways Agency to do what is right.

Some people regard us animal lovers as a bit strange, and doubtless some people do go a bit overboard about their beloved pets. I have always believed, however, that the ability to love animals, empathise with them and give them a happy and secure life is an important part of building our kinder, gentler nature. That should be respected, as should all our other relationships. When our pets are tragically killed on our roads, our agencies—in this instance, the Highways Agency—absolutely should show proper respect by having the decency to inform us. There should be no avoiding that, if identification can be made. I can hardly believe that there should be attempts to wriggle out of that public duty, but if there are, I would support making it a legal obligation.

17:01

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on raising this issue and the Backbench Business Committee on recommending the subject for debate. My hon. Friend put the case with characteristic understatement but with the forensic skill that we all know him to possess, and I praise him for doing so.

Earlier today, I had a conversation with a good friend and constituent in Knowsley, in which we talked about this issue and the fact that I would be speaking about it later today. I know my constituent to be a responsible and caring dog owner, but she made the point that in her lifetime of owning dogs, on three occasions the dogs concerned—different animals—had gone missing for one reason or another. In none of the cases could that be put down to neglect on the part of the owner; it was simply a result of the circumstances. Happily, the outcome in each case was favourable and the dog was found, not least because the owner put a great deal of effort into trying to find it. That emphasises the point that, as we are discussing, even responsible dog owners who have taken every precaution that could reasonably be expected of them find that their animals go missing. It is important that we understand that.

I do not think that my second point strays too far from the subject, and it must be taken into account. Man’s relationship with animals stretches back a very long way, and the love of animals is deeply ingrained in our culture. Every Member of the House will be aware of the fact that we probably get more letters on animal welfare than on almost any other subject. We are not talking about something sentimental, however; the relationship goes back a long way. According to a report in one of the newspapers over the weekend, which I am sure that others have seen, our relationship with dogs in Europe is thought to date back to the time when the Neanderthals walked the earth. Tamed wolves—dogs, as we now know them—were used for hunting, which gave the human race the advantage over the Neanderthals, who had fairly rudimentary weapons. That gave us a real competitive edge. I say that simply to underline the fact the relationship between man and dog is of long standing.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is looking back to the Neanderthals, but does he accept that in our modern society a lot of people purchase dogs and cats to teach their children responsibility for looking after animals and to teach them about the life cycle?

[Mr Howarth]

I agree, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman was not suggesting that I am a Neanderthal for having raised that historical fact. I will come on shortly to the point that he raises.

Given the nature and history of our culture, pet owners in this country have close, caring and responsible relationships with their pets, and we should celebrate that fact. Against that background, my hon. Friend the Member for Halton put his case very well. The hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) is quite right to say that that those relationships offer young people a way of learning, within their family, the responsibilities that go with pet ownership—and, indeed, the responsibilities that we all have to take on in life as we become adults. In addition, many people who live alone find their dog or cat to be an enormously important part of their lives.

Against the intensity of the relationship between man and pet, Harvey’s law, which my hon. Friend the Member for Halton is promoting, is incredibly important. He explained the measures most adequately, so I will not go over the ground that he has already covered. Harvey’s law would be a small step, but one that might have a great impact on the lives of people and their pets. I hope that the Minister, in summing up the debate, will be able to give us the good news that he is prepared to take the matter on board and do something about it.

17:01

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on securing the debate. I knew that it would be well attended after I saw that the Harvey’s law petition now has well over 122,000 signatures, which shows the strength of feeling that exists on this emotional and important subject.

I thank my constituent Linda, from Bolster Moor near Huddersfield, for getting me on board with the campaign. We are a nation of animal lovers, and we must put a stop to the extra heartache, frustration and distress caused when a much-loved family pet is tragically killed on our roads. As we have heard, Harvey’s law contains three simple and straightforward requests: for the Highways Agency to implement compulsory scanning of all domestic animals retrieved from the highways; for a log report to be passed to local police and dog wardens; and for photographs to be held for identification purposes. Those measures are straightforward and low cost, and, most importantly, humane and the right thing to do. From April 2016, all dogs will be compulsorily microchipped. Given that the technology will be there, it seems straightforward and reasonable to use it to give pet owners the peace of mind that comes from knowing that if a tragedy occurs, they will be informed as soon as possible, leaving no uncertainty and compassionately respecting their rights.

Over the past few months, I have submitted a series of written parliamentary questions to the Secretary of State for Transport, and I thank the Minister for his replies. I was told that

“the Highways Agency is currently assessing the potential merits of amending contracts to understand the implications of including mandatory identification and recording of domestic animals found on the strategic road network, including contacting pet owners where possible and advising relevant registration organisations.”

I look forward to an update from the Minister on those assessments. I was informed that

“The Highways Agency Network Management Manual (2009) sets out procedures for notifying owners of canines that are killed on the strategic road network for a number of Highways Agency area maintenance contracts. These contracts are due to be phased out which will result in a different approach in dealing with canine fatalities across the strategic road network as the replacement contracts no longer mandate that canine fatalities are scanned, identified or the owners contacted… the Highways Agency is currently assessing the potential merits of amending contracts to understand the implications of including mandatory identification and recording of domestic animals found on the strategic road network, including contacting pet owners where possible and advising relevant registration organisations.”

Again, I look forward to an update on those assessments.

Finally, I asked the Minister whether there were any planned changes to the system for notifying the owners of pets killed on the strategic road network after the microchipping law comes into force in 2016.

[Ian Austin]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that checks have been completely phased out in the west midlands? None of my constituents’ pets will be scanned in the event of such a tragedy, but checks are still taking place in other parts of the country such as Cornwall and Devon. Does he agree with Opposition Members that those checks should be mandatory across the country? We need to do this for everybody.

[Jason McCartney]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I am a member of the Select Committee on Transport, and I have spent a lot of time examining Highways Agency contracts, particularly in Yorkshire for the managed motorway scheme on the M1 and M62, so I am aware of the number of new contracts for our strategic road network. I hope that the Minister will answer our questions shortly.

In answer to my written question on planned changes to the notification system, the Minister said:

“The Highways Agency is aware that the Animal Welfare Act will be amended to reflect the change to compulsory microchipping of dogs by April 2016.

In advance of this change, the Highways Agency is currently assessing the potential merits of amending contracts to understand the implications of including mandatory identification and recording of domestic animals found on the strategic road network, including contacting pet owners where possible and advising relevant registration organisations.”

The Animal Welfare Act 2006 will be amended to reflect the change to compulsory microchipping of dogs by April 2016.

I thank the Minister for his answers to my questions and for saying that assessments are ongoing. I hope that he is able to update all Members present on those assessments, and I hope that he can put many loving pet owners’ minds at rest by accepting and implementing Harvey’s law. I am proud that we are a nation of animal lovers, so let us do the right and humane thing.

17:13

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on securing this debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for ensuring that time was found to debate this important issue. From talking to him in our usual place on the back row of the Opposition Benches—the noisy row—I knew that he intended to apply for a debate on Harvey’s law, and I was delighted when he told me that his request had been successful. He is not a pet owner, but he set out the case for Harvey’s law with real understanding. I am grateful for the considered way in which he put to the Minister the case for a change of heart.

The strength of feeling on this issue is clear from the sheer tide of people who signed the e-petition and the many people who contacted right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. Today’s contributions make it clear that there is great cross-party consensus on this issue. Many of my colleagues back the measure, and many Government Members back it, too.

Harvey’s law means a lot to all of us, and to our constituents. I will expand on that point shortly, but I will first declare an interest, albeit in a rather more benign way than many hon. Members did in the recent debate on second jobs. My wife, Allison, is a regular volunteer at the new Dogs Trust rehoming centre for Greater Manchester, which is in Denton in my constituency. The centre has been open for some four months, and I congratulate the Dogs Trust, its dedicated staff and volunteers on making such a success of it. Remarkably, the centre rehomed its 100th dog within a month of opening. The centre received 3,500 visitors in the same time frame, which shows that we cannot stand between Mancunians and their dogs, and I should know because I am a keen animal lover and pet owner. I currently have one Chihuahua, two cats—we had three, and I will come on to that shortly—and several chickens, but I blame my wife for those; they have completely trashed my back garden.

I am not a newcomer to the sorts of issues we are debating today, and I am therefore fully aware that the onus is not simply on those who look after motorways and roads. We dog owners must ensure that our animals are chipped and that the details on the database are up to date, which is not difficult. The Dogs Trust offers to update the database as a free service, by appointment, at all its rehoming centres, including the one in Denton. Across the UK, the trust chipped a remarkable 270,000 dogs in 2014 alone, which demonstrates that dog owners are doing their bit. We are upholding our side of the bargain, so we are now well within our rights to demand that local authorities and the Highways Agency does its bit when animals are killed on the nation’s roads.

Scanning microchips does not take a lot of time or effort, so for the sake of the peace of mind of worried dog owners, or owners of any other animals, particularly cats, which are also at risk on the roads, it is difficult to see how any reasonable opposition to Harvey’s law could be invented. Indeed, as we have heard in many contributions, it would be a little contradictory for the Government to force all dog owners to microchip their animals but not to introduce all reasonable measures to derive benefits directly from such a vast microchipping campaign. The only possible reason not to introduce the measure, as far as I can see, would be the cost to local authorities and the Highways Agency. Personally, I can think of few better uses for the fines that are to be levied on dog owners who do not microchip their dogs—I think the fine will be £500 a pop—so it should not be too long before the Highways Agency is able to buy a few scanners, if it needs them. My hon. Friend the Member for Halton said that the Highways Agency already has the scanners, which suggests that purchasing further scanners should not be necessary.

I have seen the freedom of information request from the Harvey’s law campaign, which suggests that each area covered by the Highways Agency, as my hon. Friend said, already has the necessary scanners, so the marginal capital costs would be negligible. Even if that were a problem, as we have already discussed, why not have a joined-up, cross-Government, cross-local government resolution? All local authority dog warden services have the scanners, so it is within the wit of the good folk at the Highways Agency, when an animal is found, to ask the relevant local authority to scan on their behalf if they do not have the technology. That point is particularly stark when we consider that until a few years ago, as we have heard, the Highways Agency had to scan all deceased pets found on the nation’s strategic highway network.

On the other side of the issue, we should consider the many wasted thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours that owners can put into searching for missing pets, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) said so eloquently. The emotional and pecuniary cost of a missing pet can be huge.

At the start of my contribution, I mentioned that until recently, I had three cats, not two. Last year we lost a cat to the road. Delilah was a lovely, friendly, gorgeous animal. She was a bit like a shadow: wherever we were, she was not far behind. Sadly, a car clipped her on a local road. It was heartbreaking. She was missing for 24 hours. It happened on a Thursday, and my wife was distraught when I got home after the long train journey from Westminster. I sat up all night, and every time the cat flap went, I hoped it was Delilah, but it was the other two cats; Delilah was, unfortunately, dead.

Pets are part of a family. My children were distraught, my wife was distraught and, to be honest, I was distraught, which is why I stayed up all night in the hope that she would come home. We were reunited with our pet only thanks to a local resident who picked up Delilah, put her in a box and called the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which did a microchip test and contacted us to say that Delilah’s carcase was just around the corner from where we lived. That is important for closure, if nothing else. The same is true of the cases that my hon. Friend the Member for Halton described, which were tragic, particularly the one involving a dog that was stripped of its fur and used for all kinds of things that do not bear thinking about in relation to a missing pet.

It is still the responsibility of the Highways Agency to remove such animals from the nation’s roads. That, not the scanning, is the major cost incurred. We could save a lot of heartache for hundreds of families, arguably at negligible cost, if any cost, to the public purse. One avoidable cost that I do not think has been mentioned is that of removing from street furniture the posters alerting the local community to a missing pet. I do not condone fly-posting, but in that situation I can understand why many of my constituents, and no doubt many constituents of right hon. and hon. Members here, do it. However, it costs local authorities to remove those posters from lamp posts and trees.

Ministers have failed to manage the Highways Agency on this issue with any real effectiveness. I do not speak from a position of neutrality; I have had my fair share of local run-ins with the Highways Agency as Member of Parliament for Denton and Reddish, not least over its complete failure to keep the central reservations, hard shoulders and embankments of the M60 and M67 motorways free from litter. I perpetually table questions to the Minister on that issue. Sometimes the Highways Agency stretches my patience, and this is one area in which it could do better and should be expected to do so. I am perfectly happy to give credit where the Highways Agency deserves it. If it reintroduces routine scanning of every dog, I am prepared to stand up in the House of Commons and thank the Highways Agency for it, but the fact that it is even considering removing a fairly simple obligation is scandalous.

I note the consequences of the fire at Manchester dogs home, which is about 6 miles away from my constituency. The fire resulted in the death of more than 60 animals, one fifth of the number of dogs killed on our roads each year. Those dogs had no owners, but a campaign to rebuild the centre raised a remarkable £1.5 million through an online page. A cynic need only read some of the comments that people left with their donations to see the strength of feeling there. I would go so far as to say that the relationship between Brits and their dogs is almost unique in the world. That is no bad thing at all.

I am proud to be one of those dog owners, as well as a cat owner. I note that the Minister, a pet owner and the Minister responsible for the Highways Agency, has said that he would like the agency to start scanning again. Let us have some Government support for Harvey’s law. It is plain common sense. I urge him to go back to his Department and bash heads together at the Highways Agency. Let us get this done once and for all.

17:25

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

I will briefly add my support for this campaign. I have been contacted by numerous constituents about the need for a change in the law, including one who said in an e-mail to me:

“What is the point in compulsory microchipping and identification if they’re not going to be checked by the relevant authorities when an animal is found?”

I could not agree more with my constituent. I hope that the people’s Minister, who is a pet owner himself, will respond to the voices of the people and consider the issue sympathetically.

17:26

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on securing this debate, and the more than 100,000 people who have so far signed the petition calling for Harvey’s law. As my hon. Friend said, it shows that democracy can work and can have an impact, and that people power can get concerns heard in this place. To that extent, congratulations are also due to the Backbench Business Committee for organising this debate; it is good to see the Chair of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), here.

I am winding up this debate on behalf of two important bodies: one is the official Opposition, and the other is Charlie, my cat, who has given me special dispensation to be here. Normally he complains a lot when I leave on a Monday, but today he said, “Get yourself down there.” Charlie is a survivor of a road collision. He came in looking very much the worse for wear, but it could have been a lot worse. He made a full recovery, at least physically; he has been a lot more clingy since then. All of us who are pet owners know what it feels like when a pet is involved in a road incident or, worse, as we have heard in this debate, when a pet does not come home and we do not know what has happened to it.

If I have done my figures right, we have heard from 16 hon. Members from across the House who have been united. It is rare to find such a degree of unanimity in this place. Everybody spoke with great feeling, and often from personal experience of having a pet and knowing how it becomes an integral part of the family, and of what it is like not knowing what has happened to it. I was also interested in the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), who gave us the historical perspective. I have to say that until I heard his speech I was not aware that the relationship between humans and animals, particularly dogs, played a role in the progression from the Neanderthal race to the human race. I am glad that I now know it, and it should certainly give the UK Independence party something to think about in the period ahead.

[Mr George Howarth]

I do not think that any scientists would take issue with the fact that there was a progression from the Neanderthals to the human race, because I do not think that dogs are the missing link.

[Richard Burden]

I will try to think of a witty response to that, but for the moment it is failing me.

It is really important that hon. Members have spoken up on behalf of not only the human race’s best friends, but pet owners. As the debate has shown, the public care deeply about pets and are concerned about their well-being. I understand that about 9 million households in the UK own a dog, and the House certainly has a responsibility to be concerned for the well-being of all those dogs, as we do for animal welfare more generally. My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) recently set out Labour’s intent to lead the way on animal welfare with six important commitments, from ending the badger cull to reviewing the rules on the breeding and selling of dogs and cats. It is with that last commitment in mind that the Opposition approach this debate, which has rightly included important and passionate contributions from Members from all parts of the House.

The Minister has already been asked a number of questions by hon. Members. I hope that he will be able to answer them; we are all looking forward to hearing his response. I may add a couple of questions myself. We have heard about Harvey’s sad death and the 13 weeks of suffering endured by his owners, Judith Devine and Shaun Robertson, because the Highways Agency guidance, as set out in the network management manual, just was not followed. I remind hon. Members that that guidance was published in 2009, and it sets out procedures for a number of Highways Agency area maintenance contractors when animals are found on the roads. It specifies that identification information must be collected and a search made for a collar and disc, and that owners must be notified as soon as possible. Where no collar or disc is found, the entire body of the animal must be scanned for microchips and ears checked for tattoos, and the appropriate authorities must be notified, whether that be the police or the local authority dog warden. If none of this information can be found but the animal is clearly a dog, it will be kept and as much information as possible must be passed on to the local police or dog warden.

This guidance just could not have been followed in Harvey’s case, and we have heard of other cases where it has not been followed. In 2013-14, 189 dogs and 213 cats were reported dead on the Highways Agency network. The Harvey’s Army campaign has told us in its e-mails and other approaches that numerous pets were killed on the roadside and disposed of without their owners being informed; we have also heard examples of that today.

Judith and Shaun wrote to the shadow transport team about this issue last year, and we raised a number of parliamentary questions that clearly showed that there is no standardised procedure for identifying, recording and managing animal fatalities on the road network.

We believe that people who have had their dog microchipped deserve to be treated with consideration and respect. It is also important that there is consistency across the Highways Agency, its contractors, local authorities and the police in how canine fatalities are handled, to ensure that both animals and their owners are treated with the respect they deserve. The point about the importance of a joined-up approach was made forcefully by my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne). Against that background, I was pleased to see in yesterday’s press that the Minister will agree with that point today. I hope that if new guidance is issued, it will provide pet owners with confidence that a consistent procedure will be followed. What we have seen and heard today is that that is not the case at the moment. However, there is another problem; the Government’s decision to scrap mandatory procedures for animal identification in maintenance and management contracts for the strategic road network is part of the picture.

I understand that the Highways Agency has been awarding these new contracts, which do not have a mandatory scanning policy, as a result of decisions made in 2010. The Highways Agency has denied that the change in contract had any part in the failure to identify Harvey, and says that contractors “may” still continue to scan for a chip when an animal is found and would

“attempt to reunite the owner with the animal whenever possible”.

However, that just does not ring true. If procedures are made voluntary, rather than mandatory, of course it is less likely that they will be followed. Even if they are followed in a number of cases, the frequency with which they are followed will decline. I hope that the Minister can tell us today why the decision to remove mandatory scanning was taken, who called for it and what the rationale behind it was. Also, if that decision was about saving money, how much money is it estimated to save?

[Sir Tony Cunningham]

Talking about savings, perhaps if the Highways Agency stopped putting up big signs along all the roads of Britain saying “Highways Agency”, it could afford to implement Harvey’s law.

[Richard Burden]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. All I would say in response now is: please do not get me started on broader issues concerning the Highways Agency. The Minister and I had numerous discussions about the Highways Agency during consideration of the Infrastructure Bill recently, and I fear that I would be stretching your patience too far, Mr Rosindell, if I got on to some of those points now.

On the issue of compulsory microchipping, the Highways Agency states that scanning “may” still occur. Presumably, most contractors will have the necessary equipment; if such scanning “may” still occur, the assumption must be that most of them have the equipment required. Surely, therefore, the duty cannot be particularly burdensome.

The decision to end mandatory scanning seems even more misguided given that the Government have just passed regulations that will require all dog owners to microchip their dog by April 2016. The Government have said that microchipping is a welfare measure that will increase traceability and allow lost dogs to be reunited with their owners more quickly—and amen to that. However, that will not necessarily happen if the procedures that authorities are meant to follow in order to identify pets and inform their owners are being watered down at the same time. It just is not right that the Government are introducing obligations on dog owners but removing them from their own agencies, or indeed their own companies, given that the Highways Agency, as a result of the Infrastructure Bill, has recently become a Government-owned company called Highways England.

As the British Veterinary Association has said:

“Responsible owners who have had their dogs microchipped and kept their details up to date should have a reasonable expectation that steps will be taken by the authorities to contact them if their dog is lost, injured or, sadly, found dead. As the UK moves towards compulsory microchipping of all dogs, the Government should be taking the opportunity to espouse the benefits of microchipping rather than eroding them.”

The Opposition agree with that, and we support mandatory identification procedures for the Highways Agency to follow.

Harvey’s law proposes a simple solution: that the procedures for scanning, identification and recording set out in the Highways Agency’s network management manual be not only kept in place but strengthened by legislation. Many others, such as the Dogs Trust, support that obligation too, and are calling for mandatory scanning of dogs on the roads and railways. However, we are rather confused about what the Government’s policy is in this regard, and I hope that the Minister will clear that up when responding to the debate.

I understand that, previously, the stated position was that the Government had no plans to enforce mandatory scanning through legislation, but from yesterday’s press we understand that the Minister has asked the Highways Agency to review the scanning policy. Likewise, the Highways Agency recently stated that it is currently assessing the

“potential merits of amending contracts”

to include mandatory identification, recording and notification for owners. I think everybody here today could identify the benefits pretty quickly; we would not need a big review to do that. They are: rapid identification; less distress to owners; and quicker reunification of dogs and owners.

We need a bit more clarity on these reviews and assessments to ensure that the issue is being taken seriously quickly in the Department for Transport. I hope that today the Minister will provide us with more details of what these reviews will consist of; what their terms of reference are; when conclusions are expected; and when a decision is expected on the basis of those conclusions.

Although I like the Minister a great deal, so far we have had a jumble of different statements from the Government and the Highways Agency, and that has not given Harvey’s Army, or the millions of other dog owners in the UK, the confidence they need and deserve that the pets they will have an obligation to microchip will be treated with the consideration, compassion and respect that they are calling for. Sadly, it just seems to be another indication of muddle.

From Labour’s point of view, getting this sorted out is part of the same approach to animal welfare that underlines our position on the badger cull, and our wish not to see the ban on hunting with dogs watered down or removed. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) has said:

“Our Labour values tell us that we have a moral duty to treat the animals we share our planet with in a humane and compassionate way.”

That is why Labour has committed to ensuring that it is mandatory for the Highways Agency to carry out these identification procedures. As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher), the shadow Transport Secretary, has said, these are simple procedures but they make a big difference to people. We do not think that mandating Government agencies and authorities to follow these procedures—making it compulsory—is too much to ask. That should be done quickly. I hope that the Minister agrees with me. I look forward to his response.

17:43

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

It is a delight to serve under your stewardship, Mr Rosindell, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on securing the debate. I think that I am right in saying that it was 10 years ago this month, Mr Rosindell, that the late Lady Thatcher visited Romford and met Buster, your beloved dog, in his St George’s cross coat. What more fitting time to serve under your chairmanship than in this important debate?

Affection takes many forms. Homes are bound by ties, and the love that in families dwells is, in my judgment, enhanced and embellished—no, more that that: deepened—by the affection felt for domestic animals. The atmosphere engendered by pets in any home and the mood they generate changes families and changes life. They teach us to regard what God made in a different way; they challenge our certainties; they oblige sensitivity in all but the most inane; and they soften all but the hardest of hearts. As all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate have said, it a matter of uncertainty whether we own them or they own us. One of my favourite poets, T. S. Eliot, said:

“When a cat adopts you there is nothing to be done about it except put up with it until the wind changes.”

When we are adopted by our pets, we understand that affection—that deepening love.

It is in that context that we come to this debate, which was stimulated by the response of the Backbench Business Committee to a campaign that was being run on the basis of the loss of a much loved pet. I am delighted that so many hon. Members have contributed to the debate and that others from that campaign are here to witness it.

People’s distress after the loss of a pet has been made absolutely clear in contributions from throughout the Chamber, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), said, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney), the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) and others.

It is important that I pay due regard to those contributions by setting out the circumstances that have led to the debate and underpin what has happened so far. As the Opposition spokesman said, the Highways Agency network management manual of 2009 sets out procedures for notifying owners of dogs that are killed on the strategic road network for a number of Highways Agency contracts in various parts of the country. Those contracts are being phased out and replaced with asset support contracts, which are underpinned by a new type of technical requirement: the asset maintenance and operational requirements. The document relating to those requirements details certain points to which our regional asset support contract service providers must adhere.

Requirements are outcome-based as far as possible and require the service providers to take risk-based, intelligence-led approaches to optimise their delivery. That has led to a change in the approach to dealing with canine fatalities across the strategic road network, as the replacement contract maximises efficiency. As has been made clear, new contracts no longer mandate that canine fatalities are scanned or identified, or that the owners are contacted. I know that the current position must be hugely disappointing for all animal lovers and pet owners alike.

I should like to clarify details of the statement made in response to the Harvey’s law e-petition upon its reaching 10,000 signatures, which described the standards set out in the network management manual. In my judgment that response was unclear, because it did not accurately reflect the Highways Agency’s changing approach to dealing with these fatalities. As soon as I heard about that, I asked for an urgent review. It is regrettable that that was not properly explained. So, I should like to clarify that the new contract was in operation in the area where Harvey the dog was collected. With regard to that sad occurrence, I understand that Harvey escaped when staying with the owners’ friends, which must have been heartbreaking for all involved.

Although the agency’s previous mandatory policy for dealing with canine fatalities is as I have described, it is still the contractor’s responsibility to follow their own processes and procedures. In this case, the contractor collected Harvey’s remains and transported them to a depot. A dog collar was located, but no tags were attached that could have enabled contact to be made with the owner. A scanner was used to attempt to locate a microchip, but sadly this was unsuccessful. The north-west motorway police group was asked whether any dogs had been reported as missing, but a negative response was received. Harvey was cremated and the ashes scattered in the cemetery.

Some weeks later, a Highways Agency traffic officer involved in collecting a dog from the carriageway came across a missing dog poster at a motorway service area and kindly contacted the owner to inform them of what had happened.

Not only are Highways Agency staff put at risk when trying to retrieve animals to reunite them with their owners, but any animal that escapes on to the network is a problem for drivers, who will take evasive action, which may result in a traffic collision involving potential casualties. It is important to note that due to the high speeds on the strategic road network, there is always a risk that a disc, microchip or other identifying mark will be lost in an incident. Because of the severity of accidents and the speeds involved, it is impossible to guarantee that remains can be fully identified in all cases.

The priority of Highways Agency traffic officers is to ensure safe journeys for road users. Nevertheless, when officers attend incidents involving stray or carried animals involved in collisions, they must deal with such incidents humanely and with compassion. Such incidents are distressing for all concerned. With the agency’s forthcoming transformation to Highways England and the surety of the funding and increased investment detailed in the roads investment strategy, there is an opportunity to focus more on the service that the agency delivers to its customers.

[Natascha Engel]

All we are asking for is that anyone who finds a dead animal passes the scanner over it to see whether it is chipped. It is a straightforward procedure; there is nothing complicated about it. The Minister is making it sound like it is enormously complicated, but it is not.

[Mr Hayes]

I am coming to my exciting peroration, and the hon. Lady will, I hope, be pleased with what I have to say. Although it is not possible to identify all animals or pets that are very badly injured or killed in high-speed accidents, it is absolutely essential that every possible and practical measure is taken to identify them and to contact their owners whenever and wherever possible. That involves working with relevant pet registration organisations, including the Kennel Club, and using any means by which the animal might be identified. As the hon. Member for Halton said, that aligns well with the amendment to the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which will make it compulsory to microchip all dogs from April 2016. As he argued, it would be ironic and contradictory not to rethink the practice highlighted by the campaign that followed Harvey’s death. I have therefore asked the Highways Agency to ensure that it collects and identifies every animal that is killed and to contact the owners by whatever practicable means, but I want to go further than that.

[Rosie Cooper]

I have listened carefully to the Minister, and it could be my hearing aid and my inability to hear clearly, but I thought I heard him say that he would “ask” the Highways Agency to do that work. I think most people want to hear him say that he will require the agency to do it.

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Lady has known me for a number of years, and we have worked together on a number of campaigns. She knows that when I say “ask”, I mean “order”. I have told the Highways Agency that I expect it to do this work. It will be a requirement; it is what will happen. That is how I operate as a Minister, as she knows. I am surprised she doubted me, given our long-standing friendship. [Interruption.] I agree that it is important to put that on the record.

The shadow Minister was right to ask whether the process will be mandatory. I will tell him exactly what it will be; mandatory requirements for identifying and recording domestic animals will be included in the documents for the tenders for new contracts. That applies to Cornwall and Devon, Kent, Surrey, East Sussex, West Sussex, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, parts of Warwickshire, Rutland, parts of Oxfordshire, Yorkshire and Humberside, Cumbria and parts of Lancashire, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, Durham and North Yorkshire. Most of those tenders were issued at the end of February or will be issued in March. Some of the tenders will be issued a little later, as the contracts expire.

I want to go further, however. For those contracts that have already been issued—in Somerset, Avon, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Berkshire, Surrey, Dorset, Wiltshire, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, parts of Suffolk, the west midlands, Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, parts of Gloucestershire, Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and parts of Lancashire—I have asked for urgent investigation to retrofit mandatory requirements on identifying and recording domestic animals found on the strategic road network. We will commence that process immediately this spring and bring it into operation as soon as we can, following the re-discussion of those contracts. I want the identification and recording to be mandatory, and it will be.

[Derek Twigg]

I assume that the Minister will be bringing in the legislation shortly, but let us be clear: we are about to have a general election, when Parliament will be dissolved. In asking for this process to be done, has he set a time limit?

[Mr Hayes]

I have said that the process will begin straight away, but it is helpful that the hon. Gentleman posed that question, because I am more than happy, following this debate, to write to all the Members who have contributed—I should perhaps put a copy of the letter in the Library of the House—setting out a timetable for the implementation of the commitment I have made today. That would be a fair and reasonable thing to do in response to the debate, to assure those who have been waging this campaign of the absolute certainty of the commitments I have offered. Notwithstanding the hon. Gentleman’s integrity, of which I have no doubt, it is important that I do that before the general election, because I am currently the Minister responsible for this area, and elections are funny old things. We will ensure that the measure is set in stone.

The even better news for those of us who are cat owners is that I want to ensure that where cats are involved in accidents, owners can be confident that we will endeavour to ensure that they are identified. Cats often have means of identification, so where a cat can reasonably be identified, its owner should be contacted in the same way. That is made more complicated—I do not want to be insensitive—by the fact that cats sometimes suffer in high-speed accidents the kind of injury that makes it difficult to identify them, but that will not stop us. We will use every possible endeavour and every practical means to identify cat owners.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Having lost one to the road, I thank the Minister for extending the commitment beyond dogs to cats. Will he recognise that although it is not compulsory—nor will it be compulsory—many responsible cat owners microchip their pets?

[Mr Hayes]

Yes, that is true, and it should make the commitment I have given easier to deliver. We will ensure that facilities are in place across the country to scan animals that are unhappily in the circumstances I have set out.

The Government take this matter extremely seriously. As soon as I heard about the case, I realised that the circumstance in which Harvey died was just not acceptable, for the reasons I gave at the outset. If we are made more human by the love of a pet, we need to understand that when a pet is lost and its fate is uncertain—my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) made this point wonderfully—that eats at the hearts of all those involved. To paraphrase Dickens, what greater gift can there be than the love of a cat or dog?

[Richard Burden]

I am not going to try to match the Minister’s quotations, but, for the benefit of those following the debate, I want to get absolutely clear the commitments that have been given. Would I be right in thinking that there are three? First, that new contracts will make scanning mandatory, with no delay, and so will not be preceded by a review—

[Mr Hayes]

That is already happening.

[Richard Burden]

Secondly, that a review will apply to existing contracts and the Minister will write to all Members present with a timetable, which will be placed in the House of Commons Library; and thirdly, that the requirements will be extended to cats. Will the Minister give some idea of the timetable for that final commitment?

[Mr Hayes]

I could not have summarised my own argument better than the shadow Minister has just done. Those are indeed the commitments. In the note that I will circulate on the contracts, it would be helpful for me to say a word about cats and the practicable means of contacting owners. I take the point that cats are often microchipped. As I was saying, that helps because of the availability of scanners and the fact that, as has been said in the debate, the straightforward business of locating and collecting animals in places where they can be scanned should mean that owners can be contacted wherever possible.

[Mr George Howarth]

I am grateful to the Minister for his constructive approach to the debate. Is his argument that legislation is unnecessary because his ministerial scope enables him to make the necessary changes through the contracts? Would it be more effective to ensure the mandate that he is giving by putting it into statute?

