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Oral Answers to Questions
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
1. What his plans are for the future of rehabilitation services for prisoners; and if he will make a statement.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
2. What his plans are for the future of rehabilitation services for prisoners; and if he will make a statement.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
10. What his plans are for the future of rehabilitation services for prisoners; and if he will make a statement.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
14. What his plans are for the future of rehabilitation services for prisoners; and if he will make a statement.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Michael Gove)
May I begin by praising the work of my predecessor to improve the rehabilitation of offenders? Thanks to his reforming zeal, we have broadened the range of people providing and benefiting from rehabilitation, but there is still much more to do.
Lucy Allan
I thank the Secretary of State for his reply and for the great work to support the rehabilitation of offenders to give them a second chance. Will he assure me that that rehabilitation will never be appropriate in cases such as the brutal murder of Telford teenager Georgia Williams?
Michael Gove
Absolutely. May I emphasise that, with heinous crimes such as the appalling murder of Georgia Williams, judges have the freedom to impose whole-life orders? One was imposed on the killer in that terrible case.
Michael Tomlinson
Clean Sheet and Footprints are two charities in Dorset supporting ex-offenders into work and reducing the risk of reoffending. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to support such charities and to ensure that offenders leave prison ready to face the world of work?
Michael Gove
I commend my hon. Friend for raising the work of those two voluntary sector organisations. Without the work of voluntary and third sector organisations, we would not be able to provide the educational and rehabilitative services that enable people who are currently in our prisons to have a second chance.
Michael Fabricant
It is not just voluntary services that have a role to play, but private businesses such as Marks & Spencer, and indeed other well known department stores. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should encourage private enterprise to help in the rehabilitation of offenders to get them back to work?
Michael Gove
I absolutely agree—that is a very good point. May I single out for praise the John Lewis Partnership, which does such a fantastic job in helping people from a variety of backgrounds to be all they can be? I stress that there are other organisations, such as Greggs the bakers and, of course, Timpson, the shoe and key repair firm. John Timpson’s leadership in providing ex-offenders with a second chance is exemplary.
Jeremy Lefroy
Given that 12% of the prison population are sex offenders, including many in the prison in Stafford, what specific rehabilitation work is being done for sex offenders?
Michael Gove
The excellent work that is done in Stafford prison is close to my hon. Friend’s heart, and he is absolutely right. We need to make use of the most sophisticated means that psychologists can devise to help people to tackle the problems that led them to offend. I had the opportunity earlier this week to talk to the psychologist in charge of that work at the National Offender Management Service, and to guarantee her all support in the weeks and months ahead in dealing with those terrible crimes.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
23. Lord Laming is inquiring into looked-after children and the criminal justice system. As well as rehabilitation, what is the Justice Secretary doing to help youngsters who have been in care to avoid a life in crime?
Michael Gove
I welcome Herbert Laming’s work. He has been an inspirational figure in social work. He is right to draw attention to the high number of male and particularly female offenders in our jails who spent their lives in care. Working with the Education Secretary and the Minister for Children and Families, who has responsibility for children in care, I hope we can work on the reforms of the coalition Government to ensure that more children in dysfunctional homes can be adopted and fostered quickly, and that there are better educational outcomes for children who have to spend their lives in care.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State agree that central to reducing crime rates overall is reducing the rate of reoffending? Does he therefore also agree that to cut rehabilitative services, and funding for them, ultimately would be counter- productive in the long term?
Michael Gove
The hon. Gentleman is a distinguished barrister and historian and is absolutely right, because the historical record shows that, overall as a country, we have been very poor at reducing the rate of recidivism. We need to ensure that, both in our prisons and afterwards, we have high-quality services provided by professionals who know how to change the behaviour of individuals who deserve a second chance.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I congratulate the Lord Chancellor on his recent appointment. He looked very impressive in his new robes, if I may say so.
Thirty-five per cent. of prisoners have a drug addiction and 6% acquire that addiction while in prison. What specific help is being given to those with a drug addiction when they come out of prison?
Michael Gove
I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his re-election as Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. He did an exemplary job in the previous Parliament and I know he will do a very good job in this Parliament. May I also thank him for his kind words about my dress sense? When it comes to cutting a sartorial dash, there are few who can match him.
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that drug addiction is one of the principal factors that lead individuals to commit crime. It is also the case that there is an unacceptable level of drug use, both of illegal drugs and so-called legal highs, in our prisons. We are determined to ensure that the psychological support currently available in prison, and the support rehabilitation companies can provide for individuals who are drug-addicted, is enhanced so that individuals can be weaned off a habit that brings misery to themselves and to their victims.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
Does the Secretary of State agree that an important part of rehabilitation is the nature of the custodial arrangements we make for our prisoners? He will have seen yesterday’s announcement by the Scottish Government on their plans to reform the custodial arrangements for female offenders in Scotland. Will he commit to considering a similar approach as he reforms the prison estate in England and Wales?
Michael Gove
Both our jurisdictions have a great deal to learn from one another. I am very grateful to the hon. and learned Lady for mentioning that, and for the very constructive tone she took in last week’s Westminster Hall debate on these issues. I hope to have the chance to visit prisons in Scotland soon and to talk to the Scottish Justice Minister about some of these issues.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
3. What plans he has for the future of the court estate in Gloucestershire.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
The court estate in Gloucestershire, and across England and Wales, is a major asset of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. Any new proposals on the future of the courts will be subject to consultation.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Will my hon. Friend, as part of the Courts and Tribunals Service reform programme, consider establishing one purpose-built building to house all court services?
Mr Vara
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. I am very mindful of the state of affairs of Gloucestershire’s court estate. It is important that court buildings provide value for money and meet local demand. I will certainly ensure that his comments are taken on board.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
I have discussed the issue of the courts in Gloucestershire—and in Gloucester in particular, where we have a Crown court that predates the battle of Waterloo—with the Minister and his predecessors for several years. As my neighbour and colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), has said, our courts are in a dire position. Will he confirm today that the Department will look very closely at the state of the courts and take advantage of the opportunity to use the site we have reserved free of charge in Blackfriars?
Mr Vara
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his re-election. I know the issue of the court structure was a key element in the general election. It is good to see that, post-election, he continues to battle for that cause. We have met and corresponded on this issue, so he will be aware that, as we speak, officials are engaged in considering the best way forward.
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
4. What progress he has made on ensuring that prisoners undertake work in prisons.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)
We want prisons to be places of industry and purposeful activity by replicating as far as possible a normal working week, and by teaching skills that lead to employment on release and reduced reoffending. From 2010-11 to 2013-14, the number of hours worked in prisons increased by a third from 10.6 million to 14.2 million in public sector prisons.
Matt Warman
The Minister will be aware that a number of my constituents in North Sea Camp open prison are already undertaking a great deal of paid work. What work is the Department doing to ensure that people are moved to open prisons at the right time, rather than before time?
Andrew Selous
Only prisoners assessed as at low risk of absconding and low risk of harm to the public, and who are within two years of release, may be allocated to an open prison. An open prison provides resettlement opportunities, including paid work that can support successful reintegration into the community and help to reduce the risk of reoffending. We want all prisoners to take advantage of these opportunities. We will continue to encourage all prisoners to do so.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
The prison service is housing an increasing number of older prisoners. What steps are being taken to rehabilitate prisoners who are too old or too ill to work?
Andrew Selous
We cannot require older prisoners to work, but I would certainly want those opportunities to be available to older prisoners, just as they are to many older people in society who want to carry on working. All our educational opportunities are, of course, open to older prisoners. We recognise the challenge, which the hon. Lady rightly raises, of an increasingly elderly prison population.
Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)
Between 2005 and 2009, I visited about 65 prisons in England and Wales, and it was my universal experience that the work done by prisoners was more or less useless to the outside world. In one prison, I saw people making hairnets. No doubt there is a market for hairnets—
Sir Edward Garnier
None of the prisoners in that prison—it was not too far from Lichfield!—was ever going to leave prison to work in a hairnet factory. Will my hon. Friend please ensure that proper wages are paid for the work we tell prisoners to do, so that they can support their families, rather than the welfare state, and can leave prison and get a job that they want to do?
Mr Speaker
I think the hairnet has been replaced, to judge by the length of the question, but we greatly enjoyed the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s question.
Andrew Selous
I have great respect for my right hon. and learned Friend and for his seminal work, “Prisons with a Purpose”. Of course we want high-quality work. I could show him what is happening in Halfords academy at Olney prison, where prisoners are trained to be bicycle mechanics so that they can get a job on release; or I could tell him about the new work we are doing with the Ministry of Defence, which has been much appreciated by that Department.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
The Minister will be well aware that one of the biggest safeguards against reoffending is getting people into a job. In a number of prisons, including HMP Risley in my constituency, however, prisoners are often denied access to work experience because the prison wings are locked owing to a shortage of staff. What is the hon. Gentleman doing to tackle this problem?
Andrew Selous
We are doing a great deal about it. The first and most important thing is that we were successful in recruiting more than 1,700 extra prison officers in the year to March, and we are going to carry on recruiting the same number of prison officers. That will lead to more staff on the wings, allowing more access to work activities to achieve exactly what the hon. Lady wants.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
5. If he will take steps to increase the penalties available for people convicted of burglary offences.
The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)
Since 2010, crime has fallen across the country, and in my hon. Friend’s constituency by 19%. Burglary has a disproportionate effect on victims, which is why we are pleased that custodial cases for domestic burglary have increased from 22.6 months in 2010 to 26 months in 2014.
Mr Robertson
I am pleased that the Minister is taking this crime very seriously indeed. Police forces tell us that a very small number of people commit a very high percentage of burglaries. Is it not easier to take those people out of circulation for even longer so that, very simply, they will not be able to commit those crimes?
Mike Penning
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why this Parliament has decided that the maximum prison sentence for this offence should be 14 years. It is for the judiciary to decide what sentence burglars get, but I am sure that the judiciary listens to the will of Parliament.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
Many burglaries are driven by major addiction issues, so what is being done to increase the range and variety of solutions? Is there not a place for innovative solutions?
Mike Penning
A pilot project to get rid of cautions and defer prosecutions took place in three constituencies during the last Parliament, and it is doing really well at the moment. This is exactly the sort of thing that the hon. Gentleman is talking about. People will know how the offences they have committed affect the community. We can keep them out of prison for low-level offences, but put them in prison for high-level offences.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Mandatory sentencing with “two strikes and you’re out” has had its impact on burglary. When is the Minister going to get on and implement this mandatory “two strikes and you’re out” policy for knife crime? It was introduced in January, but now we need to ensure that we set a clear implementation date rather than have the latest “as soon as possible” response from the Department.
Mike Penning
It is right and proper to pay tribute to Nick de Bois, whose work on knife crime from the Government Benches led to legislation being put on the statute book. My hon. Friend, who knows me well, will know that I intend to implement it as soon as I possibly can.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
Is the Minister aware that in the last few weeks, the Northern Ireland Assembly has discussed the prospect of mandatory minimum sentences for those who attack elderly people within our society? Does he agree that it is time Parliament sent out a loud and clear message that attacking the most vulnerable members of our society will not be tolerated? Will he meet me to discuss the prospect of introducing mandatory minimums in that regard?
Mike Penning
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the issue of mandatory minimums is devolved to Northern Ireland, but we will continue to look into it very carefully. I am pleased to say that last Thursday I met David Ford, Northern Ireland’s Justice Minister, and the Deputy Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The matter was also discussed during the Anglo-Irish summit in Dublin.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
6. What steps he is taking to increase the recruitment of prison officers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)
I believe that prison officers are among the unsung heroes of the public sector. Day in day out, they do amazing work in protecting the public. I am pleased to report that we more than met our target of 1,700 new prison officers by March 2015, and we intend to recruit a further 1,700 by March 2016.
Chloe Smith
I welcome that update. As the Minister knows, prison officers serving in HMP Norwich in my constituency, which he visited recently, and at nearby prisons such as Bure, work incredibly hard in difficult circumstances. Will he do everything possible to support them in relation to their work and conditions?
Andrew Selous
Of course I will. Both Norwich and Bure prisons are well resourced with prison officers and have a full complement of staff, but the National Offender Management Service will continue to monitor the resources that are available to both governors. I was very impressed with the work that was being done in Norwich prison, and also by the work being done in Café Britannia, outside the prison gates.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
How many prison officers were in post in May 2010, and how many are in post now? Have the numbers not been cut by about 40% overall?
Andrew Selous
I will write to the right hon. Gentleman with the exact figures. However, our benchmarking exercise has brought about a number of developments, not least the prisoner-facing roles that prison officers did not always have before. The right hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that we have closed 14 prisons. The National Audit Office has complimented us on our management of the prison estate, and we continue to recruit more prison officers.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I understand that the Minister has created a reserve force of prison officers and three reserve prisons, one of which is Wellingborough. Will he say a little more about that exercise?
Andrew Selous
As my hon. Friend may know, when soldiers leave the Regular Army, we encourage some of them to join the Army reserves, and I suppose that this concept is similar to that. The prison officer reserve has about 100 members, which gives us flexibility. I cannot update my hon. Friend any further on what I have said in the past, but this is the right thing to do.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
Does the Minister share my deep concern about the fact that some of the prison officers who are currently being recruited have not even undergone a simple Criminal Records Bureau check?
Andrew Selous
I am very surprised to hear that. We take prison officer training extremely seriously, but I shall look into what the hon. Gentleman has just told me as a matter of urgency. We are increasing the amount of time that prison officers spend being trained, and we continually improve the training we give them.
Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
7. How many days of sickness absence there were in his Department in (a) 2012, (b) 2013 and (c) 2014; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice (Caroline Dinenage)
The average number of days lost to sickness absence in the Ministry of Justice was 9.8 in 2012 and 2013, and 10.2 in 2014. The Department is committed to supporting the health and wellbeing of its employees and reducing sickness absence.
Mr Bellingham
Obviously, those are disappointing figures. Is the Minister aware that last year’s figures were twice as bad as those in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and four times as bad as those in the Department for International Development? What will she, the Secretary of State and other Ministers do to improve morale and sort out this very disappointing situation?
Caroline Dinenage
A large proportion of Ministry of Justice roles involve front-line prison staff, whose working environment is, of course, more physically rigorous than those of staff with office-based roles. It is important to note that other Departments’ sickness numbers do not include front-line roles such as those of soldiers, police officers and, indeed, nurses. When we take into account only civil servants who are employed in Whitehall, we see that Ministry of Justice staff actually take fewer sick days than those in other Departments.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
But that suggests that it is prison officers who have been the victim of assaults by prisoners, for example, who are taking sickness absence. What is this year’s rate of assaults on prison officers, and what is the Department doing to reduce it?
Caroline Dinenage
Of course the Department takes any assault on a prison officer incredibly seriously. It is essential that prison officers feel that the full weight of the state is behind them as they fulfil their duties. When there are serious assaults on prison staff, the perpetrators will be prosecuted unless there is an extremely good reason for not doing so.
Richard Arkless (Dumfries and Galloway) (SNP)
Given those figures, it might be pertinent to ask whether the Minister’s Department is a living wage employer.
Caroline Dinenage
We certainly are, as far as I understand it, and I am looking at that moving forward.
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
8. What steps he is taking to reduce reoffending.
The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)
May I take this opportunity to welcome the hon. Lady? Edmonton is a part of the world I know extremely well: it is where I grew up and did my early schooling, in Montagu Road. We have opened up the delivery of rehabilitation services through a diverse range of public, private and voluntary sector providers, who are providing excellent new facilities so that we can have fewer people reoffending.
Kate Osamor
Half of the prisons inspected by Ofsted in 2013 and 2014 were judged either to require improvement or as inadequate for learning and skills. Purposeful activity for adult male prisoners has plummeted in the past few years. Does the Minister agree that budget cuts are reducing opportunities for rehabilitation?
Mike Penning
No I do not. We inherited a really difficult situation with the economy when we came to power, but the way we have reorganised rehabilitation and training is vitally important. The key to rehabilitation is to ensure that people do not reoffend, and education and training are often the best ways of giving them an opportunity in life.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
In the last Parliament, I visited a prison in Denmark with the Justice Select Committee. One of the biggest contributors to preventing the prisoners from reoffending was their ability to cook their own food. Does the Minister agree that that ability is not a reward for good behaviour but an essential part of dealing with reoffending?
Mike Penning
I am not the prisons Minister but I have visited many prisons, not least the ones on the edge of my own constituency, and I have seen that happening in our own prisons. Giving people life skills is vital, as is giving them somewhere to live when they come out.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
Does the Minister agree that we need to retain the Human Rights Act as part of a programme established to deal with reoffending, in order to ensure that proper standards of human rights are adhered to in prisons?
Mike Penning
This country has led on human rights for centuries, and it will be no different when we introduce the legislation to ensure that this Parliament decides exactly what goes on, rather than a foreign court.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Schemes such as that offered by National Grid get young offenders into a job and a routine and back on the right path. What assessment has the Minister made of such opportunities for the future?
Mike Penning
I reiterate what the Secretary of State said earlier. Companies such as National Grid, Timpson and Greggs are doing a wonderful job for the community as well as for the individuals involved. Getting people back into work is by far the best way of giving them the self-esteem that they need and ensuring that they do not commit crimes.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
Reconviction rates double for prisoners who report using drugs in the four weeks before custody. If the Minister and his many colleagues do just one thing, will they please ensure that they reduce access to drugs in prison?
Mike Penning
I was responsible for drugs while I was at the Home Office as well, and I shall be responsible for taking the relevant legislation through the House when it arrives here from the other place. This matter is taken enormously seriously, and I am sure that the prisons Minister is doing everything he possibly can to ensure that drugs do not get into our prisons.
Jenny Chapman
I am glad to hear that the Minister is taking the matter seriously—and so he should—but he might want to look at what is actually happening on the ground. Just this morning, the chief inspector of prisons published a report on Pentonville prison in which, among his many criticisms, he observed that there was no detailed drug supply strategy. How many other prisons do not have a detailed drug supply strategy?
Mike Penning
I shall write to the hon. Lady on the exact question she has asked. The Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 has given prisons additional powers to test specifically for controlled drugs. I take this seriously, and I have stood outside prisons on patrol with the police and seen individuals pinging drugs across the fences. That is the sort of thing we need to address, making sure those people get penalised exactly like those who are taking the drugs.
Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab)
9. What plans he has for reform of the youth justice system; and if he will make a statement.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Michael Gove)
There has been a welcome decline over the past few years in the number of young offenders, but we know that more needs to be done to prevent young people being drawn into crime. We are committed to preventing youth offending and supporting young people to turn their back on crime.
Christina Rees
The number of young people behind bars is indeed falling, but the latest figures show that the number of white children in custody has fallen at twice the rate of that for those from ethnic minorities. What is the Justice Secretary doing to ensure that we help all young people to turn their lives around, regardless of race or background?
Michael Gove
The hon. Lady makes a very important point. As we discussed earlier in this questions session, there is often a link between circumstances of deprivation and a propensity to offend among young people. Sadly, far too many people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds grow up in homes where they do not have the stability, support and love that all of us think every young person should have. We need to do more to intervene long before young people fall into the hands of the justice system. Working with the Department for Education, I hope we can improve the way in which we support families, support the family courts and support the care system to look after damaged and fragile young people.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Consistently, Labour Members, along with charities such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, have argued that the idea of a secure college for young offenders is fundamentally wrong. Will the Justice Secretary indicate whether he has yet decided to drop his plans?
Wayne David
An interesting and pithy response, but it does not take us forward, does it? We all agree that education should play a central role in rehabilitation, but spending £85 million on a new prison of this kind is not the best way to help young offenders. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has expressed misgivings about these plans, so will the Justice Secretary tell us, here and now, whether the project will be cancelled?
Michael Gove
The hon. Gentleman makes some characteristically effective points, and of course I was listening very carefully.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
11. What progress he has made on reform of the courts system.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Michael Gove)
Thanks to the leadership shown by our judiciary—in particular, by Sir Brian Leveson—we are now in a position to reform access to justice comprehensively.
Peter Aldous
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer. Lowestoft magistrates court plays an important role in providing local access to justice in north-east Suffolk. Will he meet local users and me to agree on the steps that need to be taken to ensure that the court continues to play that role into the long term?
Michael Gove
I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend and those who have benefited from the administration of justice in the part of Suffolk he represents, but it is important to recognise that a third of our courts and tribunals are used less than 50% of the time. We do need to reform our court estate, but we can do so and improve access to justice by taking a 21st-century approach to ensuring that justice is served.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Cuts to legal aid have meant that lots of our constituents are finding it even more difficult to access justice, and often they are the most vulnerable constituents who come to see us at our surgeries as a result. What is the new Justice Secretary going to do to make sure that those individuals get access to justice?
Michael Gove
We are going to review the operation of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, the Act that transformed and reformed our legal aid landscape. We are also, as I have today, going to ask the very richest in the justice system to do a little bit more. One thing that struck me is that there are people in senior solicitors’ firms and in our best chambers who are not doing enough, given how well they have done out of the legal system, to support the very poorest—they need to do more.
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that to have a more efficient courts service we need a more efficient listing system, and that to get that we need to take more of our existing courts and put them into fewer buildings and to have more efficiency in the use of technology?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is, not for the first or for the last time, absolutely right. He was a great Justice Minister and he is absolutely on the button when he makes the point that we need a more efficient administration of justice in the interests of victims, witnesses and taxpayers.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor has indeed had something to say about the reform of the court system this morning. May I say “Well done” for spotting the gaping inequality in the justice system that his predecessor has created? Did he have in mind the 89% fall in social welfare legal aid cases under the previous Government—legal aid for the very poorest—or his own further cut in criminal legal aid announced last week? The president of the Law Society said that that cut could
“undermine the criminal justice system to the point that it may no longer deliver fair outcomes.”
Michael Gove
As usual, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the generous and bipartisan tone in which he conducts these exchanges. I am also grateful to him for drawing attention to some of the reforms that we have made to reduce the amount spent on legal aid. When his colleague and friend the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) was the shadow Justice Secretary, he made the point that the amount that the previous Labour Government spent on legal aid was unsustainable. We will review the reforms that we have made to ensure that we can maintain access to justice and also safeguard the interests of victims, witnesses and taxpayers.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
12. What recent discussions he has had on the treatment of people with mental health issues in the criminal justice system.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice (Caroline Dinenage)
Addressing the individual mental health needs of offenders and ensuring continuity of service from the community into custody are essential to wellbeing and rehabilitation. We work closely with the Department of Health and with the Welsh Government, who have responsibility for the commissioning of health services, in order to address this important issue.
Mrs Gillan
May I welcome the Minister to her position? Autism is a lifelong developmental disability, which often mistakenly gets classified under mental health issues, especially in the criminal justice system where too many people do not get the help they need. I am heartened that many prisoners are now seeking accreditation from the National Autistic Society for the skills and the support required for people with autism, but we need better understanding in our courts and in the Crown Prosecution Service. Will the Minister update me on the long-awaited aide-mémoire and support material for the CPS prosecutors that the Department was going to produce after the Think Autism adult strategy was published?
Caroline Dinenage
I thank my right hon. Friend for her very kind welcome. I would like to praise her for her ongoing commitment to this really important issue, particularly her work steering the Autism Act 2009 on to the statute book. We are clear that we need a system that ensures that the most vulnerable have access to the right support and help. That is why we are putting in place a programme of reforms to improve the experience of vulnerable victims and witnesses in court, as well as enhanced protection outside.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome both the Minister and the Lord Chancellor to their places. In November 2014, Argoed, a close-knit community in my constituency, was rocked by the horrific murder of Cerys Yemm. She was killed by a prisoner who had just been released and sent to stay in a bed and breakfast. Neither the council nor the landlady was told of his mental health issues. He could not get hold of the mental health medication he needed, the result of which was this unfortunate incident. His mother says that he was in and out of the criminal justice system all his life. He would go into a hostel, and then back to prison when he committed another crime. I thank the Lord Chancellor for agreeing to meet me to discuss this case. Will the Department now launch an urgent investigation into how we monitor the mental health of former prisoners?
Caroline Dinenage
It is really important that we carefully monitor how mental health is regarded from within the community into the prison system and then back out into the community again. I know that the Secretary of State and the prisons Minister have agreed to meet the hon. Gentleman and I am sure that they will listen carefully to everything that he has to say.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
Further to that question, does the Minister agree that when somebody has had a psychiatric assessment in prison, the information about their condition should be shared with all services, including social services and the police, when they leave prison? That would ensure that we had continuity of information about their condition so that when they came back into society we were clear about what we needed to do with them.
Caroline Dinenage
Yes, in the community, community rehabilitation companies and the National Probation Service are required to ensure that offenders comply with court-ordered treatment services. Probation services also supply offenders with access to mainstream mental health treatment by referring as appropriate.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
To protect and ensure sufficient access for people with mental health problems, the Justice Committee urged the Government in 2011—reaffirmed in a 2015 report—to carry out research into the geographical distribution of legal aid providers to avoid irreparable loss of capacity. What progress has been made on that recommendation?
Caroline Dinenage
I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with the exact details, but NHS England has developed national specifications for health and justice services. All prisons now have clear commissioning models, and that works as people leave prison and move into the community rehabilitation service as well.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
13. What his policy is on the European convention on human rights; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)
We will legislate for a Bill of Rights to protect our fundamental rights, prevent abuse of the system and restore some common sense to our human rights laws. Our plans do not involve us leaving the convention; that is not our objective, but our No. 1 priority is to restore some balance to our human rights laws, so no option is off the table for the future.
Catherine West
When will Ministers publish a draft Bill of Rights, as mooted in the recent election campaign?
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that this country has had a proud tradition with regard to human rights, and it will remain a central part of what we do to promote best practice around the world, but in the end, the country’s commitment to human rights will be judged on its actions, not merely the piece of paper it happens to have signed?
Mr Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have a strong record on human rights. We will continue to set an example around the world, but in our own domestic laws we do need to make sure that we have a common-sense balance. It is not a left or right issue; it is what the public expect as a matter of common sense.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
Is the Minister aware that the Church of Scotland has expressed concern about his Government’s plans to repeal the Human Rights Act? Will he now support the Church of Scotland’s call for human rights to be fully devolved to the Scottish Parliament?
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
I welcome the Minister to his place. We often hear about rights. Does he agree that perhaps it should be renamed the European convention on human responsibilities?
Mr Raab
My hon. Friend has been tenacious in his campaigning on this subject. He comes up with an ingenious suggestion. Actually, our concern has been less with the black-letter text of the convention and more with its application. Some of the problems have arisen from judicial legislation in the Strasbourg Court, some of them through the operation of the Human Rights Act, as the former shadow Justice Secretary acknowledged. We want to protect our fundamental rights and prevent abuse of the system.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Sir John Major, giving the inaugural Edward Heath lecture on the subject of Magna Carta last week, said that he respected the “power and significance” of the European convention on human rights, and that where there was conflict with the UK Parliament,
“I expect consultation and compromise to settle this issue.”
Should not the Minister, and indeed the Lord Chancellor, heed the advice of someone with so much experience of running a Tory Government with a wafer-thin majority?
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
16. What discussions he has had with the Scottish Government on the future of the Human Rights Act 1998.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Michael Gove)
I am due to meet the Justice Minister in the Scottish Government next week.
Kirsty Blackman
I welcome that news. The Minister will be aware that the Scottish Parliament voted by 100 votes to 10 to endorse the Human Rights Act last year, and that parties representing 58 of the 59 Scottish Westminster seats are against the repeal. Will the Minister make a commitment to not imposing the repeal on Scotland against the will of our people?
Michael Gove
I welcome the hon. Lady to her place, not just as the Member of Parliament who represents my parents, but as a Member of Parliament who was educated at the same school as me. She makes a very powerful point about the range of opinions in support of safeguarding, enhancing and indeed modernising our human rights in this country. I shall look forward to engaging with the Scottish National party and others, but I think it is important to stress that in this United Kingdom Parliament, human rights are a reserved matter, and parties that support reform of the Human Rights Act secured more than 50% of the votes at the last general election.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
17. What plans he has for reform of prisons; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)
We are very ambitious to reform prisons; to make them places of learning, training and work, and where healthy family relationships are kept strong, in order to change prisoners’ lives for the better, prevent people becoming victims and keep the public safe.
Nigel Huddleston
Long Lartin maximum security prison is in my constituency. In the context of any discussions on reform, does my hon. Friend agree that the safety and security of prison officers and prison workers is also of paramount importance?
Andrew Selous
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; it is wholly unacceptable that prison officers should be assaulted during the course of their duties. We have extensive violence-reduction work going on within the National Offender Management Service, in which I am taking an extremely close interest—I meet officials every month to track progress. We are absolutely determined to get on top of it so that prisons are safe for prison officers.
Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)
Northern Ireland prisons are brimful at the moment and struggling, and the prison officers are suffering as a result of the cuts. Will we look at reform of prisons across all the devolved Governments, working together to find a way forward, or will it be a case of “devolve and forget”?
Andrew Selous
As the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State has said, the Government are keen to talk with all the devolved Administrations in the UK, because we absolutely believe that we can learn from each other. Where we can, I think that we should help each other as well.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
21. I am sure that the Minister recognises the importance of reforming rehabilitation in prisons. Does he share my concern about reports from chaplains across the prison estate that they are struggling to organise collective worship because of the number of hours that prisoners are spending behind bars in their cells?
Andrew Selous
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; collective or corporate worship is important and all prisoners should have access to it. We will do our absolute best to ensure that that happens. With the increasing number of prison officers, that should be increasingly possible.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Michael Gove)
Today I was able to confirm that the Ministry of Justice will throw its full weight behind the reform programme for Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, led so ably by the Lord Chief Justice and supported by Sir Brian Leveson and the whole Judicial Executive Board.
Kevin Foster
I welcome the news that my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor shares my concern about issues in our courts that could lead to a two-tier justice system. As he will be aware, in Devon insufficient bids were received for the new legal aid contract for advice at police stations. Will he agree to meet me and representatives of the profession to discuss the specific issues that have led to that situation, such as the geography of the area, and how they can be resolved?
Michael Gove
I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend. It is very important that we ensure that in rural areas such as Devon everyone has access to the justice they deserve.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
T2. In Lancashire almost one third of domestic abuse victims at multi-agency risk assessment conferences are repeat victims. Anecdotally, many perpetrators are repeat offenders, but no statistics are available on that. What action is the Minister taking to identify repeat and serious perpetrators of domestic abuse?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice (Caroline Dinenage)
That is a very important question, and something we take very seriously. It is important that we make every effort to identify the perpetrators of these heinous crimes, but we are also determined to ensure that anyone facing the threat of domestic violence has somewhere to turn, which is why we are working closely across the Government, with the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government, to address this important issue.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
T9. Will the Minister update the House on progress being made to improve the military covenant by protecting service personnel from judicial expansionism?
The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)
My hon. Friend raises a really important issue. One minute our servicemen are heroes, and the next minute they are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. Charities such as Care after Combat, which was recently formed, are doing fantastic work that is being piloted in our prisons. I would like to meet my hon. Friend again to see how we can work together to ensure that our heroes do not end up in the criminal justice system.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
T3. Last week the Scottish Government celebrated the 10th anniversary of legal humanist marriage. Given their popularity —there has been an upsurge in the number of such marriages in that country—and support in both Houses, can the Minister give us an idea of whether the Government would like to implement something similar in this country?
Caroline Dinenage
Yes, marriage is one of our most important institutions and we need to make sure that any changes to the law are carried out with care. That is why we have asked the Law Commission to undertake a preliminary scoping study to prepare the way for potential future reform. It is due to report in December and then the Government will consider the next steps very carefully.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend look carefully again at the workings of the European arrest warrant following the announcements last night from London and from Kigali, Rwanda, and the misuse of the process by a junior Spanish judge for political rather than judicial purposes?
Michael Gove
Few people know more about, or are more committed to, the welfare of the Rwandan people than my right hon. Friend, and few Members of this House are more committed to due process and human rights, so I take very seriously the points that he raises. I will look very closely at this case and report back to him.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
T4. Could the Secretary of State explain exactly what is his policy towards the European convention on human rights and the European Court of Human Rights? On the one hand, he says that he supports the convention; on the other, he says that all decisions must be made in British courts. If all decisions are made in British courts, then the role of the European Court of Human Rights will be an utter irrelevance to Britain, and British people will therefore be denied the right of access to a treaty obligation that we signed in 1948.
Michael Gove
May I, on behalf of everyone on the Government Benches, congratulate the hon. Gentleman on making it on to the ballot for the Labour leadership? Had he required any more signatures, I would have been happy to defect in order to ensure that a full spectrum of views was behind him. He makes a very important point. We want to ensure that people’s access to human rights is enhanced as a result of legislative changes that we make.
Mr Speaker
I am very glad that the hon. Gentleman has overcome his natural shyness, with which the House is well familiar.
Mr Hollobone
You are very kind, Mr Speaker.
How many foreign national offenders do we have in our prisons, and what plans are under way to send these people back to secure detention in their own countries?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)
This Parliament would not have been the same had not my hon. Friend carried on with his diligent scrutiny of this important subject. I can report to him that at 31 March 2015 10,481 foreign national offenders were in custody in England and Wales, just over 6,000 of whom are sentenced prisoners. The Immigration Act 2014 has enabled us to cut the number of appeal rights from 17 to four. Over 800 removals have now taken place as a result of these changes. Last year, the Home Office managed to send back over 5,000 foreign national offenders.
Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)
T5. Most women entering prison serve very short sentences. Last year, 58% were serving six months or less. Twenty years ago, this figure was only a third. As 82% of women who enter prison under sentence have committed a non-violent offence, why is this figure increasing?
Caroline Dinenage
The decision to impose a custodial sentence is of course one for the independent judiciary. The law requires that a custodial sentence be passed only where an offence is so serious that neither a community sentence nor a fine will do. The courts take into account all circumstances regarding the offence and the offender. It is important to remember that just because an offence is not violent, that does not mean that it does not have victims—multiple victims—and that it is not serious.
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
I am delighted that the Lord Chancellor has committed himself to speeding up the process of justice—an essential task that I suspect he will find is like painting the Forth bridge with a toothbrush. Does he agree that one of the essential elements of that is that the digital technology increasingly available in courts talks to the digital technology that the police use in collecting evidence, because if not, it will not happen?
Mike Penning
The technology that my right hon. Friend alludes to is now coming on to the front line, and it is the sort of kit that we absolutely need. Body-worn cameras are the new replacement for Airwave, and that is absolutely vital. We must make sure that the information taken by that technology on the streets can be used all the way through the criminal justice system, particularly in the courts.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
T6. Yesterday it emerged that the Secretary of State was considering making it more difficult to get hold of official documents under freedom of information rules. I recall that the previous Cabinet Minister, the now noble Lord Maude, suggested that open data should replace freedom of information. Will the Secretary of State clarify whether he has any plans whatsoever to amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and if so, what he has to hide?
Michael Gove
I think we do need to revisit the Freedom of Information Act. It is absolutely vital that we ensure that the advice that civil servants give to Ministers of whatever Government is protected so that civil servants can speak candidly and offer advice in order to ensure that Ministers do not make mistakes. There has been a worrying tendency in our courts and elsewhere to erode the protections for that safe space for policy advice, and I think it absolutely needs to be asserted. There is no contradiction between making sure that we give civil servants the protection they deserve and also ensuring that the data—for example, the amount we spend in any Government Department—are more transparent than ever.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) to her new position. Does she agree about the importance of maintaining family ties and ensuring the rehabilitation of female offenders, as exemplified by the hard work undertaken at Foston Hall ladies prison in my constituency?
Caroline Dinenage
Yes, it is important to maintain family ties, and family engagement workers are in place in all public sector female prisons, including Foston Hall. They meet all prisoners on induction to identify any support required to maintain or establish family contact. Women’s prisons are also looking at other support for improved family links, including family days, child-centred visits, homework clubs and specific relationship and parenting skills programmes.
Corri Wilson (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)
T8. Following the question asked by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) on freedom of information, does the Secretary of State intend to introduce legislation on proposals to price out FOI requests and extend the ministerial veto, which my party would oppose, and will he give us a timetable for that?
Michael Gove
We want to review the operation of the original Freedom of Information Act. Some of the judgments that have been made have actually run contrary to the spirit of the original Act, and some of those behind the original Act, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Home Secretary who introduced the legislation, Jack Straw, have been very clear about the defects in the way in which the Act has operated. It is vital that we get back to the founding principles of freedom of information. Citizens should have access to data and they should know what is done in their name and about the money that is spent in their name, but it is also vital that the conversations between Ministers and civil servants are protected in the interests of good government.
Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)
Do Ministers agree that a British Bill of Rights is an important step towards ensuring that the matter of votes for prisoners remains a matter for this House to decide, and that the best way of rehabilitating offenders is through a good job and education, not political gimmicks?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Dominic Raab)
I welcome my hon. Friend to the House. He is absolutely right: prisoner voting is a question that should be decided by democratically elected Members of this House. Our wider aim with a Bill of Rights is not only to protect our fundamental rights, but to strengthen the role of the British Supreme Court, defend the rule of law and shield the democratic prerogatives of this House.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
The family of Richard Davies are devastated by his death on Yeadon high street. A man has been charged with manslaughter and yet has been granted bail, which is very distressing for the family. What guidance is given to judges—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman must listen. My advice is that the case is sub judice and, on the basis of a charge having been brought, it is not appropriate to raise the matter in the Chamber at this time. I recognise the assiduity of the hon. Gentleman, who may find other opportunities, but not now.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State’s apparent commitment to access to justice for everybody in this country mean that he will reverse the cuts made by the previous Government to that very same access to justice?
Michael Gove
We are committed to reviewing the reforms to legal aid, but I have to stress that it was the Labour party’s former justice spokesman, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), who made it clear during the last Parliament that levels of spending on legal aid were unsustainable under the last Government and we needed to reform. After all, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) told us, there was no money left.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
In March I brought the families of Ross and Claire Simons, who were horrifically killed in my constituency by a dangerous driver, to meet the Prime Minister to discuss the maximum sentence for death by dangerous driving, which is currently 14 years. In this particular case, the dangerous driver was given 11 years, which could be brought down to five years as a result of good behaviour. The Prime Minister made a commitment to the families to contact the then Justice Secretary to ensure that the Government looked seriously at extending the maximum sentence. Will the Secretary of State please look at this case once more?
Andrew Selous
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that issue. We have increased the maximum penalties for a number of driving offences, and we are looking carefully at the recommendations of the review announced by the previous Justice Secretary and considering how best to take them forward in a proportionate and consistent manner. We will report back to the House shortly.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor has suggested that there will be a further reorganisation of the court estate. How many courts does he anticipate being included, and given the number of courts that the coalition Government closed that are still lying empty and costing the taxpayer millions of pounds, can he assure us that there will be better value for the taxpayer this time round?
Michael Gove
We suspect that a significant number of additional courts will have to close, and I will make sure that Parliament is fully informed about that process in due course. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. We need to make sure that we get value for money from the disposal of those buildings, and decisions that have been made in the past suggest that the Ministry of Justice has not always done the right thing when investing in the court estate.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
All the statistics demonstrate that a significant number of people with mental health needs end up in prison. Is the Minister really content that there is sufficient treatment for those in prison? She has said that she is in dialogue with the Department of Health. Does she not have the same suspicion as me that if we had more effective treatment in the general community, fewer people with mental health problems would end up in prison?