[Mr Hayes]

The right hon. Gentleman is an experienced Member of the House. He will know that a mandatory contract is what it says it is: mandatory. We must act immediately; I want no further delay. As the shadow Minister said, there is no need for a protracted review. The matter is straightforward, and the last thing I want is to have to wait for a legislative vehicle so that we can amend the law. We have an election coming and would have to wait for the Queen’s Speech; the right hon. Member for Knowsley will know, as will other experienced Members, that that business could become protracted, even for such a relatively straightforward measure. I just want to get on with it. The shadow Minister asked, perfectly properly, whether the changes would be mandatory, and the answer is yes.

[Mr Philip Hollobone in the Chair]

[Angie Bray]

It is a pleasure to hear my right hon. Friend the Minister responding so positively to everything that has been said this afternoon. He will be aware that some of us who represent London constituencies might have to discuss the issue with City Hall, because, rather than the Highways Agency, Transport for London is responsible for some of the main roads that go through the capital. Has my right hon. Friend had any discussions with Transport for London? Are there useful discussions to be had about the Government’s approach to the issue? What does he recommend that those of us who represent London constituencies do to ensure that pets and owners are treated with the respect that they deserve?

[Mr Hayes]

With her usual perspicacity, my hon. Friend anticipates the final commitment that I wish to offer. The Highways Agency is of course responsible for large roads—the key arterial routes—but it is my estimation that the majority of fatalities among cats and dogs are on local roads. The Highways Agency looks after our motorways and major trunk roads, but I believe that we can go further. Following this debate, I intend not only to communicate with Transport for London but to write to all local highways authorities throughout the country to draw their attention to the Government’s position and invite them to reflect on their own local policy. That would not only take us back to where we were in respect of the mandatory obligation to collect, record and notify owners; it would take us further than we have ever been if we were able to bring about a circumstance whereby we were doing the right thing on roads throughout the country.

I was describing Dickens’ claim that there is no greater love than the love of a cat or dog, which brings me, finally, to Hemingway. He is not one of my favourite writers—that might be for political reasons—but he did sum up what I said at the start of this debate about why animals have the effect on us that they do. He was speaking of cats, but he might well have been speaking of dogs too, when he said:

“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not”,

and dogs do not either. Today, Members have not hidden their feelings, and neither should they have. I am a Minister who never hides my feelings.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

It is my great misfortune to have missed most of this debate, but I need not fear, because Mr Derek Twigg is going to sum it all up in the next few minutes.

18:06

[Derek Twigg]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. I shall try to live up to your expectations.

It has been an excellent debate, without one bad speech or intervention. Everything has been superb, with all the issues that have been raised and the degree of emotion brought into the debate—but controlled emotion, based on facts and on listening to constituents, which has been an important part of things. A number of hon. Members have been clear that they had listened to constituents.

This is a great example of democracy in action. Constituents contacted their Members of Parliament; we got together and managed to secure a debate, with the approval of the Backbench Business Committee—it is great that its Chair is here—and, finally, there has been a massive step forward today. We heard positively not only from our Labour Front Bencher, but from the Minister.

To sum up, the closeness of the relationship that people have with their pets—dogs and cats, in particular—is profound and has a massive emotional impact. Many Members have related to that today. Many members of the Harvey’s Army campaign are present in the Public Gallery. Everything goes back to them, because they decided to campaign and raise the issue with Members of Parliament, the community and the national and local media. It is so much down to them that we got here today.

I am reassured about the mandatory nature of what the Minister has proposed, but I point out to him that we have to be careful to keep a watchful eye on things, because we will need to legislate if there are any problems. We should not rule out legislation and we should keep an open mind about it. I am grateful to both Front Benchers, and it is great that the Minister has reconsidered after the representations made to him.

I again thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for the debate and all those Members who have participated. Of course, I also thank all Harvey’s Army and the campaigners for the work that they have put in to get us to where we are today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the e-petition relating to Harvey’s law.

18:09

Sitting adjourned.

Written Statements

Monday 2nd March 2015 Written Statements

Monday 2 March 2015

Counter-terrorism Asset Freezing

Monday 2nd March 2015 Written Statements

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

My noble Friend the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Deighton) has today made the following written ministerial statement:

Under the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Act 2010 (“TAFA 2010”), the Treasury is required to report to Parliament, quarterly, on its operation of the UK’s asset-freezing regime mandated by UN Security Council resolution 1373.

This is the fifteenth report under the Act and it covers the period from 1 September 2014 to 31 December 2014. This report also covers the UK implementation of the UN al-Qaeda asset-freezing regime and the operation of the EU asset-freezing regime in the UK under EU regulation (EC) 2580/2001 which implements UNSCR 1373 against external terrorist threats to the EU. Under the UN al-Qaeda asset-freezing regime, the UN has responsibility for designations and the Treasury has responsibility for licensing and compliance with the regime in the UK under the Al- Qaida (Asset-Freezing) Regulations 2011. Under EU regulation 2580/2001, the EU has responsibility for designations and the Treasury has responsibility for licensing and compliance with the regime in the UK under Part 1 of TAFA 2010.

Annexes A and B to this statement provide a breakdown, by name, of all those designated by the UK and the EU in pursuance of UN Security Council resolution 1373. The two individuals subject to restricted designations under section 3 of the Act are denoted by A and B.

The following table sets out the key asset-freezing activity in the UK during the quarter ending 31 December 2014:

Starter Homes

Monday 2nd March 2015 Written Statements

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

I would like to update hon. Members on the outcome of the Government’s consultation, launched by the Prime Minister in December, seeking views about our proposals for planning reform to support the development of 100,000 new high-quality, low-cost starter homes for young first time buyers.

We are determined to ensure young people are not denied what their parents took for granted— the opportunity to buy their own home, settle down and enjoy the security that home ownership brings. Nearly 192,000 households have now been helped by the Government to buy or reserve a home since 2010, through schemes like help to buy and the reinvigorated right to buy. But we know there are still far too many hard working young people from all walks of life struggling to gain a foot on the property ladder, so we want to go further and give them access to a new generation of high-quality, low-cost starter homes.

Our starter home consultation proposed the introduction of a new national exception site planning policy to enable starter homes to be built on under—used or unviable commercial or industrial sites not currently identified for housing, on both public and private land; for these starter homes to be only sold to young first time buyers at a minimum 20% discount below their open market value; that local planning authorities should not seek section 106 affordable housing and tariff-style contributions on starter homes; and they should be exempt from the community infrastructure levy to enable developers to help deliver the discounted sale price.

We received over 250 responses to the consultation. There was strong endorsement from prospective first time buyers for the starter homes policy. Many local authorities, developers and lenders also endorsed more support for first time buyers, and made helpful comments about how this new planning policy could be implemented. The Government have published their consultation response today, and I will place a copy in the Library of the House. It will also be available online at: www.gov.uk.

After careful consideration of these responses, the Government are today making the following change to national planning policy:

Local planning authorities should work in a positive and proactive way with landowners and developers to secure a supply of sites suitable for housing for first- time buyers. In particular, they should look for opportunities to create high quality, well designed starter homes through exception sites on commercial and industrial land that is either under used or unviable in its current or former use, and which has not currently been identified for housing.



Where applications for starter homes come forward on such exception sites, they should be approved unless the local planning authority can demonstrate that there are overriding conflicts with the national planning policy framework that cannot be mitigated.

Planning obligations should be attached to permissions for starter homes on starter homes exception sites, requiring that the homes are offered for sale at a minimum of 20% below open market price, to young first- time buyers who want to own and occupy a home. They should also prevent the re-sale and letting of the properties at open market value for a five year period.

In view of their contribution to meeting housing needs, starter homes exception sites should not be required to make section 106 affordable housing or tariff-style contributions.

Exception sites may include a small proportion of market homes, at the planning authority’s discretion, where this is essential to secure the required level of discount for the starter homes on the site.

Starter homes developments are expected to be well- designed and of a high quality, contributing to the creation of sustainable places where people want to live, work and put down roots to become part of the local community. A new design advisory panel set up by the Government, involving leading industry experts, is developing an initial set of exemplar designs for starter homes which we expect to publish shortly for wider comment. While recognising the need for local flexibility, we would expect these designs over time to become the default approach to design to be considered for starter homes developments.

This new national planning policy should be taken into account in plan-making and decision-taking, and should be read alongside other policies in the national planning policy framework.

We will shortly publish revised planning guidance to assist local planning authorities in implementing this policy change. This guidance will support implementation of the policy, including the definition of under-used or unviable land and young first time buyers.

We will also work with developers, lenders, and local authorities on the development of further supporting technical material.

In addition to this policy change, the Government will seek to amend the community infrastructure levy regulations in the next Parliament to exempt discounted starter home developments from the levy. We will also consider further how the development of more starter homes can be encouraged through further planning reforms, including the opportunity to use other forms of land.

This written ministerial statement sets out agreed coalition Government policy to deliver a national starter homes scheme and planning policy; it is separate from the announcement by the Prime Minister today setting out further Conservative policy intentions on starter homes for the next Parliament.

[HCWS324]

Grand Committee

Monday 2nd March 2015 Grand Committee

Monday, 2 March 2015.

Arrangement of Business

Monday 2nd March 2015 Grand Committee

Announcement

15:30

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that if there is a Division in the Chamber, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes from the sound of the Division Bell.

National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015

Monday 2nd March 2015 Grand Committee

Motion to Consider

15:30

Moved by

[Lord Popat]

That the Grand Committee do consider the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015.

Relevant document: 21st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[Lord Popat (Con)]

My Lords, before turning to the reason for this debate, I will focus on the success of the national minimum wage. Recognition must be given to the Labour Party for introducing the national minimum wage, which last year was voted the most successful government policy of the preceding 30 years.

The key reason for its success is its simplicity. An independent Low Pay Commission provides balanced advice to the Government about minimum wage rates. But setting the rate is just the start. The Government have taken action to create the conditions for economic growth and higher living standards. Since the election, an extra 1.88 million people are now in work, and wages are now growing faster than inflation.

The Government also have a major role to play in ensuring that the minimum wage is enforced. That is why we have increased enforcement budgets by 50% over this year and next. There are now tougher penalties. We have increased the financial penalty percentage from 50% to 100% of unpaid wages owed, and the maximum penalty from £5,000 to £20,000. Provisions in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill will change the scope of the maximum penalty from a per business basis to a per worker basis.

There are also reputational consequences. The Government have already named 162 employers who have not complied with the national minimum wage. Such bad publicity will be an additional deterrent to employers who might otherwise be tempted not to pay the national minimum wage.

I turn to the reason for this debate. An important element of ensuring compliance is the clarity and accessibility of information. Since their introduction 17 years ago, the regulations have been amended numerous times, resulting in 27 separate sets of regulations. For such important legislation that is directly relevant to so many workers and their employers, lack of clarity could result in people not being paid what they are legally entitled to. This draft instrument consolidates the 27 sets of regulations into one in order to make the rules clearer and more workable for employers and workers alike.

In response to an eight-week consultation last summer, most of the 22 respondents told us that, while they welcomed the consolidation, even greater clarity would be welcome, particularly in the guidance. We agree. Once these regulations take legal effect, we will review the guidance during 2015 in order to improve the information available to individuals and employers. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, these proposals seem to be eminently sensible and are to be welcomed—and it is very good to have cross-party agreement on the success of the national minimum wage. As the Minister will know, I served as one of the first members of the Low Pay Commission; we established the first figure for the minimum wage. More importantly, we established the framework for what was included—and what was not—in the minimum wage, such as overtime, London weighting and all the other important details that have led to the continuing success and recognition of the minimum wage.

I do not think that it is remembered now what pressures there were before the minimum wage was established—political pressures and also pressures on the Low Pay Commission—for absolute secrecy, because any leaks would have undermined the whole venture. I remember one of the away weekends that the Low Pay Commission had in its first few months. It was in the days before everybody had a mobile phone. We were incommunicado in this particular place. Relatives could get through only by ringing the residential place we were staying in and using the code word “chrysanthemum”. Has the world not changed in 17 years? It seems laughable that so few people had mobiles. I am not sure how many relatives of mine could even have said the word “chrysanthemum”.

Nowadays, we underplay—not deliberately, because it is so well established on a cross-party basis—the importance of the minimum wage. I very much hope that it will remain a cross-party venture and that we do not play politics too much with this issue. The Low Pay Commission does a very important job representing, on a tripartite basis, all the interests involved in the world of employment—and long may that continue.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome this particular statutory instrument and the introduction by the Minister. I thank my noble friend for her historical assessment. I am sure that her relatives could have said “chrysanthemum”. They might have had trouble spelling it, but that is another matter.

I thank the Minister for recognising that we introduced the minimum wage—though, I have to say, that was against the wishes of some and with dire predictions about the millions of jobs that would be lost. I am glad that we have put that behind us and I welcome the enthusiasm now.

Obviously, anything that simplifies and clarifies is to be welcomed. I welcome the point about the enforcement budgets being increased. I am interested in whether the statistic of 162 employers being named is, as I presume, for 2013-14. Maybe I missed the precise date. I just wonder whether the number of employers being reported is going up. Is the number of queries to workers’ rights helplines increasing?

I note from the Explanatory Memorandum that the Minister is due to clarify the guidance this year. It is really important that we get that right. As a matter of interest, are we keeping any statistics on the fact that, over the recent past few years, we have now had introduced the concept of a living wage? I do not expect the Minister to have any information on that, but I wonder if we are keeping any statistical evidence on it. If he has something on it, better still. Other than those questions and comments, I am happy to support this.

[Lord Popat]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, for their contributions to this debate. As I said in opening, this was the best legislation we have had in 30 years. I hope the noble Lord will believe that when I got the Motion from the officials, I insisted on putting the point that this was Labour Party policy and the best legislation we have had in some years. I thank the noble Lord for his approval of this Motion.

I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, for her work on the national minimum wage and the work that she did with the Low Pay Commission. What a success story. I am glad that it is cross-party issue and that as a Government we are doing something for the people in this country who are at the bottom end of the market in terms of the wages that they are on. I am glad that my Government have raised the allowance for people to have that extra money. The personal allowance has gone up from £6,000 to roughly £10,000 in the past five years.

The noble Lord, Lord Young, made a point about the employers named in 2013 and 2014. We are naming more employers. The revised naming and shaming scheme came in in October 2013. The new rules are part of the Government’s efforts to toughen up the enforcement of the national minimum wage and increase compliance. The 162 employers were mentioned earlier. Between them they owed substantial sums in arrears to their workers, and by naming and shaming employers it is hoped that bad publicity will be an additional deterrent to employers who would otherwise be tempted not to pay the national minimum wage. We received more complaints about the national minimum wage through the helpline during 2014-15 and we continue to increase awareness of the national minimum wage among employers and employees. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

Motion agreed.

Groceries Code Adjudicator (Permitted Maximum Financial Penalty) Order 2015

Monday 2nd March 2015 Grand Committee

Motion to Consider

15:41

Moved by

[Lord Popat]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Groceries Code Adjudicator (Permitted Maximum Financial Penalty) Order 2015.

Relevant document: 22nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[Lord Popat (Con)]

My Lords, the order sets the maximum financial penalty that may be imposed by the Groceries Code Adjudicator, and completes the set of regulatory powers available to the adjudicator to ensure that the large supermarkets deal fairly with their suppliers.

Before moving on to the purpose and effect of the order, it might be helpful if I talked a little about how the adjudicator came to be created. The genesis of the Groceries Code Adjudicator regime is to be found in the market investigation into the supermarkets conducted by the then Competition Commission between 2006 and 2008. The commission found that the problems in the sector were concentrated in the commercial dealings between the largest supermarkets and their direct suppliers. It therefore used its powers under the Enterprise Act 2002 to introduce the Groceries Supply Code of Practice in 2009.

The scope of the code is precisely defined. It governs the commercial relationships between the 10 largest UK supermarkets—those with a turnover of more than £1 billion a year—and their direct suppliers of food, drink and household products. The code requires the supermarkets to deal fairly with their suppliers and it includes specific provisions, among other things, governing terms of supply agreements; the timing of payments; marketing and promotional costs; and payments as a condition of being a supplier. It does not cover indirect suppliers further down the supply chain. Nor does it govern questions relating to pricing, which are the responsibility of the Competition and Markets Authority under general competition rules.

The Competition Commission required the appointment of code compliance officers by the supermarkets. It discussed the possibility of a regulator to enforce the code, but did not go so far as to recommend one at that time. I appreciate that many felt that the absence of a regulator was an unsatisfactory arrangement from the start. The Commons Select Committee on the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs, for example, described it as akin to setting the rules of the game but then failing to appoint a referee.

Ministers shared that view. That is why they legislated for the creation of the adjudicator to enforce the code. Christine Tacon took up her post as the first adjudicator in June 2013. Ministers were also determined that the adjudicator should have the enforcement powers necessary to ensure compliance with the code. Those powers are extensive. The adjudicator has a duty to arbitrate any dispute that is referred to her by a supplier, and she has the discretion to arbitrate if the referral is by a supermarket. The adjudicator may also launch an investigation where she judges that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a supermarket has breached the code, or has failed to comply with earlier statutory recommendations made by the adjudicator.

15:45

I shall take a moment here to clarify some of the confusion that has grown up around the adjudicator’s powers of investigation. This was highlighted most recently by the EFRA Select Committee, which recommended in its report on dairy prices that the GCA be given the power to launch proactive investigations. The Government will respond in detail to the committee shortly. But to be absolutely clear, there is nothing in either the legislation governing the adjudicator or her statutory guidance that means that the GCA must simply sit and wait for evidence to be brought to it. Far from it—the adjudicator has wide powers to investigate, and the Government expect her to rely on them to be an active and visible guardian of the code.

I know that Ministers are pleased that Christine Tacon has quickly established her profile and authority through her extensive engagement with the sector, not least by requiring the various internal and external investigations in the Tesco case to include the groceries code in the terms of reference. This is surely proof of the adjudicator making good use of the proactive powers of investigation that the legislation already grants her.

Where the adjudicator conducts an investigation and finds that there has been a breach of the code, currently she may take one of two forms of enforcement action. She may issue the supermarket with recommendations as to its future conduct to ensure compliance with the code, or she may “name and shame” the supermarket by requiring it to publish information about the adjudicator’s investigation. However, it was the will of Parliament that the adjudicator should also have the power to impose a financial penalty. Provisions to introduce a fining power by secondary legislation were therefore added to the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill during its parliamentary passage. These required the adjudicator to consult on the method for determining the maximum penalty, which she did between July and December 2013, and to make a recommendation to the Secretary of State. This recommendation was for a maximum penalty of up to 1% of UK turnover, which Ministers accepted. These regulations implement that recommendation.

I should put on record that these regulations cannot have retrospective effect. That means that the adjudicator will not have the power to impose a penalty in respect of any breach of the code that predates the making of the regulations. I know that some of the supermarkets have expressed concern about the level of the maximum. They have pointed out that, for the largest retailers, 1% equates to hundreds of millions of pounds. On the other hand, suppliers who responded to the GCA’s consultation tended to favour a much higher maximum, in some cases up to 5% of turnover.

On balance, Ministers consider the recommended 1% to represent an appropriate and proportionate maximum. It is modest compared to the figures of 10% and more in the competition regime—and it is a maximum. The adjudicator’s published guidance makes it clear that the GCA will adopt a proportionate approach to its enforcement powers and will seek voluntary compliance wherever possible. The agreement that she has secured from most of the supermarkets to limit their forensic accounting exercises to the previous two years, when six had been common, is an excellent example of her ability to get results without the need to pursue formal proceedings.

Where the adjudicator relies on her formal enforcement powers, her guidance makes it clear that she will do so by applying the well established Macrory principles on regulatory penalties. These state that a sanction must be proportionate, must deter further non-compliance and must aim to eliminate any financial benefit from non-compliance.

On the latter point, we have seen recently that, by manipulating the timing of payments to and from suppliers, supermarkets can very quickly accrue huge sums. That makes the 1% maximum in this order essential if a full and proportionate range of sanctions is to be available to the adjudicator. The Government appreciate that some noble Lords may still have concerns about the level of the maximum. I hope that they will be reassured to know that there must be a statutory review of the GCA’s performance next year, during which this order may be looked at again.

I have said that the order is about giving the adjudicator all the tools that she needs to do her job—but powers are only half of the picture. The adjudicator must also have the necessary resources and the capacity to be an effective regulator. That is why Ministers were pleased to approve an increase of almost 40% in the GCA’s levy funding—from £800,000 this year to £1.1 million next year.

In closing, I repeat that in debating this order today we are reflecting Parliament’s will to give the Groceries Code Adjudicator access to the full range of enforcement options that she needs to do her important job as effectively as possible. I am confident that granting the adjudicator this additional power will strengthen her ability to deliver fairness in the commercial relationships between the supermarkets and their suppliers. A fair and transparent market is good news not just for suppliers but for the sector as a whole and for consumers. It will promote competition and foster innovation. I hope therefore that noble Lords will support the order.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, we do support it. I welcome the introduction by the Minister but I have a couple of points to make. I welcome the Government’s decision to reject the retailers’ view that somehow the maximum penalty should be much more complex, and to keep it simple at 1% of turnover. The question of whether this is absolutely the right figure is something that we can look at in the review next year.

I also welcome the point about the wide powers of investigation and the increase in resources. It must have been a coincidence but, as I was flicking through the pages of the Sunday Times business section, I happened to notice a little article about a German supplier to a company complaining that the company had a four-month payment regime, whereas, interestingly, Germany has a one-month regime. I have not been able to verify that but the Groceries Code Adjudicator commented that she did not propose to launch an investigation into this. I was a bit surprised at that, as I thought the area would be worth some investigation. Four months seems a significant period of time for a company to withhold payment to its direct suppliers. I would welcome the Minister’s response to that.

[Lord Popat]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his contribution and for accepting this SI. He mentioned the penalty of 1%. In many ways, he is right; I think it is best to keep it simple. One per cent is a maximum. Bearing in mind that the turnover of large supermarkets can exceed £1 billion, 1% can be a substantial sum of money. Again, if we find that this is not the correct amount, we can always review the legislation.

The noble Lord mentioned the article in the Sunday Times. I have a copy of it attached to my file. Lidl was the supermarket in question. I am sure that this matter will be investigated by Christine Tacon. The payment period is longer in the UK than in Germany, but there has been no Grocery Code Adjudicator investigation. The Grocery Code Adjudicator is independent. The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill, which is having its Report stage tomorrow, is looking at prompt payment and will probably incorporate what Lidl has done to its suppliers by delaying payment for as long as four months. It might come under that jurisdiction rather than the Grocery Code Adjudicator.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

That might be the case, but the Grocery Code Adjudicator made a public statement that she did not intend to investigate it—so it is an important decision. There ought to be some dialogue with the Grocery Code Adjudicator to find out why this does not merit at least something, even if it is not a formal investigation. It is quite an important issue, and I would have thought that it merited some investigation. I cannot say that I am completely satisfied with the reply. I am not expecting the Minister to respond now, but when he has had further opportunity to reflect, perhaps he will.

[Lord Popat]

My briefing states that the GCA is independent and the small business Bill will look into it. I will certainly write to the noble Lord. The article states that the company pays its suppliers in Germany in 30 days but takes four months to pay in the UK—so it is something that we must look at.

The GCA’s published guidance commits her to a stepped approach to enforcement. The adjudicator has said that wherever possible, she will rely on informal regulatory actions to secure compliance with the code. For example, the adjudicator has secured the agreement of most of the supermarkets to limit forensic audits of transactions with suppliers to the previous two years, rather than six years. The GCA meets Ministers regularly and its performance will be reviewed by Ministers in 2016, so I think it is best if I write to the noble Lord on this matter. I read the article in the Sunday Times and have a copy with me. I will refer it to officials and write to the noble Lord.

Motion agreed.

Electronic Commerce Directive (Financial Services and Markets) (Amendment) Order 2015

Monday 2nd March 2015 Grand Committee

Motion to Consider

15:58

Moved by

[Lord Newby]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Electronic Commerce Directive (Financial Services and Markets) (Amendment) Order 2015.

Relevant document: 17th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to the draft Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Miscellaneous Provisions) Order 2015. I am pleased to introduce these statutory instruments.

The Government have fundamentally reformed regulation of the consumer credit market, transferring regulatory responsibility from the Office of Fair Trading to the Financial Conduct Authority on 1 April last year. The FCA is better resourced and more empowered than its predecessor and has been equipped with flexible rule-making powers to ensure that it keeps pace with developments in the market. The FCA regime is already having a significant positive impact and is helping to deliver the Government’s vision for an effective and sustainable consumer credit market that is able to meet consumers’ needs.

The raising of standards will improve further as the FCA undertakes authorisation assessments to assess firms’ fitness to trade—a process that has already begun for those industries regarded as the riskiest, including payday lending—and these instruments to be debated today help to support the effectiveness of the FCA’s regulatory regime.

First, the e-commerce order provides the FCA with powers to tackle credit firms, including payday lenders, which abuse their rights under the e-commerce directive to evade FCA rules. As noble Lords will be aware, the Government have taken robust action significantly to improve protections for consumers in the payday lending market. The Government transferred regulatory responsibility to the FCA’s powerful new regime and legislated to require the FCA to introduce a cap on the cost of payday loans.

The Government strongly welcome the payday lending rules introduced last year by the FCA, including limits on rollovers and the use of continuous payment authorities, and tougher requirements around affordability assessments. On 2 January, the FCA’s cap on the cost of payday loans came into force, as required by the Government. Consumers are far better protected under the FCA regime. The FCA has a wide-ranging enforcement toolkit to take action where wrongdoing is found, and the rigorous authorisation process for payday lenders is under way.

FCA regulation is already having a dramatic impact on the payday market—indeed, the FCA found that the volume of payday loans fell by 35% in the first six months since it took over regulation. These data are from before the cost cap took effect in January.

The Government are committed to preventing the gaming of the FCA’s regulatory regime, including the risk that lenders seek to relocate abroad and lend back into the UK. The important powers in this order will protect UK consumers by giving the FCA powers to take action against credit firms that abuse their rights under the e-commerce directive to establish themselves in another EEA member state but lend primarily to the UK. The powers will enable the FCA to require credit firms to comply with FCA rules—including, in the case of payday lenders, the price cap—or require them to seek full authorisation to continue carrying out their activities. The order therefore represents an important reinforcement of the FCA regulatory regime, helping to protect UK consumers from unfair costs and harmful practices.

I turn now to the miscellaneous order. This order will address a number of technical issues to ensure that consumer credit regulation strikes the right balance between proportionate burdens on business and providing robust protections for consumers. In particular, the order makes several provisions to minimise unnecessary regulatory burdens on firms.

For example, the order adjusts the working definition of a “domestic premises supplier”. This definition is important because it requires firms selling goods in a customer’s home to comply with the higher regulatory standards in the FCA’s “full permission” regime, thereby helping to protect consumers from the pressure-selling of goods or services on credit. However, it is important that this definition is drawn correctly to minimise unnecessary regulatory burdens on businesses and support the provision of goods and services to consumers.

The order ensures that firms providing goods or services in a home where no attempt is made to sell other goods or services, or anything extra provided is free of charge, are not regarded as “domestic premises suppliers”—for example, where a mobility aid supplier simply visits the customer’s home to measure up before a contract is signed, or where a kitchen supplier delivers and installs an item after it has been ordered. These firms can therefore benefit from the FCA’s lower-cost “limited permission” regime.

The order also makes a number of other technical adjustments to ensure proportionate regulatory burdens. For example, it ensures that solicitors—who are already subject to their professional regulatory regime—will not require FCA regulation when undertaking credit activities incidental to the firm’s professional services. I beg to move.

[Lord Sharkey (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak only to the first of the two orders before us. This order has the usual eye-catching name for such things: the Electronic Commerce Directive (Financial Services and Markets) (Amendment) Order 2015. A better and clearer name for the SI would be: “Closing a Gigantic Payday Lending Loophole”, because, as the Minister said, that is exactly what the SI does.

On 9 December 2013, in response to amendments put down by the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, and by me, the Government finally accepted the need for strict control of payday lending. The FCA rules that followed capped the cost of payday loans and limited the number of permitted rollovers. They also created the conditions for real-time data-sharing by lenders in order to reduce the incidence of multiple simultaneous loans. The Treasury and the FCA are to be congratulated on that. Together, with some prompting from your Lordships’ House, they have entirely changed the nature of the payday loan sector in the United Kingdom. What started out as outrageous and cruel usury has been reduced to more or less sensible costs and more or less sensible limits. The capacity of payday lenders to inflict terrible damage, as they were doing, on the most disadvantaged has been severely reduced, and I am pleased to be able to say that many payday lenders have simply shut up shop in the UK as a consequence of the new regime.

I do not think that the situation is ideal yet because, for many of us, the number of rollovers is too high, there is not yet a proper real-time database of loans outstanding and there is no mechanism for automatically preventing multiple simultaneous loans. Of course, as we speak, payday lenders are busy changing their business models in ways that will require continued vigilance on our part. We will have to see how all that works out.

In the debate of 9 December 2013, I raised for the first time the question of what seemed to me a gigantic loophole in the proposed new regulations. This was the loophole to do with the e-commerce directive, which we are discussing. As the Minister said, this directive would allow any payday lender to avoid our regulation if they were based elsewhere in the EEA and were trading in the UK only electronically. This would mean that any payday loan company could continue to operate in the UK but entirely outside our rules, caps and limits if it were based in the EEA and had no bricks and mortar presence here in the UK.

I asked the Treasury at the time what it intended to do about this. I had subsequent conversations with the Minister and officials about the problem. This order is, as the Minister correctly said, the solution to that problem. It closes the gigantic loophole in the regulations. If payday loan companies based abroad now try to use the e-commerce directive to avoid UK regulation, they can now be stopped from operating in the UK or forced to comply with our rules if they want to continue to operate in the UK. This is a very good and very necessary step forward, and I am delighted that the Government and the FCA have acted.

As the Minister said, this new order adds to the protection against the immoral and unscrupulous exploitation of the most vulnerable people in our society. However, it is a Treasury order and it is written in the Treasury’s normal, deathless—meaning, obvious-on-the-face-of-it—prose, which means that there are just a couple of questions that I would like to ask the Minister.

New Regulation 11A lists the kinds of activities that the order will apply to. Can the Minister say whether this list includes debt management companies? I know that he is aware of the wholly unacceptable charges and practices of some companies operating in this sector.

New Regulation 11B (2)(a) seems a little ambiguous. It says that the authority must be satisfied that the incoming provider,

“directs all or most of its activity to the United Kingdom”.

The question is: how is “most” to be interpreted here? Does it mean “most” by weight of advertising, “most” by number of customers or “most” by the value of lending to those UK customers? How will the authority arrive at a measure of whichever interpretation of “most” it wants to use? I very much hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to say that the FCA will be able to use all or any of the above interpretations and that it will be able to use, as a conclusive determination, whatever measures it considers reasonable.

Those are details but, in this area, detail is often absolutely critical. However, I do not want the detail to overshadow my congratulations to my noble friend the Minister and the FCA. They have closed a potentially very damaging loophole in the payday regulations.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, to our debates. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, and I feel flattered that we are now three instead of our usual two on these instruments. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and colleagues on my Benches are to be congratulated on the campaign they have waged on this issue. The noble Lord’s description of the e-commerce directive and a gigantic loophole is absolutely valid, and I join him commending the Government on closing that hole. However, we believe that this is only part of the way forward. The payday scandal has been attacked in the sense that many unscrupulous operators have been driven out of the market, and that will go further, but we wish to promote safer and more ethical forms of lending. We will try to ensure that co-operatives and mutual ownership models are able to compete on a level playing field. We will look to give greater power to local authorities to eliminate the spread of payday lending shops in town centres, and we will want to investigate ways in which to support mutuals—for example, by improving the regulatory structure in which they operate and making available support from the British investment bank. The sad fact is that we have problems in our society that mean that short-term loans are needed. It is not just about driving out the bad guys; it is about creating opportunities for a new breed of good guys. We already have credit unions to turn to as an example.

On the second order—and I thank the Minister for showing us how the two orders fit together—the Explanatory Memorandum makes perfect sense, except for the part of it that he explained, which I am left having trouble understanding. Paragraph 7.1 says:

“To extend the scope of the limited permission regime in relation to ‘domestic premises suppliers’”.

I see the importance of extending the scope to domestic premises suppliers. I went to the order—and you know that you are driven to your limit when you actually read the order—and I found that,

“domestic premises supplier” means a supplier who … sells, offers to sell or agrees to sell goods, or … offers to supply services or contracts to supply services … to customers who are individuals while the supplier, or the supplier’s representative, is physically present at the dwelling of the individual”.

I am gripped of the importance of the regulations applying in those circumstances. The key issue is the caveat in sub-paragraph (3B), which says:

“A supplier who acts as described in sub-paragraph (3A) on an occasional basis only will not be a domestic premises supplier unless the supplier indicates to the public at large, or any section of the public, the supplier’s willingness to attend”,

and so on. It seems that the differentiation is on whether they advertise or not. If I have got that wrong, I would be grateful to the Minister for writing to me. I cannot see how the words of the provision translate to the picture that he has just described, with what I would have thought was almost peripheral to suppliers not being covered rather than this specific thing, whereby,

“unless the supplier indicates to the public at large”.

I do not know what that means other than that they are in the advertising business.

Finally, does the Minister know of any specific instances where the issues that the order remedies have manifested themselves, or is this anticipatory and intended to stop a problem before it arises? Is he satisfied with the FCA’s performance as a regulator so far, since it took up those responsibilities from the OFT?

16:15

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords who have participated in this debate. I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, on his persistence in this area and on drawing this issue to the attention of the Government for the first time, I think. When he first did so, it was by no means clear that there was a legal route which enabled us to deal adequately with payday loan companies which just moved offshore. He spurred the creative minds in the Treasury to come up with a legal route, so we are extremely grateful to him for that.

He asked a couple of very specific questions, including whether the provisions include debt management companies. The answer to that is yes, they do. He asked how one defines “most” and gave a number of contributory definitions of “most”. It is for the FCA to determine that definition on a case-by-case basis. It will take into account all the factors in deciding how to do it.

The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, spoke of the Labour Party’s wish to promote a safer and more ethical lending environment. I think we all share that wish. That is why we have taken action on payday lending and have taken a range of actions to promote mutuals and credit unions, including giving £38 million to the credit union expansion project and undertaking a review of how we can promote credit unions further. Credit unions are, in the medium term, probably the best bet we have for many people having easy access to proper financial services and small loans. A key thing now will be to get credit unions up to the ease-of-use level that the payday loan providers have. To be critical of the payday loan sector, its great strength and weakness is that it is so easy to use. It is not so easy to get access electronically to your credit union account or to loans via credit unions. One of the key things that the credit union expansion project is doing is improving back-office infrastructure to enable credit unions’ systems to be more user-friendly, particularly for young people who are used to electronic methods of banking. I do not think we disagree on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked about the definition of “domestic premises supplier”. The key is to ensure that firms selling in the home, where there is a risk of pressure selling, are subject to greater regulatory scrutiny. We are clarifying that this includes where firms promote themselves as being willing to visit consumers in their homes. That makes them a domestic premises supplier, irrespective of the number of visits they make. This will make it easier for firms and the regulator to judge on which side of the line they fall. I think—and I will write to the noble Lord if I am wrong on this—that there is a big difference between a company that sells in its shop or online and then just delivers stuff to your house and a company which comes and gives a quote in your house. That is the sort of distinction we are trying to make. If I can expand on that further in any helpful way, I will do so.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

I thank the noble Lord for that promise. I find the description that he just gave entirely understandable and reasonable but then I look at the draft legislation. It takes a heroic understanding of words to move from those in the order to the explanation I have just heard. If nothing else, I shall value the letter that explains how you move in such a way.

[Lord Newby]

It will be a great pleasure to give the noble Lord something of such value. We will attempt to do that.

Finally, the noble Lord asked whether we were satisfied with the performance of the FCA in taking over the reins of the OFT. The short answer is yes. Looking at the payday loans element alone, the impact of the FCA, combined with the legislative procedures that have been put in place, has been very dramatic in a direction that most people would welcome. The relative speed with which it was able to get the cap agreed and implemented is an example of that. The short answer to that question is yes, but of course both the Government and Parliament will scrutinise carefully what it does in future.

Motion agreed.

Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Miscellaneous Provisions) Order 2015

Monday 2nd March 2015 Grand Committee

Motion to Consider

16:20

Moved by

[Lord Newby]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Miscellaneous Provisions) Order 2015.

Relevant document: 22nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

Motion agreed.

Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Banking Reform) (Pensions) Regulations 2015

Monday 2nd March 2015 Grand Committee

Motion to Consider

16:21

Moved by

[Lord Newby]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Banking Reform) (Pensions) Regulations 2015.

Relevant document: 21st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, these regulations ensure that a ring-fenced retail bank cannot be liable for pensions obligations arising from other parts of its wider banking group. These regulations are the final piece of secondary legislation necessary to bring about the ring-fencing of retail banking from investment banking. In completing this process, these regulations represent the final piece of legislation needed to complete the biggest ever overhaul of Britain’s banking system.

On election, the Government set themselves the task of fixing the banking system following the worst banking crisis in the entirety of British history. In 2010 we set up the Independent Commission on Banking—the ICB—led by Sir John Vickers to consider the options for structural reform of the banking sector. The ICB recommended ring-fencing core retail banking services from investment banking and trading.

Ring-fencing will insulate crucial core retail banking services, such as the taking of personal deposits, from shocks originating elsewhere in the financial system, and will make banks simpler and easier to resolve. This will help curtail the implicit government guarantee enjoyed by banks that are seen as too big to fail, and will protect taxpayer money from ever again being used to provide solvency support for failing banks.

One of the recommendations of the Independent Commission on Banking was that ring-fenced banks should not have any liabilities to group-wide pension schemes. The Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013 gave the Government the power to ensure this, and these regulations exercise that power. They require ring-fenced banks to make arrangements to ensure that they do not have any shared pension liabilities with other group members or outside companies—with the exception of other ring-fenced bodies within the same group, and wholly owned subsidiaries. The regulations also give powers to the banks and to the trustees of banks’ pension schemes to ensure that the necessary changes can be made, and set out the role of the regulators, the PRA and the pension regulator for monitoring and assessing the changes.

The regulations are a necessary part of ensuring that there is a robust ring-fence in place protecting core banking services. Any shared pension liabilities could pose a huge risk to the viability of the overall ring-fence and could threaten the ability of the ring-fenced bank to maintain the provision of vital services. Collectively, the large banks run their pension schemes at a deficit that reaches the multiple billions of pounds. This means that were a non-ring-fenced investment bank to fail, the ring-fenced bank could suddenly be left with a large pension liability in the many millions, or even billions, of pounds that it might be unable to pay.

Although implementing these regulations will have some transitional cost to the banks, the measure is clearly good value for money. The cost to the banks is hard to estimate, but the Treasury expects it to be in the tens or low hundreds of millions of pounds. This is relatively small in comparison to the cost of the broad ring-fencing package.

Furthermore, ring-fencing itself is the best strategy for structural reform of UK banks. The plan to ring-fence UK banks is based on the comprehensive work of the Independent Commission on Banking. The mechanisms by which ring-fencing will help financial stability are clear. The ring-fenced retail banks will be insulated from shocks elsewhere in the financial system. They will have higher capital requirements, which will improve their resilience. Ring-fencing will make banks’ structures simpler and will provide additional options to the regulator for a bank to be restructured, which will help resolution in the case of failure. By ensuring economic and operational independence, ring-fencing will achieve the objective of complete separation of retail banking from investment banking while still allowing the bank to benefit from its relationship with the wider banking group.

We firmly believe that this is the most cost-effective and proportionate option, and one that will ensure the long-term stability of the sector. The regulations play a key part in building a robust ring-fence and a stable banking sector, and I commend them to the Committee.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I sat through the creation of the Act to which these regulations relate. Broadly speaking, it had cross-party support. This is, as the Minister pointed out, a key element in completing the picture and therefore I welcome it. However, having spent several years serving on the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee of your Lordships’ House, I can only join in its complaint—it is now called the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee—from its 26th report, published on 10 February. The committee said:

“In the EM, HMT gives limited information about the consultation process which was held from July to October 2014, referring only to a number of technical changes made in the light of consultation responses, as well as to two substantial changes in order to limit the burden on the banks and regulators. Though the draft Regulations were laid on 21 January, HMT had not published the summary of responses by 10 February. We are clear that Departments should publish their consultation summaries no later than the time of laying the instruments concerned before Parliament, as we set out in the report of our inquiry into Government consultation practice. In our view, Parliament should be asked to consider secondary legislation only when Government have provided adequate information, including about consultation, to support such consideration”.

I agree with the comments in that report. I believe that that general principle should be kept to and I am disappointed that the Treasury, in this particular case, has failed.

Also, what progress is being made in this whole ring-fencing process? As the Minister will recall, there was a degree of scepticism from our Benches and other places that the timescales that the banks had to create their ring-fence structures were extended. Can the Minister give the Committee some indication of what progress the banks are making in that extended timescale and what processes the Government and presumably the PRA, the FCA or whatever is the appropriate combination are putting in place to ensure that the banks are progressing towards their ring-fenced state and that we do not once again end up in a situation where too-big-to-fail institutions land us with a fait accompli and say, “We haven’t done it yet: we’ll do it later”. With those comments, I have no objection to the regulations in principle because, as the Minister said, they complete the picture to create ring-fenced entities.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his comments. On the consultation and the publication of the consultation response document, I am sorry that it was not published earlier. It has now been published. Compared with most SIs that we take through your Lordships’ House, this is actually—though important—quite short, and has a single purpose.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

I also take the point that compared with the importance of the SI this is a modest point, but to a poor opposition spokesman like myself, without a wonderful array of staff behind me, if a document is not signalled in the EM I have great trouble actually finding it. While I am sure that the statement has been published and is right, surely it should be a matter of discipline that it should be published before it is laid, and every effort should be made to make sure that any documents referenced are referenced in the Explanatory Memorandum.

[Lord Newby]

I agree with the noble Lord. It is very difficult from the document itself to gain any sense of where pressure points or disagreements might be, and things should be published promptly, as the rules suggest.

The noble Lord asked how the ring-fence process is going. This is the final piece of secondary legislation required to implement ring-fencing. By passing it now, we have fulfilled our commitment to legislate for ring-fencing by the end of the Parliament. Further ring-fencing rules, which do not require legislation, are now being consulted on in two consultation papers and being put in place by the PRA. The PRA’s first ring-fencing consultation closed in January, and it is on course to publish its second consultation paper later this year. The big banks that have to implement ring-fencing are fully engaged with the PRA and, in January, gave their initial plans for ring-fencing to the PRA. So there is a bit of an iterative process going on between the drafting of rules and the banks’ own thoughts about how best they might do it. The other thing that has been happening is that Lloyds and RBS have been making changes to their business by winding down certain of their activities, both in terms of geographical spread and contracting some of their investment banking activities in anticipation of ring-fencing coming into effect. As far as we are aware and can see, both the regulators and the banks appear to be on track to have the ring-fencing successfully implemented in due time by 2018.

Motion agreed.

Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2015

Monday 2nd March 2015 Grand Committee

Motion to Consider

16:33

Moved by

[Lord Newby]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2015.

Relevant document: 23rd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments (Special attention drawn to the instrument)

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, this instrument creates a new regulated activity in the Financial Conduct Authority’s regulated activities order. The new activity concerns the giving of advice on the conversion or transfer of a class of pension benefits known as safeguarded benefits, which are defined in the Pension Schemes Bill 2014-15, but are best understood as benefits that the Government have taken a decision to safeguard, because they offer a guaranteed income in retirement that is assessed to be particularly valuable. They include benefits commonly referred to as defined benefit, but also include benefits that offer other guarantees or promises. This new activity relates to a safeguard being created by the Pension Schemes Bill 2014-15 in the context of the new pensions freedoms announced at Budget 2014. The advice safeguard requires scheme trustees and managers to check that members have received appropriate independent advice before transferring or converting safeguarded rights into rights which can be accessed flexibly, and before paying an uncrystallised funds pension lump sum in respect of safeguarded benefits. This safeguard will ensure that members have fully considered the implications of giving up rights that provide a valuable guaranteed income in retirement. It is important that this safeguard is operational from 6 April 2015, when the new pension freedoms come into force.

In July 2015, the Government’s response to the consultation on freedom and choice in pensions committed that advice required under the safeguard would be provided by an FCA-authorised adviser. This instrument helps deliver on that commitment. This instrument provides for advice on the conversion and transfer of safeguarded benefits into flexible benefits to be regulated by the FCA in accordance with the regulatory framework established by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

Without this order, the FCA would regulate only advice on transfers of safeguarded rights to contract-based schemes. The new regulated activity created by the instrument allows the FCA to regulate advice on all transfers of safeguarded rights and interests to trust-based schemes that can be accessed flexibly. The Government want to ensure that the consumer interest is prudently accounted for in the context of the new pensions freedom, and therefore this instrument has been brought forward to ensure the proper operation and consistent regulation of advice provided under the safeguard.

The approach of defining the appropriate independent advice required under the advice safeguard by reference to a new FCA-regulated activity was indicated during the Lords Committee stage of the Pensions Schemes Bill on 12 January this year. Amendments to the Bill were the made at Lords Report stage on 27 January to provide that the appropriate independent advice required by the Bill should be provided by a person who,

“has permission under Part 4A of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 … to carry on a regulated activity specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State”.

The House was informed in early January that the Treasury would lay an instrument to create the relevant regulatory activity. This is the order we are now debating.

The Financial Conduct Authority will set out in a forthcoming consultation paper the precise standards of advice it will require. This paper, which will be published very shortly, taken together with the Pension Schemes Bill, its regulations and this order, will ensure that the advice safeguard is robust, effective and fully operational when the pension freedoms come into force in April 2015.

I commend the order to the Committee and beg to move.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for presenting this order. He has clarified my only concern of understanding. I wish I had had the conversation with him four or five working hours ago. As I understand it, the order does all sorts of bits and bobs, but its essence is in Article 7.8 which fills a hole in the FCA applying these standards to the transfer to trust-based schemes. It took me a great deal of time to find out the difference between a contract-based scheme and a trust-based scheme. I shall not repeat my understanding lest I have it wrong, but that seems to be the essence of the order.

The “Regulatory Triage Assessment – final stage” document offers three alternatives. Option 2 is:

“Amend the FCA’s Regulated Activities Order via statutory instrument such that advice on occupational transfers is fully regulated”.

It does not give a very convincing reason why it should not do this. It is not that we are not supporting this Bill. The Opposition have not opposed the general essence of what the Chancellor is trying to do, but the size of what is happening and the importance of quality advice cannot be overstated.

I believe it has been estimated that perhaps some 500,000 defined benefit scheme holders may seek transfers almost straightaway. I think that a firm called Hargreaves Lansdown has done that. Given the very sudden discontinuity that will occur in April, is the Minister confident that the advice industry has the capacity to meet people’s needs? Does the pensions industry have the ability to meet the apparently thousands of transfer requests that it will face? Is the Minister happy that the mechanisms are available to protect the public from fraudulent operators? Does the Minister think that the Government have done enough to educate the public on the size and challenge of the changes they face? I happened to come across an article in the Observer this weekend which was rather less than reassuring. It said:

“Figures from insurance company Zurich show that, while the average length of retirement is 25 years, over half the population believe they will be retired for 20 years or less. Most people also predict they will not live beyond 85. But figures suggest half of people retiring now could live to 90 or beyond”.

That does not show an appropriate level of public understanding in facing this significant change. The noble Lord’s colleague, Steve Webb, the Minister in the other place, did not exactly use resoundingly assuring language in the article. He said:

“We wouldn’t be doing it if we thought it was a disaster, but you do take a risk when you trust people with their own money”.

I wish that his tone had been slightly more reassuring—I hope that the Government have a rather greater aspiration than the avoidance of disaster. I hope that in the short time left before April they will do their best to improve the level of education among the general public so that not too many people make decisions that they subsequently regret.

[Lord Newby]

The noble Lord is quite right to describe the order as filling a hole in the regulatory structure. That is exactly what it does. He talked about two separate changes that are taking place from 1 April. The relatively narrow one in terms of the number of people we think are likely to take advantage of it is the flexibility for people with a defined benefit scheme or other safeguarded scheme to move to a more flexible scheme. That is what the order covers. People in that category are required to take advice via a regulated adviser. We think that the majority of people with safeguarded pensions will find, on taking that advice, that it is in their best interests to retain them. However, it is for them, in discussion with the IFA community, to decide on a case-by-case basis.

I was asked whether there are enough properly qualified people to do the work. There are about 20,000 registered IFAs and around 7,000 of those are pension transfer specialists so it is quite a body of people. Given all the other changes that have taken place in the financial services sector, the concern of the IFAs in recent years has been that there was not enough work to go around—or would not be in future—on their old model of operating. I suspect that for this category of people, there will be adequate advice.

The article to which the noble Lord referred and many of his later comments were about the more general freedoms under which, from April, people will no longer have to take an annuity. There is a different and larger challenge there in terms of providing support for people in that category. As the noble Lord knows, we are setting up a completely new guidance service to advise people in that category. That service will have three strands—web-based, telephone and face-to-face—and is being developed by my colleagues in the Treasury. When I talked to them about this earlier, they assured me that they feel they are on track to have enough people and adequate systems in place to deal with the very large number of requests they will get.

One other thing that my colleague, Steve Webb, said about the change on 1 April was that he suggested people spend the day in bed rather than worry about changing their pensions literally on day one. It is important that people take time to get not just the guidance but also to think about how they want to dispose of the funding they have in their pension pot.

I completely share the concern of the noble Lord and several commentators that many people do not understand pensions at all. They have a pension but that is about all they know about it. One of the great potential benefits of this change and the fact that everybody will get free guidance is that it will help people to understand how a pension works. I think there is a view in a lot of people’s minds that a pot of money called a pension is somehow different in some mysterious way from any other pot of money. The truth is that it is a pot of money available for them to dispose of, now pretty flexibly. People will need to confront their own mortality, possibly in a way that they did not feel they needed to in the past. That is undoubtedly a challenge to people but one that they should face up to, and not just because of how they deal with their pensions. It also affects a whole raft of ways in which they think about their later years. For many people on the normal retirement age, that period will be 30 years or more—a third of their life.

It is a challenge. We are putting in place robust, we hope, measures through the guidance systems in terms of these safeguarded pensions—the subject of this order. That advice will ensure that people get the level of support they need to take the correct decisions and enable them to get the very best out of their pension savings. Of course, at this stage we do not know whether our systems will be as robust as we hope they will be. We do not know quite how people will respond to this. However, I think we have behaved responsibly in not only opening up the freedoms but also putting in place a system to ensure that people can exercise those freedoms in a responsible manner for their own benefit.

Motion agreed.

Committee adjourned at 4.49 pm.

House of Lords

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Monday, 2 March 2015.

14:30

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Norwich.

Parliament: Conventions

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Question

14:37

Asked by

[Lord Rooker]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of the conventions between the two Houses of Parliament as they have affected government business during the current Parliament.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, while there has been no formal assessment of the effectiveness of the conventions between the two Houses as they have affected this Government’s business this Parliament, we believe that they have proved adaptable and continue to stand the test of time.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree that the conventions work well while this House is unelected. However, may I ask the noble Baroness, in her role as Leader of the House—as opposed to a government Minister—to indicate to the main party leaders that, when they come to write their manifesto paragraphs on Lords reform, they should include issues related to the functions and powers of this House, and its relationship to the other House, rather than just a banal slogan on its composition? If they do not, it is likely that such legislation will get short shrift in your Lordships’ House.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I think I will leave it to the other party leaders in this House to decide whether they would like to write to Messrs Miliband and Clegg, but I agree with the noble Lord that the primacy of the House of Commons should never be in doubt. I agree with him that form should always follow function and I am clear that the purpose of this House is to give the public confidence in the laws that Parliament makes. It is an essential part of what we do and should inform what we do and how we do it, both now and in the future, however we may be composed.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I—among others, obviously—represented your Lordships’ House on the Joint Committee that looked at the conventions of Parliament. However, that was nine years ago. I suggest to my noble friend that, since that time, the era of single-party government may well have disappeared for ever.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Tyler]

Therefore, these conventions, as set out in our report, are long past their sell-by date. Have any discussions taken place, between the parties in this House and with the other place, on setting up a similar committee after the general election to look at the new situation?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I disagree with my noble friend because I think we have proved in the course of this Parliament that these conventions have, as I say, stood the test of time. Therefore, I believe that it is unnecessary to constitute another committee and that the conventions will be adaptable throughout the next Parliament.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Rooker asked a specific question about whether there would be references to these matters in the manifestos of the political parties and the Government. What will happen in the case of the Conservative manifesto?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am pleased that the noble Lord is so interested in my party’s manifesto. That suggests he believes it is the only one that really matters. He will not be surprised that I am not going to give him any insight into the content of the manifesto before it is published.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend indicate what the conventions are in respect of the Government’s involvement in private Members’ legislation? In particular, could she explain why the Government have backed a Bill that guarantees 0.7% of GDP for overseas aid, while blocking a Bill that guarantees 2% of our GDP for NATO?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The noble Lord knows that the 0.7% Bill, which was debated in this House on Friday, is, as he said, a Private Member’s Bill, but it represents a policy that was in the Conservative Party’s manifesto at the most recent election.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, if form should follow function, as the noble Baroness said, and if the function of your Lordships’ House is to act as a revising and advisory Chamber, how can it have been right for the Government to alter the form of the House, as they have, by packing the Benches behind her to create a large in-built government political majority?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I take exception to the language that the noble Lord has used. As he knows, it is important that we continue to refresh this House with new Members. Of the peerages created during this Parliament, 47 have been on the Labour Benches.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

Could the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, when she has discussions with the leaders of the other parties, use the opportunity to highlight the work that this House does in revising legislation? There may be yet another example today of how many government amendments there are to legislation. This House serves the country extremely well in its function of revising legislation, and I hope that the Leader will take every opportunity to remind people down the other end that we do it rather better.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. The fact that we are an unelected Chamber right now does not in any way diminish the important work that we exist to do. In revising and scrutinising legislation, we give the public confidence in the laws that Parliament makes.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for what she has said, but if we are to have continuing amicable relations with another place, for which we all hope, it is not very helpful if another place peremptorily kills off a Bill that has been fairly exhaustively debated in this place, as it did last Friday. It might well be that some us think we should flex our muscles on a Bill that came from the other place.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I think my noble friend is referring to the Private Member’s Bill, which originated in this House, of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman—

[Noble Lords]

Lord Saatchi.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I thought the noble Lord was referring to the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, which is still very much in play. It is quite right that the Saatchi Bill has gone through this House carefully, but the other House has the prerogative to decide how to deal with it, as it has done.

[Baroness Kingsmill (Lab)]

My Lords, could the Minister let me know what the Government propose to do about the appalling, sexist and outrageous behaviour of MPs in the other place? This is an enormous problem. It discourages women, and it is largely the men who do it.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am the Leader of this House, and therefore I do not speak for the other House. I am not sure that I would necessarily agree with the comments of the noble Baroness about the other House, but I am pleased that in this House—in my experience—there is no demonstration of sexism.

[Lord Tebbit (Con)]

My Lords, if any Members of this House think that they want to rebuff the other place in any way, there is one very effective way in which it might be done. We might send back to them some of the Bills that they failed to discuss, because they keep part-time hours, in exactly the same state as they sent them to us.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My noble friend is always full of creative ideas.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend who suggested that the Government are packing this House; I think they are packing the government Benches. I wholeheartedly agree with my noble friend about the purpose and function of this place. I hope that the noble Baroness will consider suggesting to the Prime Minister that a constitutional convention should be called. One of the things that it should take into consideration is the purpose and function of this place.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

As the noble Baroness knows from the exchanges that we have had previously, that is not something that the Government are proposing at this time. As far as the Conservative Party within this Government is concerned, there are other things that have a higher priority and do not need a constitutional convention. We want to see those implemented first.

Defence: Strategic Defence and Security Review

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Question

14:45

Asked by

[Lord Rosser]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what, if any, preparatory work has been, or is being, undertaken in advance of the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review; and whether any such work will be made available, subject to not compromising national security, prior to the general election.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, preparatory analytical work is under way to refresh the risk-based assessment approach taken in 2010. As the review will formally begin after the next election, no decision on its final scope or approach has yet been made. The Government have no plans to make any preliminary work available prior to the general election.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that response. In the light of that response, is it this Government’s intention that there should be a real opportunity, including sufficient time, for an open discussion about our defence and security strategy prior to the 2015 SDSR being finalised? The previous Government produced a Green Paper on defence and security before the last election. From what the Minister has just said, there appears to be no comparable document forthcoming from this Government in respect of the 2015 SDSR. Why is that, particularly when future defence and security strategy is one area where Governments normally seek to achieve some degree of consensus?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I agree that debate and search for consensus are important, particularly as we now face a remarkably diverse selection of security threats. The 2009 Green Paper was indeed about defence and not about security in the broader sense. I remind noble Lords that, in the national security strategy 2010, only two of the eight tier-one and tier-two threats identified were directly military; the others included pandemics, climate change, cyberattacks, organised crime on a transnational basis, terrorism and surges of migration.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, given that the French Government invited the former UK National Security Adviser—now the British ambassador in Paris—to take part in their recent defence review, could my noble friend the Minister say whether the Government intend to invite an appropriate official from France to participate in next year’s strategic defence and security review?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the House of Commons Defence Committee raised that question in its report last year. The Government’s response said that,

“we have already had preliminary discussions in particular with the US and France following our engagement in the French Livre Blanc and US Quadrennial Defense Review processes”.

This question is out there, but to be decided by whichever Government emerges after the next election.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, each night some 500 veterans sleep on the streets of London and towns and cities across Britain. I mean in no way to diminish the importance of the strategic defence review, but can the Minister indicate when the Government will honour the spirit of the Armed Forces covenant and face up to this crisis? Our defence depends on the commitment of the men and women of our Armed Forces and we owe them a duty of care when they have left the services.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I of course acknowledge the importance of the noble Lord’s point, but I merely stress that I am answering for the Cabinet Office and the Government as a whole. We are talking about a security and defence review that involves the majority of departments in Whitehall feeding into an overall view of threats to our domestic and international security.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

The world is a much more dangerous place than it was in 2009, when that report was well received. Now there is a danger of conflict between European Union states and Russia, and there is a profoundly dangerous conflict in the Middle East as well. Surely there is a case for a debate, as my noble friend on the Front Bench suggested. We really cannot carry on as if there were not a problem emerging in the world that makes the world a much more dangerous place than it was five or six years ago.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the 2010 SDSR was undertaken at speed, in the context of a very wide gap between defence spending commitments and the Treasury’s ability to fund them. We may hope that after the next election we shall have a little more time—perhaps a matter of six to nine months—before the conclusion of the SDSR. I remind noble Lords that in 1997-98 Labour’s defence review took well over a year. That will allow more time for the sort of debate about our role in the world, the threats we face and how much we devote to meeting these different threats than we had in 2010.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is deluding himself there, because the driver will be the CSR, which will have to gallop down the track very fast. I was disappointed with the Minister’s response to my noble friend on the Front Bench, in terms of the ability to go out and talk to various other people. Does he not believe that we need something like the National Security Forum, and an ability to talk to academe and experts on military affairs, so as to get an input from all parties, moving very fast? The CSR will hit us and we will have to make decisions about spending that will have a huge impact on the military.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the process of consultation and debate with outside bodies is well under way. The noble Lord makes his points about involving those parties, and I myself have been to see some of them. I was at the Royal United Services Institute and at Chatham House discussing precisely those broad issues behind the SDSR, so the process of consultation with outside experts is under way. I wish we had seen more, for example, about Labour’s approach to defence and security, which might have fed into a more public debate before the election.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords, as the SDSR of 1998 sought to reduce the Reserve Forces, and the coalition’s recent SDSR moved in the opposite direction, if my noble friend is still serving in a coalition Government in the next Parliament, in which direction does he think it is likely to go?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as the noble Lord has remarked, we are in a much more acute security situation, not only in eastern Europe but in north Africa and across the Middle East, than we were five years ago. One of the questions that whichever Government emerges after the next election will have to consider is what spending priorities are, and how far we need to raise the issue of security within that. I again stress that an SDSR is not just about military spending: there are a wide range of other security threats—some very long term—which that includes.

Tehran: British Embassy

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Question

14:52

Asked by

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they intend that the chargé d’affaires to Iran should be operating from a reopened British embassy in Tehran.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government remain committed to reopening the British embassy in Tehran once we have resolved the outstanding steps required to bring the embassy back to a functional level and conclude the arrangements for re-establishing a visa service in Tehran. We are in ongoing discussion with the Iranian Government to identify solutions for both sides.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that somewhat opaque reply. Do the Government agree that the case for establishing, on a continuing basis, a voice and a presence in Tehran is more compelling than it has ever been in the light of the ongoing negotiations on nuclear matters, whichever way they come out? Either they will be successful, in which case they will probably lead to a loosening of sanctions and considerable commercial opportunities for British businesses, with which they will need help, or Tehran will become the centre of one of the most dangerous world situations. We surely need to be there, raising our voice and reporting about what is going on.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I entirely agree that Iran is an important country and an important player in the broader politics of the Middle East. However, the British embassy in Tehran was trashed extensively in 2011, much of the equipment was destroyed and a number of local employees were mistreated. There are a number of issues to get around before we go back there. Meanwhile, chargés d’affaires from both sides are spending extended periods visiting each other’s country, so we are already engaged in a dialogue, as far as we can.

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, the UK Home Secretary is quite right to place an emphasis on visa overstayers being returned to their respective countries and, of course, embassies play a vital role in that. Can my noble friend say what the UK Government are doing to ensure that the Iranian embassy here can be fully opened so that it can help and support the Iranian visa overstayers to return to Iran?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the problems of overstayers are not on the British side. It is much more a matter of the Iranian Government’s willingness to accept people back, in particular if they are being expelled from Britain and have overstayed their formal status here. There is a trade-off between opening a visa service in Tehran and the issue of overstayers in Britain. That is one of the issues that, unfortunately, has not yet been resolved.

[Lord Kinnock (Lab)]

My Lords, in the improved relationship that would be signified by the reopening of the embassy in Tehran, will the Government give emphasis to efforts to re-establish the British Council operations in Iran, which were flourishing and of massive use both to the relationships between our countries and to Iranians? That could signify a really important step forward in the building of constructive relationships.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

As the noble Lord probably knows, discussions are already under way about the possibility of reopening the British Council operation in Tehran. I declare an interest in that my wife is an officer of the British Academy and the British Institute of Persian Studies also had to close. We have to recognise that there are some delicate issues at stake. There is the protection of British nationals when they are there and there is the problem with the human rights situation in Iran which we should not ignore.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord has raised the question of human rights in Iran, will he undertake that the Government, if they do reopen the embassy, will start a discussion again on human rights in Iran and, very particularly, the hanging of underage young people?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am happy, on behalf of the Government, to give that complete assurance. The treatment of journalists, the number of executions and the treatment of women are all very substantial issues on which we will wish to maintain an active dialogue with the Iranian authorities.

[Baroness Afshar (CB)]

My Lords, are the Government aware that the best way of maintaining that dialogue and controlling some of the abuses in Iran is by having a presence and by having students from Iran coming here and students from here going there? It is only through interactive relations that it will be possible to intervene from the inside in the terrible politics of Iran. Standing on the outside will not help.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government are very well aware of that and we are anxious to reopen the embassy. However, we need some reassurances on the return of equipment to re-equip the embassy, the safety of employees and a number of other issues before we can finish the negotiations.

[Baroness Morgan of Ely (Lab)]

My Lords, Labour welcomes the appointment of the chargé d’affaires for Iran as a step towards the re-establishment of full diplomatic relations with the country. Can the Minister elaborate on what assurances the Iranian Government have given to the UK Government for the protection of British diplomatic staff and their ability to carry out work without hindrance if and when the embassy is opened?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Baroness will know that the Iranian Government are not simply a monolith. We negotiate on nuclear matters as well as on reopening the embassy with the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There are other elements in the current Iranian regime which are not as easy to negotiate with or to gain assurances from as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

Following the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, will the Minister also talk to the Iranian Government about the treatment of children?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We will certainly talk about the treatment of children and also about the treatment of religious minorities. We are all aware of the treatment of the Bahai, in particular, in Iran who have suffered very grievously because the Iranian Government recognise only Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism as religions alongside Islam. Other sects are considered heretical and some Christians are also persecuted within Iran.