Caroline Dinenage
I very much agree with my hon. Friend, and we are doing just that. In England, we are working with the Department of Health and the Home Office to support NHS England to develop liaison and diversion services. Those services place NHS staff, usually a mental health nurse, at police stations and courts to assess offenders for a range of health problems, including mental health problems, and refer them to the right treatment and support services. The information can then be shared with courts, prisons and probation services to inform decisions on charging and sentencing.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
The coalition Government increased the transparency of government by requiring Ministers to report on their meetings with outside organisations. Is the Justice Secretary not embarrassed that he now wants to reduce Government transparency by strengthening the ministerial veto on freedom of information requests?
Michael Gove
I enjoyed serving in the coalition Government alongside the right hon. Gentleman, and I welcome him back to the House.
It is absolutely right that people should know who Ministers meet and which lobby groups and others take up ministerial time, but I hope the right hon. Gentleman would agree that it is vital that we protect civil servants by making sure that they can give full and frank advice. Sometimes, as well as respecting transparency, we have to respect confidentiality. We have a duty of care towards those in the civil service who do such a good job of supporting Ministers.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Ministers will be aware of the incident last week at Killingholme, in my constituency, when 51 illegal immigrants were apprehended following a successful operation by Border Force. They were dispersed to detention centres throughout the country. Can the Secretary of State assure me that adequate provision will be made for future incidents of this type, and that the legal process will not in any way hinder their speedy deportation?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that case. It is vital that we ensure that there is appropriate provision for people who have been taking advantage of our generosity. I will therefore work with the Home Secretary to ensure that we have the facilities necessary to deal with situations such as the one that my hon. Friend’s constituents have had to face.
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
The Government recently announced that they were going ahead with a further 8.75% fee cut to criminal legal aid, the second in a year. The existing system, especially the online Crown Commercial Service system, is already wholly inadequate. What justification is there for further cuts, other than to further reduce access to justice for those most in need?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
May I first welcome the hon. Lady to the House?
It is important that we recognise that we have one of the most generous legal aid budgets in the world, and that it needs to be sustainable. It has to be fair to the people who need legally aided advice, fair to the providers and fair to the taxpayer, who ultimately pays for it. As far as the latest 8.75% cut is concerned, we have made sure that there will be proper access for all those who need legal advice.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry to disappoint remaining colleagues, but time is against us and we must now move on.
Point of Order
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Today is National Women in Engineering Day, and it is also Parliamentary Links Day, when we celebrate the links between Parliament, science and engineering—celebrations that you yourself, Mr Speaker, were gracious enough to launch this morning. Could you advise me how it might be in order for me to get two such important events on the record?
Mr Speaker
Any advice from me, as the hon. Lady now knows, is superfluous. She has found her own salvation: the matter is on the record; it can never be erased from it. I hope she is satisfied. It is a very good cause.
European Union (Finance) Bill
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
15:20 - The Committee divided: - Ayes: 254 / Noes: 301 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Temporary Chair (Mr Gary Streeter)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 1, in clause 2, page 1, line 18, leave out subsection (3).
This amendment removes the automatic coming into force of the Act two months after it is passed, which would be incompatible with any of the new Clauses.
Clause 2 stand part.
New clause 1—Report on level of EU budget spending—
“(1) This Act shall come into force on such day as the Treasury shall by order specify.
(2) The day specified in the order made under subsection (1) shall not be earlier than 14 days after the date on which the condition has been satisfied.
(3) The condition referred to in subsection (2) is that the Treasury shall have laid before both Houses of Parliament a copy of a communication sent by the Treasury to the European Commission requesting a review by the European Commission of the basis of appropriations for the European Union budget, and in particular—
(a) a comparative analysis of commitment or payment as the basis for appropriations, and
(b) a study of whether alternative arrangements might offer in the longer term improved value and enhanced budgetary control.”
The Clause requires Ministers to seek a European Commission study of whether alternative approaches to funding EU activities would offer better value for money and improved budgetary control.
New clause 2—Reform of priorities within the EU budget—
“(1) This Act shall come into force on such day as the Treasury shall by order specify.
(2) The day specified in the order made under subsection (1) shall not be earlier than 14 days after the date on which the condition has been satisfied.
(3) The condition referred to in subsection (2) is that the Secretary of State shall have laid before both Houses of Parliament a copy of a communication sent by the Secretary of State to the President of the European Council requesting a fundamental review by the Council of Ministers to be completed before 31 December 2015 of budget priorities, waste and inefficiency within the European Union budget.”
The Clause requires Ministers to seek a Council of Ministers review of budget priorities, waste and inefficiency within the EU budget to be completed by the end of 2015.
New clause 3—Accountability and transparency—
“(1) This Act shall come into force on such day as the Treasury shall by order specify.
(2) The day specified in the order made under subsection (1) shall not be earlier than 14 days after the date on which the condition has been satisfied.
(3) The condition referred to in subsection (2) is that the Secretary of State shall have laid before both Houses of Parliament a copy of a communication sent by the Secretary of State to the President of the European Commission inviting officials to provide the relevant European affairs select committee in each House of Parliament with details of the draft European budget for each financial year before the draft European budget is agreed in the Council of Ministers.”
The Clause would require Ministers to invite European Commission budget representatives to provide details of the draft European budget to the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee and the House of Lords European Union Committee each year before the EU budget is agreed.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Streeter. Clause stand part, the amendment and the new clauses have been grouped, so if it is convenient I shall start with the two clauses, turn to the new clauses and finish with the amendment, which is consequential and related to the new clauses.
The purpose of the Bill is to enable the UK to give effect to the new own resources decision amending the arrangements for financing the annual budget of the European Union. The amendments were agreed at the February 2013 European Council, and the new ORD, reflecting those amendments, was adopted by the Council of Ministers on 26 May 2014.
Clause 1 is fairly simple: it adds the new own resources decision, adopted unanimously in May 2014, to the list of previous ORDs, recognised under the European Communities Act 1972, thus giving it effect under UK law. When passed, the Bill will become the European Union (Finance) Act 2015 and supersede the European Communities (Finance) Act 2008, which approved the previous ORD. Clause 2 cites this legislation as the European Union (Finance) Act 2015 and repeals the 2008 Act.
For the benefit of hon. Members, I shall explain in a little more detail what the new own resources decision, to which clause 1 refers, means. The new ORD will largely maintain the existing financing system framework, which consists of four pillars: levies and duties on trade with non-member countries in agricultural goods, including sugar; customs duties on trade with non-member countries; the yield from applying a call-up rate to a hypothetical harmonised VAT base for each member state; and a fourth resource based on gross national income—GNI. Those four pillars remain largely untouched in the new ORD, and that is no insignificant achievement. During the negotiations over the multi-annual financial framework and before, there was considerable pressure to change the financing system.
Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend confirm that GNI is assessed in the same way across the whole Community?
Mr Gauke
Yes, it is. My right hon. Friend raises an important point and I suspect that he has in mind the issues that occurred last year as a consequence of revisions to our GNI and that of other member states, which meant that an additional surcharge was applied to the United Kingdom. He will of course recall the negotiations that followed and how we ensured that payments were delayed and that the rebate applied to the surcharge. There is consistency in the application in this case and that is very important. There is suitable scrutiny and co-ordination, with Eurostat playing a role.
Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)
The various agreements have been described as a considerable achievement. Under pillar two and the rural development payments, Scotland’s payments will work out at about €12 per hectare. The EU average is €76 per hectare. Would the Minister care to define “considerable achievement” in that light?
Mr Gauke
I would certainly make it very clear that there was a considerable achievement in the 2013 negotiations that were implemented in 2014. For example, there were calls for changes to the financing system and to introduce new types of member state contributions, but the UK resisted that successfully. There were calls to introduce new EU-wide taxes, including a financial transactions tax, and the UK resisted that successfully. Finally, there were calls to reform the rebate and the Government protected that. That is a considerable achievement.
On the subject of the regional distribution of common agricultural policy receipts, it is only fair to point out that payments per hectare are only part of the story. Although Scotland receives the lowest payments per hectare, Scottish farmers also receive one of the highest payments per farm in the European Union. On average, Scottish farmers receive just under £26,000 compared with England’s £17,000, Wales’s £16,000 and Northern Ireland’s £7,000. I hope that that provides some clarity for the right hon. Gentleman.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I note the irony that the House of Commons Library published its briefing paper on the Bill on the bicentenary of the battle of Waterloo. It notes, with its characteristic understatement, that our
“rebate is not popular with other Member States or the Commission”.
May I invite my hon. Friend to make a firm commitment to the retention of our rebate? Will he continue to argue for it and ensure that it is not part of any of the renegotiations on our ongoing membership in the Community?
Mr Gauke
Absolutely. I am keen to make that commitment and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. Those of us who participated in the equivalent debates after the previous multi-annual financial framework was agreed and on the Act that performed the task that this Bill will now perform will recall that we spent some considerable time focusing on the fact that a large part of the rebate had been surrendered by the previous Government for little or nothing, merely a promise of reform of the common agricultural policy that had not been delivered.
Kelvin Hopkins
Following on from the point made by the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), I have said many times in this House that the deal done in 2005 was a terrible mistake. The Government have made frequent references to it. Is it not now appropriate to consider trying to regain what was lost in that deal, particularly because our net budget contributions have been rising so strongly in recent years?
Mr Gauke
First, I acknowledge the consistency with which the hon. Gentleman has approached these issues. If I recall correctly our debates in 2008 and 2009, he expressed clearly his dissatisfaction with the performance of the Government that he supported, in terms of surrendering part of the rebate.
The other point to make is that the hon. Gentleman should not underestimate the Prime Minister’s achievement in that negotiation. When he went to debate and negotiate on these matters, few believed that he would be able to reduce the overall budget in real terms, but he succeeded in doing so. Today’s debate is focused not so much on the expenditure side, although I think we will discuss expenditure thanks to the Opposition’s helpful amendment and new clauses—I was going to say “probing amendments”, but we shall see—but what happened was also very important on the revenue side. It was a considerable success that we were able to resist new types of member states’ contributions, new EU-wide taxes and attempts to reform the rebate. That is of some note.
Oliver Dowden
I congratulate the Government on their success in keeping the EU budget down. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will continue to keep pressure on the EU to make sure that it continues to live within its means, not just for this budget settlement but for future budget settlements?
Mr Gauke
I will certainly make that assurance and indeed, I will set out in a little detail what we are doing in that field. I referred to my hon. Friend as a fellow Hertfordshire MP. However, if I remember correctly, at the time of the negotiation, he was part of the team in Downing Street who were involved in the undoubted success. It is characteristic of his modesty that he did not draw attention to that point, but I daresay that a lot of the credit for the successful negotiation lies in his hands.
Smaller changes to the own resources decision affect some member states’ contributions and the balance between the pillars of the own resources system. Those are somewhat detailed, but I hope it will be helpful to set them out for the Committee, because they are, in essence, at the heart of the Bill and clauses we are debating.
Specifically, the smaller changes include the following: the member states’ retention rate for traditional own resources—TOR—which covers member states’ collection costs for customs duties, is reduced from 25% to 20%. That change will have no impact on the ultimate cost of the EU budget to the UK on account of the UK rebate. For the period 2014 to 2020, the ORD also reintroduces the reduced rate of call for VAT-based contributions for Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. Austria will revert from its reduced call rate over the 2007-2013 multi-annual financial framework to a standard call rate of 0.3% over the 2014-2020 MFF. The financial benefit of the changes to the UK depends on technical factors. Even so, on current estimates, those changes point to a benefit of approximately £150 million over the course of the MFF.
Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)
My constituents are still reeling from Labour’s great recession. Will my hon. Friend assure me that the Bill will not result in any new taxes or new contributions from the UK?
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
Was not another of the Prime Minister’s substantial achievements in those negotiations to shift the debate about the future finances of the European Union on to Britain making a contribution to the competitiveness of the European Union, and making sure that resources were allocated to improve competitiveness for business?
Mr Gauke
My hon. Friend makes a good point. He anticipates comments that I will make later relating to how we can ensure that the money is not just controlled and reduced, but better spent. There is a criticism, which I suspect is shared by Members from all parts of the House, that the money that the European Union spends in its various ways is not used as efficiently and is not as focused on improving our competitiveness as it might be. There are encouraging signs that there is a greater focus on that. I will return to that shortly.
I was running through the various technical changes in the own resources decision. I have touched on the changes to the retention rates. May I also touch on the changes in relation to GNI-based contributions?
Simon Hoare
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way a second time; he is being very generous. My constituents in North Dorset and people across the south-west want to have confidence that Her Majesty’s Government will in no way acquiesce to a change in our rebate as part of any negotiations. We all understand that the UK’s agreement is contingent on any changes to the rebate. I invite the Minister to make the commitment that the rebate is not part of any renegotiation, that it is absolutely off limits and that this Government will always continue to defend our rebate.
Mr Gauke
I give the assurance that the Government will always defend our rebate. Perhaps it might be helpful to the Committee if I make the point that I made on Second Reading about the scale and significance of the partial surrender of our rebate by the Labour Government. According to the European Commission, the disapplication of the UK rebate cost the UK about €9 billion over the seven-year period of the previous multi-annual financial framework. Thereafter, with the abatement disapplication fully phased in, the cost to the UK is about £2 billion a year. That is a significant sum, particularly given the fiscal circumstances that we continue to face.
Frankly, the question of what was achieved in return for the surrender of that partial rebate might be asked. Perhaps we will hear an answer to that later this afternoon, but I have not heard a convincing answer yet.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
The Minister has outlined how the European Union is currently funded through contributions from member states. Some in the European Parliament argue that that system should be replaced by direct taxes levied by the European Union. Will the Minister confirm that the British Government would resist any such move?
Mr Gauke
Yes, we would resist such a move. It would be a fundamental change to the nature of our relationship with the European Union, and one that would go in entirely the wrong direction for the United Kingdom. There were calls in the negotiations for such a step to be taken. There were calls, for example, for a financial transaction tax to be introduced to finance EU spending. We resisted that. The Prime Minister was very clear in ruling it out from any deal.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
My hon. Friend talks about the financial transaction tax, but the City is an incredibly important contributor to the UK economy and it has a significant turnover. Will he assure us that the Government will not allow the European Union to attack the City from a different direction as it looks for alternative sources of revenue from the jewel in our economic crown?
Mr Gauke
I certainly give that assurance. There was a strong push for a financial transaction tax, which would have had a particular impact on the United Kingdom, given that we have the pre-eminent financial centre not just in the European Union, but in the world. That could have been damaging for the City of London. We resisted it and we will continue to take that approach.
To make a broader point—although I will not go too far down this route, Mr Streeter—it would be more helpful if there was an acceptance in the European Union that the City of London is a jewel in the crown, to use my hon. Friend’s phrase, not just of the United Kingdom, but of Europe as a whole. We should have the pre-eminent financial centre in the United Kingdom, and trying to damage it would be disadvantageous to all within the European Union.
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
Will the Minister welcome the confirmation from the Office for Budget Responsibility that in cash terms, the payment from the UK will be the same in the 2019-20 financial year as it is in 2014-15, which in real terms is a reduction of 7%? Will he encourage the Government to ensure that my constituents in Eddisbury do not pay a greater proportion of their taxes into an ever-increasing European budget, and to seek further reductions of a similar scale?
Mr Gauke
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is noticeable that our contributions are lower than they were in the last year of the previous multi-annual financial framework, not least because of the achievement of the Prime Minister in February 2013. Of course, we continue to suffer the unfortunate effects of the previous negotiation, when part of our rebate was lost, amounting to £2 billion a year. None the less, we have made considerable progress thanks to the steps that were taken in 2013.
For the period from 2014 to 2020, the ORD reintroduces reductions in the GNI-based contributions of the Netherlands and Sweden, and introduces a reduction in those contributions for Denmark. The UK will contribute to those small corrections, but that will largely be offset by changes to other corrections.
Lastly, the ORD lays down the own resources ceilings at 1.23% of total member states’ GNI for payments and 1.29% for commitments, and sets out the method for calculating subsequent changes to those ceilings following the introduction of the European systems of accounts 2010 by all member states.
The Bill will give UK approval to the new ORD and is the last UK action that is necessary to deliver the 2013 deal on the budget.
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
I admire the level of detail we are going into in this debate and I know that we all find it fascinating, but my constituents often say that they would like to hear details that they can understand, such as household-level figures. I note from the briefing that we are paying the equivalent of a £10 a month subscription per person. Will my hon. Friend confirm that when we talk about the renegotiation, we will do our utmost to talk in language that everyone outside this House can understand, as well as going through the fine detail?
Mr Gauke
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I confess that I have set out rather detailed points. I know hon. Members in the Chamber will be capable of understanding them, but they will not necessarily cause great excitement among the many hundreds of thousands if not millions who are currently viewing the debate. My hon. Friend puts his view of the nature of our contributions in clear language. It is important that we have a Government who are determined to ensure that we get a good deal within the European Union and that we are careful in how we spend money there.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
I note again a matter that is of great interest to the electors of Tonbridge, Edenbridge and Malling. The budget will be 7% lower in real terms by 2020, which is very welcome, but will the Minister say more on the consequences to the EU budget of the UK’s position, because we are rather hoping that 7% is the beginning and not the end?
Mr Gauke
My hon. Friend touches on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), who drew attention to the fact that our net contributions are forecast to be lower in 2019-20 compared with 2013-14. In fact, our net contribution in 2019-20 will be £9.3 billion compared with £10.2 billion in 2013-14, which is clearly lower in cash terms but also lower in real terms. My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) raises the issue that we should make a strong case for budget discipline. He wants to ensure that we appreciate that we are dealing with taxpayers’ money. Whether UK taxpayers’ money or taxpayers’ money from the wider EU, that money has to be spent wisely. That is a good point, and I will return to it later when we deal with the Labour new clauses and amendment.
Alex Salmond
I am pleased to say that I have drawn level with the Chancellor on this morning’s assessment.
I admire the dead bat that the Minister is showing to his Back Benchers, but can he answer this point: is it the Prime Minister’s objective in the European renegotiations to lower the UK’s budget contribution, and if so by how much?
Mr Gauke
The right hon. Gentleman refers to my dead bat, but I thought I had played a flourishing cover drive. The Prime Minister has set out objectives for a renegotiation, which will then be taken to the British people, who will decide our future as members of the European Union. We believe we should do a wide range of things to ensure that Europe works better for its members. We have consistently argued the case for fiscal discipline and we are not alone in making that case. Indeed, the Bill itself demonstrates that there is strong support for a fiscal disciplinarian approach within the European Union—the fact that we were able to negotiate a reduction in the multi-annual financial framework was a considerable achievement. In those negotiations, we had the support of member states such as Germany, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and others.
Alan Mak
My hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) made a very important point about protecting the UK’s rebate, which is important to my constituents in Havant and throughout the country. Will the Minister confirm how much of the UK rebate the Labour Government gave away?
Mr Gauke
I will certainly make that point. It was estimated by the European Commission to be of the value of €9 billion over the previous MFF period. In this MFF period, it would be in the region of £2 billion a year, which would be a considerable loss. The Government will not be repeating that.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
I would like to take the Minister back to the intervention of the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond), because the Minister did not really answer him. In an article in The Sunday Times this week, one Conservative MP said of the Prime Minister’s intentions that he was keeping things up his sleeve, and that:
“He’ll try to negotiate a lower net contribution to the budget.”
It is definitely being said that the Prime Minister is holding that in reserve. Will the Minister comment on that?