Astute-class Submarines

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Question

15:00

Asked by

[Lord West of Spithead]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the time to build an Astute-class submarine has reduced as the shipyard has gained experience of building that type of vessel.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Astor of Hever) (Con)]

My Lords, the build time and commissioning for each Astute-class submarine continues to reduce as lessons are learnt. For the first boat, HMS “Astute”, this took 170 months from the start of manufacture until operational handover to the Royal Navy. The second boat, HMS “Ambush”, achieved this in 149 months.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. As he will know, the first build of any class always takes longer. Perhaps he could write to me with the answer to this question: how long has HMS “Artful”, which is the third of the SSNs, taken from laying down to sea trials, compared with HMS “Agamemnon”, which is the one that is being built at the moment? All the information I have is that these lengths of time are suddenly starting to stretch out, which means that more money will be spent. Is the Minister aware that the US is now very concerned that the stretching out of timescales may impact on any future submarines, and worried about the impact on the common missile compartment that the Americans are funding to a large extent, but that we will be using?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I will write to the noble Lord on the point that he asks about. The Astute submarine programme required the UK’s nuclear submarine design build capability to be re-established following a 10-year gap since the delivery of the last Vanguard-class submarine. The consequences are still being felt across the whole of the submarine enterprise. Further improvements are still needed and we are working very closely with our key suppliers to ensure that they make those improvements.

[Baroness Wilcox (Con)]

My Lords, will the Astute class have female submariners this time?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, women officers and ratings will be able to serve on Astute-class submarines from about next year, but this will not be the first class to do so. Seven women officers have completed the submarine officer training course and are now serving in the submarine service on board the Vanguard-class submarines, and in headquarters appointments. Women ratings will commence training this year.

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My noble friend and the Minister have already referred to the positive experience effects that one always gets in building any class of vessel, or in any engineering project, but does he recall that in addition to those effects that one can expect, there was a particular problem at the beginning of the Astute-class programme because of the break in continuity and expertise from the previous submarine-building programmes of the Trafalgar class? Does he therefore accept that it is vital that we do not run into those problems again, and those excess costs and wastes of money, and that this time there is absolutely no gap between the end of the building of the Astute programme and the beginning of the successor class programme?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a very good point. Designing and building submarines is one of the largest programmes, and most complex activities, that the MoD and UK industry undertake, and the noble Lord is well aware of that. Addressing the technical issues associated with nuclear submarine capability is exceptionally challenging, and is reflected in the time it takes to design and build a submarine.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, in view of the vulnerable international situation, have the Government been in discussions with BAE Systems about how to speed up the production of these necessary submarines with Tomahawk missiles if the international situation gets worse, or are we stuck on a timetable that has no connection with the international scene?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, my noble friend makes a very good point. We continue to look for ways to optimise manufacturing schedules. For example, we are introducing new technology to support modular build, an innovative means of testing and commissioning different systems.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, the stretching out of delivery times affects the cash flow of subcontractors, and those difficulties can be hideously compounded by delays in the settlement of their bills. Is there oversight of the rate of settlement of bills and, if so, is it satisfactory?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I cannot answer my noble friend’s question from the Dispatch Box, but I will take it back to my department and undertake to write to him.

[Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)]

My Lords, can my noble friend give an indication of the extent of Soviet submarine activity off our shores and our ability to maintain surveillance?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I am aware of this but it is probably difficult for me to say too much about the subject from the Dispatch Box.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I was not going to ask about that subject but, as we know, at one stage we had 16 attack submarines but now we have six, and that has an impact on antisubmarine warfare by submarines. My question really goes back the build rate—the drumbeat—of these submarines. The drumbeat was extended unnaturally because we did not wish to have the submarines coming off the production line quickly. That means that each boat costs more than it should have done. Is that not correct, or does the Minister believe that we had to build them over that timescale?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right but we are working with industry to try to speed up the manufacture of these submarines, and I think we are being very successful in that initiative.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords, could my noble friend give a word of description of how the naming of warships occurs in the Royal Navy? Contingent on his answer, would HMS “Adaptable” be a possibility?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I wish I could answer that question. For the benefit of the House, I have mentioned the first three submarines: HMS “Astute”, HMS “Ambush” and HMS “Artful”. The fourth is called “Audacious”, the fifth is “Anson” and the sixth is “Agamemnon”. For the seventh, we are still waiting to decide on the name.

Health Service Commissioner for England (Complaint Handling) Bill

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

First Reading

15:06

The Bill was brought from the Commons, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

Warm Home Discount (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2015

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:07

Moved by

[Baroness Verma]

That the draft regulations laid before the House on 12 January be approved.

Relevant document: 19th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 25 February.

Motion agreed.

Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2015

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Mesothelioma Lump Sum Payments (Conditions and Amounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2015

Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers’ Compensation) (Payment of Claims) (Amendment) Regulations 2015

Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2015

Automatic Enrolment (Earnings Trigger and Qualifying Earnings Band) Order 2015

Motions to Approve

15:07

Moved by

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

That the draft orders and regulations laid before the House on 14 and 19 January be approved.

Relevant documents: 19th and 20th Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 25 February.

Motions agreed.

Employment Allowance (Care and Support Workers) Regulations 2015

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Social Security (Contributions) (Re-rating and National Insurance Funds Payments) Order 2015

Social Security (Contributions) (Limits and Thresholds) (Amendment) Regulations 2015

Childcare Payments (Eligibility) Regulations 2015

Motions to Approve

15:07

Moved by

[Lord Newby]

That the draft orders and regulations laid before the House on 13 and 19 January be approved.

Relevant documents: 20th and 21st Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 25 February.

Motions agreed.

Shared Parental Leave and Leave Curtailment (Amendment) Regulations 2015

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Companies Act 2006 (Amendment of Part 17) Regulations 2015

Motions to Approve

15:08

Moved by

[Lord Popat]

That the draft regulations laid before the House on 12 and 16 January be approved.

Relevant documents: 19th and 21st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 26 February.

Motions agreed.

Industrial Training Levy (Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2015

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2015

Motions to Approve

15:09

Moved by

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

That the draft orders laid before the House on 21 January be approved.

Relevant document: 21st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 26 February.

Motions agreed.

Recall of MPs Bill

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Third Reading

15:10

Clause 1: How an MP becomes subject to a recall petition process

Amendment 1

Moved by

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

1: Clause 1, page 2, line 4, leave out “10” and insert “15”

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, it would be an abuse of procedural arrangements at Third Reading for me to go into great detail on issues that we have raised during previous stages of the Bill. At Second Reading, I set out the principles driving the amendments that I tabled; in Committee, my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton set out her views and further embroidered my own; and on Report, we dealt in great detail with the 20 days and 10 days amendment. It suffices to put to the House the bare essentials of the argument.

The Government’s original Bill provided for a suspension of at least 20 days before the second trigger provoked a petition for a possible by-election. The Labour Opposition then moved an amendment—which I have repeatedly opposed—reducing the period of suspension from 20 days to 10. Supporters of my amendment have argued that the Labour amendment in the Commons would lead to a cluster of penalties of under 10 days, even where penalties of more than 10 days and fewer than 20 days are more appropriate. We have argued that there will be pressure on members of the committee from all sides of the House of Commons, and perhaps from people on the payroll, to ensure that decisions are taken in that committee to avoid petitions and by-elections. The committee will, in our view, be transformed from a quasi-judicial one into a political one, where even a lay membership will inevitably be compromised. I set out my reasons for thinking that on Report.

The 10-day amendment, when considered in the Commons, was supported by only two members of the Standards and Privileges Committee and was opposed by another four—if I recall correctly—while a further three abstained. It was opposed by all those on the Conservative Benches in the House of Commons. My amendments, at previous stages, would have restored the 20-day provision that was in the original government Bill. I fear that my case has not been helped by the Rifkind-Straw affair over recent weeks.

Today’s amendment is a compromise—better than 10 but not as good as 20. However, there is ever increasing anger over the fact that this amendment was carried in the House of Commons by Members of Parliament themselves, the great majority of whom did not know what they were doing. The few who have defended the 10-day provision have deployed a new argument, which I will address very briefly. They say that my amendments would weaken the Bill by reducing the number of petitions and by-elections. The idea is rubbish. Indeed, my amendments strengthen the Bill, and I will explain how. There will be cases that require more than a 10-day suspension but do not require a possible by-election. My amendment enables the higher penalties of longer periods of suspension to be imposed on Members of the other place who sin.

Finally, I need to repeat that I have supported recall for nearly 30 years, following my 15 years’ experience as a member of the Standards and Privileges Committee in the Commons and its predecessor, the Select Committee on Members’ Interests. I beg to move.

15:15

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, very briefly, I support the noble Lord in his amendment, although I am not sure that I entirely support him in his argument. He suggests that the very unfortunate circumstances of Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw have weakened his argument but, on the contrary, they have strengthened it, at least in so far as my own opposition to the Bill is concerned. We have argued throughout these proceedings against the basis on which the Government have introduced the Bill. Where people have done something wrong—or, in the case of these two Members, appear to have done something wrong; we have not yet heard the facts or the circumstances of each case—the immediate reaction of the parties will be to withdraw the Whip, which is what happened to both Mr Straw and Mr Rifkind, making it impossible for them to face their electors as Conservative or Labour candidates. I do not for the life of me see how this Bill will operate in circumstances where the leaderships of political parties rush to judgment before they have the facts and remove the Whip.

The noble Lord’s amendment is sensible in that it extends the range of penalties so that the penalty can fit the misdemeanour. By making the range of penalties so slight, it puts the committee in a difficult political position, which it most certainly should not be in. I have no hesitation in supporting the noble Lord’s amendment, although I do not share his views on the wisdom of recall. Members of Parliament should be able to face their electors. However, in the case of Malcolm Rifkind, we are on the eve of a general election, and if the Government really believed that it was up to the voters of Kensington to decide, he would have been able to go forward as a candidate and put his case to the voters. In practical terms, that is not what has happened, and I believe that that would be the case in every circumstance where this legislation may be required, which is why I do not support the legislation but do support the noble Lord’s amendment.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)]

My Lords, I think we are all agreed that this is not the time to discuss recent matters in the press. It is certainly not the time for your Lordships’ House to be apparently trying to make things easier for recalcitrant or erring MPs. I stress, as we all have, that none of us has any time for MPs who transgress the rules or MPs’ discipline in any form.

When we were arguing the case for 15 days rather than 10, it was not a matter of protecting MPs; it was a matter of justice. Things have to be done properly, which is what this House is about. In passing, I will say that I welcome the amendments that we will be discussing later when they are moved by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, if only because they destroy the defence he offered that we cannot change what has been done in the House of Commons. The refrain we have heard throughout the amendments is that, whatever the case, the other place has decided and we must not seek to overturn it.

I know a lost cause when I see one and I appreciate that the chances are that the Minister will not accept this amendment. However, may I suggest to him a novel procedure? Would he perhaps accept the amendment on the understanding that the reason for doing so would simply be to allow the other place to look at the matter again? This is the last opportunity for that to be done; there is no other way for this to be discussed further unless the Minister accepts this amendment. If he accepts my suggestion of accepting the amendment on the understanding that it is purely and simply to allow further discussion in the other place, I give him my personal guarantee—and, I believe, the guarantee of everyone on this side of the House—that when it comes back there will be no opposition whatever if the Government decide to press on with 10 days.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to add just a few words because this is an extremely important issue. I am very grateful that my noble friend has raised it again. The remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, show how complex the issue is, and yet it is treated as very simple. His comments about the withdrawal of the Whip and the inability of someone subsequently to stand in a by-election have not been discussed and fully thought through. I think that that shows how hastily this legislation has been pushed through despite the fact that people have been talking about it for many years.

However, I support the suggestion made by my noble friend Lord Hughes. In all the times that we have discussed this matter in the House, the Minister has never said why the Government have changed their mind and why they are sticking now to 10 days when they thought that 20 days was appropriate. Like my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, I have served on the Privileges Committee in another place. I can vouch, as he does, for the fact that the discussions on that committee—in my day it was under the chairmanship of the late Lord Newton—were never political. Discussions never led to a schism in the committee along political lines. I think that there is a very real danger that that is what will happen if we do not seek some changes even at this late stage.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours for persisting with this theme, and for bringing this issue back once again at Third Reading however forlorn the prospect of acceptance of his compromise amendment may seem to be—and it is. As other noble Lords have said, the issue that it deals with is one of very great importance for the House of Commons. I believe, in any case, that by introducing these provisions for the recall process, the House of Commons has demonstrated a catastrophic lack of self-confidence. Specifically, the means of policing its own affairs that the House of Commons has traditionally used is the operation of the Standards Committee. Through the provisions in the Bill, and particularly through the amendment brought in by the Labour Party to reduce the period of suspension from 20 days to 10 days, which would trigger the recall process, the effect will be greatly to reduce the practical capacity of the Standards Committee to perform its proper function.

If the House of Commons is to rehabilitate itself in the public esteem, it must be seen to be able to take responsibility, and to provide effective means to take responsibility, for matters of internal discipline and for disciplining Members of Parliament who transgress or commit serious wrongdoing. In so reducing the realistic scope for disciplinary sanctions that the Standards Committee can recommend to the full House, the House of Commons has portrayed a lack of self-confidence and done itself a deep disservice.

So I add to the plea from my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside that the Front Bench will accept the amendment simply to allow Members of the House of Commons to think again about this. Very few of them participated. Very few of them voted in the debates. Many of them did not realise the import of what was approved by the House. They ought to have that opportunity to think again, in their interests and in the interests of parliamentary democracy. I think that we in your Lordships’ House are fully entitled to offer our advice to them on this matter. As another House of Parliament, and as citizens, we have an interest in the integrity, good name and good functioning of the House of Commons.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I am very sympathetic indeed to Amendments 1 and 2 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for the very specific reason that I have followed the progress of the Bill throughout its stages in both Houses and I can confirm to your Lordships that a whole number of implications which have arisen in this House were not addressed there—for one very simple reason: all the votes were on a free vote. I am very enthusiastic about free voting in both Houses, but of course when there is a free vote there is not the same guidance from the parties about the full implications of the measures in front of the House—whether it is this House or that House.

I can confirm absolutely the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Hughes of Woodside and Lord Howarth, that this issue of what could easily happen—in the terms that have been so forensically analysed by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours—in the Standards Committee, simply were not addressed in the debate in the other place. I suggest to my noble friend Lord Forsyth that if the recall mechanism was in place, for example, I do not believe that party leaders would feel that it was appropriate to appear to prejudge the outcome of an inquiry by removing the party Whip. I think that they would be inclined to leave it to the commissioner, the committee and then to the recall process—and eventually, of course, to the electorate, as is the intention behind the Bill.

On those grounds, I hope that my noble friends on the Front Bench will be prepared to think very carefully about how we must give the House of Commons another opportunity to think through the implications of this part of the Bill.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I have felt all along that this is a very ill conceived, ill thought-out Bill, and one that does no credit to Parliament in general or to the House of Commons in particular. I have briefly made similar points to those made by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, in previous debates.

I feel that this is such a bad Bill that it is, frankly, unimprovable and unamendable, but I salute the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. He is sometimes a controversial figure but nobody can deny that he is a parliamentarian of real status who is deeply concerned about the reputation of Parliament. He is trying very hard with this amendment and, in so far as anything could improve the Bill, it is probably this, if it were passed, because it would give that chance for another place to think again.

What concerns me more than anything else—I alluded to this a few seconds ago—is the status and standing of Parliament. This great and free country of ours depends above all on two things: the rule of law and the sovereignty of Parliament. In eroding the sovereignty of Parliament, we do no one any service. This Bill is in fact the erosion of the sovereignty of Parliament Bill. This House is clearly not going to stand in the way of the elected House, but it does behove us constantly to remind the Members of that elected House that by their lack of confidence in themselves they are doing no one any service.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, your Lordships will know that we do not support the amendments that stand on the Marshalled List today, despite the arguments that have been made by people who, as I think they all said, fundamentally do not like the Bill.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Some of them have admitted that they do not like the Bill—we have just heard that it is fundamentally wrong. There is another view, of course: that the status of Parliament depends not simply on the good behaviour of its Members but on the ability of constituents, where there has been serious misdemeanour, to hold their Members to account. That is the thrust and drive of the Bill, and it is for that reason that my party has supported the idea that, where someone has been found—differently from the case in front of us now—guilty and sentenced to imprisonment, or it is found by their peers in the other place that they should be suspended for a time from the House, they should not automatically be able to continue in the job of representing their constituents.

15:30

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

I understand my noble friend’s position as leading for the Opposition, but I know of nowhere in any election manifesto or decision where we stand or fall by a matter of 10 days, 15 days or 20 days. The principle is not being attacked in any sense by this amendment. I beg of her, as I have asked the Minister, at least to think about the possibility—without committing the party at the other end to change its mind—of looking at the matter afresh, just to give it a chance.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I am coming to the matter of days in a moment. It is right to reiterate what many people outside Parliament feel about when someone is judged to have done something that even their peers in the other place consider inappropriate behaviour. In most other walks of life, one would not automatically be able to continue in one’s job. Therefore, there should be a possibility for recall at that point.

The second point is whether the particular number of days, which is what we are discussing in this amendment, is the right one. A different proposal was made by the coalition Government at the beginning. It was debated in the other place, although it may not have been debated at great length, and it has certainly been debated here, in Committee and on Report. A judgment has always to be made.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I think that I heard my noble friend say that it was debated in the other place. I defy her to find anywhere in the Hansard report any more than a couple of sentences on the issue of 10 and 20 days.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My point is that it was debated there and the case was made for why it should change. The point I am trying to make is that the proposal for 20 days, 10 days, 15 days, five days or 30 days is a matter of judgment. There is no right or wrong answer. It is a judgment on what is the appropriate connection between a decision in the other place and its Standards Committee and the point at which that should trigger a recall petition. That is a difficult judgment and one that I say needs to be made by the House of Commons, which is where this decision was taken.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Is that not the whole point—that the House of Commons needs to be able to take a decision? A story in the press over the weekend suggested that people should be expelled from the House of Commons for three days for boorish behaviour. Is it three days or 10 days? What about not declaring an interest? Should that be 10 days or should it be between three and 10 days? By having a broader spectrum, it is possible to provide a sanction that will be seen to be appropriate for the offence. Does she see that it is not about whether it is 10 days or 15 days but the spectrum that is open to the House to show its displeasure when Members behave badly?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I do not disagree that it is for the House of Commons to do that, but it has have taken a decision. My noble friends say that the Members did not know what they were doing—I would not make that comment—but they took a decision by 203 votes to 124 that this was the figure that it should be.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

I understand the difficulty that my noble friend is facing, because she has been given a position and she has to try valiantly to defend it, but I do not think that anyone at any stage has explained why 10 days is appropriate. If, as my noble friend on the Front Bench is saying, it is for the House of Commons to make a decision, what is wrong with giving it the opportunity to reflect on this issue again?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My judgment is that it would come to the same view.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords—

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

Could I finish what I was saying? Whatever it finally decides, the point is that it has taken that decision. The argument has not been made to my satisfaction that its view is so wrong and our view so right that it is only us who are right and not it.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My noble friend is very kind to give way. She says that the House of Commons has taken that decision and she thinks that it would take the same decision again. In the figures that she just gave, less than half the Members of the House of Commons voted. Is it not the role of this House to invite the other place to think again in appropriate circumstances? Is that not exactly what we should be doing here?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

As many noble Lords will know, I have helped defeat the Government and sent stuff back where I have believed that the other House was wrong and I wanted it to rethink. We have done that on a number of Bills. We have had victories. We have sent things back and occasionally there has been movement. It is always a judgment call. On this issue, however, my view is that we have the right figure. As I have said before in this House, it is a very delicate balance. What we do not want is such a low number—

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Before my noble friend sits down—

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

She is a long way from sitting down by the sound of things.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

She says she has the right figure. Let me put to her a scenario. Imagine a case of non-declaration of interests that is worthy of a penalty of more than 10 days but not 20 days. I can remember some pretty difficult cases of non-declaration of interests. Are we saying that in such a case we should invoke a procedure which could lead to a by-election that costs hundreds of thousands of pounds both to the political party and the local authorities, with all the inconvenience of bringing in vast numbers of party workers to defend the party interest, because of a case of non-declaration where the Member’s defence may be that they simply made a mistake but where the committee realises that it has to invoke a punishment of at least 10 days?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

The answer is yes. If the MP’s own colleagues—I do not want to use the word “peers”, as it is a bit confusing—believe that the issue is serious enough for a suspension of at least 10 days, they would do so, although I find it hard to believe that they would so for a mistake. That is what this Bill is all about. The trigger may be 10 days or my noble friend may be right and perhaps it should be 12 days or nine days—I do not know exactly because it is a judgment call—but this Bill is about saying that, where their fellow Members of Parliament consider that the issue is serious enough, that is the trigger for a recall.

It is also important that the figure is not so low that we undermine in any way either the sort of normal protest that could happen in the House of Commons or the mistake—although I doubt that it would apply for a mistake—or misdemeanour that so offends other MPs that they take the MP to the Standards Committee. The essence of the Bill is that a recall will be triggered when the suspension is for a certain length of time.

There is another, separate point. Whether the threshold is five, 10, 15 or indeed 40 days, there will always be the difficulty—as happens when magistrates hear cases—where the knowledge that the decision can trigger a by-election will add an extra dimension to the judgments that are taken. That applies both to magistrates in a court case, if it is about whether there should be a sentence of imprisonment rather than a fine, and to those dealing with these situations. That is tough. Decision-making is tough. I recognise that, but I do not think that the number of days minimises that effect.

We will deal later with a very helpful amendment from my noble friend about the Standards Committee, which I hope will address some of the challenges that will be before members of the Standards Committee. On this amendment, the decision has been taken by the other place and I think it is right. I hope that my noble friend will withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the commitment and care with which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has pursued this issue. The Government have of course therefore actively considered it over some period of time.

I have to say that I do not recognise what the noble Lord described as the widespread anger in the Commons over all this. I have just been checking with my noble friend Lord Gardiner and thinking that through. During the period when the Bill has been going through its Lords stages, I have met members of my own party in the Commons and my noble friend Lord Gardiner has met members of his own party there. We have met people from the Labour Party, our opposite numbers and the Bill managers within the Commons on a number of occasions. It is remarkable to me that what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has heard has not managed to reach our ears. It has been relatively public knowledge that we were indeed managing the Bill through this House.

The suggestion that the House of Commons voted on a substantial change to the Bill without understanding what it was doing seems to be stretching matters a little. It may be that this was a catastrophic mistake of the Labour Party in the Commons, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said. I recognise the strength of feeling among a number of Labour Peers within this House that it was a catastrophic mistake by their own party. All I can say is that this has not reached the Government’s ears. We have not had protests, or suggestions that we need to save the Commons from itself in the way proposed.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, talked about eroding the sovereignty of Parliament and how we have again to protect that dimension. However, all those of us who have been out campaigning in recent weeks know that what those of us who are attached to the traditions of the British constitution think of as the sovereignty of Parliament is thought by too many of those on whose doors we knock as the Westminster bubble. We have great difficulty in persuading them that it is worth voting at all. They think that all politicians are in here for themselves. This is part of why the recall Bill has gone through a series of consultations over the last three years and is now going, not hastily, through both Houses.

We have considered at length this question of the proper period of suspension which should trigger recall in this House and in other discussions outside the House. We do not see a strong case for reversing the decision which the House of Commons took on an amendment from the Labour Opposition and, having considered it, we are therefore not willing to accept the noble Lord’s amendment.

The decision of the other place was clearly based on the precedent of past suspensions for misconduct recommended by the Standards Committee. The Standards Committee has in the past recommended 10-day suspensions for receiving payment to ask questions in the House, misuse of access to the House and breaching the Code of Conduct—cases which should undoubtedly be considered as serious wrongdoing. We are not considering cases of innocence or unproven allegation.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am listening carefully to my noble friend’s argument, but surely the Government considered these matters very carefully when they came forward in the first place with their proposal for 20 days. Can he explain to the House why the Government thought that 20 days was appropriate, with all the knowledge about previous penalties imposed by the Standards Committee?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord knows very well that the choice of the exact number of days is a matter for judgment. We recognise that the House of Commons took a judgment on that and we are accepting that judgment.

The question of the role and composition of the Standards Committee is also tied up in this. Looking at the next group of amendments, we will continue discussing the important question of the Standards Committee, on which I recognise that a number of members of this House have served. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for his considerable efforts, which I respect, but I nevertheless ask him to withdraw his amendment.

15:44

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, how can I answer that? I am at a loss. The noble Lord says that he has consulted with his colleagues on the Liberal Benches in the Commons, but I know for a fact that a number of Liberal MPs have expressed concern on whether even they were aware of what they were voting for.

I say to my noble friend Lady Hayter on the Front Bench that many people behind her who support my amendments do not like the Bill. I have always liked the idea of a Bill that deals with recall, and many of us who support the position that I have taken on the Bill support recall. We are arguing about a very small but highly significant detail in the Bill which we believe will have effects which the House of Commons has not as yet taken into account. As I said in an intervention, there was almost no debate apart from a couple of sentences.

I warmly thank my noble friends Lord Howarth of Newport and Lord Hughes of Woodside for their argument that we should just give the other House another opportunity. I am absolutely convinced that everyone who supports 10 days will back down in the event that this matter is put before the Commons. Therefore, although the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, says that he felt that the Rifkind-Straw affair does not weaken the position, it does so in the sense that it has put the fear of God into many Members of Parliament that they cannot meddle with the decision. They would have meddled with it, but they do not want to. That is why that has somehow changed the agenda and made it much more difficult for us to get the amendment through today.

My noble friend Lady Taylor, who spent some years on the Privileges Committee with me, drew on what is at the heart of our amendment. The committee in the Commons will now be politicised; some in the Commons will think, “Well, if we can change it and get more of a lay membership, somehow the climate within the committee will change”, but I am afraid that is not the case. The fact that by-elections can now be precipitated simply by 10 days’ suspension will infect that committee, whether it has lay membership or otherwise. They will be conscious of the debate going on in Parliament more widely on what happens as a result and what happens during the course of a by-election with all the expense involved.

I have listened to my noble friend. I would love to divide the House today, but I will not do so. There will be an incident, a decision and a public row, and those who argued in defence of this 10-day nonsense will come to regret what they have done—and that applies to all Dispatch Boxes in both Houses. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

Amendment 2 not moved.

Amendment 3

Moved by

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

3: Clause 1, page 2, line 13, after “Commons” insert “(which may include members who are not Members of Parliament, whether or not those members are entitled to vote in the committee’s proceedings)”

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, this amendment was born from an undertaking given by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, in winding up in the last debate on Report, at col. 1144 of the Official Report of 10 February 2015, when he said that he would consider my Amendment 6, which dealt with the issue of lay membership of the Standards Committee. My amendment draws on a report of the Procedure Committee on lay membership of the Committee on Standards and Privileges from November 2011. The report states that the Procedure Committee in the Commons concluded that,

“if lay members were to be given voting rights, legislation should set the matter beyond a doubt. The Committee believed that appointing lay members in the absence of such legislation would carry a ‘strong element of risk’, in that it could ‘lead to conflict between the House and the courts and might have a chilling effect on how the Committee conducts its work even before such a challenge emerged’”.

That comment in the report came in response to a Commons resolution of 2 December 2010 inviting the Procedure Committee to bring forward proposals from the Committee on Standards in Public Life for lay membership to be appointed to the Standards and Privileges Committee, which, indeed, is precisely what has happened.

However, the voting aspect is not a new issue for the House of Commons to consider. It was first considered in 1876, when Sir Thomas Erskine May, then Clerk of the House of Commons, argued that it was not an illegal act to appoint lay members with full voting rights to committees on Private Bills. However, since then, I understand that both the Clerk of the Commons —I think in the last Parliament, but perhaps even earlier in this Parliament—and the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege opposed lay members being given the right to vote. I have therefore tabled this amendment to give the Government the opportunity to clarify their position on that matter.

I consider that this is an important issue. That is why I am moving this amendment. On 10 February, at col. 1131 of the Official Report, I argued for a very different approach to the handling of complaints by the Commons Standards Committee based on a majority lay membership—which I support—with a right to recommend, but not vote, and with its recommendations being either accepted or rejected by a committee minority of elected Members of Parliament—as elected Members of Parliament, they would enjoy full parliamentary privilege—as against the majority lay membership. If the Minister has difficulty addressing all the points I am making on this matter, I will perfectly understand if he wishes to write to me after the debate. However, it is very important that at some stage in the near future—certainly in this Parliament—we establish the Government’s attitude to lay members of the Standards Committee being given that right to vote. I beg to move.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 5, which is linked with the amendment just moved by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. I am delighted to follow his forensic and forceful analysis of the very serious issues arising from this part of the Bill and have considerable sympathy with his views.

Ever since Second Reading, the noble Lord, and indeed noble Lords on all sides of the House, have rightly raised concerns about the effects of the Bill on the fragile, non-partisan nature of the Standards Committee in the Commons. I think that many Members of your Lordships’ House remain concerned about that. Indeed, it was a theme of the debate we have just had on previous amendments. I note that a number of prominent former Members of the Commons expressed those concerns, particularly those who, like me, have had to deal with the Standards Committee in a variety of official roles.

In the same vein, and right from the start of this Bill’s passage through Parliament, beginning in the other place, there have been cross-party endeavours to ensure that the process for triggering a recall petition is independent of MPs and is seen to be independent of MPs. My noble friend Lord Norton raised this issue in the early stages of the Bill’s consideration here, and it was the theme of the important report of the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House. In my view, and that of my colleagues across the House, it remains the one crucial weakness at the very heart of the Bill, and it has been the subject of widespread concern in both Houses.

Ministers have been open throughout to suggestions for improvements and I am extremely grateful, as are my colleagues, to them and officials for being so ready to discuss changes that might be made. The Minister in charge of the Bill, Greg Clark, made a promise at the end of the Commons stages that,

“the Government were clear on Second Reading that we are open to ways to improve the Bill and we stand by that commitment”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/11/14; col. 681.]

He has been true to his promise, and there has indeed been constructive engagement in your Lordships’ House. However, I am sorry to report that attempts to find another route for triggering recall that would have obviated MPs and the Standards Committee altogether have failed. We tried but it has not been successful.

In the interim, the Standards Committee has produced an extremely thoughtful, positive and authoritative report on its own future and role. As Members who were here on Report will recall, the report was published that very morning. It is therefore not surprising that few of us were given the opportunity to read it in detail. For that reason, I hope that I will be forgiven for reading a critical paragraph of the report, paragraph 34 on page 40, in full:

“A number of criticisms are levelled at the House of Commons disciplinary system both by outside observers and parliamentary insiders: MPs sit in judgement on themselves; the Commissioner is not truly independent; there is incomplete separation of powers with the Commissioner acting as investigator, prosecutor and to some extent adjudicator; the system is disproportionate; the rules are not clear; MPs cannot get advice; the sanctions are insufficient. It is these criticisms which this Report considers and, where appropriate, makes recommendation for addressing”.

Every Member of your Lordships’ House who has been following the progress of the Bill must recognise that that paragraph and the whole report are critical to the way in which the recall Bill is supposed to proceed; they are vital. That is why we have tabled new amendments to make sure that there is a direct linkage between action that is taken to fulfil the recommendations of the Standards Committee and the implementation of this part of the Bill.

The Standards Committee also says in terms that it needs a more robust, more sizeable independent element. This is why it links so well with what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has just been saying about the lay members. The committee’s recommendation at paragraph 90 is:

“After considering various Committee sizes we recommend a marginal increase in Committee size from thirteen to fourteen, with seven lay and seven elected members”,

thereby building the independent role of those lay members in all matters that would be relevant to the recall Bill. The report, and that specific recommendation, is the inspiration for Amendment 5, for which I am grateful to have the support of my noble friends Lord Norton and Lord Lexden and the noble Lord, Lord Alton.

It is in that specific section of the Standards Committee report that we should be putting our faith, trust and confidence if we are to make sure that the Bill has any credibility in the outside world, let alone fulfils the full obligations of the committee and deals with the problems to which so many Members of your Lordships’ House have been referring. Our amendment would ensure that the committee’s key recommendation was implemented before the Committee on Standards was asked to get involved in this potentially invidious way in the recall process. Alongside the other committee recommendations, such as that,

“the body of any Report makes clear whether or not the lay members agreed with the Report”,

this change would at least be a start in showing that the recall process is reasonably independent from MPs, and is seen to be so.

I hope that my noble friends on the Front Bench will be able to respond positively to this amendment. Although the composition of the committee is of course a matter for the whole House of Commons, I understand that the Leader of the House and his colleagues are taking this matter of the relationship between these proposals and the Recall of MPs Bill extremely seriously. Surely we can now have a firm assurance from the Government that they would not want to see this recall mechanism operated by a committee with an insufficient number of independent lay members sitting on it.

16:00

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I rise once more in support of my noble friend Lord Tyler, having also done so on the earlier occasions when he brought forward amendments designed to improve this highly imperfect Bill. As my noble friend has made clear, the objective has been the same throughout: to try to find a way of removing or at least lessening the involvement of MPs themselves in the processes by which a recall petition can be triggered. That central issue was underlined in the report on the Bill that was provided by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, and that report has been much in our minds during these proceedings. No one could expect to be seen to be acting utterly impartially in determining a period of suspension when a heavier penalty will trigger recall and a lesser one will not.

As my noble friend has made clear, he and those of us who supported the amendment have now taken into account a major development that occurred during the passage of the Bill through this House. As my noble friend reminded us, news of a very significant report on the composition of the House of Commons Committee on Standards reached us on the very day that we consider the Bill on Report. It has now become clear that the committee members believe that its composition should be changed to give equal representation to MPs and lay members. Now that the committee has gone that far, it would surely be sensible to wait until the committee has assumed its new form and acquired the greater independent representation that is now proposed before it is given its recall responsibilities. That is what this amendment seeks to do, and I am very glad to support it.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I argued in the previous debate that surely the way for the House of Commons to re-establish its good reputation is for it to take responsibility for its own self-government and its own self-discipline. I am therefore opposed to the propositions put forward in these amendments, and indeed by the House of Commons Committee on Standards, not only that there should be lay members of the committee but that there should be equal numbers of lay members and Members of Parliament and that the lay members should have votes. It seems to me that those arrangements would not be consistent with the House of Commons taking the responsibilities that I believe that it should.

I also suggest that what we are being invited to approve is inconsistent, first with Magna Carta, which established the principle of trial by peers, and secondly with the Bill of Rights, which asserts parliamentary privilege and insists that the proceedings of Parliament should not be questioned or impeached by those who are not Members of Parliament. It may indeed be the case that Parliament has power to set aside Magna Carta—even in its 800th anniversary year—and that it has power to discard elements of the Bill of Rights. I would suggest only that parliamentarians should draw a very deep breath and think very carefully indeed before they do so.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is always Jacobinical—he has a splendid fury in his reforming drive—but the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, has a profound knowledge of parliamentary history. The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who is not able to be in his place today, is deeply knowledgeable about parliamentary privilege. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, another of the sponsors of Amendment 5, is a very experienced former Member of the House of Commons. I am startled that some of those noble Lords should associate themselves with this kind of drastic change, which, in the present circumstances, when all of us are intensely concerned to see how the good reputation of Parliament can be better upheld, would surely be in effect an abdication of the central responsibility that Parliament has for itself and for its own good conduct. I am deeply opposed to these amendments.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, not for the first time this afternoon I find myself in complete agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. This amendment, well intended as I am sure it is—I have the highest regard for those who have put their names to it—is damaging to Parliament. It is inimical to the spirit of Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. Frankly, like the noble Lord, I am astonished that people whom I regard so highly as doughty defenders of Parliament should in fact be complicit in an amendment that, if passed, could have the effect only of further emasculating Parliament. I also agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, when he expresses concern that the committee in another place should have recommended this lay participation. That is inimical to the whole doctrine of parliamentary privilege, which is of incalculable importance and, when used correctly, is a bulwark of our liberties in this country.

There was no prouder day for me than when I was elected to another place. A number of your Lordships who were there are present this afternoon. It is interesting that those who are expressing particularly acute concerns about the Bill are mostly those who have served in another place. When I entered that place, I felt, in the words of, I think, Admiral Rodney in the 18th century, that there was no higher honour that any Englishman— of course in those days there were no women in Parliament—could aspire to than being a member of a sovereign parliament in a sovereign nation. That we should be whittling away at the very foundations of our parliamentary and civil liberties makes me profoundly sad. I could not support this amendment; I cannot support the Bill in any way, shape or form.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I am sorry to part company from my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport, but I support Amendment 5. Perhaps it is a bit of a selfish reason as to why, which is that it helps facilitate the alternative approach that I put forward on Report. The amendment says that the committee should have,

“a number of members who are not Members of Parliament at least equal to the number of members of that Committee who are Members of Parliament”.

Of course, had the arrangement that I proposed on Report been in place, there would be more lay members of the committee than ordinary members. That falls precisely within the definition set out in this amendment, in that Ministers could actually introduce the scheme that I was suggesting in legislation—or indeed the House could, but it would need legislative support.

To remind Members of what that scheme was, essentially there would be 10 members of the committee, with seven lay and three elected. The three elected members would enjoy parliamentary privilege because they are elected. The seven lay members would be effectively advising the committee. They vote and make their recommendation, but it is for the three elected members to decide whether to reject or accept the recommendation of the lay members. The elected members essentially have charge—a responsibility for approving the recommendations so that they can be submitted to the full House of Commons. For that reason I accept the amendment. It takes us partially down the route that I want to go down, and I hope that the Government, at some stage in the future, will finally select that route.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate—and not simply because it is an easier one to respond to. As I said when we discussed this subject in Committee, or possibly on Report, we strongly support having more lay members on the Standards Committee. We believe that it is crucial for that body to have the confidence of the public, so opening up its work to people who are not MPs is an excellent step towards gaining that confidence. In other areas of life—in the medical profession, the legal profession and other professions—outside independent members are now the norm in any disciplinary process. That gives confidence to patients and clients that someone other than the cohort of those whose behaviour is being judged is involved in the decisions. Indeed, I think I am right in saying that in most of those other professions there is now a lay chair of the relevant disciplinary body.

As my honourable friend on the Front Bench in the other place said, we want to see a,

“radical overhaul of the Committee. That would include the removal of the Government’s majority and an increase in the role and authority of its lay members. We propose that at least half the Committee should be lay members and that the Chair of the Committee should not be a Member of Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/10/14; col. 69.]

It is encouraging that today there has been backing from all sides of the House on the need to move forward in this respect. The Government may say that the Bill is not the appropriate place to make such a change—although I note the astute amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and others—but whether that is the case or not, we are sending an important message that all the political parties are determined to see the Standards Committee work effectively, fairly and transparently, and in a way that gives voters confidence in its work.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for his references back to the historical developments. My brief says that there is a record of lay members serving on a Commons committee as far back as 1836, and that it was in 1876 that Erskine May laid down that while it was perfectly acceptable for lay members to serve on Commons committees it was not acceptable, within the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, for them to vote on such committees. I understand that that is the position that we still hold. There have been lay members of Commons committees in the past and there are now three on the Standards Committee, whose recent report suggests that the number should increase to seven.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, have taken us back to Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and a range of other things. I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that I am currently reading Professor David Carpenter’s very helpful, and massive, book on Magna Carta, and I am becoming a little more doubtful about the beauty of Magna Carta, fully put, than I was. Its treatment of women and Jews, for example, is not exactly in line with modern habits—just as, if one reads the Bill of Rights carefully, as I have also done, one learns that its assumptions about Roman Catholics are not ones that would meet with automatic approval in the 21st century.

16:15

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Oh!

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Yes, we will make exceptions in some cases—particularly for the sons of Church of England clergymen.

Standards have developed and moved, and we are discussing how we would advise the House of Commons and how the Government should respond to the House of Commons on its proposals to move the Standards Committee further. The recent report calls for an increase in the number of lay members—we have had three lay members since 2013—and in their representation as a proportion of the committee. The Government already have a high regard for the lay members of the Standards Committee and appreciate the very important role they play in the work of the committee. The three lay members who currently serve have clearly made a valuable contribution and add an important level of independence to the process.

The Standards Committee report has only very recently been published and the Government have not found time to agree a formal response—the matter is, after all, in principle for the Commons itself. If I may say as clearly as I can, the Government can see no reason at all why there should not be an increase in the number of lay members of the committee, as proposed in the Standards Committee’s report. The disciplinary procedures of the House of Commons are, in principle, a matter for that House as a whole. It is for the Government to facilitate a debate in which the report of the Standards Committee can be considered in detail and consequent changes agreed.

I would urge this House to ponder carefully any course of action that might be interpreted as pressuring, influencing or leaning on the other place to make such a significant change to its disciplinary procedure. After all, we come up against issues of parliamentary sovereignty and parliamentary privilege.

[Lord Tyler]

I am grateful to my noble friend and recognise that he is in a difficult position for the reasons he has just enunciated. We do not want to look as if we are telling the House of Commons when it should take its business, but can he at least, say, on behalf of the Government, that it would be the hope and intention of the business managers for the extremely important report from the Standards Committee to be addressed and, I hope, action taken before the Dissolution of this Parliament later this month? May I appeal to the Minister to ignore the pleas from the ultra-conservative tendency in this House, represented by the noble Lords, Lord Howarth and Lord Cormack, who I think have not read the report of the Standards Committee which addresses very carefully the issues of parliamentary sovereignty and parliamentary privilege?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I also give way to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Can I clarify the position and go back to what I was asking? What is the Government’s position on voting in that committee in the event that it were to proceed to implement the increased lay membership, to which the Minister referred?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am trying to be as helpful as I can on a very recently published Standards Committee report. I remind the House of some of the history. When the Kelly report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 2009 recommended that there should be lay members on the Standards Committee, the recommendation was accepted in principle and referred to the Procedure Committee. That committee, in line with parliamentary precedent, reported that, while there was a long history of non-voting lay committee members, there was also a long-established precedent that only Members of the House could vote. The Government do not see any reason why we should override that long-standing precedent.

To add a further dimension on the complexity of the constitutional issues with which we are dealing, the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege in June 2013 advised very clearly against legislating on the lay membership of the committee. To do so would risk bringing the operation of parliamentary privilege, as it currently applies to the standards and other committees, into question. The membership and operation of the Standards Committee is a matter for the House of Commons and the provisions in the Bill have been designed in such a way as to fit in with its disciplinary arrangements, however they are constituted. The second recall trigger would work in exactly the same way whether there were three, seven, 10 or 15 lay members on the Standards Committee, so it would not be justified to stop the second trigger from operating unless the number of lay members was increased.

The Standards Committee report also specifically says:

“The Committee has said that it will work to implement whatever Parliament decides on recall”.

Whether or not the other place decides to act on the Standards Committee’s recommendations—and, as I have said, the Government certainly see no reason why it should not in respect of the lay members of that committee—the committee’s essential role in holding MPs to account for their conduct will remain unchanged.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, asked me to guarantee in the remaining short weeks of this Parliament that the Commons will reach that decision before Parliament is dissolved. I am unable, standing here, to give any such absolute guarantee, but I will certainly take that back to my colleagues in the other place and make the point.

Having given as warm assurances as I can to this House, I hope that enables the two noble Lords to withdraw their amendments.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I am indebted to the Minister because he has made the position clear. We now know that the Government do not support the Standards Committee’s lay membership being given the right to vote, which brings me right back to my Amendment 6 which I moved on Report, which I now believe is a real option. I was also against the lay membership being given the right to vote informal proceedings, which was what I was trying to flush out, because it makes my amendment more sensible.

All I would like from the Minister is an assurance that the debate that took place on Report, and if I might modestly say in particular the proposal in my amendment, will be considered by the appropriate authorities. I would ask those who are charged with reading these matters in the other place, as invariably they do when we deal in this place with House of Commons business, to read the debate and consider that amendment. I think that my proposal was a very reasonable way to proceed. It would ensure that the lay membership really felt they were making a contribution and it would not take us down road concerning the issue of parliamentary privilege, which my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport was essentially alluding to. On that basis I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 3 withdrawn.

Clause 9: Recall petition to be made available for signing

Amendment 4

Moved by

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

4: Clause 9, page 7, line 19, leave out “8” and insert “6”

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 4 would reduce the petition signing period from eight weeks to six weeks. On Report, we debated the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, to reduce the signing period to three weeks. The Government felt that shortening the availability of the petition to this length of time would make the petition process unworkable, especially for those who wished to sign by post. However, it was clear from that debate that the decision to increase the number of signing places to a maximum of 10 could allow us to consider a reduction in the signing period.

We have listened carefully to the arguments put forward for reducing the signing period and believe that a reduction to six weeks is a sensible and practicable step. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and also to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who is not in his place today, whose amendments at previous stages of the Bill’s consideration have raised this question. Having reflected on the issue, we consider that a shortened period of six weeks would strike the right balance between tightening the process and enabling proper access to signing. It would allow sufficient time for electors to consider the campaigns for and against signing the petition and enable those who wish to sign by post to make an application.

Additionally, the revised period would still allow the petition officer to check and approve postal applications in good time for signing sheets to be issued and returned, including making the important check that an elector has not already signed the petition in person. A further benefit of shortening the signing period, which was referred to in previous debates, is that constituents will find out the result of the petition sooner, and if a by-election is to be held, this would enable the election of their Member of Parliament more quickly.

In considering this issue, we have taken very seriously the views of your Lordships’ House and we believe that the amendment is a sensible improvement to the operation of the recall petition. The amendment has the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for which I am most grateful. For those reasons, I beg to move.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Gardiner of Kimble and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for their characteristic generosity and their willingness to reflect upon the issues that were raised in the debate on Report, to meet me and my noble friend on the Front Bench, and the decision they have reached to reduce the signing period from eight weeks to six weeks.

There were four essential arguments in connection with this. One was that, as a result of the most welcome amendment which the Government themselves brought in on Report increasing the number of signing places to up to 10, there will not be the same difficulty for registered electors to find their way to somewhere where they can sign.

There is also the question of cost. We do not want to prolong this process and its associated costs any longer than is necessary. Maintaining no fewer than two staff, I should think, who will work quite long hours for eight weeks and in up to 10 signing places, with the costs of premises and equipment, will be pretty expensive. Indeed, I would be interested to know if the Government have made any calculation or estimate of how much per week they anticipate this process to cost. Anyway, it is highly desirable that it should be kept to the minimum.

Another argument was very strongly made by my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town that it is most important to minimise the period during which citizens in a particular constituency would not have the services of their MP available to them, whether in the constituency or in the House of Commons.

Finally, what is for me the most important argument is that it is desirable to minimise the period of what I think will be an intensely unpleasant political process. We will see journalistic vultures circling around what they take to be political carrion. As people witness this experience—I hope to goodness that they never will and that the provisions of this Bill never have to be operated in practice—I fear that the unpleasant nature of this political process will deepen the revulsion that many feel for politics and that any gain in accountability will be more than offset by an increase in public disaffection with politics.

While I do not want in any way to be churlish, I think that the Government have perhaps been unduly timid in reducing the signing period from eight weeks to only six weeks. My amendment on Report proposed a period of three weeks and that was perhaps a little optimistic, but I would have thought that the necessary processes could be transacted in four or five weeks. I was unpersuaded by what was a key argument put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, that ample time should be made available for people who do not already have postal votes but decide that they would like to sign this petition by way of a postal procedure to be able to apply to do so. I think that that is a bit of a luxury that is not really needed. At all events, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, pointed out to us in an earlier debate that a whole general election can be conducted in four weeks; we are about to have a general election conducted over a period of five and a half weeks including the Easter holiday. So I think that insisting on a period of no fewer than six weeks for a petition, which would find its conclusive result if only 10% of the electors sign it, is unduly timid.

However, as I say, I do not wish to be churlish and I am genuinely grateful. A reduction from eight weeks to six weeks is 25% off, and that is pretty good. I thank both noble Lords and I am happy to support the government amendment.

16:29

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I think this is a sensible compromise. I, too, supported the view that the excessive period was unnecessary. Once we had in place the flexibility on places for signing to take account of geography and demography in areas such as the one I know and the one the noble Baroness knows, it was a very sensible thing to move. I do not accept that a further, more drastic reduction to three or four weeks would really have been very practical. After all, this is not going to be an anticipated event in the same way that a general election is. There will be an extension of postal involvement in the process, and therefore six weeks is a reasonable period. A further reduction would be wrong. This is a good compromise, and I am grateful to my noble friend.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

I add my thanks to the Minister for tabling this amendment, to which we have added our names. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport, who argued persuasively both on Report and today. Given the move from four to 10 signing places, we really did not need the lengthy period of eight weeks. I hope that, for costs and other reasons, there will now be less need for people to apply for postal votes, and it will be easier for people to arrange to meet one of the signing places. While we would not want to rush the petition, we think that both the MP and the constituents deserve to have as swift a result as possible so that the MP is not taken away from their normal parliamentary duties for an inordinate period, as has been outlined by my noble friend Lord Howarth. We see six weeks as being an improvement on eight and look forward to this amendment passing shortly.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, this has been a short but important debate. I am glad that we have been able to reach what I think is a sensible arrangement, after compelling arguments. I beg to move.

Amendment 4 agreed.

Clause 24: Commencement

Amendment 5 not moved.

Schedule 5: Recall petition returns

Amendment 6

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

6: Schedule 5, page 56, line 41, at beginning insert “(1)”

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, since this is the last group in this debate, I thank those who have taken part for the constructive role that they have played in the very thorough scrutiny that this Bill has had. I was a little upset when the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, suggested that we had done our business hastily. I think that we have done our business—from Second Reading, through Committee to Report, and now to Third Reading—in the appropriate way in which this House behaves. We have met with those who have expressed their greatest concerns on the Bill, and, as the names on the amendment to which I am now speaking show, we have done our best to reach a consensus with the Opposition where they have made reasonable points, which the Government feel should be taken into account.

I am also very grateful that we have had such an extraordinarily good and efficient Bill team for this Bill. Over the last four and three-quarter years, I have met rather more Bill teams than I would like to have done, and on one or two occasions I have realised what you suffer if a Bill team does not do what you need for a Monday afternoon Committee stage—on one particular occasion, the legal adviser had missed the ferry back that morning from the Isle of Wight and we arrived without the full pack that we needed. I am confident in saying that this is one of the best Bill teams that I have had.

Government Amendments 6, 7 and 8 require the petition officer to deliver all recall petition returns to the Electoral Commission as soon as reasonably practicable after the documents have been received. These support the more substantive government Amendment 10, which will require the Electoral Commission to prepare and publish a report after every recall petition. These amendments build on those first tabled by the Opposition on Report, and I welcome their support for our amendments today. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for their constructive engagement on this issue.

In drafting the Bill, the Government have been keen to ensure that we create a regulatory environment that is consistent with existing electoral law. However, we recognise that recall petitions are a new style of electoral event for which there is no one-size-fits-all set of rules that can be applied. That said, we have drawn heavily, as far as we can, on underlying principles from wider electoral law—notably, encouraging participation through proportionate regulation and preventing undue influence by wealthy groups and individuals.

The Government have been grateful to noble Lords for their contributions throughout the passage of the Bill in terms of how the campaign should be regulated. The Government have also been consistent in our view that the spending and donation rules that we have put in place are appropriate to the nature of a recall petition and are fair and workable in practice. We appreciate the desire to ensure that the process is properly assessed in what we hope will be the very rare event of a recall petition taking place.

The Bill as introduced to this House provides for the Electoral Commission to report on the conduct of a recall petition, including how the spending and donation rules work, at its own initiative. Noble Lords have expressed a desire to see a formalisation of this process, requiring the Electoral Commission to report after every recall petition. These amendments will provide for this. Amendment 9 corrects a minor and technical issue with the drafting of Schedule 5 to the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town and I have also put our names to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, on the role of the Electoral Commission. As the Minister has described, the amendments have the effect of requiring the Electoral Commission to take a greater role in the scrutiny of recall proceedings, which is to be welcomed. As a general principle, the Electoral Commission needs to move on from its present position of offering advice and guidance to more specific areas that it is responsible for, and to be held account properly by Parliament for its work in those areas. That is my position, although it is a matter for another day.

The specific amendments address the points that I have argued were lacking throughout the Bill. I am grateful to the Minister for mirroring the amendments that we on these Benches put forward in previous stages of the Bill. The first set of amendments to Schedule 5 ensures that all returns by campaigners are subject to checks by the Electoral Commission and delete the phrase “on request”, thereby requiring the petition officer to deliver a copy of all the recall petition returns when they have been received. We strongly disputed the Electoral Commission’s view that these would be little local events with a local feel. I took the view that that was a silly claim by the commission; we all know that these will be national events attracting enormous media attention. The commission is best equipped to look at the work being done with returns, as it has both the resources and the expertise at its disposal. I did not accept the commission’s note on this when it said that it may need additional resources to make this work. We all hope that these provisions will be enacted very rarely, and I am very confident, as a former commissioner, that this extra work can be done from existing resources.

We believe that these amendments are particularly important, given that the Government have not accepted our concerns about the potential loopholes that have been left open with regards to donations and expenditure received by both accredited and non-accredited campaigners. This at least goes some way towards ensuring that the financial circumstances of campaigns are subject to some level of scrutiny. Although we are disappointed that the Government have failed to address what we from these Benches regard as the inherent unfairness in the equality of arms of accredited campaigners, as well as the lack of safeguards on permissible donors, we are at least glad that we have managed to persuade Ministers that it is paramount that donation returns are checked.

It is hoped that this will go some way to providing confidence in the financial aspects of recall campaign procedures, which we on this side of the House believe could be open to abuse. The Government’s other amendment to Schedule 5 is a technical amendment, which clarifies the Bill, and we support it. The amendments to Schedule 6 require the Electoral Commission to produce a report on the recall petition proceedings once they have been completed. As I said previously, given that this is an entirely new facet of campaigning, I believe that an independent assessment of the process would be greatly welcomed, not only by constituents but by those affected or involved in the process, and by everyone else involved.

In conclusion, the amendments made in your Lordships’ House have been small but significant in making it more workable for all involved. Perhaps the most important inclusion in the forthcoming regulations will be the requirement on the petition notification card to inform electors of the fact that they are signing what could become a public petition. Given that the Government rejected our judgment that this was de facto a public petition, this is at least something to address the issue of secrecy and the availability of the marked register, the details of which still have to be worked out.

Regrettably, little attention has been given to such practicalities or even the principles of the recall process, which explains why so much has been left to regulations —fairly inexcusable, given that the Government have had an entire Parliament to draft a 25-clause Bill. Despite this, the help that we received from the noble Lords, Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Gardiner of Kimble, was much appreciated, and we welcomed it very much. They were willing to meet us to discuss the detail and the principle, so I record my thanks and those of my colleagues on these Benches for their hard work. Also, I join them in supporting and thanking the Bill team for their hard work; they have been courteous and helpful throughout the process.

I thank my noble friend Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town. We were friends for many years before we came into the House—we came in on the same list nearly five years ago. It is always a pleasure to work with her. Her leadership and hard work on this are much appreciated by everyone involved. I thank my colleague Helen Williams from the opposition office for her contribution; though it was behind the scenes, it was very much appreciated by me and my colleagues here. I also thank noble Lords on all sides of the House for their work. We have done our job as a revising Chamber, and I am grateful to everyone involved.

We have all expressed the wish that the Bill will never need to be used. However, it is right that it should be as fit as possible in case it is. The Minister knows that we remain concerned about the possible intrusion of big money into the consideration of whether an MP should continue in Parliament. I hope that he is right and we are wrong in worrying about this. That apart, we have made the Bill a bit better than when it arrived in your Lordships’ House. I hope that it can now be moved on so it is an Act of Parliament very soon.

[Lord Tyler]

I wish to comment briefly on these amendments. Since the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, signed them, I felt it was only right that he should be allowed to go first, but I endorse everything he said; these are useful improvements. When the Bill first came to your Lordships’ House there was a certain mood that somehow we should not be making improvements to it—not that it was incapable of improvement, but that somehow we should not be looking at such internal matters as those with which the Bill is concerned because they are so clearly matters that intimately affect the Commons collectively and individual MPs. I am delighted that through the whole of the debate, at all stages, that apparent lack of confidence in the role of your Lordships’ House has fallen away and we have had very serious, helpful and, I hope, positive discussions about how to improve this legislation.

It would be ironic if, simply because the Bill affected so intimately the self-interest of Members of the other place, somehow we felt we could not take any view on it, when as a Parliament we clearly have to take a view both about the reputation of Parliament as a whole and about the intricacy and effectiveness of individual proposed legislation. I share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that it may well be that this turns out not to be entirely fit for purpose. Presumably, it will be tested when, or if, it is used, and that will be an obvious moment for us to review the situation, as my noble friend Lord Norton and I said in a previous debate. If we had accepted the view that because it was of such intricate, direct self-interest concern to Members of Parliament then somehow or other we had to withhold our views, that would surely have given credence to the idea that the form of your Lordships’ House could not be a matter of concern to the other House of Parliament, which would be patently ludicrous. I am pleased that in fact that situation fell by the wayside and no one has pressed that.

I share with the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, my thanks as an individual Member of your Lordships’ House to all those who have taken such trouble within the Government to try to make sure that we had the best possible opportunities to influence the way in which this legislation came before us. In particular, I thank my noble friends Lord Wallace and Lord Gardiner for the impeccable way in which they have treated us, giving us every appropriate opportunity to try to improve the Bill. It is slightly improved, but I suspect that some of the issues that we were dealing with earlier today will come back to haunt us before too long.

16:45

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, perhaps I should add that it has been interesting that, in the best traditions of this House, the Divisions on the Bill have not been one party group against another but have often been within and across political party groups. That is how it should often be in this Chamber: it is part of a healthy debate.

I have been sitting here today wondering whether the colour of the coat of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, was intended to be a heavy hint at her preferred post-election coalition, but perhaps we can continue that discussion outside the Chamber. I conclude by thanking everyone for the lengthy amount of time that we have spent on the Bill. I commend the amendment.

Amendment 6 agreed.

Amendments 7 and 8

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

7: Schedule 5, page 56, line 41, leave out “, on request,”

8: Schedule 5, page 57, line 5, at end insert—
“(2) Delivery under sub-paragraph (1) must be as soon as reasonably practicable after the officer receives the document in question.”

Amendments 7 and 8 agreed.

Amendment 9

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

9*: Schedule 5, page 58, line 5, leave out “1” and insert “2”

Amendment 9 agreed.

Schedule 6: Minor and consequential amendments

Amendment 10

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

10: Schedule 6, page 58, line 32, leave out “may” and insert “must”

Amendment 10 agreed.

Bill passed and returned to the Commons with amendments.

Counterterrorism Policy: Syria and Iraq

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Statement

16:46

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary in answer to an Urgent Question in the other place.

“Mr Speaker, as the Government have made clear repeatedly, the threat we face from terrorism is grave and it is growing. The House will appreciate that I cannot comment on operational matters and individual cases, but the threat level in the United Kingdom, which is set by the independent Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, is at severe. This means that a terrorist attack is highly likely and could occur without warning.

The Government have consistently and emphatically advised against all travel to Syria and parts of Iraq. Anyone who travels to those areas is putting themselves in considerable danger, and the impact that such a decision can have on families and communities can be devastating.

The serious nature of the threat we face is exactly why the Government have been determined to act. We have protected the counterterrorism policing budget, up to and including 2015-16, and increased the budget for the security and intelligence agencies. In addition, we have provided an additional £130 million to strengthen counterterrorism capabilities and help to address the specific threat from ISIL.

We have taken significant steps to ensure that the police and security services have the powers and capabilities that they need. Last year, we acted swiftly to protect vital capabilities which allow the police and security services to investigate serious crime and terrorism, and to clarify the law in respect of interception for communications service providers.

This year, we have introduced the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act. This has provided the police with a power to seize a passport at the border temporarily, during which time they will be able to investigate the individual concerned—and I can confirm that this power has been used. The Act has created a temporary exclusion order that allows for the managed return to the UK of a British citizen suspected of involvement in terrorist activity abroad. It has strengthened the existing TPIM regime so that, among other measures, subjects can be made to relocate to another part of the country, and it has enhanced our border security for aviation, maritime and rail travel, with provisions relating to passenger data, no-fly lists, and security and screening measures.

Since its national rollout in April 2012, over 2,000 people have been referred to Channel, the Government’s programme for people vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism, many of whom might have gone on to be radicalised or to fight in Syria. The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act has now placed Channel on a statutory basis, and it has also placed our Prevent work on a statutory basis, which will mean that schools, colleges, universities, prisons, local government and the police will have the duty to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. Already, since 2012, local Prevent projects have reached over 55,000 people and helped young people and community groups understand and challenge extremist narratives, including those of ISIL.

In addition to this work, and alongside the checks that we have already conducted on a significant number of passengers leaving the UK, we have committed to reintroducing exit checks, and arrangements to do so will be in place by April 2015. These will extend our ability to identify persons of interest from a security, criminal, immigration or customs perspective. As the Prime Minister stated last week, the Transport Secretary and I will be working with airlines to put proportionate arrangements in place to ensure that children who are at risk are properly identified and questioned.

The Government are taking robust action. But we have been clear that tackling the extremist threat we face is not just the job of the Government, the police and the security services. It needs everyone to play their part. It requires educational institutions, social media companies, communities, religious leaders and families to help protect vulnerable people from being drawn into radicalisation and to confront this poisonous ideology. If we are to defeat this appalling threat and ideology, we must all work together”.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the answer to the shadow Home Secretary.

In our debates on the counterterrorism Bill, we referred on several occasions to the 600 or so British citizens who have travelled to Syria to join the conflict. Each of those 600 has somehow come into contact with extremists and been radicalised. When this Government came to power, they revoked the relocation orders that removed individuals from terrorist networks to disrupt those networks. They took that action against professional advice. Do the Government now accept that the removal of relocation orders made it harder to disrupt terrorist networks, particularly those in parts of London?

Given that the Government advice is not to travel to Syria, we all find it absolutely incredible that three 15 year-old schoolgirls were able to make that journey, taking over 30 hours, without any intervention. When were the authorities in Turkey notified? Was it really three days later and, if so, why did it take so long? What communications were there with the British embassy in Turkey and what action was taken by the embassy to try to locate the young girls? Did anyone think of just checking the bus station? What measures are now being put in place to prevent this happening again?

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, the noble Baroness asked about the control orders. She will be aware that they related to a different time. The threat which has come from people travelling to Syria has gathered pace over the past couple of years. The threat level has increased. There was also concern, which we discussed at length during the passage of the counterterrorism Bill, about the orders being whittled away by the courts. We felt that we needed to introduce a new measure, the TPIM, which is more effective and has a higher threshold. That has been more effective in the location element. On the noble Baroness’s point about the removal of the orders being against professional advice, the Home Secretary discussed the proposal with the authorities before the decision was taken. They accepted it at that point, just as they are now recommending that the measure is reintroduced given the renewed threat that we have faced.

I know that the issue of how on earth this could happen with the three young girls has caused immense distress to everyone. It is the subject of an ongoing investigation. The account of the series of events that is coming from the authorities in Istanbul is vigorously challenged by the Metropolitan Police. It informed the Turkish embassy on the very day that it was alerted to the children having gone missing. However, rather than my going further on that, I would be grateful if the noble Baroness could bear with me in allowing the investigation currently under way to take its course.

16:53

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, apart from physical measures, does my noble friend agree that it is fundamentally important to understand the motivation of young people who are drawn to fight in Syria and to disseminate a counter-narrative to the persuasion to which so many of them seem to be subject?

[Lord Bates]

Absolutely, and that is the vital role of Prevent and Channel. I think it is also vital to engage all communities through putting that on a statutory footing and to engage the religious communities. I am pleased that my noble friend Lord Ahmad is beside me; he is engaging particularly with Muslim communities which are as appalled as we are at what is happening, so-called in the name of their faith, which they have absolutely nothing to do with. We get that message and we want to communicate it to as many people as possible.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

I welcome the Channel and Prevent programmes. Can the Minister tell us what assessment has been made of their success? They are very new and are crucial to change. Do we have inspections? Is Ofsted equipped to inspect such a programme? It is the key to ensuring that our children are safe., and I would be grateful to know whether any of that has been undertaken.

[Lord Bates]

Prevent is subject to the Prevent co-ordinators in local areas. The regional higher education Prevent co-ordinators are run out of BIS. They are in charge of overseeing the quality when it comes to universities. There is talk in the consultation document of a possible role for an outside body to inspect their effectiveness, such as the Higher Education Funding Council, but at the moment it rests with those organisations in the 30 key priority areas for Prevent.