Mr Gauke
We have consistently argued the case for money being spent more wisely and for greater European Union public spending restraint. We have already made progress with that argument—we made progress in 2013 and the Bill relates to the negotiation, although it is on the revenue rather than the expenditure side. We will consistently argue that case.
Mark Garnier
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way—he is giving us a lot of his time. He mentions fiscal prudence and spending taxpayers’ money wisely. Two things that epitomise the wastefulness of the European Union are the Strasbourg circus—the waste of money moving the whole Parliament to Strasbourg—and the fact that the accounts have not been signed off for some two decades. The Prime Minister is working very hard to achieve fiscal prudence, but does the Minister agree that the mood around the whole EU is behind him in dealing with that? The problem is not unique to the UK. The Prime Minister has the wind in his sails and support from the rest of the EU to deal with those problems.
Mr Gauke
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I would perhaps go further: it is not just member states that recognise that things need to change and that there needs to be better value for money. Vice-President Georgieva, who has responsibility for the budget, also recognises the need to ensure that money is spent in a better way. The Prime Minister has consistently set out the fact that there are two sensible objectives: to cut the whole budget and to protect the rebate. We will continue to make that case.
Kelvin Hopkins
I thank the Minister for giving way once again. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman), who is not in his place, made a useful point about expressing our contributions in terms that the citizens will understand—contribution per head, per month or whatever. Would it not be useful to look at the expenditure side of, for instance, the common agricultural policy, and say how much that costs in net terms per head of population, and how much it has cost over many decades in higher food prices? People would be very interested to know that.
Mr Gauke
The hon. Gentleman draws me into deeper waters and wider issues. Perhaps I should resist, Mr Streeter, before you advise me not to spend too much time on the common agricultural policy and some of its costs. It is worth pointing out that the CAP as a proportion of expenditure by the EU is falling and has fallen fairly significantly. The hon. Gentleman’s point is about making things clearer and ensuring that the British public have a better understanding of where their money is spent. There is a wider point, because that does not apply only to EU contributions. I am sure that he and all hon. Members welcome the fact that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs sends out tax statements to the British public so that they can see details of where money is spent in various Government Departments and the details of the money spent on our net contribution to the EU.
The scrutiny Committees of both Houses closely scrutinised and cleared the proposal for the new ORD, which was agreed unanimously by member states in May 2014. The Bill and the Prime Minister’s 2013 deal demonstrate that, working with allies, we can achieve change in Europe, and secure a good deal for the UK and for Europe. I commend the clauses to the House. They should stand part of the Bill.
Sir William Cash
I am happy to wait if the Minister wishes to deal with the new clauses. I will come back at that point.
Mr Gauke
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. New clauses 1, 2 and 3 and amendment 1, all tabled by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), would require the Treasury to undertake a series of actions prior to the Act coming into force. New clause 1 would require the Treasury to inform both Houses that it has formally requested a review by the European Commission into alternative ways of running the EU budget and a comparative analysis of commitments and payments as the basis for appropriations for the budget. New clause 2 would require the Treasury to request a fundamental review by the Council of Ministers of EU budget priorities, waste and inefficiency. New clause 3 asks for the Chancellor to issue an invitation to the Commission to provide further details of the draft budget to scrutiny Committees. Amendment 1 would delete subsection (3) of clause 2, which would mean that the Act would not come into force until 14 days after the conditions specified in each new clause were met.
We recognise the concerns underlying the amendments. Nevertheless, the hon. Lady will recall that the Bill relates exclusively to the financing of the EU budget, while the amendments relate to the separate, although equally important, issue of EU budget expenditure. On that basis alone, we reject them.
Tom Tugendhat
My hon. Friend talks clearly about financing and the details of various percentages going up or down. Does he recognise that what he is really talking about is setting the tone on the agreement we have in the European Union? The UK can play its part as a good partner in the EU, but the EU can help to play its own role in promoting what we all recognise is a growing economy in Europe, and not just a redistribution of wealth.
Barbara Keeley
I invite the Minister to remind himself of a similar debate we had in January 2008, in which he and his hon. Friends on the then shadow Treasury team tabled a strikingly similar new clause that asked for a report on the review by the European Commission covering all aspects of EU spending. It was a very robust debate and he was a signatory to that new clause. He rejects my new clause, but it is very similar to the one he tabled in 2008.
Mr Gauke
I am tempted to point to the remarks made by the hon. Lady’s colleagues in setting out the reasons why that new clause should have been rejected. She might not have been persuaded, but I am tempted to say that six years on, after much reflection, I can see some value in them. The stronger argument I would perhaps make is that in contrast to what happened some years ago, when the previous Labour Government negotiated away part of our rebate, we have just had a successful negotiation in 2013. Let me set out the progress that is being made on that agenda. If I may, I will give a little detail on the substance, putting aside the point that the Bill focuses on the revenue, rather than the expenditure, side of things.
Sir William Cash
On the reference in new clause 3 to
“the relevant European affairs select committee in each House of Parliament”
as my hon. Friend knows, the European Scrutiny Committee always goes through all the budgets, makes reports regularly and has the power to invite anybody, including officials from the European Commission. In addition, it receives explanatory memorandums from the Government—in fact, from the Minister himself. I would like to make some further remarks about this later, but I agree very much with what he says in rejecting the Opposition’s proposals.
Mr Gauke
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those remarks. Let me come straight to new clause 3, as he has raised that point.
Along with many across Europe, we share the concern that lies behind new clause 3 that the EU is not sufficiently accountable to EU citizens. Hon. Members will need no reminding that the Prime Minister has already made it clear that strengthening the role of national Parliaments is a central tenet of his reform programme. Within the existing legal framework, the Government already take the role of national Parliaments in scrutinising EU proposals very seriously. That is why, when the European Parliament requested the formation of a high-level group on own resources to review the EU financing system, we insisted that national Parliaments, as well as the European institutions, were given a voice as part of the consultation. We therefore amended the joint declaration on the formation of the group explicitly to take account of input from national Parliaments.
We do all we can to ensure the transparent and effective scrutiny of each year’s annual budget negotiations. An explanatory memorandum is deposited as soon as possible after the publication of the draft EU budget each year. That is followed by debates in both Houses and regular ministerial updates at significant stages of the negotiation process.
We are committed to working with both scrutiny Committees to make this process as efficient and effective as possible for all parties. However, we believe that requiring the Government to write to invited officials to appear before the scrutiny Committees would add little to the scrutiny process and would be a very peculiar precedent, for all the reasons set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash). It would add little because the Committees can, and have, invited officials to appear before them. For example, in June 2014, Nadia Calvino, the Director-General of the European Commission budget, gave evidence to the Lords EU Economic and Financial Affairs Sub-Committee.
It really should not be the place of Government to determine who the scrutiny Committees should see. It is for the Committees of both Houses to decide for themselves who should appear before them and when. It would be a peculiar precedent for the Executive to begin to interfere with that freedom, no matter how benign the initial intention.
Barbara Keeley
I appreciate the point made by the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Stone, but the Minister cannot have it both ways. In a debate in October 2012, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), speaking for the Government, complained strongly—I referred to this in a previous debate—that Ministers had asked the Commission to model costs of €5 billion, €10 billion and €15 billion in relation to staffing. That very reasonable request was bounced back with the very insulting comment:
“We declined as it’s a lot of work and a waste of time for our staff who are busy with more urgent matters…we are better educated than national civil servants. We’re high fliers, not burger flippers”.
If the Minister is expecting us to believe him, when such a simple request on a staffing issue is not taken seriously, then we do have some points to make.
Mr Gauke
I will return to that point. My remarks, when the hon. Lady intervened, were in respect of new clause 3 and the European Scrutiny Committee. I have been very clear that it would be a curious thing to do to place this in legislation and for the Executive to take that role upon themselves. I very much echo the remarks made on that by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone.
Sir William Cash
Let me add one further point before I deal with the matter in substance. The European Scrutiny Committee’s most recent report, which in this respect has been accepted by the Government, recommended that each Committee, including the Treasury Committee, establish a rapporteur to consider these questions. We could effectively work with the Treasury Committee to ensure, if necessary, that there would be an even deeper examination of the Treasury aspects.
Mr Gauke
We obviously welcome scrutiny in this area. If the European Scrutiny Committee or other Committees seek the Government’s support, for example, in bringing over Commission officials to give evidence, the Government would of course gladly support them. Let me offer that hand of co-operation if I may, but I do not see a strong case for placing this within the legislation. Indeed, I would go further and say that it would be inappropriate for us to do so. That deals with new clause 3.
We do not believe that the proposal, which would require the Government to write to various European institutions to invite them to undertake a review of one or other aspect of the EU budget, would really add to the work that the Government have undertaken and continue to undertake to improve the expenditure of the EU budget.
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)
My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) rightly highlighted the welcome reduction in the contribution, which is good news for my constituents in Charnwood, as it is for his. That was in stark contrast to results achieved in negotiations by previous Governments. As the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) mentioned, while the focus may be on revenue and not expenditure, it is important that the money is well spent. Will the Minister reassure me that he will continue to push the case for reform of how the EU spends money to ensure that it is well spent, well audited and that the accounts are signed off?
Mr Gauke
I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent intervention. The answer to his question lies at the heart of our response to new clause 1. He raises an important point.
New clause 1 requires the Government to write to the Commission to review the basis of appropriations for the EU budget to see whether “alternative arrangements” would provide better value for money. Although the link between appropriations and value for money is an important one, it is not of the first order. The Government’s first priority is to control spending directly, not through the system of appropriations. Cutting low-value expenditure is the first and most important way of improving the quality of EU spending.
In delivering an historic real-terms cut to the budget, the Government took a decisive step. Within a smaller budget, we also made sure that expenditure was reoriented towards areas that provide higher value for money. Spending on the common agricultural policy will fall considerably as a proportion of the total budget, while spending on research and development and other pro-growth investment will increase. So it is possible to operate within the system of appropriations, if appropriate control is in place.
The new clause none the less raises the question of whether the system of payments and commitments is appropriate for delivering value for money. It is a question that we must ask. It is true that it is an unusual budgeting system and it is not the way in which the UK Government budget. If the EU were starting from scratch, we would not advocate using that system. Yet I do not think anything would be gained by requesting a review of the system—for one simple and compelling reason. The proposed review in new clause 1 has already been set in motion by the new Budget Commissioner, Vice-President Georgieva, through her recent “budget for results” initiative. We obviously cannot say what the review will include, but its terms of reference are widely drawn, providing ample space to review the current budget system, including the system of appropriations, and to explore possible alternative approaches that would offer better value for money and improved financial management.
The UK has publicly welcomed that initiative and has shared its expertise. The Chancellor has made it clear to other Finance Ministers during ECOFIN meetings that that is the UK’s position. The initiative will involve member states, the European Parliament and the European Court of Auditors.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I am grateful for that update, but perhaps the Minister will tell us what the Government are going to do proactively in terms of their own priorities to deliver the value for money that he talks about, beyond the generalities that we have heard all morning about better value for money, better spending and better priorities. Can we have some specifics? How will the Government exert real influence on that important review?
Mr Gauke
The most important thing we can do is reduce the EU budget because that then focuses the mind of the European institutions to ensure that the money they are able to spend is prioritised in the right way. I come back to how the money is spent and the importance of focusing more on items that will help ensure a more dynamic European economy—more on research and development, for example—and proportionately less on the common agricultural policy. That is something that all hon. Members should support. That has been achieved.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
I think the Minister has answered my question. It was about the common agricultural policy, and he has just walked into the answer.
Kevin Foster
I thank the Minister for generously giving way to me a second time. Does he agree that the European Commission did not propose a single euro of savings when the negotiations started, so it would be strange to ask it to conduct the review to secure better value for money, as the new clause demands? In essence we would be asking the poacher to review how the poaching is getting on.
Mr Gauke
I take my hon. Friend’s point. We are, I hope, moving in the right direction. The new Commission has been in place for the past few months or so, and the early signs are—I shall return to the point—that it appears to be more focused on the task. I think there is a link: there was a reduction in the EU budget, which has somewhat focused the mind.
Kelvin Hopkins
Following what the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) has said, would it not be sensible and appropriate for our Government to carry out a comprehensive review of how we think the budget should operate, and make that a firm public submission, whatever is undertaken by the EU itself?
Mr Gauke
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, which he makes in a characteristically constructive way. Clearly, it is important for us to work with other like-minded member states to ensure that we get the focus we need and the prioritisation of expenditure in the areas that add the most value. There are different ways of achieving that, and we can discuss that. It is only fair to note, however, that some progress has been made, as I shall touch on in a few moments.
New clause 2 imposes a requirement on the Government to request a review by the Council of Ministers of the EU
“budget priorities, waste and inefficiency”
in advance of ratification. The new clause relates not to financing, but to expenditure, so I again point out that we will reject it. Although the Government recognise the need to cut down on wasteful spending, requiring the Government to write and ask for a review of waste and inefficiency would add little to what the Government are already doing in this area. We know that there is waste and inefficiency in the EU budget. We need action, not words—and action is what the Government have taken. Our most important step has been to cut the EU budget. Just as Governments across Europe are making tough decisions to consolidate public finances, the multi-annual financial framework deal negotiated by the Prime Minister has forced the EU to make tough decisions to bear down on waste and to economise. By imposing restraint on the EU budget, we can create a culture change in the Commission. The days of Commission officials measuring their success by how much of the budget they have been able to spend should be behind us.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
I could understand the Government’s reluctance to incorporate the amendments in legislation if they did not deal strictly with the narrow interpretation of the Bill, but in view of what they ask the Government to do, I cannot see why the Government should be reluctant to take any of those actions. Why do they not simply give an undertaking to do so? Then we would not need the amendments, and we could all agree on something.
Mr Gauke
In the case of new clause 2, which relates to how we deal with the way in which the Council of Ministers works, we are making progress and taking action, which includes cutting the budget. In the case of new clause 1, I do not need to undertake to write a letter calling for the Commission to do something that it is already doing. As for new clause 3. I have already made it clear that I do not think it would be appropriate for us to impose on members of the European Scrutiny Committee something that is a matter for them.
Barbara Keeley
I am slightly surprised that the Minister is unable to take on board what was actually a very sensible suggestion. He says that overall budget restraint is sufficient, and that there is no need for a focus on “waste and inefficiency”. As I mentioned earlier, back in 2012, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells tried to introduce measures to reduce the staffing budget and asked for modelling, but that request was rejected. Commission representatives should not feel that they can bounce back to UK Ministers simple requests that really would help decision making.
Time and again, Members on both sides of the House raise issues relating to the Commission’s staffing costs. If that is the response that the Minister has been receiving—he is not admitting it today, but the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells mentioned it during another debate—we really must press the matter. It is not good enough simply to accept that everything is fine and we do not have a problem. We must push the case for enhanced scrutiny.
Mr Gauke
We care a great deal about eliminating waste and inefficiency in the EU budget. The question is how we should do that. Let me say first that, if we can reduce the MFF, that will place a much greater onus on the Commission to eliminate wasteful expenditure.
The hon. Lady made a perfectly fair point about what happened back in 2012. However, the Prime Minister’s negotiation triumph in 2013 has reduced the MFF, and we are now seeing signs—which we were not seeing three years ago—that the Commission is focusing much more on the issue. Vice-President Georgieva described the 2015 budget, which was agreed last December, as
“a budget of responsibility… a tight budget that reflects the tight fiscal conditions in our Member States.”
She said that it was
“a very focused budget, focused on the priorities that we have established in the new Commission.”
She added:
“It is directed towards investments in competitiveness, for instance supporting the innovative nature of our businesses. It is also a budget where tight controls on spending will allow us to achieve the best possible results.”
Vice-President Georgieva’s “budget for results” initiative, which focuses on better rather than more spending, has come about as a direct result of the imposition of restraint at the top. The United Kingdom is engaging constructively with the initiative, and is working actively with the Commission to ensure that momentum is maintained through regular meetings at political and technical levels. We are working with our allies to increase support for the initiative and to ensure that all member states are represented in discussions. We look forward to the first meeting of the inter-institutional working group in mid-July and to contributing to the “budget for results” conference in September.
Because of what we have achieved in reducing the budget, we are seeing a culture change, but we need to ensure that the momentum is maintained. If the Labour party supports that, I am delighted, but we must remember that it was Labour that surrendered part of our rebate and failed to impose the discipline that we needed.
Barbara Keeley
Again, I am surprised by the Minister’s response. Let me remind him of a point that I made on Second Reading. When Labour Members voted with rebels in the Conservative party, they strengthened the Prime Minister’s hand before he went into negotiations by insisting that the MFF be cut. The Minister really ought to acknowledge that. Surely it helps if, on every occasion, Members in all parts of the House can be strong in saying that we want enhanced scrutiny, and that is what we are trying to do through our new clauses today.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
It is difficult to listen to what Labour Members are saying about new clause 2 without remembering what happened when they were in government in the United Kingdom. Let us not forget the huge increase in the number of people they employed, including outreach workers and people with non-jobs. Given the vast inefficiency and waste of all those years, it seems a bit rich for Labour Members to expect us to take lectures on the subject.
Mr Gauke
That is a very good point. However, you would not wish me to be detained too long, Mr Streeter, by the fact that various candidates for the leadership of the Labour party appear to be recognising that too much money was spent before the crash, and that not all of it was spent in an efficient manner.
Carolyn Harris
Does the Minister believe that enough is being done to ensure the transparency of budget decisions that are made at EU level?
Mr Gauke
The hon. Lady has asked a good question. In the context of the review that the Commission is undertaking and the focus on a budget for results, transparency is certainly important. The Government’s record is clear: we want more transparency in relation to all expenditure, whether at UK or EU level, and I think that more can be done in that regard.
The hon. Member for Worsley made an important point about administrative expenditure. As part of the MFF deal, EU staff salaries were frozen in 2013-14, and EU institutions committed themselves to a 5% headcount reduction by 2017 and an increase in statutory pension age to 66 for officials who started work in or after 2014. I would be the first to accept that those reforms do not go far enough, but, working with like-minded member states, the Government will continue to press the EU institutions to show maximum restraint when it comes to administrative expenditure.
Barbara Keeley
Are this Minister and other Ministers having more success than their right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells had back in 2012, when the European Commission dismissed his very reasonable request for some modelling on staffing costs? Are the Commissioners being any more helpful nowadays?
Mr Gauke
Some progress has been made since then. The Commission has improved its transparency record, partly thanks to the Government’s ongoing work. In particular, it released a payments plan containing much more detail on payment forecasts. I accept that we can go further, and that UK citizens expect more, but requiring the Government to write a letter inviting officials to attend Select Committee meetings will not really deliver that. What is required is constant vigilance and discipline. We have shown that, and it is delivering results.
Sir William Cash
Earlier, the hon. Member for Worsley raised the question of how the proposals for budget reduction came about. As I am sure the Minister remembers only too well, I was one of the so-called rebels, although actually we were not really rebels at all: all that we were doing was asking the Government to listen, which is exactly what happened, because our amendments were accepted. The then Financial Secretary to the Treasury—or perhaps the Economic Secretary—paid tribute to us for having presented the proposals, and everything was hunky-dory.
Mr Gauke
I am grateful for the constructive tone that my hon. Friend brings to the debate; he has a history of so doing. He has argued for greater efficiency and transparency in the expenditure of the European Union for many years, and I am grateful to him for that.
I should also point out that we are providing technical assistance to the Commission as it considers all the options for enhancing performance on the budget. We are sharing our expertise in areas such as value for money, spending area objectives and improving budgetary performance—for example by removing adverse incentives and improving accountability and transparency.
Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)
My constituents were aghast when the previous Labour Government gave away our rebate. Will the Minister confirm that the Bill will ensure that there will be no further such concessions as long as this party is in power?
Mr Gauke
I am more than happy to give my hon. Friend that assurance. When we debate the scrutiny of expenditure, it is worth bearing it in mind that allowing us to make a bigger contribution than we otherwise would involves a cost to the UK taxpayer. The fact that budgets were allowed to increase significantly also means that the focus on getting value for money could be lost. If we are to eliminate wasteful expenditure, it is important that we bear down on the overall budget, because that has a big impact. That is a clear area of difference—if I may put it that way—between the two parties. We have placed a consistent focus on controlling expenditure, whether at UK or EU level.
The next opportunity to look wholesale at the priorities of the EU budget will be the mid-term review of the MFF. That review is required under the agreement reached on the MFF, and it must take place by 2016. The Opposition’s calls for a review appear to add little to the review that is already planned. The Government will engage constructively with the Commission, the Council and the European Parliament to look at further ways in which spending can be improved.
In the meantime, the Government are taking every opportunity to bear down on wasteful spending and to highlight it where it is identified. That is reflected in our having voted against the discharge or approval of the EU budget for the past four years. Until the European Court of Auditors is able to give a positive statement of assurance on the EU accounts, we will continue to work with allies in calling on the Commission to do better. I note that this position is not the one that the previous Labour Government took.
Together with our allies, Sweden and the Netherlands, we have issued a joint counter-statement calling on the Commission and member states to take proactive steps to reduce the level of error in the EU accounts by simplifying regulatory frameworks and increasing the training and guidance available to national officials. By supporting the European Court of Auditors’ calls for more focus on performance and added value in the EU budget, we have helped to change the Commission’s focus from compliance to results.
The Government are also playing their part in the work being undertaken to simplify the rules governing the implementation of structural funds. In the past, the Commission’s focus has too often been on compliance, fostering a tick-box culture with little care for performance. A structural fund simplification agenda was launched earlier this month by Commissioner Cretu, and those involved will meet for the first time next month. The budget for results initiative, to which I have already referred, will provide another valuable opportunity for this Government to continue to insist on maximum efficiency and results in relation to EU spending.
Of course, we are also keeping up the pressure on the Commission in the annual budget negotiations and in response to in-year requests for more funding. We have a strong track record of pushing back against draft amending budgets, to ensure that value-for-money criteria are met, and we regularly challenge the Commission to identify opportunities for reallocation rather than coming to member states with requests for more money. The Government are constructively engaging with the work that I have outlined, in order to ensure the best possible deal for the United Kingdom.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Has my hon. Friend seen the work of the so-called five presidents of the euro area, which sets out how they wish to press for full fiscal union, with a euro Treasury and a euro budget under central control. Will he assure the Committee that we will have nothing to do with any of that?
Mr Gauke
Yes; my right hon. Friend makes an important point about the euro area. No doubt he will have heard the speech delivered by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Mansion House a couple of weeks ago, in which he made it clear that one of our priorities in the UK’s negotiations ahead of any referendum will be to ensure that the “euro-outs”—the European Union member states that are not in the eurozone—are properly protected and do not find themselves disadvantaged by the eurozone countries working together to the disadvantage of the “euro-outs”. That is a real priority for the United Kingdom.
Sir William Cash
I am sure that my hon. Friend appreciates the difficulties inherent in this matter. It is all very well to want to disaggregate the eurozone from the non-euro member states, but the reality is that we are all part of the same European Union. Any attempt to make a change of this kind would involve a fundamental change to our relationship with the EU and would therefore require a treaty change by any reasonable standards. Does he appreciate how serious the position would be if we neither sought nor achieved that objective?
Mr Gauke
It is important that we meet that objective.
On the subject of the report, I would make the point that we benefit from the single market and do not want to stand in the way of the eurozone resolving its difficulties, but we will not let the integration of the eurozone jeopardise the integrity of the single market or disadvantage the United Kingdom in any way. That is one the important objectives in our negotiation with the European Union, and it is exactly the point that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was making in his Mansion House speech. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) are right to raise the importance of this point, which we fully recognise.
John Redwood
The five presidents’ press release and work programme, which will result in a White Paper, are about taking over the European Union budget and using it for transfers throughout the eurozone. Clearly, Britain does not want to be part of that. I was asking the Minister about the budget, not about single market regulations.
Mr Gauke
The point about our position applies across the piece. To be fair to my right hon. Friend, certain eventualities that he predicted many years ago have come to pass. Because of the current situation in the eurozone, substantial reform could well be needed so that the members of the single currency are able to co-ordinate fiscal policy to a greater extent, with greater fiscal transfers and so on. That raises issues for the eurozone members which do not apply to other members of the European Union that have access to the single market but would not wish to partake in any such arrangement. We would need to ensure that if that is the direction the eurozone goes in, the position of the euro-outs is protected. Ensuring that access to the single market remains in place for all 28 member states is an important part of that, which is why I mentioned it. We need to ensure that our position is protected. That is the point I wish to make, and I fully understand the points that my right hon. Friend is making.
Finally, amendment 1 has been proposed in order that the conditions set out in new clauses 1, 2 and 3 are consistent with the terms of commencement in the Bill. I have explained to the Committee why we will not be supporting the new clauses, and we thus reject the amendment. While I have the opportunity to do so, I wish to identify a typographical error in the explanatory notes. The second line of paragraph 6 refers to a VAT-based rate of call of 15% for Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, whereas it should have read 0.15%. I draw the Committee’s attention to that in case it caused consternation among right hon. and hon. Members.
In conclusion, let me assure the hon. Member for Worsley that, having made important progress in 2013, this Government are focused on ensuring maximum restraint, budgetary control, value for money and transparency in EU spending. I therefore welcome the spirit of her proposals, but requiring the Government to request that the Commission or the Council of Ministers review these issues adds little to the real work that has been done and continues to be done to improve the working of the EU budget. That work began with the Prime Minister’s historic deal, which cut the budget in real terms and protected the current system of financing—we should not forget that that is what this Bill is about. That work continues through the budget for results, through the Government’s continued engagement on the annual budget and through the discharge of the budget, and it will continue during the mid-term review of the MFF.
With those few, brief introductory remarks, I urge the hon. Lady not to press her proposals to a Division and I urge hon. Members to support the clauses set out in the Bill.
Barbara Keeley
Before we go any further, may I point out that my constituency is now called Worsley and Eccles South? The people of Eccles would rightly be very upset if we left them out of the equation; Eccles is a very important town in my constituency.
I rise to speak to the new clauses standing in my name and those of my hon. Friends. We are dealing with a slight complexity, in that the Bill is simple but drafted in such a way as to make it complex to amend. Amendment 1 is therefore a technical paving amendment which can bring in the new clauses, so it is that amendment that we will push to a vote, if necessary.
The Bill relates to agreement of the own resources decision that will be incorporated into UK law, based on the agreement reached at the February 2013 European Council. The Minister covered that at great length over the past hour and 20 or so minutes. Decisions on UK contributions reaching €14 billion are brought into sharper focus in a week when Ministers are discussing cuts to tax credits for the low-paid and have not been prepared to rule out cuts to financial support for disabled people. We find ourselves in a serious and austere financial context, so we must ensure that we look at every aspect of value for money, budgetary control and the reform of priorities within the EU budget.
When we debated the MFF in this House in October 2012, the Government’s motion talked about agreeing that we must see
“significant improvements in the financial management of EU resources by the Commission and by Member States and significant improvements in the value for money of spend”.—[Official Report, 31 October 2012; Vol. 552, c. 295.]
The last debate contained many examples, some of which I shall refer to, showing that we are not there yet. I am sure the Minister would agree, so what we are simply trying to do with the new clauses is find ways in which we can enhance value for money assessments, budgetary control and the reform of priorities. That is very important to many of the Members in the Committee today and to Members throughout the House.
The proposals standing in my name and those of my hon. Friends will assist greatly in ensuring that reports are made to this House on value for money and budgetary control, and on budget priorities and waste and inefficiency within the EU budget. Examples have been given in interventions that give us an understanding of the extent of concerns about this out in the country—which we explored on Second Reading—and those can only increase.
Tom Tugendhat
Would the hon. Lady let me know which of her hon. Friends are so supportive of her? There appears to be somewhat of a dearth of support.
Kelvin Hopkins
I rise to assure my hon. Friend that I am supporting her very strongly today.
Barbara Keeley
I think the hon. Gentleman will see when we come to the vote that we do have support.
Our new clause 3 would also improve accountability and transparency by inviting EU budget representatives to appear before the European Scrutiny Committees in this House and the other place each year before the EU budgets are negotiated. I appreciate the points made by Conservative Members that of course there should be no interference with the work of the European Scrutiny Committee in this House, but what we have tried to do in these new clauses is send the strongest statement we can send and give the strongest possible support to all those in this House who want to see these important aspects of value for money and budgetary control put in place.
Sir William Cash
I am sure the hon. Lady would appreciate the fact that the European Scrutiny Committee functions by virtue of the Standing Orders of the House of Commons. Leaving aside the merits of this proposal, if there were to be a stream of requirements imposed by Parliament on the manner in which the European Scrutiny Committee, an all-party Committee containing many Labour Members, were to conduct its business, the life of the Committee would be made pretty intolerable and its purpose would probably be undermined.
Barbara Keeley
I very much take that point on board.
New clause 1 requests a review by the European Commission of the basis of appropriations for the European Union budget and a study of whether alternative arrangements might offer improved value and enhanced budgetary control. On Second Reading, I highlighted a concern about the growing gap between the ceiling on spending commitments and the ceiling on payments. That gap, as agreed in the settlement of February 2013, is between €960 billion on commitments and €908 billion on payments. As I pointed out in the earlier debate, that gap has crept up from an average of 2.6% to the current 5.4%, and it is projected to rise to 5.7% in the period from 2014 to 2020. We must now seriously question whether that gap is manageable.
The Commission describes the system as follows:
“Commitments are tomorrow’s payments, and payments are yesterday’s commitments. Commitments are planned future payments whereas payments are legal obligations from the past…if every year the increase in commitments is much higher than that in payments you end up promising many partners to pay their future bills but find yourself unable to pay those bills when they arrive years later.
This is what has been happening over the last years: as many commitments were made years ago for projects that are being completed now”.
That is a key issue with the drive to smaller EU budgets, yet, as the Commission says,
“many bills related to projects remain unpaid and have to be rolled over to the following year. This leaves no choice to the Commission but to call for increases in payments.”
John Redwood
I entirely agree with the hon. Lady about the need to get better value for money in a smaller budget and to bring down the commitments. Does she have some individual proposals on things that could be taken out of the EU budget for which the Government should argue?
Barbara Keeley
I think that we could get to that if we had the information in the review that I am calling for, but what I want first is an examination of the system. This system is a recipe to drive up budgets rather than a way to control them.
Commitments are being made at a level of up to €14 billion a year more than payments. We have had years when the commitments have been €14 billion more, and that means bills being rolled forward, or staying unpaid, which is unacceptable. It is not a sensible system, and I think that the Minister actually acknowledged that. If it is not a sensible system, we should not be going along with it.
Kelvin Hopkins
My hon. Friend is making a fair point. It has been suggested that, in real terms, we should be paying 7% less into the European Union budget by—I think—2020. Given what she has just said, is it not likely that that will not turn out to be true, and we will not see a reduction of that kind?
Barbara Keeley
Indeed, that is a very real fear. If we look down the list of commitments and compare it with the payments made, we will see the level of commitments that are still to roll forward, which is a very frightening prospect. I go back to the point that I have just made. This is a system designed to drive up budgets. We support what has taken place and recognise that the House voted for it back in 2012, but unless this system changes we will be in a situation in which commitments are being made in the period up to 2020 of €960 billion, which is €52 billion more. It is a serious matter. Clearly, it is serious if the Commission is taking on budgets and then not paying bills, but it is the upward pressure on the budget process that is the great concern.
In our last debate on this Bill, the hon. Members for Corby (Tom Pursglove), for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), and for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) and my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) referred to a range of concerns that their constituents had about EU finance, how the EU budget is spent and the need for control of the budget. That is a point to which we will keep returning.
In the debate of 15 January 2008 on the Committee stage of the European Communities (Finance) Bill—I have already mentioned this—the Financial Secretary, then shadow Treasury Minister, and his shadow Treasury colleagues called for a report on “all aspects of EU spending”. Clearly, both the Opposition then and the current Opposition have had concerns about this. The Minister and his colleagues called for that report in 2008. I hope that we still have time in the rest of this debate for him to repent his view that we do not need further reviews.
As I have mentioned, there were complications in the wording of the amendment in 2008. I have read through the debate. The difficulty that the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends on the shadow Treasury team at that time ran into was that the amendment called for Treasury certification that it
“considers the outcome of the review is satisfactory to the interests of the United Kingdom”.
That seemed to be the sticking point. We have avoided such complications in this Bill by tabling simpler amendments that ask for an analysis of the basis used for appropriations and the study of alternative arrangements.
The Minister has said that such a review is ongoing. Will he tell me at this point when we will see that review?
Barbara Keeley
Will he clarify at which point in 2016? [Interruption.] No, it is just some time in 2016.
Barbara Keeley
The Minister can hear the comments being made by Members from sedentary positions. Clearly, we are working through a crucial time in the run-up to the referendum, and the budgetary information, with all the decisions that have to be made, will be crucial for the people out there.
In our amendments, we have expressed the wish to have these reviews and the reports. We want to send out the message that this House is serious about scrutinising the EU budget.
At the end of our debate on Second Reading, the Economic Secretary talked about the need for scrutiny on the payment gap. She told us that the European Commission has committed to publish more frequently its analysis on payment forecasts. I join the hon. Lady in welcoming an enhanced level of information on the EU budget, but believe that much more needs to be done on that. Does the Minister agree now—after both of us have spoken on the matter—that it is time that the EU moved away from a system in which it can make commitments of billions of euros more than it can pay, creating pressure on member states to ever-increasing budgets?
New clause 2 calls for a reform of the priorities in the EU budget, and specifically requests a review by the Council of Ministers of budget priorities and waste and inefficiency in the EU budget. The Minister has mentioned reviews that are already taking place, but I do not think that he mentioned a review of priorities of the kind that our new clause invites.
On Second Reading, I raised the need for further reform of budget priorities. Labour believes that expenditure on growth and jobs should continue to be prioritised by cutting back even further on agriculture spending.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury told us that overall spending on the common agricultural policy will fall by 13%, compared with the last financial period, and that spending on research and development will increase by 4%. As welcome as that fall in agriculture spending is, we believe that the level of spending is still too high compared with spending to support growth and jobs. The Minister has responded to points made by his own side today, but he has not really got to the nub of the point.
As I said on Second Reading, agriculture accounts for only 1.6% of the European Union’s total output. If that is the case—I think that we will keep returning to this point—is it still appropriate that it accounts for 30% to 40% of the budget?
Alex Salmond
Is the hon. Lady saying that, in the opinion of the Labour party, agricultural support and spending are too low in Wales?
Barbara Keeley
I am not making that point in particular. What we are asking for in this clause is a review of budget priorities. We can see from the percentages that competitiveness for jobs and growth is the most important. I am not making specific points about specific countries. Under the new method of agricultural spending, I think that there is a great deal of flexibility for allocating the funding between countries.
Kelvin Hopkins
My hon. Friend made a very strong point about the CAP. If there were no CAP, would it not be sensible for us to subsidise sections of our own agriculture according to what we think is right rather than what the European Union thinks is right?
Barbara Keeley
Indeed we could. Let me go on and make a few more points about the proportion that is allocated to that very important priority of competitiveness for jobs and growth. In 2014, only around €15 billion will be spent by the EU on that budget priority compared with over €41 billion for market-related spending and direct payments for agriculture. There is no sense in a system that takes that vital priority—vital for every part of the EU—of competitiveness for jobs and growth and spends so little on it. Out of the €6.3 billion of European Union funding allocated to the UK in 2013, only 23% was spending on jobs and growth compared with 63% on agriculture. It is the balance that we are calling into account.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North said on Second Reading, although the proportion of the budget for agriculture has been falling, there has been a fairly significant increase in money terms over the past eight years. As long as this balance seems wrong to people, it will be very hard for many of us to explain on the doorstep why we are spending only 23% of European Union funding in the UK on jobs and growth but 63% on agriculture. Some hon. Members might find such an explanation easier in their constituencies than others, but it is a difficult argument.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I am very sympathetic to what the hon. Lady is saying. My one concern would be that if there are reforms, they do not disadvantage some farmers in North East Somerset and other rural constituencies to favour spending on the continent. Reform is quite right, but it needs to be fair for the United Kingdom’s farmers.
Barbara Keeley
The more reviews that we carry out of those priorities, the more that we develop our understanding of where the money is going. Earlier, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) called for these matters to be discussed in a language that his constituents could understand, and I do not think that they are discussed in such a way. Having ploughed through very many debates and very many documents in relation to the Bill, I do not think that those matters are understood. The hon. Gentleman is quite right.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury said she accepted that expenditure on the CAP is
“still too high both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the overall budget.”—[Official Report, 11 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 1426.]
If that is what the Treasury team currently feel—that it is still too high, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the overall budget—what are we doing to understand that better, to review it and to change it?
It is my assertion that previous reviews have not led to the level of reform that we want to achieve. It was our purpose in tabling new clause 2 to keep focus on that vital issue. When most member states are finding it necessary to make very difficult decisions—clearly, we are in that position ourselves—about their own budgets and spending, the European Union must ensure that expenditure is efficient and focused on addressing the major concerns that member states face. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) said in the October 2012 debate:
“The next seven years of the EU budget should prioritise jobs, growth, infrastructure and practical programmes that rejuvenate fragile economies.”
As I mentioned on Second Reading, this is much needed when we still have 735,000 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK looking for work. That should be our focus—those young people.
We need a better balance of funding and we need the European Union to provide a better framework and strategy to achieve growth and jobs. Looking deeper into the detail, and the spending commitment to the EU’s smart and inclusive growth priority, only a quarter of that is spent on competitiveness for jobs and growth, and three quarters on the EU’s cohesion policies, including structural funds. It probably is not appropriate today to open up further debate about the use of structural funds. That is often discussed when we are discussing EU finance, but as my hon. Friend also said:
“Savings can be made on aspects of EU structural funds that…are too often committed in a haphazard manner and depend on outdated commitments rather than future priorities. Unless structural funds contribute to positive economic development, they cannot be justified.”—[Official Report, 31 October 2012; Vol. 552, c. 304.]
The Opposition say strongly that the proportion of the EU’s smart and inclusive growth expenditure that goes towards securing competitiveness for jobs and growth is too small. That important area of spending accounts for around a quarter of the EU budget in 2014, but that rises to only 27% across the whole six-year period.
Sir William Cash
Does the hon. Lady appreciate that much of what she says in terms of generalities is understandable, and is reflected very much in European Commission documents, which I have been looking at for the last 30 years, one way and another, on the European Scrutiny Committee, but that the inherent problem is the fact that every time there is a need to argue for jobs and growth, the answer from the European Commission is to give more subsidies, more bail-outs, and more cohesion and structural funds, when actually what is needed is deregulation and to provide people with a means of increasing productivity and jobs and to deal with youth unemployment?
Barbara Keeley
I hesitate to say that I think we agree on this point, but I think we do. [Interruption.] All right, then: we enthusiastically agree on this point. It is very clear indeed that, particularly with youth unemployment, we have a serious problem. It is a problem throughout the EU. We must spend more on that and we must find a way of doing so. Although the Minister spoke at great length, he did not tell us at any point what the difference would be between the ongoing review in the EU and the existing commitments. We want to send a very strong message. Until the Bill is passed, it is our last chance for a considerable period to make these points strongly to the EU, and we believe that we should do so.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
One issue that concerns me in the area that I represent is the fishing industry. There is to be a review of the common fisheries policy. One thing that could come off the back of that is our young people getting jobs in the boats, because up until now they have not been encouraged to do so. We need not just a better common fisheries policy, but encouragement and incentives for our young people to take the jobs in the local fishing boats, and thereby create employment and prosperity for them as well. Does the hon. Lady agree?