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, while I am entirely sympathetic to the Government’s intentions, does the Minister recognise that some individuals may wish to go to Iraq and Syria to oppose rather than support Islamic State? I am sure your Lordships will be aware of last week’s tragic and comprehensive destruction of the museum in Mosul. That cultural vandalism was accompanied by the abduction of 220 Assyrian Christians, with the intention of obliterating Christianity and the memory of it. It is already reported that some people have travelled to the conflict zone to defend Christians. What is the Minister’s advice for those living in the United Kingdom with family in the area who may be tempted to travel to fight for their protection?

[Lord Bates]

The right reverend Prelate raises a very serious and sensitive point. I would say very carefully that whatever your perspective on the crisis in Syria, our recommendation is that you do not travel. There are other international agencies which are doing incredible work in trying to bring peace and protect individuals and particular groups in that area. We should give them our full support without adding further to the difficulties by introducing independent people into that very complex and dangerous theatre of terrorism.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept that there are many people who are caused great pain by some of the comments made in the newspapers, particularly those who have been responsible for the education of some of these young people? Perhaps he heard the headmistress of the school which one famous character attended. Will the Minister do all he can to stop people pointing the finger at those who have done a job, tried to do it as well as possible and are now left in this awful position of being blamed for something that has nothing to do with them and that they could not have prevented?

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend is absolutely right. I am sure that whenever we see a horrific crime committed by an individual, every head teacher wonders if they could have done more. That is in the nature of the educational professionals that we have.

I am afraid that there are some people who have that sadistic, vile, criminal bent within them. That reinforces the fact that what we are talking about here is not any ideological or religious struggle. It is pure and simple criminality—and in the case of that particular individual, murderous criminality. It is a tragedy for the family and people who know them, but we should not blame ourselves for what an individual had responsibility for and should have controlled himself.

[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that there is something absurd about the security services being blamed in any way for what has happened where people may or may not have gone to Syria to fight for ISIL? Instead of criticising the security services, which have a huge job not only in detecting or identifying people who might be involved in this kind of terrorism but all other kinds of terrorism at the moment, we should be giving full support to them. Is it not completely unrealistic to think that everybody who is followed or identified by the security services should somehow be locked up? There is no prison system yet invented that would be capable of identifying and imprisoning all those who might conceivably in the future be guilty of some terrorist act.

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that when it comes to this, we should pay tribute to the security services for the immense work which they have done. Since 2010, 750 people have been arrested for terrorist-related offences, 210 have been charged and 140 have been successfully prosecuted. It is in the nature of these things that we focus on the one or two who got away rather than the many that the security services have detected.

Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

Commons Amendments

17:01

Motion on Amendments 1 and 2

Moved by

[Lord Bates]

That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 1 and 2.

1: Before Clause 37, insert the following new Clause—
“Exemption from civil liability for money-laundering disclosures
In section 338 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (money laundering: authorised disclosures), after subsection (4) insert—
“(4A) Where an authorised disclosure is made in good faith, no civil liability arises in respect of the disclosure on the part of the person by or on whose behalf it is made.””

2: Clause 64, page 52, line 32, at end insert—
“( ) An application to a sheriff for an order under section 59, 60, 62 or 63 must be made by summary application.”

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bates)]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Commons Amendments 24, 25, 35, 36 and 37. This first group of Commons amendments principally makes two further changes to the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

Part 7 of the Proceeds of Crime Act places obligations on the “regulated sector”, such as banks and accountants, to submit suspicious activity reports to the National Crime Agency, where the reporter has suspicions that a transaction might be linked to money-laundering or the financing of terrorism. This part of the Proceeds of Crime Act provides for a category of suspicious activity reports, called consent SARs. Where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a transaction might be related to money-laundering, the reporter may seek the consent of the National Crime Agency to proceed with the transaction to avail themselves of some defence against a money-laundering charge. Some 14,000 consent SARs are submitted each year.

The National Crime Agency has seven working days to respond to a consent SAR. If consent is refused, the National Crime Agency has a further 31 calendar days to investigate the transaction. While the reporter awaits the NCA’s decision on consent, the activity or transaction must not proceed. The process can therefore unavoidably hold up the financial transaction in question. The consequences for a customer whose request or transaction is so delayed may go beyond mere inconvenience and lead to financial loss. A customer who has suffered such loss may seek to take legal action against a bank or other institution to recover any losses or otherwise to make a claim for damages. While the Government recognise the concerns of customers, we believe that where an institution has suspicions regarding the transaction and reports those to law enforcement authorities in good faith, as the law requires it to do, that institution should not be liable for civil claims for damages.

The UK is obliged, under Article 26 of the EU’s third anti money-laundering directive, to provide protection to those who report suspicions of money-laundering in good faith from incurring civil liability for doing so. The common law currently affords such protection through the Court of Appeal ruling in the case of Shah, which held that while customers can require institutions to prove that the suspicion that gave rise to the SAR was reasonable, provided the suspicion is so proved, the institution cannot be held liable for loss suffered by the customer as a consequence of the institution’s failure to carry out promptly the customer’s instructions.

We believe that placing this civil immunity on a statutory footing will provide for greater legal certainty. Commons Amendment 1 is directed to that end. That immunity from civil proceedings will apply only where a suspicious activity report is submitted in good faith, and those in the regulated sector responsible for submitting such reports will continue to be liable for any negligent or malicious conduct. We will work with the National Crime Agency and the Financial Conduct Authority to ensure that the change to the law does not lead to an abuse of the process. We believe that this amendment to the Proceeds of Crime Act will strengthen the partnerships we have built with the regulated sector and will increase the regulated sector’s trust and confidence in the SAR regime.

Commons Amendments 35 to 37 give effect to a recommendation made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in its report on the Bill. The Commons amendments would in turn amend the Proceeds of Crime Act to give statutory force to the 2012 Supreme Court judgment in the case of Waya. The Supreme Court ruling and these amendments relate to the making of a confiscation order following a criminal conviction. If the prosecutor applies to the Crown Court for a confiscation order, the court has to consider making such an order—it has no discretion. In its consideration, the Crown Court sets a value for payment on the confiscation order at what is termed as the “recoverable amount”.

The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Waya that the duty on the Crown Court to make a confiscation order should be qualified so that it did not apply where such an order would be contrary to the defendant’s right to the peaceful enjoyment of his or her property, as enshrined in Article 1 of Protocol 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights. I stress that that does not mean that a confiscation order should not be made in such cases. The Supreme Court was saying that the amount for which a confiscation order is made must be proportionate in light of the circumstances of a case. It is possible that a court may decide not to make a confiscation order, but we believe that that would be highly unlikely. The Crown Court would most likely decide to set an amount to pay at less than the full recoverable amount.

The current situation is, of course, that the Crown Court is bound by the judgment of the Supreme Court as the superior court. The Crown Court should be, and is, already applying the findings in Waya to confiscation cases before it. However, we wish to make the obligation on the Crown Court explicit and ensure its consistent application. As I have said, that accords with the conclusion of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which said that,

“the Bill provides an opportunity to bring greater legal certainty to the legal regime governing the proceeds of crime by inserting into the statutory framework express language which would give clear effect to the judgment of the Supreme Court in Waya”.

Commons Amendments 24 and 25 make consequential amendments to the commencement clause.

Finally, Commons Amendment 2 makes a technical change to Part 4 of the Bill, which provides for the seizure and forfeiture of substances used as drug-cutting agents. Clauses 59, 60, 62 and 63 provide for applications in respect of various matters—for example, the continued retention of suspected drug-cutting agents—to be made to the appropriate court. In Scotland, such applications will be made to the sheriff. Commons Amendment 2 provides that in Scotland those applications must be made by way of summary application, as distinct from other forms of application, such as an initial writ or small claim. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Motion on Amendments 3 and 4

Moved by

[Lord Bates]

That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 3 and 4.

3: After Clause 65, insert the following new Clause—
“Sexual communication with a child
After section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 insert—
“15A Sexual communication with a child
(1) A person aged 18 or over (A) commits an offence if—
(a) for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification, A intentionally communicates with another person (B),
(b) the communication is sexual or is intended to encourage B to make (whether to A or to another) a communication that is sexual, and
(c) B is under 16 and A does not reasonably believe that B is 16 or over.
(2) For the purposes of this section, a communication is sexual if— (a) any part of it relates to sexual activity, or
(b) a reasonable person would, in all the circumstances but regardless of any person’s purpose, consider any part of the communication to be sexual;
and in paragraph (a) “sexual activity” means an activity that a reasonable person would, in all the circumstances but regardless of any person’s purpose, consider to be sexual.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable—
(a) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or a fine or both;
(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years.””

4: After Clause 65, insert the following new Clause—
“Child sexual exploitation
(1) The Sexual Offences Act 2003 is amended as set out in subsections (2) to (6). (2) For the heading before section 47 substitute “Sexual exploitation of children”.
(3) In section 48 (headed “Causing or inciting child prostitution or pornography”)—
(a) in the heading, for “child prostitution or pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation of a child”;
(b) in subsection (1)(a), for “to become a prostitute, or to be involved in pornography,” substitute “to be sexually exploited”.
(4) In section 49 (headed “Controlling a child prostitute or a child involved in pornography”)—
(a) in the heading, for “prostitute or a child involved in pornography” substitute “in relation to sexual exploitation”;
(b) in subsection (1)(a), for “prostitution or involvement in pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation”.
(5) In section 50 (headed “Arranging or facilitating child prostitution or pornography”)—
(a) in the heading, for “child prostitution or pornography” substitute
“sexual exploitation of a child”;
(b) in subsection (1)(a), for “prostitution or involvement in pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation”.
(6) In section 51 (interpretation of sections 48 to 50)— (a) omit subsection (1);
(b) for subsection (2) substitute—
“(2) For the purposes of sections 48 to 50, a person (B) is sexually exploited if—
(a) on at least one occasion and whether or not compelled to do so, B offers or provides sexual services to another person in return for payment or a promise of payment to B or a third person, or
(b) an indecent image of B is recorded;
and “sexual exploitation” is to be interpreted accordingly.”
(7) In section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959 (loitering or soliciting for purposes of prostitution), in subsection (1), after “person” insert “aged 18 or over”.”

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Commons Amendments 13, 15, 19, 33, 38, 40 to 48 and 52. Commons Amendment 3 responds to an amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, on Report and again at Third Reading. As the House will recall, the noble Lord and the NSPCC were concerned that there might be a gap in the law whereby an adult could communicate with a child for a sexual purpose without fear of prosecution. We responded by bringing forward a new offence to deal specifically with those concerns. I pay tribute to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, in working with the NSPCC to bring forward these changes, which we recognise as being important amendments to the Bill.

The new clause inserted by Commons Amendment 3 therefore creates a new offence which criminalises a person aged 18 or over who communicates with a child under 16, who the adult does not reasonably believe to be 16 or over, if the communication is sexual or if it is intended to elicit from the child a communication which is sexual. The offence will be committed whether or not the child communicates with the adult.

The offence will apply only where the defendant can be shown to have acted for the purposes of obtaining sexual gratification. Ordinary social or educational inter- actions between children and adults or communications between young people themselves will not be caught by the offence, and it is certainly not our intention to discourage the discussion of sexual matters in the context of such everyday relationships. The offence, which will apply equally online and offline, will be subject to a two-year maximum prison sentence. The new offence will extend to England and Wales.

Commons Amendments 15, 19, 41, 44 and 47 are consequential on Amendment 3. Importantly, Commons Amendment 43 provides that the new offence will automatically attract the notification requirements for registered sex offenders under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. The Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have welcomed the new offence and agree that it will help to ensure that young people are fully protected by the law and will allow the authorities to intervene earlier to prevent more serious forms of offending—for example, sexual grooming and contact offending—against children. The NSPCC has also strongly welcomed the new offence.

Commons Amendment 4 seeks to update the language used to describe child sexual exploitation offences in Sections 48 to 51 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. In Committee in the Commons, Ann Coffey MP made a compelling case to remove from the statute book references to child prostitution and to limit the scope of the offence of loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution so that it applies only to adults. Commons Amendment 4 gives effect to these changes.

This Government are clear that children who are sexually exploited, whether for financial gain or other reasons, should not be referred to as prostitutes and should be recognised as victims. The Government agree that such language is outdated and anachronistic. This Government believe that it is extremely important to convey the right messages about the treatment of children and young people who may be exploited or are at risk of exploitation. It is vital that any legislation relating to prostitution should recognise that children who have been subjected to sexual abuse or exploitation are, first and foremost, victims. They should not be stigmatised by legislation which treats them as perpetrators of crime or prostitutes.

This is also an opportunity to remove statutory references to child pornography where they exist and where, for similar reasons, children should always be seen as victims. Subsections (1) to (6) in Commons Amendment 4 make the necessary amendments to the 2003 Act. Commons Amendments 38, 42, 45 to 48 and 52 make the necessary consequential amendments to other enactments.

In addition to amendments to the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the Government are also of the view that we should, in the same spirit, amend Section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959 so that the offence of loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution would apply only to adults. This is the effect of subsection (7) in Commons Amendment 4 and the associated consequential Amendment 33. Unlike the amendments to the 2003 Act, an amendment to Section 1 of the 1959 Act would have a material impact in terms of criminality and enforcement. It would, in effect, decriminalise under-18s selling sex in the street. When considering this change it must be noted that, in practice, children and young persons under 18 are rarely arrested for loitering or soliciting. The Government consulted with the police on the impact of this amendment on their ability to protect children from sexual exploitation, and they welcomed the change. I am clear that this change is fully in keeping with the Government’s approach of treating children as victims, and preventing any suggestion that they may be complicit in their sexual abuse or exploitation.

I hope that the House will welcome the proposed changes in Commons Amendment 4. By introducing these changes we will make further strides in permanently shifting attitudes towards victims of child sexual abuse and exploitation. I commend these amendments to the House.

17:14

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of these amendments. It is helpful and we certainly welcome them. I am also grateful to him for recognising the persistence of my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey on this matter. When he first raised the issue the Government were initially reluctant to take it on board not because they were not supportive of what he was trying to do, which was to think differently around these issues with the child as a victim. Even though the child might be engaged in sending sexually explicit messages or photographs, the child was still the victim. I referred at the time to a case that I was aware of whereby an older man was pretending to be a 14 year- old girl in order to get a real 14 year-old girl to send messages and photographs of herself quite willingly. But she was clearly a victim and was being exploited. We are grateful to my noble friend for his persistence and to the Government for taking this issue on board.

We also welcome the change in the language of the legislation by removing references to child prostitution and child pornography. Both are child abuse. Children cannot agree to be prostitutes. If money is changing hands, it is because they are victims. This shows how thinking has moved on. The noble Lord may not recall but, during the debates on the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, I proposed amendments brought to me by the Police and Crime Commissioner for Greater Manchester, Tony Lloyd, about being able to close down premises being used for child grooming. The response from the Government Minister at that time, Norman Baker, was that the prostitution laws should be used. However, of course, those laws could not be used because the children were not prostitutes. Even though they may have been receiving some kind of payment at the time, it was clear that they were victims.

The only concern I would raise is on the language in subsection (2) of the new clause proposed in Amendment 4. Perhaps further progress is to be made. In the other place we proposed amending the reference to,

“offers or provides sexual services to another person in return for payment or a promise of payment”.

That talked in the old-fashioned language and we tried to move on by including,

“prepares to engage in, or engages in, sexual activity with”,

rather than “provides … for payment”. However, welcome as that change would have been, it does not detract from the fact that the Government are ensuring that that is an offence and recognise it as exploitation and abuse.

We welcome these amendments, which are a step forward. I know that my noble friend Lord Harris would join us in welcoming the support from the Government for his proposals.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I briefly want to say that this is a real sea-change in attitude. I am delighted to hear the Opposition Front Bench because I have, in the past, argued with Ministers on other Benches who could not see the point of changing the word “prostitution” because they said that a crime was still being committed. Everyone now has understood that the language changes the attitude to the child and we are now really seeing children as victims. I am enormously grateful for this sea-change. It will change the way in which young people and children are dealt with. We know that the police have had a huge change in attitude in the way in which they work with these young people. The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children, which looked at working with the police, heard from them on numerous occasions how helpful it would be if we perceived children as victims and no longer as perpetrators of crimes in this sexual area. I am immensely grateful to the Government for this work.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s move in this direction whereby children are regarded as victims. We all know that a 14 year-old can be manipulative, but the important point about these amendments is that they put the onus on the adult not to transgress. In other words, they must make sure that they are not committing a crime and I am sure that this is what the Government wish to see. Putting the onus on to adults who get into correspondence with children is an extremely good move.

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the contributions made in this short debate, particularly those made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. She is right about what is happening here. In some ways, the language needs to catch up with the change in attitudes in society, as was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. We need to do that catching up, but the law also needs to catch up with the technology, as was pointed out by the noble Baroness. We talk about this applying equally online and offline, because sadly we know that more often than not the engagements of these communications have been in an online community, where the perpetrator is not visible. It is therefore absolutely right, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that we should ensure that responsibility rests with the person who is making that initial contact.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, questioned the use of the term,

“offers or provides sexual services”,

in Commons Amendment 4. I have some sympathy with the comments she made, but in amending the Sexual Offences Act we sought to avoid changing the ambit of the relevant offences. The existing wording achieves this objective. I should stress that the wording,

“offers or provides sexual services”,

is used to define the term “sexually exploited” and should be read in that context. With those reassurances, and appreciative of that welcome, I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Motion on Amendments 5 and 6

Moved by

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 5 and 6.

5: After Clause 70, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty to notify police of female genital mutilation
After section 5A of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (inserted by section 70 above) insert—
“5B Duty to notify police of female genital mutilation
(1) A person who works in a regulated profession in England and Wales must make a notification under this section (an “FGM notification”) if, in the course of his or her work in the profession, the person discovers that an act of female genital mutilation appears to have been carried out on a girl who is aged under 18.
(2) For the purposes of this section—
(a) a person works in a “regulated profession” if the person is— (i) a healthcare professional,
(ii) a teacher, or
(iii) a social care worker in Wales;
(b) a person “discovers” that an act of female genital mutilation appears to have been carried out on a girl in either of the following two cases.
(3) The first case is where the girl informs the person that an act of female genital mutilation (however described) has been carried out on her.
(4) The second case is where—
(a) the person observes physical signs on the girl appearing to show that an act of female genital mutilation has been carried out on her, and
(b) the person has no reason to believe that the act was, or was part of, a surgical operation within section 1(2)(a) or (b).
(5) An FGM notification—
(a) is to be made to the chief officer of police for the area in which the girl resides;
(b) must identify the girl and explain why the notification is made;
(c) must be made before the end of one month from the time when the person making the notification first discovers that an act of female genital mutilation appears to have been carried out on the girl;
(d) may be made orally or in writing.
(6) The duty of a person working in a particular regulated profession to make an FGM notification does not apply if the person has reason to believe that another person working in that profession has previously made an FGM notification in connection with the same act of female genital mutilation.
For this purpose, all persons falling within subsection (2)(a)(i) are to be treated as working in the same regulated profession.
(7) A disclosure made in an FGM notification does not breach—
(a) any obligation of confidence owed by the person making the disclosure, or
(b) any other restriction on the disclosure of information.
(8) The Secretary of State may by regulations amend this section for the purpose of adding, removing or otherwise altering the descriptions of persons regarded as working in a “regulated profession” for the purposes of this section.
(9) The power to make regulations under this section— (a) is exercisable by statutory instrument;
(b) includes power to make consequential, transitional, transitory or saving provision.
(10) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section is not to be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.
(11) In this section—
“act of female genital mutilation” means an act of a kind mentioned in section 1(1);
“healthcare professional” means a person registered with any of the regulatory bodies mentioned in section 25(3) of the National Health Service Reform and Health Care Professions Act 2002 (bodies within remit of the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care);
“registered”, in relation to a regulatory body, means registered in a register that the body maintains by virtue of any enactment;
“social care worker” means a person registered in a register maintained by the Care Council for Wales under section 56 of the Care Standards Act 2000;
“teacher” means—
(a) in relation to England, a person within section
141A(1) of the Education Act 2002 (persons employed or engaged to carry out teaching work at schools and other institutions in England);
(b) in relation to Wales, a person who falls within a category listed in the table in paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 to the Education (Wales) Act 2014 (anaw
5) (categories of registration for purposes of Part 2 of that Act) or any other person employed or engaged as a teacher at a school (within the meaning of the Education Act 1996) in Wales.
(12) For the purposes of the definition of “healthcare professional”, the following provisions of section 25 of the National Health Service Reform and Health Care Professions Act 2002 are to be ignored—
(a) paragraph (g) of subsection (3); (b) subsection (3A).””

6: After Clause 70, insert the following new Clause—
“Guidance about female genital mutilation
(1) After section 5B of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (inserted by section (Duty to notify police of female genital mutilation) above) insert—
“5C Guidance
(1) The Secretary of State may issue guidance to whatever persons in England and Wales the Secretary of State considers appropriate about—
(a) the effect of any provision of this Act, or
(b) other matters relating to female genital mutilation.
(2) A person exercising public functions to whom guidance is given under this section must have regard to it in the exercise of those functions.
(3) Nothing in this section permits the Secretary of State to give guidance to any court or tribunal.
(4) Before issuing guidance under this section the Secretary of State must consult—
(a) the Welsh Ministers so far as the guidance is to a body exercising devolved Welsh functions;
(b) any person whom the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(5) A body is exercising “devolved Welsh functions” if its functions are exercisable only in or as regards Wales and are wholly or mainly functions relating to—
(a) a matter in respect of which functions are exercisable by the Welsh Ministers, the First Minister for Wales or the Counsel General to the Welsh Government, or
(b) a matter within the legislative competence of the National Assembly for Wales.
(6) The Secretary of State may from time to time revise any guidance issued under this section.
(7) Subsections (2) and (3) have effect in relation to any revised guidance.
(8) Subsection (4) has effect in relation to any revised guidance unless the Secretary of State considers the proposed revisions of the guidance are insubstantial.
(9) The Secretary of State must publish the current version of any guidance issued under this section.”
(2) Consultation for the purposes of subsection (4) of section 5C of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (inserted by subsection (1) above) may be, or include, consultation before the coming into force of this section.”

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, in moving this Motion, I will speak also to Commons Amendments 20, 39 and 49 to 51. Commons Amendment 5 introduces a new mandatory duty for health and social care professionals and teachers in England and Wales to report cases of female genital mutilation to the police. The Government are clear that FGM is an extremely harmful crime. It is child abuse and can cause extreme and lifelong physical and psychological suffering to women and girls. We have taken a number of steps to put a stop to FGM, including a communications campaign to raise awareness of FGM, a suite of resources for front-line professionals and communities, the launch of the Government’s FGM unit and, of course, the various measures to strengthen the law included in the Bill.

Those in safeguarding professions are of course key to helping to achieve this. There is a striking disparity between what we know about the likely prevalence of FGM and the number of cases referred to the police. We believe that introducing a mandatory reporting duty will both ensure that professionals’ responsibilities in this area are clear and also increase referrals to the police.

The consultation on how best to introduce a new mandatory reporting duty closed on 12 January and we published the Government’s response on 12 February. The proposed duty takes into account the feedback we received from a wide range of respondents, including healthcare professionals, education professionals, community groups and members of the public. The duty will apply to all regulated health and social care professionals and teachers in England and Wales in respect of cases of FGM which either are disclosed to them by the victim and/or are visually confirmed. The duty will be limited to victims aged under 18 at the time the case is identified.

We recognise that some individuals working within these professions may be less likely to encounter cases of FGM and visual evidence in particular. We are clear that introducing this duty does not mean that there will be a new requirement for professionals proactively to look for cases or evidence; they will be expected to report only known cases which they encounter in the course of their usual professional duties. Furthermore, the position in terms of suspected or at risk cases will remain the same. We expect professionals to refer such cases appropriately, as set out in the multiagency guidelines on FGM, using the existing safeguarding framework and procedures. Likewise, the introduction of this duty will not mean that non-regulated practitioners no longer have a responsibility to report cases of FGM, known or otherwise. We will ensure that there is appropriate guidance explicitly to capture good safeguarding practice for such practitioners.

Where professionals become aware of cases, the duty will require them to make a report to the police within one month. As we will make clear in the guidance, this is a maximum timeframe. We expect the majority of reports to be made within shorter timescales. The one-month timeframe allows for exceptional cases where, for example, a professional has serious concerns that a report to the police may result in an immediate safeguarding risk to the child and therefore consultation with colleagues or other agencies prior to reporting is essential.

As highlighted by some consultation respondents, cases will have safeguarding and criminal elements, which must be considered in tandem. FGM is a criminal offence and we therefore believe that it is right for reports to be made directly to the police. We recognise that there may be concerns about this approach and that some are of the view that reports should instead be made to social care. However, we are clear that when a report is made, it will not necessarily result in immediate arrests or court action. The police will work with the relevant agencies to determine the most appropriate response.

In preparing to introduce the duty, we will work closely with the police to put in place a clear system that supports an effective multiagency response. In addition, through the new FGM unit, we will work with local communities and professionals to explain the duty and its primary focus on safeguarding girls and women to help manage any anxieties or concerns which could prevent communities from engaging with vital services. Where a professional fails to comply with the duty, this will be dealt with in line with existing disciplinary frameworks, which may include referral to the relevant professional regulator or the Disclosure and Barring Service. This approach will ensure that the sanctions imposed reflect the specifics of the individual case and it takes into account the views of the majority of consultation respondents. We will work closely with the bodies responsible for sanctions to ensure that due regard is given to the seriousness of breaches of the duty.

In addition to the duty, Commons Amendment 6 confers on the Secretary of State a power to issue statutory guidance on FGM and requires relevant individuals to have regard to it. This will take the form of multiagency guidance for front-line professionals, which will help ensure a more effective response to FGM, support improvements to multidisciplinary working, and promote effective implementation of the new mandatory reporting duty. The guidance will sit alongside existing guidance and legislation on safeguarding, which will remain unchanged and which are, of course, critical to preventing FGM. Commons Amendments 20 and 39 provide that the new reporting duty and statutory guidance will apply to England and Wales only.

Noble Lords will recall that on Report in this House the Bill was amended to provide for FGM protection orders for the purposes of protecting a girl against the commission of a genital mutilation offence or protecting a girl against whom such an offence had been committed. Commons Amendments 25 and 26 are essentially consequential to provide for legal aid to be made payable in FGM protection order proceedings.

Amendment 25 amends Schedule 1 to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 to provide that civil legal aid may be made available for the making, varying, discharging and appealing of FGM protection orders. The civil legal services available will be subject to the exclusions set out in Parts 2 and 3 of Schedule 1 to LASPO. Part 2 of Schedule 1 makes clear that certain types of legal aid services are not available; for example, those relating to a claim in tort in respect of negligence even when they might otherwise fall within the descriptions of legal services under Part 1.

Part 3 of Schedule 1 provides that the civil legal services listed in Part 1 of Schedule 1 do not generally include advocacy, but this is subject to exceptions. Advocacy in the relevant civil courts, including the family court, is already caught by these exceptions. However, Amendment 26 ensures that advocacy in proceedings to vary or discharge FGM protection orders in the Crown Court and the magistrates’ court is also included within the exceptions so that legal aid for advocacy will be available in such cases.

The Government consider that an amendment to the scope of the civil legal aid scheme in England and Wales is appropriate in these circumstances because of the important nature of these anticipated proceedings. Amendment 24, which is also in this group, is a minor drafting amendment. I know this issue was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, at Third Reading so I trust that these amendments will be welcome to the Opposition and indeed to my noble friends.

17:30

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

Before the Minister sits down, could she clarify something about the amendment numbers? She referred to Amendments 24 and 25, neither of which is in this group: they were consequential amendments in group 1. The issue of FGM protection orders attracting civil legal aid seems to be covered by Amendments 50 and 51. According to the amendment list, government Amendment 24 is in group 1 and government Amendment 25 is in group 8.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Baroness is correct.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

So are we discussing those amendments now? Have they been wrongly grouped? Or are the amendment numbers that the noble Baroness has incorrect? Are we, in fact, discussing Amendments 50 and 51 rather than Amendments 24 and 25?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I apologise to the House. Let me clarify the fact that we are debating Amendments 50 and 51.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 5 and 6 in particular. Before I start, let me say that I absolutely agree with the Minister that female genital mutilation—FGM—is a horrible procedure, and it is right to criminalise it, with the severest of penalties for anybody involved. I have seen many adolescent girls and young women whose subsequent health has been affected by female genital mutilation—occasionally resulting in death during childbirth, but much more often in the horrible condition known as obstetric fistula, which I have seen in Africa. I am therefore totally committed to making sure that this horrible procedure is made illegal and removed.

During the passage of the Bill through the Commons, the Government introduced an amendment to make it a duty for regulated healthcare professionals to notify police of female genital mutilation, and the amendment was accepted there. Like the professional organisations—particularly the regulators of the medical profession, the General Medical Council and the British Medical Association, and some of the colleges, particularly the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health—I am concerned about that amendment.

Our concern is about the proposed duty to report FGM in all known cases in girls and young women under 18. That duty will be a significant step change in the law. I am not aware of any other circumstances in which healthcare professionals are required to refer patients to the police without any regard to the potential impact on the patient. That is what concerns me—the potential impact on the patients, particularly young girls under 18, including 16 to 18 year-olds.

Doctors are required to make the care of patients their first concern, but of course they have to balance that duty against wider public interest considerations. There are clear circumstances in which they should disclose information to an appropriate agency. For example, it might be necessary to protect a specific person or people, or the public more broadly, from a risk of death or serious harm, or to assist in the investigation or prosecution of a crime. The General Medical Council guidelines in Protecting Children and Young People: The Responsibilities of All Doctors make that absolutely clear.

The proposed duty, however, allows no scope to consider the best interests of the child or young person. In effect, the duty mandates that the wider public interest in investigating whether or not a crime has been committed would always outweigh the girls’ rights and interests, including those of the individual child or young person. It is difficult to see how that satisfies the proportionality argument or requirement of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It also means that doctors will sometimes be obliged—I agree, in rare circumstances—to act against what are considered to be the best interests of the patient. That is in conflict with the primary duty of doctors.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health also found that,

“there is no credible or conclusive evidence that ... mandatory reporting … better protects children at risk of harm, and its introduction would undermine that cultural approach of risk and responsibility sharing that has been developed in the current system. Mandatory reporting still raises more questions than it provides answers”.

In response to the Government’s consultation, the professions argued that any duty to report FGM should include a “reasonable excuse” for not reporting if it would be contrary to the best interests of the child or young person to do so. Further consideration needs to be given to the position of young women between the ages of 16 and 18. There is no clear line between childhood and adulthood. While under-18s have a different status in law, at 16 it is presumed that young people have the ability to make a whole range of decisions, including about their own care. Discussions about the treatment and care of a 17 year-old may be indistinguishable from those relating to an adult. Particular risk may arise in the context of maternity care, and here I have a particular concern. A young woman may not present to healthcare services if she fears it will result in a referral to the police. Young women who have undergone female genital mutilation as children will be at increased risk during maternity care and childbirth. They require particular and extra care during labour. That duty would undermine the provision of care that might be given to them.

There are many positive aspects to the Bill which I absolutely support. It makes a real difference to the lives of children and young women. This particular duty goes counter to that and I wish there was a phrase saying that in some circumstances there might be a need to protect children and young women. If we cannot change this today, I hope that at least there will be a commitment on the Minister’s part to make sure that the guidance will reflect our concern.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

I wish to speak to Amendments 5 and 6 and hope that, in the further consultation on the guidance, the Government will be able to address the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Patel. I have a question for my noble friend the Minister. There is nothing in the amendment about sanctions for not fulfilling this very serious duty to report a very serious crime, but the letter from the noble Lord, Lord Bates, referred to the fact that the sanctions would be professional and employment sanctions. I wonder whether my noble friend can clarify what that means and say why the Government feel that such sanctions to this new duty would be any more effective than the professional sanctions that already exist within professional associations for the sort of misconduct that we are talking about. To ignore knowledge of such a serious crime is not the sort of thing we would expect of a professional. Some of us feel that overlooking such a serious crime must require a more serious sanction than just leaving it to the professional associations to deal with.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 5 after Clause 70 is clearly a well intentioned measure, but I am concerned that if mandatory reporting of FGM is implemented in isolation it could have unintended consequences. Like my noble friend Lord Patel I am worried, in particular, that professionals will have no discretion and will be obliged to report, even when it may not be in the best interests of the child. The evidence from other countries where mandatory reporting of child abuse in general has been introduced suggests that there could be similar unintended consequences if a duty was introduced for FGM. Most notably: women and girls could be discouraged from seeing healthcare professionals because of concerns about catapulting themselves or friends and family into criminal investigations; professionals may seek to avoid discussions that could lead to disclosure if they are fearful of the consequences; and individuals would be likely to report on any occasion when they come into contact with a girl who they believe has undergone FGM, resulting in a girl being visited by police or social workers on multiple occasions in the short space of time before they are 18, which could be a fairly traumatising experience.