Barbara Keeley
Indeed. We have focused a great deal on agricultural spending and the CAP, but I do not think any of us would say that there has been a fair deal for people in the fishing industry. Fisheries policy, in many places, has been a disaster and has caused great problems for our fishing industry. It is a shame and a pity if, as I think is the case, young people no longer believe that they can have a career in fisheries.
Alex Salmond
Given that many people who represent fishing constituencies would agree with the hon. Lady on that point, does she not find it passing strange that in all of the possible treaty amendments that have been listed as possibilities for the Prime Minister’s soon-to-be-considered renegotiation stance, not once have I heard from the Government Front Bench that a treaty renegotiation on the common fisheries policy is any part of the Conservative party’s priorities?
Barbara Keeley
That is strange, but I cannot answer for the Minister. He may want to intervene for himself now or at some later point.
I have emphasised jobs and growth, but this EU budget priority also includes policies and programmes to promote vital areas of research and innovation—infrastructure, education, training and enterprise development. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) has been a staunch advocate of the importance of EU funding for research and development in the UK. In 2012 he said:
“The more the EU invests in research and innovation, the more the UK benefits, because the quality, breadth and depth of UK research puts us in a position whereby we gain disproportionately from European research programmes.”—[Official Report, 31 October 2012; Vol. 552, c. 292.]
It is self-evident that competitiveness for jobs and growth should be more of a priority, but also that we would benefit more if the priorities were switched to increase funding for research and innovation.
Serious consideration of reform of the EU’s spending priorities is needed if we are to use the EU budget, as the Opposition believe we should, as a mechanism to promote future jobs and growth in the UK and other member states. We can only get that change of spending priorities if we keep a focus on the balance between competing priorities and continue to drive down wasteful and inefficient spending.
Much was said on Second Reading, as I am sure the Minister recalls, about what hon. Members consider to be wasteful and inefficient spending. Some Members might cover that again today, but we have already talked about staffing costs and administration costs, and the costs of the move between Brussels and Strasbourg. Other items of waste and inefficiency can also be drawn to the Minister’s attention.
We have already discussed new clause 3, and I do not need to keep on emphasising this, but in tabling it we did not in any way want to disturb the balance between the Government and the scrutiny Committees. I hope that hon. Members accept that. However, points have been raised in previous debates on why we need that relentless scrutiny. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East said in the debate on the multi-annual financial framework that we need
“a relentless focus on the justification behind detailed expenditure.”—[Official Report, 31 October 2012; Vol. 552, c. 304.]
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury said on Second Reading:
“Many in Europe agree with us that the EU is too uncompetitive, too democratically unaccountable and too inflexible to the concerns of citizens in its member states.”—[Official Report, 11 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 1389.]
That is a very poor situation that we find ourselves in.
Sir William Cash
The hon. Lady referred to the need for relentless scrutiny. I have a thought in my mind that maybe some people think that the European Scrutiny Committee, at least over the last five years, has indeed been relentless in its scrutiny, and that goes for all members of the Committee, which has produced many unanimous reports. Is she effectively prepared not to press her amendment because of the problem I gave about the constant stream of legislative requirements that might interfere with our status as a European Committee?
Barbara Keeley
Indeed, we could do that. We would definitely want to press the other new clauses, but there was no intention to upset that balance. It has been suggested that the Minister could solve these matters by giving some kind of undertaking on the matters raised in our new clauses. We do not resile from the position that we want to send out the strongest possible message from this House that we are serious about scrutiny. The European Scrutiny Committee is of course relentless in its focus on those matters, and so too must the House be relentless. Doubtless we will have many more reports and reviews.
When in opposition, the Minister was part of the team that tabled an amendment to get a report, as I mentioned earlier. It was not agreed to at the time, but the Commission review went ahead anyway. The results of that report, which was published in 2010, were interesting. Its main finding—it was a very substantial finding—was that the current rules for the EU budget make it slow to react to unforeseen events, while too many complexities hinder its efficiency and transparency.
This is a week of tumultuous events for the European Union. The situation we find ourselves in with the EU budget, with its complexity, its slowness to react, the difficulty in balancing priorities and the fact that it does not represent the priorities that we think are important, means that it is clear to all—there is often broad agreement on this in the House, and I am sure that there will be today—that it is past the time when it needs to change.
Our remaining amendments would assist in ensuring that reports are made to the House on value for money, budgetary control and, importantly, budget priorities and waste and inefficiency. I commend them to the Committee.
Sir William Cash
I have already said much of what I need to say on new clause 3, which is my main concern today, so I will make only a few points. Basically, new clause 3 is inappropriate. The European Scrutiny Committee does its job relentlessly, as the shadow Minister has just indicated, so there is no need for the new clause. We can invite officials to it if we wish to, and we do on occasion, but we are perpetually scrutinising the budget and recommending matters for consideration on the Floor of the House.
Imposing on the European Scrutiny Committee legislative functions that would be monitored by other Government Departments could cause enormous difficulty by interfering with its Standing Orders functions. Under the Standing Orders, the Committee has to form a judgment on what is of political and legal importance. We can invite European Commission budget representatives to see us, and indeed we can also recommend to the Treasury Committee, for example, that it might wish to do the same, so we already have various means at our disposal.
It is not necessary for me to repeat the points that I have already made in interventions. I am grateful to the shadow Minister for agreeing not to press new clause 3 and putting that on the record, so that in future nobody else is tempted to impose on the European Scrutiny Committee, or indeed on any Select Committee, legislative requirements that might in one way or another interfere with their discretionary judgments under the Standing Orders.
Barbara Keeley
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept my assurance that we have no intention of doing that, but I also hope that he will agree that it is important to send out the strongest possible message that we are focusing on these matters relentlessly throughout the House, and that the European Scrutiny Committee will continue its excellent work.
Sir William Cash
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady. I hope that she will not mind my mentioning the fact that she is sitting in glorious isolation on the Opposition Front Bench, and with nobody behind her, other than my friend the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), who is not known to be enthusiastic about all matters European. Perhaps the relentless scrutiny to which she refers could be improved by having a few more Labour Members here to support her.
Alex Salmond
It is a great pleasure to follow what must be the briefest speech I have ever heard from the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) on this subject—it is wonderful to see him able once again to stand in his place today.
Let me turn to the question of EU finance and agriculture. I know that agriculture is not a subject that much concerns the Conservative party; the Tory party these days is much more likely to be concerned with asset stripping, rather than agricultural production, and with financial derivatives, rather than agricultural crops—that is what gets its pulse moving.
I was concerned when the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) said that far too much of the European Union budget was consumed by the common agricultural policy. The fundamental reason for that—we did not hear this simple point from the Government Benches—is that the common agricultural policy is one of the few policies that financially is effectively under the competence of the European Union. If the European Union had competence over health, for example—I doubt that there is much support for that, from me or anyone else in the House—its agricultural budget would be totally dwarfed by what it spent on health. The dominance of the agricultural budget is a factor of its being one of the European Union’s relatively few common policies.
Of course, it is possible to argue that there should not be direct farm payments. Indeed, that was the argument that the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) took into the CAP negotiations. He started from the position that the UK Government, without much opposition from Members from rural constituencies in the Conservative interest, thought that there should not be direct farm payments, and he found himself in a minority of one in the negotiations; his position was not supported by any other member state. It was therefore decided that we were to continue with farm payments. Therefore, if we have a common agricultural policy, and it is a substantial part of the European Union’s budget, it is reasonably important to ensure that our share of the agricultural budget as component nations in these islands is fair and competitive, because our agricultural production has to compete in that common market with that in other member states.
Does the Minister really think that the share allocated to UK agriculture, and to Scottish agriculture in particular, can be counted as a considerable achievement, as he claimed in his opening remarks? Let us remind ourselves of some of the facts. Under pillar one of the CAP budget, it was agreed that the lowest that any member state should receive in support was €196 per hectare. It was agreed in negotiations that each country in the original 15 would work to that minimum. Scotland receives substantially less than that—just over half of that payment per hectare. That is going to cost Scottish agriculture about £1 billion in the period to 2019.
Mark Garnier
The right hon. Gentleman said from a sedentary position during the Minister’s speech that that was because Scottish farms are the biggest in the UK. It would be helpful if he could give a little flavour of the size of Scottish farms compared with English, Welsh and Irish farms, and how the numbers break down.
Alex Salmond
I was going to move on to that very point, because the Minister’s reply to my intervention inspired me to go to the Library in search of some figures. I will answer that point in a moment.
Let me move on to pillar two, the second major aspect of agricultural support. I have been doing some comparisons and looked at what would have happened if in negotiations Scotland had achieved from pillar two the same amount of agricultural support as the Republic of Ireland, which in many ways is a comparable country with regard to land area and agriculture as a share of the overall economy. The answer is that Ireland has achieved a budget four times the size of Scotland’s budget under pillar two—€2.19 billion compared with €478 million—in the years to 2019.
Given that it has been decided that the common agricultural policy should continue and that farm payments should continue to be made, how will it be possible for Scottish agriculture to compete effectively when it gets such a dramatically lower share than the minimum allocated to any other EU country? Far from getting an excellent deal on pillar two to compensate for the poor deal on pillar one, Scotland gets a miserable share in comparison with comparable countries.
Kevin Foster
I have been listening with interest to the right hon. Gentleman’s points about funding for Scotland. How does he think this support would be getting on without the benefit of the UK’s rebate?
Alex Salmond
One of the reasons we do so incredibly badly in many European programmes as regards funding is that the Treasury’s interest, when looking at additionality, as it calls it, is always to minimise EU expenditure. Although it is perfectly acceptable for the Government to defend the rebate, it is less acceptable to look at every European programme and try to minimise expenditure on it, because in doing so, we lose some of the alternative opportunities that the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South talked about. If the Treasury looks at every European programme and says, “How do we minimise spending?”, what follows as a natural consequence is that our share of that spending is also diminished. In the case of the common agricultural policy, it is possible to make a direct connection with the negotiating stance of the right hon. Member for North Shropshire, who was trying to abolish farm payments altogether and got the miserable, unfair and inequitable distribution of support that has been the end result of the CAP negotiations.
The Minister—I am not sure if it was a dead bat, a glorious drive through covers, or a catch at slips—rather evaded the direct question of what is the Prime Minister’s negotiating stance on the budget. The Minister said, after being passed a note, that the Prime Minister’s stance was to cut the whole budget and to protect the UK rebate. Let me point out that that has been the Government’s stance and policy since they took office in 2010; it is not a particular stance for these renegotiations. What the Minister is being asked—we really would like an answer—is whether the Prime Minister has a specific target in mind in renegotiations for changes in the EU budget or the UK contribution to it, and if so, what it is. Failure to answer that question throughout the debate adds to the no doubt unworthy, but considerable, suspicion shared across this Chamber that the Prime Minister is adopting this nebulous approach to what are his negotiating aims so that whatever he comes back with can be announced as a fundamental achievement. That does not stand scrutiny in this Committee, but even more importantly, it is a particularly poor campaigning argument in favour of the European cause.
I hope that the Minister—the last man in—will rise to the occasion by confirming that he is in favour of more equitable distribution of land ownership in Scotland and by giving us an insight into the Prime Minister’s true negotiating hand in the coming arguments and discussions in the European Union.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The speech by the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) is tremendously important and gets to the heart of one of the issues we have with the common agricultural policy, although, not surprisingly, I look at it in a different way from the question of socialism and land holdings that the SNP is going for.
The issue, as has been discussed in the European Scrutiny Committee, is that over the years our farmers have increasingly become so efficient and large that there has been a good deal of consolidation. That applies very much in my constituency among dairy farmers. The number of dairy farms has reduced significantly and they are bigger farms proportionately, but European subsidies tend to go to smaller farms disproportionately. Therefore, we find that British farmers are disadvantaged. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that if, under a system of farming subsidies and a competitive framework, that means that people are getting handouts from the European Union, British farmers—farmers in the United Kingdom—do not get the equivalent subsidies to farmers on the continent, they are disadvantaged because their cost base is automatically higher and their profitability is reduced. Therefore, when we are arguing for careful consideration, overview and oversight of expenditure in the European Union, and reductions in the common agricultural policy, we have to ensure that the cuts are made in a way that is fair to the UK farmer. Even if our end objective is the entire elimination of agricultural subsidies, it must be done in a way—
Jim Shannon
As I am sure the hon. Gentleman is well aware, the farms in Northern Ireland are smaller. They are greater today than they were, say, 20 years ago, but they are still not big in comparison with those on the UK mainland. Does he agree that there needs to be consideration for the farms in Northern Ireland, particularly in my constituency of Strangford? He seems to be referring to farms that are very large. In Northern Ireland, we have farms with an average of 150 acres.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am very sympathetic to farmers and I ought to declare an interest as I have a little land in Somerset, although sadly not a great deal and I do not farm directly. If I did, I would certainly count as a very, very small farmer. In the past a slice has been taken from the biggest receivers of European subsidies, so the farms that have been the most consolidated and efficient lose subsidies at a faster rate than other farms. I think that protection is already in place—
Alex Salmond
That is why the protection built into the agricultural settlement of €196 per hectare is so important, and why it is so disadvantageous that it is almost half that figure in Scotland. That is why the minimum per hectare is so important.
Mr Rees-Mogg
Being more traditional, I prefer a minimum per acre, but otherwise I am broadly in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman. I agree that it is not right to look at the issue purely in terms of the landowner, because that discourages consolidation. As Conservatives, we are in favour of efficiency in all industries, but the subsidy system across Europe not only disadvantages our farmers, but discourages consolidation and efficiency. That cannot be the right approach.
Peter Grant
Is the hon. Gentleman telling us that consolidation and enlargement always equal efficiency? Does he not recognise that, especially in agriculture, there are significant community and social benefits to allowing small, family owned farms to continue in existence?
Mr Rees-Mogg
There are great advantages to having small, family owned farms, but we need an efficient agricultural system that provides the food and produce the country needs. I do not think one should be unduly sentimental for agriculture against other industries. As a lover of the countryside and of our rural traditions, I am tempted to fall in line with the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant). The constituency was called Central Fife when I stood there—unsuccessfully, just for the record. However, although I am sympathetic to his point, I think it is important to have efficient agriculture first when spending other hard-pressed taxpayers’ money. It ought not to be entirely about sentimentality.
Kelvin Hopkins
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg). Before I turn to the main part of the my speech, I would like to comment on what he has just said. Some 34 years ago, my then 11-year-old son had a discussion at his primary school about what was then called the Common Market. He was asked about the common agricultural policy, which he knew a lot about because he listened to me at home. His teacher asked him, “What is the CAP?” He said, “It’s the common agricultural policy.” His teacher asked, “What is that about, then, Daniel?” He said, “It’s a way of subsidising inefficient small farms,” and 34 years on, the hon. Gentleman has raised exactly the same point. Some things do not change very much. I think my son is the same age as the hon. Gentleman.
It is also a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who sits on the Front Bench, and support two of her new clauses and her amendment. On new clause 3, I am pleased that she has acceded to the sensible point made by the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, of which I am also a member. I will, however, support my hon. Friend in the Lobby later on her other new clauses.
I have spoken probably 100 times in European debates in this Chamber over the past 18 years. I have said some of what I am going to say today a number of times before, but in order to make an effect in politics I think we must sometimes repeat messages over and over again, hoping that, in time, one’s colleagues, particularly those on the Front Bench, will listen, agree, take note and act accordingly.
I was also much taken by the hon. Gentleman’s comment that when he rebelled he was trying to help his Front-Bench colleagues. That is a splendid idea. If ever I am moved to rebel in future, I shall tell my Whip that I am trying to help our Front-Bench colleagues and I hope she will accept it in that spirit.
The most interesting new clause is new clause 2, which is about expenditure. I have said many times that I believe that the common agricultural policy ought to be repatriated to member states for them to decide how to subsidise their own agriculture, and that the CAP’s structures should be dismantled. We would certainly benefit from that financially in more than one way, including by not paying in so much. We could subsidise at exactly the same level and possibly in exactly the same way, but still be better off because we would not be paying into something where we are net losers.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has ever been to Iceland, Norway, the Faroe Islands or places further north of Scotland, but he would see greater use of land there than in the highlands and islands of Scotland, because the agricultural support is so much better. On repatriation, would there not be a danger to some countries that the Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-American model of economics would suck out the little money that is there and give it to London, which does not put it around its own state? At least with Europe we have some sort of guarantee that we will get the money, even though we are among the least favoured areas of the land.
Kelvin Hopkins
The hon. Gentleman’s point tempts me to talk at greater length about a broader, more socialist approach to running the world, with which I strongly agree. If I did so, however, I think I would set too many hares running and Mr Williams would call me to order very quickly.
The CAP is nonsense. We ought to abolish it and repatriate agricultural policy to member states. We can decide in our own country which parts of agriculture should be subsidised and to what extent, and we can decide where and when we buy food. We might choose to subsidise to keep agriculture sustained in this country for strategic reasons. During the second world war we needed to produce food for ourselves, and all countries have to bear those sorts of factors in mind when deciding what they produce.
Interestingly, the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) obviously does not like the common agricultural policy or the common fisheries policy very much. I am surprised that the SNP is in favour of the European Union at all.
Alex Salmond
The hon. Gentleman is mistaken. I think that the CAP is a failure of UK Government negotiation, as I have tried to explain. On the CFP, however, he is on much stronger ground: I would support a treaty amendment to change it substantially and remove it from central control.
Kelvin Hopkins
We are in strong agreement on that point. I have said many times in this Chamber that we ought to give notice of withdrawal from the CFP if it is not abolished in total. Countries could then manage their own fisheries with a 200-mile or 50/50 limit. In that way, fish stocks could be recovered, because they would be managed at a national level and we would license fishing for our own fishermen. In addition, if any other fishing boats came from outside, they would have to be licensed and managed properly.
Alex Salmond
To pursue my point, is it not strange that the Government never mention treaty amendment to the common fisheries policy as an objective, even though it would certainly be within the competence of this financial Bill? Everything else is mentioned as an objective in the renegotiation, but to my knowledge the Prime Minister has never identified the common fisheries policy as something that he is even trying to get change on, far less a treaty amendment.
Kelvin Hopkins
The right hon. Gentleman makes a strong point. That is one of my red lines, and I shall put that case to the Prime Minister when I have an opportunity. I have said that many times before in the Chamber.
Jim Shannon
As I said earlier, I represent the constituency of Strangford, and the fishing industry is particularly important to me. We have had a cod recovery programme in the Irish sea for the past 10 to 12 years, and there are greater numbers of cod than there have ever been during that time and the fish are bigger. However, Europe restricts our fishermen’s ability to fish those cod. That is an example of why we need a new common fisheries policy that local people can control and have an input in.
The Temporary Chair (Hywel Williams)
Order. I hope that the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) will not go too far down that line of discussion.
Kelvin Hopkins
I shall move on to my other points in a second, Mr Williams, but I agree with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that if member states control their own fisheries, they will be able to stop irresponsible fishing and the plundering of fish stocks by other nations.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Going back to what the hon. Gentleman said a few moments ago about agriculture, is he aware that many farmers do not want to leave the EU because they feel they would be treated less generously? However, if Britain came out of the Union, would we as a net contributor not have more money to spend on farming if we wished to do so?
Kelvin Hopkins
The right hon. Gentleman makes a strong point. I have said that if we were outside the EU, we would be better off financially and could choose what we subsidised, how and to what extent. We could choose what sort of farming we wanted to sustain. I have made the point before that small hill farmers in Wales, who are part of our rural culture, ought to be preserved. They might not be very efficient, but we could perhaps choose to subsidise them. For other forms of farming we might choose to maintain the subsidies at the current level, but we would make that choice democratically through our Government and this Parliament.
Mr MacNeil
The glib answer that has often been given to me in the House in years past as to why we should maintain the common fisheries policy is that fish do not have passports. Of course that neglects the reality that there are three types of stocks: migratory stocks, non-migratory stocks and straddling stocks. We can look at what happens in countries that control their own fisheries, such as Iceland. Jóhann Sigurjónsson, the chief fishing scientist of Iceland, tells me that its fishing has so improved, and trawlers are catching the cod stocks so much more quickly, that fishermen are actually getting frustrated. They are being so successful and doing their work in so little time that they want to go and catch more. That is a sign of their success, having managed their own stocks for a number of decades.
Kelvin Hopkins
Indeed. The hon. Gentleman is well ahead of me in his expertise in the matter, but the basic point is that we should control our own fish stocks and manage them properly.
I have one or two other points to make about expenditure in the EU budget. From time to time we have discussed international aid. My view, and I think the view of the Department for International Development, is that we would spend international aid better than it is spent through the European Union. We would target and manage it better and try to ensure that it was spent in a less corrupt way in certain countries. Countries would do better to manage their own aid donations abroad than have them dealt with through the European Union. Aid is therefore another component of the EU budget that could be taken away.
Then we come to structural funds. Again, I believe that member states, particularly our own country, are best able to judge what regional assistance they need to provide. We could target that assistance better than when it is decided by the European Union. As part of our regional policy, we might want to have state aid to assist the growth of manufacturing in some of the less successful regions of our country. Manufacturing is too small as a proportion of our economy, and if we want to expand and improve our manufacturing sector to help investment, we might want to use state aid, which is forbidden under the EU arrangements.
Mr MacNeil
Is not the great danger that the high priest of the austerity cult, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would drive austerity further and we would not see the spending that we currently see in areas of Wales and in the highlands and islands of Scotland?
Mr MacNeil
He would keep it all in London. If that were to happen, we would need full fiscal autonomy, or indeed independence, to ensure that areas of Scotland were well protected.
Kelvin Hopkins
I thank the hon. Gentleman, but it is a counsel of despair to say that because we cannot trust our own Government, we have to go to the European Union. I was on a march through London opposing austerity last Saturday, and there were tens of thousands of people there who felt strongly about it. Even though we may have Governments we do not like from time to time, we have the chance of pressurising them in the short term and getting rid of them and replacing them with more progressive Governments in the long term. Pressurising Governments is what I do in politics, as I think Members of all parties do. I want to see the Government elected in this country governing this country, not giving away our powers so that we are governed by a bureaucracy in Brussels or wherever.
I have mentioned spending on the CAP, aid, structural funds, regional policy and so on. If we had responsibility for those things, some of the fiscal transfers that effectively take place between the richer and poorer countries in the European Union might no longer happen. If we want fiscal transfers, the way to do it would be for us to make substantial contributions to a fund that could be allocated to the Governments of less well-off countries. Lithuania, Latvia, Poland or wherever could benefit from donations, but they would go to those countries’ Governments, who would decide how that money ought to be spent in their countries. It would not be about the European Union subsidising certain sectors in a way that may or may not be beneficial to those countries. As I said, in Lithuania, and no doubt in other countries, they are being paid not to grow agricultural products and their own food. That is nonsensical, and I wish to see an end to it. If we want fiscal transfers, let them be up front. Let us contribute to a fund that poorer countries in the EU, or in a new association of member states, could draw on. That would be a more sensible way forward.
Of course, that would loosen the bonds of the European Union. We would not have decisions about all sorts of sectors being made by the Commission in Brussels. They would be made by democratic Governments, and we would have a looser association of states within Europe, which would be a much more sensible way of operating. I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South said, and I support her probing new clauses and her amendment 1, which we hope to be voting on soon.
Peter Grant
Tapadh leibh—thank you, Mr Williams. I apologise for not being able to say that in Welsh despite your attempts at tuition last night. I will keep practising.
It struck me after hearing the first two speakers in the debate that we had spent an hour and 45 minutes discussing the Bill and the only point of contention appeared to be whether the Government should write letters, and, if so, how many. If we are serious about sorting out great European institutions that are inefficient and have a lot of waste, I suspect that many of the audience of millions watching live on television will ask us to hold a mirror up to our own face. A debate such as this surely cannot be what this place was designed for.
Alex Salmond
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point about the likely outcome of Scottish negotiations in Europe, but it is highly unlikely that any Scottish negotiator would come back with less agriculture support than the minimum awarded to every other European nation.
Peter Grant
I do not know whether that is a bid to be the first independent Scottish ambassador to the European Union, but if I am in a position to put anybody’s name forward I shall certainly bear in mind my right hon. Friend. He makes a valid point, which is related to the question he has asked repeatedly and on which he has still not had an answer: what the Prime Minister’s negotiating position and priorities are going to be. The fishing industry is not a massively important part of the United Kingdom’s economy; it is a massively important part of the economies of some nations that make up the United Kingdom. The negotiations are, however, always carried out through the Westminster lens, and it is seen as a major achievement when all we come back with is, “Not too many things have got worse.” We talk about aspiration. I think aspiration means we want things to get better, not to think we have achieved a lot when we come back from negotiations and have not had to lose too much.
The European Union does not mange its finances very well at all. We do not need to be accountants to work that out. Most companies would not be allowed to continue if they went 20 years without having their accounts signed off. Sometimes we need to look, however, at how we manage the part of it for which we are responsible. Some questions today, particularly those from the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on the Labour Front Bench, about scrutiny of the European budget and the performance and financial management of the European Union, were pointing to weaknesses in the way this House holds Europe to account. That points either to a lack of involvement of members of the European Scrutiny Committee, or to the fact that it has not been given sufficient powers. There are many weaknesses in the way European finances affect the responsibilities of this Chamber, and changes could be made to the way this House holds Europe to account, but their delivery does not necessarily mean having to threaten to walk away from Europe altogether.
As I said in an earlier intervention, I do not see why the amendment needs to be put to a vote. It does not contain anything that the Government should be reluctant to do. I defer to the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), who has left the Chamber, and his expertise on the procedures of the House and the position of the EU Scrutiny Committee, but it is time to put on a statutory basis a process whereby the Government ask things of Europe on our behalf—and which no Government in their right mind should be reluctant to do. How could any Government not want to ask Europe to be more accountable, or to think a wee bit more carefully about its spending priorities before it sets them? I hope that we see an outbreak of common sense among Government Members.
The United Kingdom’s position in whatever negotiations the Prime Minister has would be strengthened if we could find a way for this Bill to be amended and approved unopposed. If the proposed changes are put to a vote, I am minded to go with them. It would be sad if it were a matter of public record that this Committee had divided on such an important matter—on the crucial question of whether we wanted the Secretary of State to write a letter to Europe.
Mr Gauke
We have had a wide-ranging debate over the past two and a half hours. The hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) was not far off the substance of the matter before us: the disagreement is over whether there should be placed in statute a requirement to write a letter.
I recognise the spirit of the proposed changes before us, and the need for us to improve the value of expenditure in the European Union, to cut down on waste and to increase transparency. We strongly support and have advocated those points.
I have to say that writing to the Commission, asking it to review the issues, will not particularly achieve the objectives we have heard set out, but the Government have taken action and continue to do so to improve EU spending. That began with the Prime Minister’s historic deal, cutting the budget in real terms. It has forced the Commission to prioritise, which we very much welcome, and it has led to the Commission’s budget for results initiative. The UK is playing an active role in that process, and we continue to push the Commission to bear down on waste in its responses to the EU budget discharge process. The Government are contributing to the simplification proposals from the Commission, and the UK will continue to fight for restraint in the annual budget.
Those steps have led to concrete results: the Commission has become more transparent and has shifted more funding into pro-growth spending. We certainly make no apologies for that—although there appears to be some resistance to it in some parts of the House—and the UK’s contributions will be lower for every year in this seven-year deal period than in the final year of the last MFF deal. That is a saving of almost £8 billion over the forecast period compared with 2013-14.
Barbara Keeley
If the Minister is resisting the amendments, and it sounds as though he is, will he tell the Committee whether he is happy with the balance of priorities in the spending on competitiveness for jobs and growth, which was a key point that I spent time discussing? He seems to be resisting any attempt to put forward a review or report that would make it easier for the House to push for changes, so is he happy with the current balance?
Mr Gauke
In the 2013 negotiations, we achieved a shift towards a greater proportion of expenditure being on pro-growth measures, such as research and development, and away from other areas of expenditure that contribute less to growth. That includes the common agricultural policy. The hon. Lady says that it is a small amount. Actually, it was not; there was significant progress in terms of a reduction in the common agricultural policy, with more spending on those areas where we think there could be greater added value. That is the right direction. I again have to draw the contrast with the surrender of £2 billion a year in respect of our rebate for common agricultural policy reform that we did not see—I am afraid that that is the record of the last Labour Government with the 2005 deal. I therefore believe that we are moving in the right direction.
If the hon. Lady is asking, “Would we like to go further?”, then, yes, I very much support that view. We want to go further and see a greater emphasis on expenditure that provides better value for money for UK and EU taxpayers. That is very much what we want, but I question the idea that the letter she is calling for will make any difference, particularly when we are seeing progress with the Commission’s budget for results initiative. The working group will meet for the first time in July and there will be a major conference in September 2015. We want to continue that approach during the mid-term review, which, as I said, will occur in 2016.
Barbara Keeley
The Minister was unable to give a date. Mid-term reviews are one thing, but we are moving towards a referendum, as we all know. We are all going to have to build this case for our constituents and for the campaign out there, and we need the information sooner. The slow trundling-on of the EU Commission will not suit our need for that information in this country, in this year and the next. I invite the Minister to come to my constituency and try to explain that this is a really good deal—the split between competitiveness and growth, and the amount that is spent on research and development—when we really should be pushing for that for our economy. We need to explain that and we need the review to be done sooner. He cannot even say when it is going to be done in 2016—it may be too late.
Mr Gauke
The MFF will be in 2016, as I said. The reality is that trying to transfer expenditure in the way we certainly want to—and from what the hon. Lady is saying, she also wants to, although it does not seem to have support in all parts of the House—is a major task. We have made progress. If she is saying that the situation is frustrating and she would like to go faster, I am not disagreeing with her, but I am afraid that that is the way the European Union works. We have clearly made progress and I do not think it does her cause any good to downplay our progress.
Mr Gauke
I was going to turn directly to the common agricultural policy, for which the right hon. Gentleman is such an enthusiast, subject to his complaint that he would like Scotland to have a greater share of the money that comes to the United Kingdom.
During the renegotiation, we faced the fact that the UK’s CAP receipts would fall over the next budgetary period in real terms. The conclusion was that the fairest way of allocating that cut was through an equal, proportionate reduction in both pillars across the United Kingdom. To have allocated more funding to Scotland or any other part of the United Kingdom would have meant deeper cuts across the rest of the United Kingdom. That was why the Government took the steps we did.
Alex Salmond
Rather than bemoaning the £2 billion the Labour party lost in respect of the budget rebate, will the Minister revisit the €220 million of convergence money that the Government chose not to distribute by hectare, which is the basis on which we got it in the first place? Does he realise how much bitterness that decision caused in the rural communities of Scotland? It no doubt contributed to the Conservative party’s worst election result in Scotland for a century last month.
Mr Gauke
I will briefly make two points to the right hon. Gentleman. There is no additional money for the United Kingdom. Over the next funding period, the UK’s direct payments will fall by about €500 million compared with 2013. The most appropriate way of allocating that cut, as I said earlier, is to share it equally between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. To have given more money to Scotland would have meant a greater reduction across the rest of the UK.
If the right hon. Gentleman objects to that approach, let me put it in context. Regions are allocated structural funds according to a Commission formula that was agreed as part of the MFF deal, which takes into account, among other factors, regional wealth relative to the EU average. As a result of the new EU formula for allocating structural funds, there would not have been a fair distribution across the UK, with each of the devolved Administrations set to lose out significantly. In 2013, the Government decided to correct that. As a result, Northern Ireland’s allocation was increased by €181 million, Scotland’s by €228 million and Wales’s by €375 million. That meant that all parts of the UK were subject to an equal cut. We believe that that delivered the fairest deal for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. However, the right hon. Gentleman chose not to draw the Committee’s attention to that example of equal treatment, which benefited Scotland.
Alex Salmond
The Minister would probably get more information from The Scottish Farmer than he is getting from his civil service briefs. There was €220 million of convergence money to take account of the fact that per hectare, particularly in Scotland, we were receiving so much less than the minimum that was allocated to other countries. The question is quite a simple one. The vast majority of people think that it would have been fair to distribute that convergence funding per hectare, because that was why we were getting it. Why was that not done, and will he revisit that bad decision?
Mr Gauke
I say again that the right hon. Gentleman really must look at the overall treatment. When we look at agriculture spending and the structural funds, we see that there has been fair treatment of each part of the United Kingdom to ensure that no one part suffers as a result of changes to the EU budget. I say to him that if we can find savings in the common agricultural policy, we should do so.
We have had a wide-ranging debate. When it comes down to it, I believe that there is support for the clauses in the Bill, but it appears that the Opposition wish to press their new clauses that call on us to write letters calling for action, ignoring the fact that action is already being taken and that there is already going to be a review of the MFF by the Council of Ministers. The Commission is already following the Prime Minister’s historic deal by focusing on prioritising expenditure. I am afraid that the letters that the Opposition propose will achieve nothing of substance and do not belong in a Bill that is focused on revenue, rather than expenditure. I therefore urge the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) not to press her amendment and new clauses, and urge hon. Members to support the clauses of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Repeal, extent, commencement and short title
Amendment proposed: 1, page 1, line 18, leave out subsection (3).—(Barbara Keeley.)
This amendment removes the automatic coming into force of the Act two months after it is passed, which would be incompatible with any of the new Clauses.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Mr Gauke
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The Bill gives UK approval to the financing aspects of the 2013 EU budget deal. As hon. Members will recall, in 2013, the Prime Minister secured a deal that delivered the first ever real-terms cut to the EU budget and preserved our rebate. If we are tightening our belts at home, we should not be spending more through the EU—and thanks to the Prime Minister’s historic deal, we are not. It is a good deal for the taxpayer now and over the coming years.
In addition to forcing restraint on EU expenditure on the revenue side, it was a specific UK objective that there would be no new types of member state contribution; no new EU-wide taxes to finance EU spending; and no change to the UK rebate. That is precisely what we achieved. The political agreement at the February 2013 European Council was accurately reflected in the new own resources decision. This sets out the system of financing the EU budget until 2020, and was agreed unanimously by member states at a meeting of the Council of Ministers in May 2014.
Hon. Members will have noted that the ORD reintroduces reductions in the gross national income-based contributions of the Netherlands and Sweden, and introduces small reductions in those contributions for Denmark and Austria. The UK will contribute to these small corrections, but this will largely be offset by changes to other corrections. The UK has always supported the principle of budgetary corrections set out at the 1984 Fontainebleau European Council, which gave us our own rebate. In the absence of any meaningful reform on the expenditure side of the EU budget, we believe that those member states that, like the UK, make disproportionately large net contributions in relation to their prosperity, should receive corrections.
The Bill will give UK approval to the unanimous agreement on the new ORD—an agreement that maintains the existing system of financing the EU budget. That means no new types of member state contributions; no new EU-wide taxes to finance EU spending; and, crucially, no change to our rebate.
This agreement is in our national interest. It also serves as an important reminder of what can be done when we are tough, constructive, positive and determined in negotiations with European partners. The agreement that will be implemented by this Bill is a good deal for Britain and a good deal for Europe, and I commend it to the House.
Barbara Keeley
I am glad that new clauses 1 and 2 were discussed earlier. Given the result of the vote, I urge the Minister to consider the importance of keeping EU budget spending under review. As I said earlier, the system of commitments and payments is worrying. We want a system of budgetary control, not a system that drives up the pressure for increases through unpaid bills and commitments made in years past.
I also urge the Minister to continue to focus on the need for reform of EU budget priorities, which we spent some time discussing, and, in particular, on the need to increase funding for competitiveness, jobs and growth. It is important for Ministers to be able to reshape EU budget priorities, but, following our discussions, I am not sure that they have that ability.
The Minister resisted our amendments, and resisted our requests for him to make a sensible undertaking that would have removed the necessity for a vote. His position on our amendment and new clauses suggests that he is content with the reports and reviews that are trundling along in the EU, and it does not send the strong message that could be sent about the need for enhanced scrutiny and reformed priorities. That is a pity, and I hope that the Minister will continue to reflect on it.
Alex Salmond
Thinking back to all the Committee sittings, I recall that the Minister did not feel able to give an effective answer to questions about the Prime Minister’s negotiating stance in relation to the forthcoming European question and, particularly, European finances. He was asked a number of times—by me and by other Members, including Labour Front Benchers—what would be distinctive about that stance, and what the Prime Minister’s precise objectives were. The Minister responded by telling us that the Government’s objective was to minimise the EU budget, to ensure that it was efficient, and to protect the rebate, but that has been Government policy for a number of years. What really interested Members was whether the Prime Minister had a specific intent and negotiating stance, and what his objectives were. We were interested in those questions in the context of European finances, so that we could judge his success or failure after the negotiations.
If the Minister does not feel able to provide an answer to what strikes me as a very reasonable and fair question, he will add to and fuel suspicions among both pro- and anti-Europeans in the House that it is not just a question of the Prime Minister’s having a stance, but of the Prime Minister and the Government deliberately concealing the nature of that stance from the House and the country, so that it will not be possible for them to be judged effectively when the negotiations are over. That seems to me to be a fundamentally unsatisfactory way to proceed in regard to any financial issue, let alone an issue as important as European finance.
The Minister shakes his head. I hope that, if he disagrees, he will intervene and reveal what the Prime Minister’s stance actually is, because we are all mystified by what the targets are in the negotiations that are at this moment taking place in various European capitals. The Prime Minister, on our behalf and at our expense, is moving from capital to capital, and the only people who are not to be informed of his actual negotiating posture are the Members of this House and the people of this country. That is a remarkable position.
I am familiar with the Minister’s steady hand at the Dispatch Box, and with his wonderful cover drive. I know that he would not want, at the very last minute of the Bill’s progress in the House of Commons, to be caught at slip in not answering a simple question: what are the Prime Minister’s negotiating targets, and how will we be able to judge whether he has achieved them?
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Business of the House (Today)
Ordered,
That, at today’s sitting, the Speaker shall put the questions necessary to dispose of the motion in the name of Secretary Patrick McLoughlin relating to High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill: Instruction (No. 3) not later than 90 minutes after the start of proceedings on this motion; such questions shall include the questions on any amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved; proceedings may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.—(Mr Goodwill.)