Will the noble Baroness please clarify what would happen in instances where the duty to notify police of FGM is not in the best interests of the child? Surely it is vital that the guidance on this piece of legislation is fully and carefully considered, and that experts who deal with these cases are fully involved. Can she also clarify the intentions for the guidance on how this duty will be implemented, and confirm whether this guidance will be subject to full consultation?

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I add a few words of strong support to those of my noble friends Lord Patel and Lady Howe. It seems that this is trying to deal with the problem after the horse has bolted. As the Minister knows, we argued at length earlier in discussions on the Bill about the need to tackle this matter at source, where these ideas are being pressed—by the leaders and religious leaders of some communities who believe that this is necessary to save you from hell and such matters. To go down this road will be quite dangerous, because there will be an inclination by families and communities to hide these children from view. Not only may they not seek medical attention—that would be incredibly serious, as my noble friend Lord Patel has said—these girls and women need extra healthcare and may get none at all if they are hidden away. But you can also imagine that these children may be hidden away from “ordinary” English schools, because teachers may come to know about what has happened, and these families and communities will be under more pressure to set up separate schools, not integrating with our society. That would be absolutely retrograde to encourage in some way.

Obviously this is an unintended consequence. I am sure the Government’s motives are utterly right and pure, but these things can have the most devastating unintended consequences, and one can just imagine the greater isolation, being kept away from healthcare, schools and so on. These children will be incredibly vulnerable if these amendments go through, and I put on record again that we need to tackle FGM—and my goodness, we need to tackle it—at source. It is probably far too late in the day, but really it is the community and religious leaders who need to be stopped when they are preaching non-authentic Hadith and pressing for FGM on that unauthentic basis. Even at this late stage I plead with the Minister to take a step back and think whether this is the right way forward. I profoundly believe it is not. The most eminent QC in this country, Dexter Dias, who knows about these things, would say the same. Go to the community and religious leaders; do not try and deal with this after the event when these children have already been tortured.

17:44

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Bates, knows, I have taken a great interest in this subject. I am in favour of the Government taking every action they can, but having listened to my noble friends on these Benches, I have to say that we should row back from this new clause. As I listened to my noble friend Lord Patel, I could imagine the circumstances of a seriously ill child whose parents knew that if they took her to a hospital and she was examined, they would be putting themselves at risk. As we have heard, we could be creating an even worse situation. We have to try to seize the whole problem of FGM, but it must be done at an earlier stage. I have suggested before that if there is to be anything mandatory, perhaps it must be examination at a much earlier stage, but that is another matter.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I found this quite extraordinary when I read about it in the newspapers. That is not because I do not think that the Government should be taking a strong line—I admire that—and not because we need to take action against FGM—many of us have spoken about it—but because we had an in-depth debate in which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and I held slightly different views about mandatory reporting. When we looked at mandatory reporting in its broader sense, it was clear that the differences between us were all about unintended consequences and not having thought through the issue from beginning to end. I was under the impression that mandatory reporting was to be taken away and there would be an in-depth look at the issue with a different sort of consultation, after which we would come at it again. FGM is at the most complicated end of mandatory reporting, as we have heard from my noble friends, so I had assumed that it would be included in that further debate. I am surprised that the provision has been brought forward in this way, even though most of us would want any possible action taken to prevent FGM.

My final point is that this clause cuts across the basic principle that the child’s needs are paramount, something which is repeated in all our children’s legislation. Here, the child’s needs are no longer paramount—the community wish to take action becomes paramount. I hope that this will be taken away and looked at again in relation to the arguments which have been made.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, what is always clear when we debate FGM issues is how complex they are. I think that the law of unintended consequences has been discussed throughout our debates. I have just read again the letter from the Minister, Karen Bradley, to Seema Malhotra MP setting out why the Government have brought this new clause forward. A consultation was held on 5 December on how to introduce mandatory reporting for FGM. As other noble Lords have said, it is a little strange that we did not have the benefit of that consultation when we held our previous discussions. It would have been helpful to have the consultation and the Government’s response, but they were not made available to us, although the other place did have the benefit of seeing them when it discussed these issues.

The purport of the amendments which have been put forward in your Lordships’ House on this issue is not just to deal with the problem afterwards, but to prevent it happening in the first place. It is also about sending a strong message that FGM is something we cannot tolerate at all. I have some concerns about mandatory reporting, but it is to be hoped that they can be addressed in the guidance and the review process. I think it is clear that we need to ensure that where health professionals are aware of instances of FGM, they should report them so that action, whether that be medical or legal, can be taken. The concerns which have been raised are ones that the Government will want to address when they are considering the guidance. If they find that there is any evidence of women not presenting to medical practitioners for care during pregnancy, it should be examined.

[Baroness Meacher]

I just want to check whether the noble Baroness agrees that reporting to the police could actually deter families from taking these children to the health services. In saying that reporting needs to happen, I am very worried if this goes to the police.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

I am not sure that I accept that a family whose daughter had undergone FGM and became seriously ill would not want that to be dealt with. It is quite a big jump to make, to put pressure on a family in that way. The noble Baroness says that they will not, but if that becomes evident, the Government will have to look. As I said, I have slightly conflicted views on this, but the House of Commons, I am sure, had the benefit of the consultation—although that was slightly split. I look forward to the response from the noble Baroness the Minister.

I come back to the point on legal aid. One issue that I raised with the Minister in earlier debates was whether legal aid would be available for FGM orders. At that time, she was unable to confirm that they would. We raised the point that without such legal aid, which is available for forced marriage orders, there would be no FGM orders. The point about prevention, which the noble Baroness made, is that unless you have the orders, there is not going to be prevention of FGM. We have had several conversations; the noble Baroness promised to write to me on several occasions, and I think she was frustrated that no correspondence was forthcoming. I am pleased now that the Government have confirmed that legal aid will be available for FGM orders. So we support the new clause, but I would be grateful if she could address some of the points raised in this debate, because justified concerns have been raised. That does not take away from the fact that the whole purpose of this is to try to prevent FGM from ever occurring and women from suffering such abuse.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, it is probably best to start with the point that not only is FGM illegal but it has been illegal for 30 years, and that all healthcare professionals—indeed, all professionals —who come into contact with children have a general safeguarding duty to those children. That is the underlying issue within the law, and it has been so, as I said, for three decades. As noble Lords have said, FGM is a terribly complex issue, and there are things beyond the law that we also need to do in terms of changing the culture and the practice of FGM.

I will start with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Patel. The mandatory duty to report has actually received support from organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives, but the noble Lord pointed out the concerns raised by the BMA. It has actually been supportive of the majority of the FGM measures in the Bill but it has highlighted some concerns in respect of the mandatory reporting duty, particularly what it means for victims. The Government appreciate that introducing a mandatory reporting duty will impact on many different sectors, and we recognise that this is very complex. However, we believe that it will be an important step forward in tackling FGM.

FGM is already a hidden crime, and introducing a clear mandatory duty will provide clarity for professionals on their responsibilities to report to the police. It will also lessen the onus on the girls to report FGM by putting responsibility on those whose job it is to safeguard girls who have been victims of what is a crime and what is child abuse. Of course, we recognise that there are existing legal and professional responsibilities in relation to safeguarding, and the new duty will have to be seen in the context of the existing statutory guidance—for example, Working Together to Safeguard Children.

Some concern has been expressed that the duty may act as a barrier to individuals accessing healthcare services. The Government recognise this risk, which is why we are clear that there will be no requirement for professionals to work outside their usual professional duties to actively seek out cases of FGM. We have focused the duty on known cases of FGM rather than suspected ones, and the new FGM unit working with government departments is conducting a programme of outreach with professionals and front-line communities, which will explain how the new duty, in tandem with other government reforms, will work in practice. We are also updating the multiagency guidelines on FGM and putting them on a statutory basis to support effective implementation of the duty.

There were also concerns about cases being referred to the police and the fear that this may act as a further deterrent to individuals accessing services. The Government have carefully considered the options for when referrals should be made, and we recognise that cases have both a criminal and a safeguarding element. FGM is a criminal offence and we therefore believe that the most appropriate reporting route is via the police. However, I reassure noble Lords that a report to the police will not necessarily immediately trigger a criminal investigation: when a report is made, the police will work with the relevant agencies to determine the most appropriate course of action. In preparing to introduce the duty, we will work closely with the police to ensure that a clear reporting system is in place prior to its introduction. In addition, we will have ensured that there is a reasonable timeframe within which professionals are required to make the report to the police, to allow time for consultation with other agencies in sensitive or complex cases.

Finally, I confirm that the Government will ensure that there is adequate time for consultation with stakeholders prior to the introduction of statutory guidance.

I again apologise to the House for the confusion about the provisions relating to legal aid. The relevant amendments in this group are indeed Commons Amendments 50 and 51. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked what legal aid will be available for orders made in criminal proceedings. The Commons amendments make civil legal aid available for victims and third parties who may wish to apply, vary or discharge an FGM protection order.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

The noble Baroness is aware that the orders are not based on criminal proceedings; they are civil orders. The confusion was caused because the Government have placed a civil provision within the criminal law, whereas our proposal was for a civil provision, wholly within civil law. I think that is what, partly, created the confusion around legal aid. It is purely a civil matter, although it sits within criminal legislation.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Baroness for clarifying that. I think I referred to this in my introduction, but the Government have made some quite tough choices in deciding which matters would remain in scope of legal aid. The ministry took account of the importance of the issues at stake, the individual’s ability to present their own case and the availability of alternative sources of funding. Legal aid continues to be available in the most serious of cases, for example where people’s life or liberty is at stake or where their children may be taken into care. Legal aid is available where not providing it would be likely to result in a breach of the individual’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights or European law. I confirmed in my remarks at the beginning that civil legal aid will be provided.

My noble friend Lady Walmsley asked about the progress of the consultation on whether to introduce a more general duty to report suspected abuse of children and vulnerable adults. As my noble friend will know, following the earlier debates on the Bill in the House the Government committed to undertake such a consultation, and the outcome of that consultation will be reported on within 18 months of Royal Assent.

My noble friend also asked about sanctions for failing to report cases of FGM. The proposal will use existing disciplinary frameworks to consider sanctions. Given that in health these may include General Medical Council and Nursing and Midwifery Council fitness to practise proceedings, there can be a wide variety of recommendations made as to suitable action, which may include retraining, supervision or other measures.

18:00

The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, made a very good point about legislation not always being the answer, and I think I covered that in my earlier remarks. It is around changing the culture, raising awareness and improving training for professionals, and people being aware that this is—and has been for so many years—a criminal offence.

[Lord Patel]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister. She repeated that it has been a criminal offence for 30 years and I absolutely agree. However, what has been a criminal offence for 30 years is to perform female genital mutilation, and we have failed to prosecute anybody for doing so. This might be a means to provide encouragement when a prosecution does come along, but we have to be aware, as my noble friend Lady Howe said, that there are serious things that may happen because of the amendment. If this amendment had already been in the Bill, we would have explored it in Committee in great depth. I am encouraged that the Minister says the guidance in the consultation will be wider. I hope that in the formulation of the consultation document, the noble Baroness and Ministers will also consult the professionals and teachers. It is not only the British Medical Association that did not like this amendment; it is also the General Medical Council, which is the regulator. If I do not report a case, I am breaking the law after this legislation, the General Medical Council will be obliged to investigate me and it might be to the point that it removes my licence to practise—I am temporarily still licensed to practise though maybe not for long. Therefore, it is a serious amendment to address.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Lord and pay tribute to his years and years of experience, of which I have none. I take his point that although it has been a criminal offence for 30 years, there have not been any prosecutions brought. This legislation has not come without extensive consultation with a variety of different stakeholders or without raising awareness within the population as a whole—that is why the Girl Summit sought to raise awareness. The noble Lord is absolutely right: it will not be done by legislation alone.

The consultation will involve a wide range of stakeholders. What we had before was certainly not perfect or else we would not be revisiting it 30 years later. We can only hope that, by raising awareness, trying to change culture and putting in place the various measures that we have, we will actually get to a better place for these girls in the future. We are going to watch progress as time goes on.

I will just mention to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, that we received 150 responses from a wide range of different areas when the consultation closed on 12 January and we have had various workshops with healthcare professionals. I hope that gives him some comfort regarding the Government’s intention.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down—I was waiting in case she covered an area which I think may be important—can she confirm to the House that the guidance about the investigation of a reported case will include the ability to see whether it may be an index case in an area where FGM is being promoted, so that the prevention aspect of discovering one case can be built in and built on so that the community at risk is actively targeted with education and support to try to ensure that the girls at risk who are not yet subject to FGM are more adequately protected?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I do not know the ins and outs of particular cases, but I see where the noble Baroness is coming from, which is that there may be learning about raising awareness in the communities involved. She certainly has a point, but perhaps I could write to her in due course.

Motion agreed.

Motion on Amendments 7 and 8

Moved by

[Lord Bates]

That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 7 and 8.

7: After Clause 70, insert the following new Clause—
“Controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship
(1) A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a) A repeatedly or continuously engages in behaviour towards another person (B) that is controlling or coercive,
(b) at the time of the behaviour, A and B are personally connected, (c) the behaviour has a serious effect on B, and
(d) A knows or ought to know that the behaviour will have a serious effect on B.
(2) A and B are “personally connected” if—
(a) A is in an intimate personal relationship with B, or
(b) A and B live together and—
(i) they are members of the same family, or
(ii) they have previously been in an intimate personal relationship with each other.
(3) But A does not commit an offence under this section if at the time of the behaviour in question—
(a) A has responsibility for B, for the purposes of Part 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 (see section 17 of that Act), and
(b) B is under 16.
(4) A’s behaviour has a “serious effect” on B if—
(a) it causes B to fear, on at least two occasions, that violence will be used against B, or
(b) it causes B serious alarm or distress which has a substantial adverse effect on B’s usual day-to-day activities.
(5) For the purposes of subsection (1)(d) A “ought to know” that which a reasonable person in possession of the same information would know.
(6) For the purposes of subsection (2)(b)(i) A and B are members of the same family if—
(a) they are, or have been, married to each other;
(b) they are, or have been, civil partners of each other; (c) they are relatives;
(d) they have agreed to marry one another (whether or not the agreement has been terminated);
(e) they have entered into a civil partnership agreement (whether or not the agreement has been terminated);
(f) they are both parents of the same child;
(g) they have, or have had, parental responsibility for the same child.
(7) In subsection (6)—
“civil partnership agreement” has the meaning given by section 73 of the Civil Partnership Act 2004;
“child” means a person under the age of 18 years;
“parental responsibility” has the same meaning as in the Children Act 1989;
“relative” has the meaning given by section 63(1) of the Family Law Act 1996.
(8) In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence for A to show that—
(a) in engaging in the behaviour in question, A believed that he or she was acting in B’s best interests, and
(b) the behaviour was in all the circumstances reasonable.
(9) A is to be taken to have shown the facts mentioned in subsection (8) if— (a) sufficient evidence of the facts is adduced to raise an issue with respect to them, and
(b) the contrary is not proved beyond reasonable doubt.
(10) The defence in subsection (8) is not available to A in relation to behaviour that causes B to fear that violence will be used against B.
(11) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable—
(a) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years, or a fine, or both;
(b) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or a fine, or both.”

8: After Clause 70, insert the following new Clause—
“Guidance
(1) The Secretary of State may issue guidance about the investigation of offences under section (Controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship) to whatever persons the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(2) The Secretary of State may revise any guidance issued under this section. (3) The Secretary of State must arrange for any guidance issued or revised under this section to be published.”

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Commons Amendments 17 and 21.

We can all agree that domestic abuse is a serious and pervasive crime; a point well made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, on Report. It is shocking that in the past year more than 2 million people in England and Wales were abused by those closest to them, and even more shocking that 85 women were murdered by a current or former partner.

However, comparing those figures to the number of people who reach out for help and access the criminal justice system shows that, despite prosecution and conviction figures reaching their highest ever levels under this Government, domestic abuse is still vastly underreported. A stark comparison of crime survey and Crown Prosecution Service figures suggests that just one in 20 of those abused by their families and partners have access to justice.

The sad fact is that we are still grappling with a reality where many people think a crime has been committed in a relationship only if violence is involved. Even the courts have taken the view that stalking and harassment legislation does not apply in ongoing relationships where abuse is interspersed with periods of affection. That rules out those cases of domestic abuse where controlling and manipulative perpetrators play on the affection of their partners or family members to avoid detection.

The Government understand that coercive and controlling behaviour can be harder to recognise, but can be every bit as damaging to its victims as physical violence. To quote one victim of domestic abuse who responded to our consultation,

“my bruises faded, but the psychological scars didn’t”.

In recognition of the harm that coercive and controlling behaviour can do, the Government have expanded the non-statutory definition of domestic violence and abuse to send a clear message that abuse is more than just physical. Last summer, we ran a consultation to ask whether the law also needs to be strengthened to provide better protection to victims of domestic abuse. Eighty-five per cent of respondents told us that the law needs to be strengthened; 55% highlighted the need for a new offence to make sure that a person causing someone they are in a relationship with to live in constant fear faces justice for their actions.

Commons Amendment 7 provides for just such an offence. The new offence makes it clear that abusing someone in a relationship is every bit as serious as stalking or harassing a stranger. It applies to repeated or continuous behaviour in relationships which, when incidents are viewed in isolation, may appear unexceptional, but has a significant cumulative impact on the victim’s everyday life. It causes them to feel fear, alarm or distress.

When I first spoke on this issue in the House last year, I said that legislation on this issue must be approached judiciously. I stand by that. There is a balance to be struck. Every relationship has its own power dynamics and this is not about outlawing arguments or saying that couples cannot disagree. It must be clear that the new offence does not apply to volatile relationships which stop short of being abusive. To capture this balance, key elements of the new offence are the need to establish the repeated or continuous nature of the behaviour and the ability of a reasonable person, whether part of or external to the relationship, to appreciate that the behaviour will have a serious effect on its victim.

We have made sure that the new offence does not duplicate existing criminal law. Child abuse does not fall into the ambit of the new offence because it is covered by existing offences. Nor does the new offence apply to extended family members who have never lived with the victim, because stalking legislation would capture those circumstances.

We must also be on our guard against the application of the new offence in circumstances where control may be necessary to secure a loved one’s safety. For example, I am sure that none of us would want to see the spouse of a person struck by mental illness imprisoned for medicating them or protecting them from situations which may cause them harm. I am equally sure that we would not want to see the parents of an unruly teenager convicted for proportionately curbing the behaviour of their wayward child. That is why we have included a defence in the framework.

Of course, we also need to be sure that manipulative perpetrators cannot use the defence to escape justice. To address this, the defence will not be available where the victim has been caused to fear violence. To rely on the defence, a defendant will need to show that a reasonable person would agree that their behaviour was reasonable in all the circumstances. This is not an easy test to meet if you have perpetrated a campaign of control against another person.

The maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment for the new offence recognises the damage that coercive or controlling behaviour can do to its victims and is commensurate with the maximum penalty for stalking. Of course, the new offence cannot be implemented without an effective police response, so the work that the Home Secretary is doing to drive improvements through her national oversight group on domestic abuse remains as high a priority as ever.

The new offence, together with the guidance for investigators provided for in Commons Amendment 8, will make it easier for the police to protect victims and bring those who abuse them to justice. This will send a clear message that domestic abuse in all its forms will not be tolerated in our society. Commons Amendments 17 and 21 are consequential on Amendments 7 and 8. I beg to move.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, I welcome these amendments. As a long-term patron of Basildon Women’s Aid, for over 20 years, I am very much aware that coercive and intimidating behaviour is often a precursor to violent behaviour. I have spoken to women and found that it can start with, “Oh, I like to see you in that dress”. In one case, it went from what somebody wore and whether they wore make-up through to, if they even washed, they were seen as trying to attract other men, and that then led to violence. It can start very simply with what somebody wears or make-up and end in violent behaviour.

Not only does the amendment recognise that controlling or coercive behaviour in such relationships is dangerous, it could also be a preventive measure, because it could nip the problem in the bud before it gets to violent and more abusive behaviour. The amendment recognises how dangerous such controlling behaviour is. Even if it does not lead to violent behaviour, controlling behaviour is dangerous and corrosive to the individual. That is recognised in the courts already. Ongoing, day-in, day-out controlling behaviour has led to cases where the woman being victimised has turned on and been violent towards the perpetrator of such behaviour. The courts have now recognised that slow-burn behaviour. Intimidation has consequences, so the amendment is very welcome.

The Minister talked about the effective police response. Passing a law does not, on its own, make something happen, and he recognised that. In my area, the number of police officers and the pressure that they are under has an impact on the police’s ability to investigate and act on such issues. Too often, domestic violence can, as the noble Lord and the Home Secretary have recognised, come further down the list of priorities. I hope that, when the Government examine how successful this is, they also look at the resources that are available for the police to take the action that is needed.

18:15

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for welcoming the amendment and for her additional emphasis on the point that this could be seen as a preventive measure. That is absolutely right and I hope that that will be the case.

On the noble Baroness’s specific point, the Home Secretary has not shied away from the fact that the police need to do more. That is why she has launched the review by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary on the police response to domestic abuse. That report identified that police practice in using the current law is inadequate. The chief inspector also highlighted failures in leadership that mean that strategic priorities are not being realised in front-line policing and there is a front-line culture in which domestic abuse is often not regarded as a serious crime. The Government are clear that this is not good enough. Lasting, meaningful improvement must happen now; and to make sure that change happens, the Home Secretary has established and is chairing the new national oversight group. This work is the Government’s main priority on domestic abuse and will lead directly to better protection of victims. However, in addition to important operational improvements, the new offence will strengthen the protection available to victims trapped in cycles of abuse and help front-line agencies provide a better response to this serious crime. I appreciate the cross-party support on this issue.

Motion agreed.

Motion on Amendments 9 and 10

Moved by

[Lord Bates]

That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 9 and 10.

9: After Clause 71, insert the following new Clause—
“Throwing articles into prisons
After section 40CA of the Prison Act 1952 (inserted by section 71 above) insert—
“40CB Throwing articles into prison
(1) A person who, without authorisation, throws any article or substance into a prison is guilty of an offence.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1)—
(a) the reference to an article or substance does not include a reference to a List A article, a List B article or a List C article (as defined by section 40A);
(b) the reference to “throwing” an article or substance into a prison includes a reference to doing anything from outside the prison that results in the article or substance being projected or conveyed over or through a boundary of the prison so as to land inside the prison.
(3) In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence for the accused to show that—
(a) he reasonably believed that he had authorisation to do the act in respect of which the proceedings are brought, or
(b) in all the circumstances there was an overriding public interest which justified the doing of that act.
(4) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—
(a) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to a fine (or both);
(b) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or to a fine (or both).
(5) In this section “authorisation” means authorisation given for the purposes of this section; and subsections (1) to (3) of section 40E apply in relation to authorisations so given as they apply to authorisations given for the purposes of section 40D.””

10: After Clause 71, insert the following new Clause—
“Prevention or restriction of use of communication devices by prisoners etc
(1) Regulations may make provision conferring power on a court to make a telecommunications restriction order.
(2) “Telecommunications restriction order” means an order requiring a communications provider to take whatever action the order specifies for the purpose of preventing or restricting the use of communication devices by persons detained in custodial institutions.
(3) Regulations under this section must—
(a) specify who may apply for telecommunications restriction orders;
(b) make provision about giving notice of applications;
(c) make provision conferring rights on persons to make representations;
(d) specify the matters about which the court must be satisfied if it is to make an order;
(e) make provision about the duration of orders (which may include provision for orders of indefinite duration);
(f) make provision about variation (including extension) and discharge of orders;
(g) make provision about appeals.
(4) Regulations under this section may—
(a) make provision for a telecommunications restriction order to specify that a requirement of the order is not to apply in particular circumstances;
(b) make provision authorising a court to include in an order a requirement for the person applying for the order to pay any or all of the costs of complying with it;
(c) make provision about time limits for complying with orders;
(d) make provision about enforcement of orders (which may include provision creating offences);
(e) make provision about costs (or, in Scotland, expenses) in respect of legal proceedings;
(f) make different provision for different purposes;
(g) make incidental, consequential, supplementary or transitional provision, including provision applying any enactment (with or without modifications).
(5) The power to make regulations under this section is exercisable—
(a) in relation to England and Wales, by statutory instrument made by the Secretary of State;
(b) in relation to Scotland, by the Scottish Ministers.
(6) A statutory instrument (other than a Scottish statutory instrument) containing regulations under this section is not to be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.
(7) Regulations made by the Scottish Ministers under this section are subject to the affirmative procedure.
(8) In this section—
“communication device” means an item specified in section 1(3) of the Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Act 2012 (mobile telephones etc);
“communications provider” means a person providing a service that consists in the provision of access to, and of facilities for making use of, any telecommunication system (whether or not one provided by that person);
“court” means—
(a) in relation to England and Wales, the county court;
(b) in relation to Scotland, the sheriff;
“custodial institution” means—
(a) in relation to England and Wales, a prison, young offender institution, secure training centre or secure college;
(b) in relation to Scotland, a prison or young offenders institution;
“enactment” includes—
(a) an enactment contained in subordinate legislation within the meaning of the Interpretation Act 1978;
(b) an enactment contained in, or in an instrument made under, an Act of the Scottish Parliament;
“telecommunication system” means any system (including the apparatus comprised in it) that exists (whether wholly or partly in the United Kingdom or elsewhere) for the purpose of facilitating the transmission of communications by any means involving the use of electrical or electro-magnetic energy.”

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 16, 22, 23 and 28. Control and order is a fundamental foundation of prison life. Without it, safety cannot be guaranteed and the rehabilitation of prisoners cannot take place. It is known that the throwing of packages containing contraband, including psychoactive substances—often inappropriately referred to as “legal highs”—is a key method of supplying drugs into prisons. In some cases, it is co-ordinated by criminal gangs involved in a wide range of criminality. The presence of new psychoactive substances in prisons, now drugs of choice among many prisoners, is a significant and growing problem that we must address urgently. These drugs are having an increasingly destructive impact on prison security, order and the welfare of individual prisoners, with increasing evidence of links to mental health problems and violent behaviour.

While it is currently a criminal offence under the Prison Act to convey a number of items including controlled drugs into a prison, non-controlled substances are not covered by that legislation. As such, those caught trafficking a range of new psychoactive substances have been able to evade justice. This is not acceptable.

Commons Amendment 9 will create a new offence of throwing or otherwise projecting any article or substance into a prison without authorisation. The clause will criminalise the trafficking of new psychoactive substances into our prisons and also captures the throwing of other articles into prison that could pose a threat to prison staff and prisoners. We must not tolerate those who damage prison health and order by throwing items such as new psychoactive substances into prisons. This new offence will help to stop this harmful practice.

Commons Amendment 10 seeks to prevent the unauthorised use of mobile phones in prison. The unauthorised use of mobile phones presents serious risks to prison security. They have been used to plan escapes and support the commission of serious crimes by organised criminals. In January, we saw the sobering reports of the conviction of a prisoner in Wandsworth prison who had used his mobile phone to arrange the importation of machine guns into this country from Germany. I am sure that we all agree that such use of mobile phones in prison is completely unacceptable.

The National Offender Management Service uses a range of techniques to detect and seize phones in prisons. However, despite the success of these methods, as mobile phone technology advances and the size of handsets decreases, it is becoming easier for prisoners to conceal illicit phones in prison. Disconnecting phones would be a cost-effective and future-proofed method to prevent the unauthorised use of phones in prison. Mobile network operators have asked for a clear legal framework to support disconnection. Amendment 10 will therefore enable the Secretary of State—or, in Scotland, Scottish Ministers—to make regulations conferring a power on the civil court to make a telecommunications restriction order. Such an order will require a mobile network operator to disconnect those SIM cards and handsets that are found to be in use in prisons without authorisation, effectively putting those devices beyond normal operational use.

In the unlikely event that a genuine customer’s phone is disconnected in error, NOMS will advise the mobile network operator that the telecommunications restriction order no longer applies. This will allow the network operator to expedite the reconnection of the service. This will be done quickly, without the need to return to court to vary the order. The customer’s phone can still be used to call the emergency services, should that need arise. As an additional safeguard, NOMS will report annually to the Interception of Communications Commissioner, providing the details and frequency of any erroneous disconnections for scrutiny by the commissioner’s office.

It is unacceptable that prisoners should continue to use mobile phones to carry out criminal activity outside prison. Having the power to disconnect illicit phones in prison will help to tackle that flagrant disregard for the restraints of their incarceration. Our view is simple: we must constantly seek ways to improve prison security. These new offences will do exactly that. The other amendments in this group are consequential on these two new clauses. I commend these amendments to the House.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, this is pure curiosity on my part but, in relation to Amendment 10, might I understand how it would be possible to tell the communications providers that they should apply a telecommunications restriction order to a specific SIM card unless said SIM card had already been seized and obtained by the prison authorities—in which case, why would it be needed? Also, what steps have been taken to look at technological systems that would jam the signals inside prisons?

[Lord Bates]

Those are very reasonable points to make. On general jamming in the prison compound, I recognise of course that some individuals working within that compound need to have mobile devices, which can be used to communicate. By that, I am referring to the staff prison officers.

On the specific issue of SIM cards, the National Offender Management Service currently uses a range of different techniques to detect and seize phones already in prisons, including the use of detection technology and regular cell and prisoner searches. However, despite the success of these approaches, as mobile phone technology advances and the size of handsets decreases it is becoming easier for prisoners to conceal illicit phones and move them around the prison estate. It is for the Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether to prosecute an individual for possessing a mobile phone in custody. Due to the way in which mobile phones are typically used in prisons, with multiple prisoners potentially sharing one phone, it is often not possible to attribute handsets and SIMS to specific individuals.

In many ways, I agree with the noble Lord that identifying the number on the SIM card is tremendously difficult when you are still searching for the device. However, in the light of experience, we are simply trying to make it as difficult as possible for the individuals concerned to do this. NOMS uses a range of measures to stop phones and SIM cards getting into prisons. However, due to the high number of deliveries, post items and individuals entering and leaving prisons each day, it is impossible entirely to prevent SIMs and handsets making their way on to the prison estate.

Those are the points that I have, which I hope have been some help. There might just be some communications data on their way to help me. The signal of an unauthorised phone or SIM card can be detected without physically seizing the phone SIM in question. Blocking has a role but can be expensive to use. The answer is therefore probably quite straightforward—it is now, anyway. Through the detection devices we can identify a SIM, even if we have not managed to locate it, and block it in the process. I hope that with that general reassurance, the House will accept these amendments.

Motion agreed.

Motion on Amendment 11

Moved by

[Lord Bates]

That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment 11.

11: After Clause 73, insert the following new Clause—
“Codes of practice about investigatory powers: journalistic sources
In section 71 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (issue and revision of codes of practice), after subsection (2) insert—
“(2A) A code of practice under subsection (1) that relates (expressly or otherwise) to the exercise and performance, in connection with the prevention or detection of serious crime, of powers and duties conferred or imposed by or under Part 1 of this Act—
(a) shall include provision designed to protect the public interest in the confidentiality of journalistic sources;
(b) shall not be issued unless the Secretary of State has first consulted the Interception of Communications Commissioner and considered any relevant report made to the Prime Minister under section 58.””

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Commons Amendments 14, 30 and 34. I will first deal with the Commons amendments.

Commons Amendment 11 relates to the use of powers under Part 1 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act—RIPA—to identify journalistic sources. The House will recall that this important issue was raised by my noble friend Lord Strasburger on Report in October. I hope I speak for the whole House when I say that a free press is fundamental to our democracy and nothing should be done which might endanger that.

When the issue was before us previously, I said that it would be premature to take action in advance of knowing the findings of a report into the issue by the independent Interception of Communications Commissioner. We now know the commissioner’s findings and the Government immediately accepted in full the recommendations contained in his report when it was published last month. Those included that there should be judicial authorisation of requests for communications data which are intended to determine the source of journalistic information. While the commissioner did not find widespread or systematic abuse, and found that the number of cases where police forces had sought to obtain communications data for the purpose of determining journalistic sources were few, he found that a lack of sufficient care and attention in some applications, including in the consideration of the implications for freedom of expression, was such that we needed to act.

We have not been able to bring forward in the Bill the legislative changes required to give full effect to the commissioner’s recommendation relating to judicial authorisation, given that the scope of the Bill is limited to serious crime. However, I trust that Commons Amendment 11 will make it clear that we will address the underlying principle as far as possible when we can. It provides that any code of practice issued under RIPA that deals with the use of the investigatory powers under Part 1 of that Act in relation to the prevention or detection of serious crime shall include provisions which protect the public interest in the confidentiality of journalistic sources. It also requires the Secretary of State to consult the Interception of Communications Commissioner and to have regard to any relevant reports that he has made.

Noble Lords will also be aware that we intend to lay very shortly for parliamentary approval the draft acquisition of communications data code of practice. That follows a public consultation on the draft code and addresses both the responses to that consultation and the Interception of Communications Commissioner’s recent report. The code, when approved, will require law enforcement to use production orders, which are judicially authorised, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—or the equivalents in Scotland and Northern Ireland—for applications for communications data to determine journalistic sources.

Nevertheless, it is clear that a long-term solution will have to wait until after the election. However, to be clear about our intent, the Government published last week a draft clause that will give full effect to the commissioner’s recommendation on judicial authorisation for applications to determine the source of journalistic information. Legislation will be required in the next Parliament in the field of investigatory powers to give effect to the recommendations of David Anderson QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, which will give Parliament the opportunity to put into law the full recommendation of the independent commissioner. I hope that the Government’s approach provides reassurance to your Lordships that the Government take very seriously the issue of the protection of a free press and free expression.

I hope that Commons Amendment 11, in combination with the other measures I have outlined, including a requirement to use the judicially authorised production order route and a commitment to future legislation, will assure your Lordships of the Government’s intent in this area. I reiterate that the Government are committed to giving full effect to the recommendations made by the Interception of Communications Commissioner. We are doing as much as we can in the Bill, given the limitations of its scope, and will return to this issue in the next Parliament. I recognise that my noble friend Lord Strasburger would like the Bill to go further. I look forward to hearing what he has to say about his Amendment 11A and I will respond to that when winding up. In the mean time, I invite your Lordships to agree with the Commons amendments.

18:30

Motion on Amendment 11A (as an amendment to Amendment 11)

Moved by

[Lord Strasburger]

That this House do agree with Amendment 11A as an amendment to Commons Amendment 11.

11A: Line 10, at end insert—
“(aa) shall include provision designed to protect the confidentiality of personal information obtained in connection with a person’s acting as a minister of religion, as a healthcare professional or as a Member of Parliament;(ab) shall include provision about the circumstances in which notice of legal proceedings relating to notices and authorisations under Part 1 of this Act in respect of data should be given to persons to whom the data relates;”

[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

My Lords, when this Bill was last debated in another place, the Home Office rejected a new clause tabled by Julian Huppert and backed by cross-party Back-Benchers that was very similar to this Amendment 11 but had a number of key differences. My amendment seeks to probe the justification, if there is any, for the Government’s omission of those provisions.

The first of these relates to the protection that is due to other privileged material, as it is rightly intended to be provided for journalistic material. This is what might be called medical privilege, religious or spiritual privilege and elected representative privilege. When an individual makes contact with a doctor, priest or MP, they are entitled to a higher level of confidentiality than applies to other matters. Therefore, just as journalistic material should be subject to a process involving judicial authorisation before communications data are accessed by the police, so should this sort of communications data.

The justification for providing protection in respect of journalistic material in RIPA, provided by the Government when they eventually agreed, was that it was necessary to protect whistleblowers who could be identified by the police accessing the communications data of journalists. Surely the same applies in respect of the communications data of Members of Parliament, and their equivalent in the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Why are the Government in their new clause providing only that the code of practice should protect whistleblowers’ identity when they go to the press and not when they go to their MP to reveal serious wrongdoing?

The second justification given by the Government for judicial authorisation before the police could access journalists’ communications data was that there was confidential information inherent in the “metadata” that would be obtained; namely, that someone identifiable had contacted a journalist. Exactly the same applies in respect of communications data relating to medical practitioners. The fact that a certain person has been in communication with a healthcare professional with a specific specialty in itself reveals confidential information. Obvious examples are mental health care professionals, STD clinics, obstetricians and so forth. The Home Office has provided no justification for failing to provide protection for such data, nor indeed has it provided for safeguards to be written into the code of practice, which the amendments before us deal with. This is even more peculiar when one sees that the Government’s proposed change to the code of practice, which was all they were offering before the IOCCO’s report was published, makes specific reference to the types of privilege—medical, spiritual and Member of Parliament—which my amendment would require a code of practice to deal with. It is not good enough for the Home Office to say that it wants to go no further than the recommendations in the IOCCO’s report because that report in several places made reference to the equivalent public interest that attaches to the confidentiality in these areas.

The second matter that my amendment deals with is the question of notice for journalists of an application to a judge when their confidential sources’ identities may be revealed. Under PACE, when the journalist holds the confidential material—called “excluded material” under PACE—the default position is that the journalist is given notice; that is, that the application is heard by the court inter partes. When it comes to RIPA and communications data, the person who holds the material will in general be a telecoms company or an ISP. They are not going to be in a position, of course, to contest any application. They have no significant interest in protecting the confidentiality of any of the information they provide to the police, providing that the police are acting within the law. It is only the journalist who can and should, if circumstances permit, assist the court in identifying the degree of public interest in identifying any of his or her sources.

By analogy with the provisions in PACE, it seems only right that there should be provision in the new legislation that the Government have promised after the election to provide for judicial authorisation for journalists to be given notice of the application. No doubt it will be appropriate also to provide that that notice does not have to be given when there is a risk that such notice might significantly prejudice a criminal investigation because, for example, the journalist, himself or herself, is a suspect, or, if given notice, could destroy evidence, or because the journalist might tip off a contact who was a suspect in a criminal investigation that might lead to the suspect destroying evidence or absconding.

That is why my amendment seeks to require that the code of practice makes provisions for the circumstances in which the journalist could and should be notified of an application to access communications data that is likely to lead to the identification of a confidential source. It should make no difference to the question of whether, without prejudice to an investigation, a journalist can have the opportunity to make his or her case to the judge when the data in question are held by a third party telecoms company.

The courts have found it extremely useful to hear representations from the media about non-broadcast footage when the police had applied under PACE for the release of that material. The protection of whistleblowers requires that the only people who can speak up for them in court before they are identified under this legislation are given notice of the application, subject to not prejudicing the investigation. This is a concern for my party and the National Union of Journalists.

Before I finish, I should like to raise a number of questions to the Minister on this area. After Julian Huppert tabled his new clause, which would provide for judicial oversight in RIPA for applications relating to journalistic sources, the Government agreed to make a temporary arrangement that the police would be directed to use PACE when such circumstances arose, and that this would be achieved by a change to the code of practice. My first question is: when will the Government bring forward the proposed code of practice, because time is short before Parliament prorogues? Secondly, will my noble friend and officials meet urgently with me and the National Union of Journalists to discuss the form of that code of practice? Thirdly, is it intended that the code of practice will, as I have indicated by this amendment, set out the circumstances in which journalists can be given notice of an application under Schedule 1 of PACE, even though the existing PACE provisions do not provide that they be given notice because they are not holders of the data or material? Fourthly, will the Home Office take the opportunity in this code of practice to make it clear that the police should use PACE procedures for other forms of privilege before obtaining communications data relating to the other forms of privilege that I have set out, as well as to communications data that might reveal contact between a lawyer and his or her client? As I explained, the Government’s previously proposed change to the code of practice did specify that consideration needs to be given to these other forms of privilege on the same basis as that given to journalistic privilege.

The Government, in response to Mr Huppert’s proposed new clauses, also published draft clauses that they said would be included in any update of RIPA legislation following the report of the Anderson review, early in the next Parliament. Those draft clauses were made available to Members of the other place only about an hour before the debate on Mr Huppert’s new clause. It therefore seems appropriate to use this opportunity to ask the Government to explain some of their provisions before this legislation goes through, given that Members of the other place were not given that opportunity before deciding not to press Mr Huppert’s new clause.

My first question is why there is a provision in the draft clauses to bypass judicial authorisation for RIPA requests for telecoms data in the circumstances of “imminent threat to life”, when such provision does not exist in PACE. Why is the threshold used by the Government to decide when the journalistic privilege requirement to put the application before a judge is triggered higher in their draft clauses than in PACE? The draft clause states that the requirement for judicial authorisation is triggered when the purpose in whole or in part is to identify a journalist’s sources, whereas in PACE the threshold or test, much more appropriately, is that the application is likely to reveal the source. As I have explained, I believe there should be circumstances in which a journalist should be notified of an application to access their communications data, and that this should be included in the new legislation.

The Government’s draft clause, unlike PACE, does not even provide for notice to be given to those who hold the data. Will the Government explain this or reconsider it? The Government’s draft clauses do not contain the same provision as in PACE for it to be an offence to destroy material sought under an order granted by a judge. Will the Minister please explain this? Finally, will the Minister explain why in the draft clause there is no provision for the judge making the decision to have regard to the public interest in maintaining the confidentiality of journalistic sources? This was proposed by the amendment in the other place. I beg to move.

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, in responding to my noble friend Lord Strasburger, I pay tribute to him for the way he has engaged with this issue. We have had some conversations about this, and I know that this is a subject he feels very passionately about. He also brings a great deal of expertise to the role, and a knowledge of how communications actually work.

The special case being made for journalists here is the fact that not only did the Interception of Communications Commissioner confine his particular examination in his report to looking at journalists, but someone who speaks to, say, a lawyer does not reveal what was said. If someone is trying to establish the source of a leak, knowing who spoke to a journalist may be more important than actually knowing what was said. This does not extend in the same way to other professions. That is what we are trying to say. It is a different way of looking at the particular situations in which journalists find themselves. I also say to my noble friend that we will very shortly lay before Parliament for approval the draft acquisition of communications data code of practice, following the public consultation. That will provide another opportunity to look at this.

My noble friend asked some specific questions about when the Government will bring forward the proposed code of practice. As the Minister for Modern Slavery and Organised Crime made clear in the House of Commons last week, the Government hope that the code of practice will be in place as soon as possible, but obviously this will be subject to parliamentary approval. My noble friend asked whether the Minister and officials will urgently meet with him and the National Union of Journalists to discuss that code of practice. Officials have already met with the National Union of Journalists early in the process. The NUJ has also responded to the consultation, and we have considered their response. Following the consultation, we have implemented significant changes in the code, as I have stated, and will publish it shortly. However, I am of course very happy to meet my noble friend and any others from the NUJ whom he wishes to bring with him.

It was also asked whether the code of practice will set out the circumstances in which journalists can be given notice of an application under Schedule 1 of PACE. My honourable friend Karen Bradley addressed the issue of providing notice in the House of Commons when considering these amendments in another place last Monday. It has never been the practice in this country that those who are subject to a communications data application are notified. There are obvious reasons for that, given that the crime may be under active investigation. We do not intend to depart from that, but we are of course very happy to listen to concerns.

18:45

My noble friend asked whether the Home Office will take the opportunity to make it clear in this code of practice that the police should use PACE procedures for other forms of privilege before obtaining communications data relating to other forms of privilege, such as that between a lawyer and client. As I mentioned, the draft code of practice was consulted on. It already makes it clear that special consideration must be given to any applications for data that relate to a person who is a member of a profession that handles privileged or otherwise confidential information. Following the consultation and the commissioner’s recommendations, the detail of the considerations of necessity and proportionality have significantly increased in the code, which will shortly be laid before Parliament.

My noble friend asked whether there was provision in the draft clauses to bypass judicial authorisation for RIPA requests in the event of an imminent threat to life. This is to cover a situation in which communications data to identify a journalistic source is required with extreme urgency. For example, if a bomb warning was telephoned to a journalist, or a newspaper officer, the police would want urgently to establish where the call was made from. That would technically count as trying to identify journalistic sources.

The Interception of Communications Commissioner looked at the Government’s threshold test for journalistic privilege in great detail. His recommendation, in paragraph 8.9 of the report, was:

“Judicial authorisation must be obtained in cases where communications data is sought to determine the source of journalistic information”.

We clearly sought to effect that, as I mentioned.

My noble friend asked in which circumstances a journalist should be notified of an application to access their communications. As I have said, my honourable friend Karen Bradley has already stated the Government’s view on this issue, providing notice in the debate in the House of Commons on 23 February that it was never the practice in this country that those who are the subject of an application for communications data are notified, as serious crimes may be involved.

The Government’s draft clauses do not contain the same provisions as PACE. In response to that point, acquiring communications data is not the same as acquiring a notebook or even a phone handset. The data are retained by the communication service providers, either for their own business purposes or under data retention legislation. I can think of no circumstances where, on receiving an order granted by a judge for communications data, whether from a journalist or in any other circumstances, a communications service provider would have any reason to delete that data.

Finally, my noble friend asked why there is no provision in the draft clauses for the judge making the decision to have regard to the public interest. The draft clauses require the judge to ensure that the requirements, in Sections 22(1) and 22(5) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act are satisfied. Section 22(1) ensures that the application is necessary and Section 22(5) ensures that the application is proportionate.

I totally accept that those answers, as far as they go, may not be entirely satisfactory to my noble friend, but I hope that the overarching commitment that I have given to continue our discussion on this very important issue will enable him to withdraw his motion.

[Lord Strasburger]

My Lords, I gave my noble friend the Minister advance notice of my questions. He has made a very good attempt at answering them and I thank him for that. Obviously, the devil will be in the detail of the code of practice. I will very gladly accept his invitation to come and discuss that with him. Clearly, we will all return to this subject in the new Parliament when the Anderson review is delivered. For now I am very happy to withdraw my motion.

Motion on Amendment 11A (as an amendment to Amendment 11) withdrawn.

Motion agreed.

Motion on Amendment 12

Moved by

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment 12.

12: After Clause 73, insert the following new Clause—
“Termination of pregnancy on grounds of sex of foetus
(1) The Secretary of State shall arrange for an assessment to be made of the evidence of termination of pregnancy on the grounds of the sex of the foetus in England, Wales and Scotland.
(2) The arrangements made under subsection (1) shall be such as to enable publication of the assessment by the Secretary of State within 6 months of the date of Royal Assent to this Act.
(3) The Secretary of State shall consider the assessment made under subsection
(1) and—
(a) determine and publish a strategic plan to tackle substantiated concerns identified in the assessment made under subsection (1); or
(b) publish a statement and explanation in relation to why a plan under subsection (3)(a) is not required.
(4) Any strategic plan under subsection (3)(a) must include, but need not be limited to, steps—
(a) to promote change in the social and cultural patterns of behaviour with a view to eradicating prejudices, customs, traditions and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority of women and which may amount to pressure to seek a termination on the grounds of the sex of the foetus;
(b) to ensure best practice exists in identifying women being coerced or pressured into seeking a termination on the grounds of the sex of the foetus, or at risk of being so, and in the provision of protection and support to potential victims; and
(c) to promote guidance to service providers, health professionals and other stakeholders.
(5) The Secretary of State must lay a copy of the plan, determined under subsection (3)(a), before each House of Parliament within 6 months of the publication date of the assessment under subsection (2).”

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, noble Lords will be pleased to hear that I have only one amendment to deal with here—I hope I can get it right—which is Commons Amendment 12. Unlike the other Commons amendments we are considering today, Amendment 12 was tabled by a Back-Bench MP, Ann Coffey. It was agreed by the Commons on a free vote by 491 votes to just two. As in the Commons, the Government are not taking a view either for or against Amendment 12, and there will again be a free vote in this House should it go to a Division. That said, it might assist noble Lords if I provide the House with some background.

The Government have been consistently clear that abortion on the grounds of gender alone is already illegal. The Department of Health repeated that in guidance issued in May 2014, and it is important to stress that all independent sector providers have agreed to comply with, and operate on the basis of, the department’s guidance—and that they must do so as part of their licensing conditions.

The department has also undertaken detailed analysis to investigate whether the gender birth ratio in the UK varies by the mother’s country of birth beyond the range that might be expected to occur naturally. The analysis, first published in May 2013 and updated in 2014, concluded that, when broken down by the mother’s country of birth, no group was statistically different from the range we would expect to see naturally occurring. The Department of Health has rightly committed to repeat that analysis annually when new birth data become available. However, I stress that the Government will remain vigilant, will continue to monitor data and will be fully open to any other evidence that comes to light. Anecdotal reports of sex-selective abortion have been raised from time to time. Anyone with evidence of individual cases should report this to the police to investigate.

It is against that background that Commons Amendment 12 would require a further assessment of the evidence that terminations are taking place on the ground of the sex of the foetus alone. In addition to the analysis that the Department of Health is undertaking on an annual basis in this area, any other evidence that comes to light could be considered. The Department of Health is already considering what further sources of evidence can contribute to our knowledge on this important issue. The amendment would further require the Secretary of State for Health to consider the assessment and either to determine and publish a strategic plan to tackle substantiated concerns identified in the assessment, or to give a statement and explanation as to why such a plan is not required.

As I have said, it is for the House to decide whether to agree Commons Amendment 12. In considering the matter, noble Lords may wish to take account of the short debate in the House of Commons and the outcome of the Division in that House, as well as the views of noble Lords as expressed in this debate today.

Motion agreed.

Motion on Amendments 13 to 17

Moved by

[Lord Bates]

That that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 13 to 17.

13: Clause 75, page 79, line 16, at end insert—
“( ) Subsection (7) of section (Child sexual exploitation) and paragraph 1A of Schedule 4 do not apply in the case of an offence proceedings for which are started before the commencement of that subsection.”

14: Clause 75, page 79, line 16, at end insert—
“( ) The amendment made by section (Codes of practice about investigatory powers: journalistic sources) applies only to a code of practice that is issued or revised on or after the day on which this Act is passed.”

15: Clause 75, page 79, line 26, at end insert—
“( ) in the Sexual Offences Act 2003, subsection (3)(a) of the section 15A inserted by section (Sexual communication with a child) above;”

16: Clause 75, page 79, line 28, at end insert—
“( ) in that Act, subsection (4)(b) of the section 40CB inserted by section (Throwing articles into prisons) above.”

17: Clause 75, page 79, line 32, at end insert—
“( ) section (Controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship)(11)(b).”

Motion agreed.

Motion on Amendment 18

Moved by

[Lord Bates]

That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment 18.

18: Clause 75, page 79, line 32, at end insert—
“( ) In relation to an offence committed before section 85(1) of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 comes into force—
(a) a reference to a fine in the following provisions is to be read as a reference to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum—
(i) section 60(3)(a);
(ii) in the Sexual Offences Act 2003, subsection (3)(a) of the section 15A inserted by section (Sexual communication with a child) above;
(iii) in the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, paragraph (b) of the subsection (2) inserted in section 5 by section 69(4)(b) above;
(iv) paragraph 4(5)(b) of the Schedule inserted in that Act by section 70(2) above;
(v) section (Controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship)(11)(b) above;
(vi) in the Prison Act 1952, subsection (4)(b) of the section 40CA inserted by section 71 above;
(vii) in that Act, subsection (4)(b) of the section 40CB inserted by section (Throwing articles into prisons) above.”
(b) the reference to a fine in paragraph 2(2)(a) of the Schedule to the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, inserted in that Act by section 68(2) above, is to be read as a reference to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.”

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, as the House is well aware, there is no greater duty for a Government than the protection of its citizens in the face of a significant and very real threat to our safety and security. We are in the middle of a generational struggle against a deadly terrorist ideology. In such a climate, it is more important than ever to ensure that the police and our security and intelligence agencies have the right capabilities they need to tackle the threat from terrorism, both at home and abroad.

Only a short while ago, this House scrutinised a package of new powers in the newly enacted Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. This Act significantly adds to the tools at our disposal to counter the threat posed in particular by British-born violent extremists. It disrupts the ability of people to travel abroad to fight, and to return here. It enhances our ability to monitor and control the actions of those in the UK who pose a threat, and it combats the underlying ideology that feeds, supports and sanctions terrorism. It is right and proper that we brought forward and enacted that legislation at the earliest opportunity, but we must also act at the earliest opportunity to ensure that when individuals who may pose a threat to our security have already travelled abroad to places of conflict, such as Syria and Iraq, to engage in terrorist-related activities, they too are not beyond the reach of the law when they return to the UK.

To this end, Commons Amendments 26, 27 and 29 provide for Clause 72 of the Bill to come into force on Royal Assent. The House will recall that Clause 72 will ensure that we are able to prosecute individuals who have prepared and trained for terrorism overseas by extending the extraterritorial reach of the offences in Sections 5 and 6 of the Terrorism Act 2006. Let me be clear that this measure does not come without safeguards. The Bill already makes clear that prosecutions cannot be brought retrospectively—that is, in respect of activities undertaken before the measure is commenced. We are also working with our law enforcement and security partners in advance of Royal Assent to ensure that this change is communicated to those who will use it.

I hope your Lordships will agree that, given the immediacy of the threat we are facing from terrorism and foreign fighters in particular, there is an overriding necessity to ensure that our law enforcement and security partners are provided with the right tools, as early as possible, to protect the UK public, and that this power should be available immediately. The other amendments in this group are minor or technical in nature. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Motion on Amendments 19 to 58

Moved by

[Lord Bates]

That this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 19 to 58.

19: Clause 76, page 79, line 45, leave out paragraph (d) and insert—
“( ) sections 65 to (Child sexual exploitation);”

20: Clause 76, page 79, line 45, at end insert—
“( ) sections (Duty to notify police of female genital mutilation) and (Guidance about female genital mutilation);”.

21: Clause 76, page 79, line 45, at end insert—
“( ) sections (Controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship) and (Guidance);”

22: Clause 76, page 79, line 46, leave out “section 71” and insert “sections 71 and (Throwing articles into prisons)”

23: Clause 76, page 80, line 1, at beginning insert—
“( ) Section (Prevention or restriction of use of communication devices by prisoners etc) extends to England and Wales and Scotland (but not Northern Ireland).”

24: Clause 77, page 80, line 26, leave out “32” and insert “31A”

25: Clause 77, page 80, line 32, leave out “42” and insert “41A”

26: Clause 77, page 80, line 34, leave out “The following provisions” and insert “Sections 67 to 69”

27: Clause 77, page 80, line 36, leave out paragraphs (a) and (b)

28: Clause 77, page 80, line 40, at end insert—
“( ) section (Prevention or restriction of use of communication devices by prisoners etc);”

29: Clause 77, page 80, line 40, at end insert—
“( ) section 72 and paragraph 60 of Schedule 4 (and section 74(1) so far as relating to that paragraph);”

30: Clause 77, page 80, line 40, at end insert—
“( ) section (Codes of practice about investigatory powers: journalistic sources);”

31: Clause 77, page 81, line 17, at end insert—
“( ) Consultation for the purposes of subsection (2), (3), (6) or (7) may be, or include, consultation before the day on which this Act is passed.”

32: Clause 78, page 81, line 26, leave out subsection (2)

33: Schedule 4, page 103, line 38, at end insert—
“Street Offences Act 1959 (c. 57)
1A (1) The Schedule to the Street Offences Act 1959 (orders under section 1(2A): breach, amendment etc) is amended as follows.
(2) In paragraphs 2(3), 3(3) and 5(4), for paragraphs (a) and (b) substitute “a magistrates’ court acting in the relevant local justice area”.
(3) In paragraph 9(2), for paragraphs (a) and (b) substitute “any magistrates’ court”.
(4) Omit paragraph 9(4).
(5) In paragraph 10(4), for paragraphs (a) and (b) substitute “to a prison”. (6) Omit paragraph 10(5).
(7) In paragraph 11(1) omit “youth court or other”.”

34: Schedule 4, page 105, line 32, at end insert—
“Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (c. 23)
In section 71 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (issue and revision of codes of practice), in subsection (8), for “(3)” substitute “(2A)”.”

35: Schedule 4, page 105, line 33, at end insert—
“16A In section 6 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (making of order) at the end of subsection (5) insert—
“Paragraph (b) applies only if, or to the extent that, it would not be disproportionate to require the defendant to pay the recoverable amount.””

36: Schedule 4, page 108, line 3, at end insert—
“31A In section 92 of that Act (making of order), at the end of subsection (6) insert—
“Paragraph (b) applies only if, or to the extent that, it would not be disproportionate to require the accused to pay the recoverable amount.””

37: Schedule 4, page 110, line 21, at end insert—
“41A In section 156 of that Act (making of order), at the end of subsection (5) insert—
“Paragraph (b) applies only if, or to the extent that, it would not be disproportionate to require the defendant to pay the recoverable amount.””

38: Schedule 4, page 111, line 35, at end insert—
“( ) In Schedule 2 to that Act (lifestyle offences: England and Wales), in paragraph 8 (prostitution and child sex), sub-paragraph (2) is amended as follows.
( ) In paragraph (b), for “child prostitution or pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation of a child”.
( ) In paragraph (c), for “prostitute or a child involved in pornography” substitute “in relation to sexual exploitation”.
( ) In paragraph (d), for “child prostitution or pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation of a child”.”

39: Schedule 4, page 111, line 38, at end insert—
“Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (c.31)
In section 8 of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (extent etc), in subsection (4) after “Scotland” insert “and sections 5B and 5C do not extend to Northern Ireland”.

40: Schedule 4, page 112, line 1, at end insert—
“In section 54 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (sections 51A to 53A: interpretation), for subsections (2) and (3) substitute—
“(2) In sections 51A, 52, 53 and 53A “prostitute” means a person (A) who, on at least one occasion and whether or not compelled to do so, offers or provides sexual services to another person in return for payment or a promise of payment to A or a third person; and “prostitution” is to be interpreted accordingly.
(3) In subsection (2) and section 53A, “payment” means any financial advantage, including the discharge of an obligation to pay or the provision of goods or services (including sexual services) gratuitously or at a discount.””

41: Schedule 4, page 112, line 1, at end insert—
“ In section 78 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (meaning of “sexual”), for “except section 71” substitute “except sections 15A and 71”.”

42: Schedule 4, page 112, line 1, at end insert—
“ ( ) In section 136A of that Act (meaning of specified prostitution offence etc) subsection (2) is amended as follows.
( ) After paragraph (a) insert—
“(aa) an offence under section 48 of this Act committed by causing or inciting a child to be sexually exploited within the meaning given by section 51(2)(a);”.
( ) In paragraph (b), for “section 48 of this Act, or Article 38 of the Northern
Ireland order,” substitute “Article 38 of the Northern Ireland order”.”
( ) After paragraph (b) insert—
“(ba) an offence under section 49 of this Act committed by controlling the activities of a child in relation to sexual exploitation within the meaning given by section 51(2)(a);”.
( ) In paragraph (c), for “section 49 of this Act, or Article 39 of the Northern Ireland order,” substitute “Article 39 of the Northern Ireland order”.
( ) After paragraph (c) insert—
“(ca) an offence under section 50 of this Act committed by arranging or facilitating the sexual exploitation, within the meaning given by section 51(2)(a), of a child;”.
( ) In paragraph (d), for “section 50 of this Act, or Article 40 of the Northern Ireland order,” substitute “Article 49 of the Northern Ireland order”.
( ) Subsection (3) of that section is amended as follows. ( ) Before paragraph (a) insert—
“(za) an offence under section 48 of this Act committed by causing or inciting a child to be sexually exploited within the meaning given by section 51(2)(b);”.
( ) In paragraph (a), for “section 48 of this Act, or Article 38 of the Northern Ireland order,” substitute “Article 38 of the Northern Ireland order”.
( ) After paragraph (a) insert—
“(aa) an offence under section 49 of this Act committed by controlling the activities of a child in relation to sexual exploitation within the meaning given by section 51(2)(b);”.
( ) In paragraph (b), for “section 49 of this Act, or Article 39 of the Northern Ireland order,” substitute “Article 39 of the Northern Ireland order”.
( ) After paragraph (b) insert—
“(ba) an offence under section 50 of this Act committed by arranging or facilitating the sexual exploitation, within the meaning given by section 51(2)(b), of a child;”.
( ) In paragraph (c), for “section 50 of this Act, or Article 40 of the Northern Ireland order,” substitute “Article 49 of the Northern Ireland order”.”

43: Schedule 4, page 112, line 3, at end insert—
“( ) After paragraph 24 insert—
“24A An offence under section 15A of this Act (sexual communication with a child).””

44: Schedule 4, page 112, line 18, at end insert—
“( ) Schedule 15 to that Act (specified offences for purposes of Chapter 5 of Part 12) is amended as follows.
( ) After paragraph 116 insert—
“116A An offence under section 15A of that Act (sexual communication with a child).””

45: Schedule 4, page 112, line 18, at end insert—
“( ) In paragraph 136, for “child prostitution or pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation of a child”.
( ) In paragraph 137, for “prostitute or a child involved in pornography” substitute “in relation to sexual exploitation”.
( ) In paragraph 138, for “child prostitution or pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation of a child”.”

46: Schedule 4, page 112, line 18, at end insert—
“( ) Schedule 15B to that Act (offences listed for the purposes of sections 224A, 226A and 246A) is amended as follows.
( ) In paragraph 35, for “child prostitution or pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation of a child”.
( ) In paragraph 36, for “prostitute or a child involved in pornography” substitute “in relation to sexual exploitation”.
( ) In paragraph 37, for “child prostitution or pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation of a child”.”

47: Schedule 4, page 112, line 18, at end insert—
“ ( ) Schedule 34A to that Act (child sex offences for purposes of section 327A) is amended as follows.
( ) In paragraph 7(b), for “15” substitute “15A”.
( ) In paragraph 7(e), for “abuse of children through prostitution and pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation of children”.”
( ) After paragraph 13A insert—
“13B An offence under section 66 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 (possession of paedophile manual).”

48: Schedule 4, page 113, line 28, after “Wales),” insert “in paragraph 4 (prostitution and child sex), in sub-paragraph (2)—
(a) in paragraph (b), for “child prostitution or pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation of a child”;
(b) in paragraph (c), for “prostitute or a child involved in pornography” substitute “in relation to sexual exploitation”;
(c) in paragraph (d), for “child prostitution or pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation of a child”.
( ) In that Part,”

49: Schedule 4, page 114, line 18, at beginning insert “Part 1 of”

50: Schedule 4, page 114, line 19, at end insert—
“( ) After paragraph 15 insert—
“Female genital mutilation protection orders
15A (1) Civil legal services provided in relation to female genital mutilation protection orders under paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 to the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.
Exclusions
(2) Sub-paragraph (1) is subject to the exclusions in Parts 2 and 3 of this Schedule.””

51: Schedule 4, page 114, line 23, at end insert—
“ ( ) Part 3 of that Schedule (advocacy: exclusion and exceptions) is amended as follows.
( ) In paragraph 6—
(a) omit “and” at the end of paragraph (a); (b) at the end insert “, and
(c) proceedings for the variation or discharge of an order under paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 to the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.”
( ) In paragraph 8—
(a) omit “and” at the end of paragraph (c); (b) at the end insert “, and
(e) proceedings for the variation or discharge of an order under paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 to the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.””

52: Schedule 4, page 114, line 27, at end insert—
Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (c. 12)
“ In section 116 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (information about guests at hotels believed to be used for child sexual exploitation), in subsection (8)(a), for “prostitution and pornography” substitute “sexual exploitation”.”

53: In the Title, line 2, after “1933,” insert “the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the Street Offences Act 1959,”

54: In the Title, line 4, after “2005” insert “, the Prison Act 1952”

55: In the Title, line 8, leave out from “children;” to “to” in line 9

56: In the Title, line 8, after “children;” insert “to create an offence in relation to controlling or coercive behaviour in intimate or family relationships;”

57: In the Title, line 9, after “prison;” insert “to make provision for the prevention or restriction of the use of communication devices by persons detained in custodial institutions;”

58: In the Title, line 11, after “crime;” insert “to make provision about codes of practice that relate to the exercise and performance, in connection with the prevention or detection of serious crime, of powers and duties in relation to communications;”

Motion agreed.

House adjourned at 6.57 pm.