High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill: Instruction (No. 3)
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
I beg to move,
That it be a further Instruction to the Select Committee to which the High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill is committed–
(1) that the Select Committee have power to consider–
(a) amendments relating to the vertical and horizontal alignment of the proposed railway in the vicinity of the A38 and Trent and Mersey Canal in the parishes of Fradley and Streethay, King's Bromley and Whittington in the County of Staffordshire;
(b) amendments conferring additional power to carry out works in the Borough of Slough and in the parish of Iver in the County of Buckinghamshire for the purpose of providing a new Heathrow Express depot in the Borough of Slough (to the north east of Langley railway station), in consequence of the displacement of the existing depot because of the exercise of powers conferred by the Bill;
(c) amendments conferring additional power to provide sidings for Crossrail services at Old Oak Common in the London Boroughs of Ealing and Hammersmith and Fulham that could be extended in the future to create a connection between the West Coast Main Line Railway and the Great Western Main Line;
(d) amendments to accommodate the requirements of landowners and occupiers in
i. the London Boroughs of Brent and Ealing;
ii. the parishes of Barton Hartshorn, Calvert Green, Chetwode, Great Missenden, Grendon Underwood, Little Missenden, Preston Bissett, The Lee and Twyford in the County of Buckinghamshire;
iii. the parishes of Godington and Mixbury in the County of Oxfordshire;
iv. the parishes of Aston-le-Walls, Boddington, Chipping Warden and Edgcote, Greatworth, Radstone, Thorpe Mandeville and Whitfield in the County of Northamptonshire;
v. the parishes of Burton Green, Coleshill, Curdworth, Kenilworth, Ladbroke, Lea Marston, Middleton, Offchurch, Southam, Stoneleigh, Stoneton, Wishaw and Moxhull and Wormleighton in the County of Warwickshire;
vi. the parishes of Armitage with Handsacre, Drayton Bassett, Hints with Canwell, King's Bromley, Swinfen and Packington and Whittington in the County of Staffordshire;
vii. the parishes of Balsall, Berkswell, Chelmsley Wood and Hampton-in-Arden in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull; and
viii. the City of Birmingham;
(e) amendments to accommodate changes to the design of the works authorised by the Bill in:
i. the London Boroughs of Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham and Hillingdon and the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea;
ii. the District of Three Rivers in the County of Hertfordshire;
iii. the parishes of Chetwode, Denham, Ellesborough, Great Missenden, Grendon Underwood, Little Missenden, Preston Bissett, Quainton, Steeple Claydon, Stoke Mandeville, Turweston, Twyford and Wendover in the County of Buckinghamshire;
iv. the parishes of Godington and Mixbury in the County of Oxfordshire;
v. the parishes of Aston-le-Walls, Boddington, Greatworth, Marston St Lawrence, Radstone and Thorpe Mandeville in the County of Northamptonshire;
vi. the parishes of Coleshill, Curdworth, Kingsbury, Lea Marston, Middleton, Offchurch, Radbourne and Stoneleigh in the County of Warwickshire;
vii. the parishes of Colwich, Drayton Bassett, Fradley and Streethay, Hints with Canwell, King's Bromley, Swinfen and Packington and Weeford in the County of Staffordshire;
viii. the parishes of Berkswell and Bickenhill in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull;
ix. the City of Birmingham;
(f) amendments to the definition of "deposited statement" in clause 63(1) of the Bill to refer to supplementary environmental information provided in relation to matters which do not require an extension of the powers of the Bill to construct works or acquire land;
(g) amendments for purposes connected with any of the matters mentioned in sub paragraphs (a) to (f);
(2) that any petition against amendments to the Bill which the Select Committee is empowered to make shall be referred to the Select Committee if–
a) the petition is presented by being deposited in the Private Bill Office not later than the end of the period of four weeks beginning with the day on which the first newspaper notice of the amendments was published, and
(b) the petition is one in which the petitioners pray to be heard by themselves or through counsel or agents.
That these Orders be Standing Orders of the House.
The motion relates to the High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Bill that is currently before a Select Committee of this House. The role of that Committee is to hear petitions against the Bill from those who are, to use the legal term, “directly and specially affected” by it. The Committee, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms), has already heard more petitions in 11 months than the Crossrail Bill Select Committee dealt with in its entire 21 months of sitting.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
But does this not demonstrate the rather crass way in which HS2 initially dealt with our constituents? I should like to praise the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms). He has a unique ability to put constituents’ minds at ease when they feel tense as they appear before a Select Committee.
Mr Goodwill
I would extend that praise to the other members of the Committee, who have dealt very well with people who can be nervous in that situation. I should also like to take this opportunity to praise the work done by my officials at HS2, who have gone the extra mile to address some of the petition issues before they even needed to reach the Committee.
As intended, the process has led to many sensible changes to the scheme in order to address the needs and concerns of petitioners. Some of the changes have been agreed by HS2 Ltd dealing directly with petitioners, and some were recommended in the Select Committee’s recent interim report, to which the Government responded on 4 June. Many changes can be accommodated using existing powers, but some require the powers in the Bill to be extended—for example, when a change requires the use of land that is not included in the Bill. In such circumstances, an additional provision is required. This is effectively a mini-hybrid Bill, with its own environmental statement and petitioning period for those “directly and specially affected” by the changes.
The motion relates to an additional provision that, subject to it being passed, the Government intend to deposit on 13 July. The additional provision contains 125 changes, along the line of route beyond Camden, that have resulted from the petitioning process and from HS2 Ltd’s continued development of the design of the railway. The changes are mostly of a minor nature. They include the realignment of access routes and the diversion of footpaths following discussions with affected landowners, or the relocation of areas of ecological mitigation to reduce the impacts on farming operations. I am tempted to say that this is a tidying-up process, but I recall that that was how some described the Lisbon treaty.
There are, however, proposals for three significant changes. As already announced, we propose to realign the route in the Lichfield area so that it runs in a cutting rather than on an embankment, as well as moving the route away from the Trent and Mersey canal. This will enable the line to go under the A38, the South Staffordshire railway and the west coast main line, which will significantly reduce the visual impact of the railway in the area. I hope the House will welcome this example of the promoter seeking to take on board petitioners’ concerns and integrate them into the HS2 project where we are able to do so. I am particularly pleased that, in this case, the solution will be less expensive to deliver.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Will the Minister tell the House what effect those route changes will have on the proposed journey times?
Mr Goodwill
They will have no effect at all on the journey times. This is about delivering the project by and large as planned. HS2 is more about capacity than it is about journey times. This is about addressing the real capacity issues that we have on our rail network, particularly between Birmingham and London.
The most significant other change concerns the Heathrow Express depot. It is currently located at Old Oak Common, but it needs to be relocated in order to construct the new Old Oak Common station. It was originally intended to be moved to another site nearby, but more detailed operational work undertaken by Network Rail since the Bill’s deposit has revealed that that site would not work operationally. We therefore propose to relocate the depot to a site in Langley, near Slough.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Will the Minister shed more light on his statement that this “would not work operationally”? What I have heard on the grapevine, which has been my only source of information, is that there is more potential to make money out of the Old Oak site than out of the Langley site, and so Network Rail wants a depot out and more commercial development in.
Mr Goodwill
We looked closely at the North Pole depot site, but the Langley site is operationally more effective, and it also means that we would not block any proposal that might come forward for the Great Western line to connect with Crossrail at terminal 5.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
Will the Minister explain what he means by “operationally more effective”, because to any normal person it would seem odd that it is “operationally more effective” to have a depot that is not even on the route between Heathrow and Paddington?
Mr Goodwill
In these matters we are advised by Network Rail, which informs us that the practicality of operating these depots is such that the Langley site is the best one on which to locate this depot.
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)
In considering the Langley site, what work has been done on the knock-on consequences for transport within the Iver area? I ask that because there are specific schemes to relieve the heavy goods vehicle problem that is besetting Iver, and it is widely concluded that the project being proposed here will prevent those schemes from happening. In particular, I refer to the relief road into the back of the Ridgeway trading estate. This matters very much and will have to be sorted out if this proposal is to go ahead.
Mr Goodwill
Those are precisely the sort of issues that petitioners can come forward with as part of the hybrid Bill process that this additional provision triggers. May I make it clear that we are not, at this point, considering agreement on these changes? This is about setting the process in train so that these points can be made and the Committee can look at them.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Will the Minister clarify that last point? Will an environmental impact study be carried out on the difference between the two possible depot sites? Has that been considered or is it something that will come further down the line, if he will pardon the pun?
Mr Goodwill
There will indeed be an environmental statement to address the impact that will arise from the 18 changes that require additional powers in the Bill—for example, a new location for the replacement village hall for Burton Green. An environmental statement will accompany those additional provisions, and some changes that do not require additional provisions will also have their own environmental statement, which will allow those particularly important environmental considerations to be discussed.
The additional provision includes powers to build sidings for Crossrail at Old Oak Common which may in future enable a link to be built between Crossrail and the west coast main line. That is not in itself part of HS2, but doing the work after HS2 is built would incur significant expense and disruption.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
It is good that these points made by homeowners have been addressed. On Old Oak Common, what compensation is available to residents in Wells House Road and Midland Terrace in NW10, because they say that their suburban way of life will be demolished? Their gardens are being compulsorily purchased and then they will also have to deal with noise, disruption and all sorts of other things for 10 years. Whatever compensation scheme—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. You can sit down and relax for a second, as I want to try to be helpful. The hon. Lady has just come in and normally I would just let that go, but we must have short interventions. If she wants to catch my eye to speak, I am more than happy for that to happen. That might be a good way to address this, but we must have short interventions as this debate will last only an hour and a half. Wherever I can be helpful, I will be.
Mr Goodwill
The hon. Lady makes precisely the point that has already been raised by many residents about the existing provision before the hybrid Bill Committee. The additional provisions in AP2 will also allow them to have that say, so that, if necessary, mitigation can be put in place to lessen the impact of construction traffic and to look at alternative routes for traffic and other such things. I have been down the line of route, and I do understand many of the problems. Indeed, I was in Slough on Sunday, and saw the site from the train. I know exactly where it is located.
Robert Flello
On the future-proofing issue, the Minister may possibly be aware that I have a certain interest in Stoke-on-Trent being serviced ideally by HS2 directly. However, is the Handsacre junction also being future proofed to protect areas such as Stoke-on-Trent? Do these provisions address that?
Mr Goodwill
That matter does not specifically relate to measures in AP2. Where possible, we will ensure that, as we construct the railway line, we do not rule out other connections, which is precisely the point that I made about the west coast main line.
The changes in total will not increase the overall project budget or target price for phase 1. They result in modest additional costs, but they will be accommodated within the contingency, which is provided for that very purpose.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Will the Minister tell us what the total additional land take is for these provisions?
Mr Goodwill
I do not have those figures to hand, but it is minimal. In most of the additional provisions, which are in the document that has been provided for the convenience of the House, we can see that these are quite small additional areas of land. They are not major changes to the project, but tweaks. In many cases, they are changes made at the request of the landowner or farmer involved because it improves their situation.
As required by Standing Orders, we will be depositing an estimated expense, setting out the gross costs of these changes should the motion be approved. The motion instructs the Committee to consider these amendments and to hear petitions related to them. It is important to note that the motion does not ask the House to agree that these changes should be made; just that the Committee be allowed to consider them. If the House approves the motion, the additional provision and related documents, including an environmental statement describing the likely significant environmental effects of the changes, will be deposited in Parliament and in local authority offices in those locations affected by the changes.
Michael Fabricant
I am a little bit curious about the process. What is to prevent a ping-pong taking place, such as we have between the House of Commons and the other place, whereby petitioners say that they do not agree with the changes, and so subsequent changes are made? How does the process end?
Mr Goodwill
In most cases, there will be support for these changes. Indeed, as I have already said, many of the changes are at the request of the landowners who are, in many cases, the only people who are affected. In future, it may be necessary to come up with more additional provisions, and we certainly have that option.
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend accept that, from the moment of the publication of a document showing the new changes in the site, blight afflicts the properties that are close to the areas affected by these amendments? As a Member of Parliament, I received this document only this morning. My parish council was already aware of the changes. It is an interested party in these changes, but not the landowner.
Mr Goodwill
That document has been provided for the convenience of the House to help with today’s process. The definitive document will be published on 13 July, and that will be the document on which any submissions on the petitioning process can be made. In addition, a supplementary environmental statement will also be deposited. That describes any new or different significant environmental effects that may arise, informed by new survey data that have become available since the deposit of the Bill, as HS2 Ltd has now been granted access to more land. As I have said, those deposits are all planned for 13 July. These documents will supersede the explanatory note made available in advance to MPs and published online last week.
I would like to make Members aware of two minor errors in the document. A change described on page 68 in Berkswell in the constituency of Meriden, while being correctly described and having the correct map, had the wrong plan. One other change relating to a footpath had the correct information provided, but did not clearly highlight the full extent of the footpath that will be amended on page 70. The documents to be deposited on 13 July will contain the full information.
As required by Standing Orders, notices in national and local newspapers will be published immediately after deposit, alerting the public to these changes and the opportunity to feed into the process by petitioning or responding to the consultation, as appropriate. In addition, HS2 Ltd will be writing to those near the proposed changes to highlight the consultation. Once the notices have appeared, a public consultation on the environmental statement lasting 42 days, in accordance with Standing Orders, will commence. This is planned to run from Friday 17 July to Friday 28 August. As with the main environmental statement consultation at the time of Bill deposit, the responses to the consultation will be analysed by Parliament’s independent assessor and the assessor’s report will be tabled in the House ahead of Third Reading.
Mrs Gillan
Is it not a great shame that once again there is going to be a truncated consultation period for this increase in land take? Also, has the Minister considered the fact that the consultation is taking place over the summer? Many of the people who want to feed back on this may be away.
Mr Goodwill
I am sure that my right hon. Friend realises that people go on holidays at all times of the year. Indeed, if we moved into the September period, many would argue that that is the party conference season and therefore those involved in politics might not be available. I am aware that there is a major leadership campaign going on in at least one of our political parties, which could also be seen as a reason why one time or another might not be appropriate. I believe that the four-week period is absolutely appropriate. We have had no problems in the past with people being able to provide their petitions.
There will also be a petitioning period of four weeks for those directly or specially affected by the changes in this second additional provision, so that they can submit petitions. That petitioning period will begin on Friday 17 July and end on Friday 14 August for all petitioners.
I hope that the House will agree that these amendments demonstrate that while the Government recognise the vital role that HS2 has to play in transforming our transport network and our economy, we also recognise the need to listen to those directly affected by the railway and, wherever possible, seek to mitigate those impacts. I commend the motion to the House.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I am glad that we are holding this HS2 debate on national women in engineering day. I am sure the whole House would agree that the Government’s investment in rail must be used to encourage more women to take up careers in engineering and in the rail industry.
I welcome the Minister back to his place. I had, of course, hoped to be speaking from his side of the House after the election. I was relishing the possibility of taking ministerial responsibility for the content of each and every one of the Bill’s 50,000 pages, but I reassure the House that the Opposition will continue to subject the Government’s delivery of this important project to close scrutiny.
I want to express our gratitude for the work undertaken by the Bill’s Select Committee, including the Clerks of the Committee, my hon. Friends the Members for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), the hon. Members for Poole (Mr Syms), for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham), and Mike Thornton, the former Member for Eastleigh. I am sure the whole House will want to place on record its appreciation of the time and effort spent by residents and other affected parties who appeared before the Committee, and to thank the outside bodies and Members of this House who provided support to petitioning.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I would like to put on the record my appreciation for the Select Committee, which visited some of the problem areas that we have in Coventry and also visited those people the wrong side of the dividing line who would not qualify for compensation. I hope that the Committee, the Minister and the Secretary of State will remember that a lot of people’s livelihoods depend on this, and their property has been rendered valueless.
Lilian Greenwood
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of the Committee’s going to visit those places most affected by the route and listening to the concerns expressed.
I know that the constituencies of several Members on both sides of the House are affected by these changes, and they will want to press the Minister on matters of detail, so I shall keep my remarks brief.
The Opposition support HS2 because we believe that it is the right project to address chronic capacity shortfalls on the rail network as well as historically inadequate connections between the cities of the north and the midlands. Those arguments were covered in detail in the House, not least on Second Reading, when the House endorsed the principle of building an initial route between London and Birmingham, so I do not propose to repeat them here. However, I will say that, although HS2 has provoked passionate debate, both sides have always accepted that the project’s design could be improved as the route is refined.
Many of these revisions are undoubtedly positive, and the campaigners who secured changes, such as the reconfiguration of the route at the point it crosses the A38, deserve great credit. That is why the Opposition will not seek to obstruct this motion. Those changes will reduce planning blight for petitioners and provide some measure of certainty to many of those who live along the route. However, I know that a number of right hon. and hon. Members have concerns about these changes, including the relocation of the Heathrow Express depot, and I will make way for them shortly. Before doing so, I would like to put a few questions to the Minister.
I welcome the Minister’s clarification of when the petitioning period will end, but can he say why the information was not included in the Department’s press release, where arguably it would have been seen by more people? Does he accept that the maps published in his explanatory information document do not provide clear information on a number of issues that might be of interest to residents, such as the elevation of new structures or the net land-take of those changes? Will he give an undertaking that any petitioners or Members of the House who request that information will receive it?
As the Minister will be aware, the Bill’s Select Committee has said:
“We have heard that HS2 Limited’s record on engagement has been poor.”
The Department has said that HS2 Ltd is being more timely in its dealings with petitioners who are due to appear before the Committee in June and July. Can he assure the House that that is not simply a case of officials catching up during Dissolution and that engagement between HS2 Ltd and petitioners will be improved permanently? That is of particular concern to those areas at the southern end of the route. In that regard, can he confirm that he expects to bring forward additional provision to cover Euston station later this year? Can he indicate when exactly those changes will be brought forward?
Michael Fabricant
The hon. Lady will recall that the former Member for Holborn and St Pancras, who was a doughty campaigner against HS2, had particular concerns about Euston. Has she given any consideration to the Mayor of London’s comment that, even if the changes can be made at Euston, it will be extremely difficult to get people on to London transport—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I think that I might be able to help. This motion does not relate to Euston, so we do not need to go into that now.
Lilian Greenwood
I will take your direction, Mr Deputy Speaker, but there are undoubtedly issues to be tackled at Euston. Three times now the residents of Camden have been presented with different plans for Euston station, with all the uncertainty that brings. Their treatment has clearly been inadequate, and I urge the Minister to shed a little light on when we can expect those additional provisions—I hope that I am still in order, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Does the Minister agree that it is unacceptable that a number of my hon. Friends have not been informed of the fact that the additional provisions would affect their constituencies? I know from discussions with a number of Members that they have had no communication from HS2 Ltd, or indeed from the Department, and consequently have had only one day’s notice that the changes are being debated. I know that the changes are a cause of concern to a number of hon. Friends. That situation is unacceptable, so I hope that the Minister will take it up with officials. The situation must not be repeated when further additional provisions are brought before the House.
Mr Goodwill
We are not debating the provisions; we are debating the fact that the Select Committee can receive petitions and consider the changes. We are not debating the provisions at this point.
Lilian Greenwood
I thank the Minister for his intervention, but this is clearly an opportunity for right hon. and hon. Members who wish to make comments on behalf of their constituents to do so. It is only right that people are aware of the provisions that are being introduced and debated in this House. They will question what the value of these exchanges is if we do not raise concerns on behalf of our constituents.
I seek an assurance from the Minister that, when the Committee has issued an instruction regarding a particular section of the route, it will be acted on accordingly. This is a matter of particular concern in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). I would welcome a commitment that today’s additional provision does not represent an end to the question of land-take at the Washwood Heath site, and that a mutually agreed solution will still be sought with the site’s owners.
Residents face a plethora of compensation schemes, some of which have been withdrawn, while awareness of others appears to be low. As the HS2 residents commissioner has said:
“It is vital that those who are eligible for the Government’s property compensation and assistance schemes get clear information and know what they are entitled to.”
Will the Minister take steps to clarify what support is available to residents, including those who live outside the rural support zone? This applies particularly to the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq).
Lilian Greenwood
It is vital that the Minister and HS2 Ltd set out precisely the implications for the roads affected in my hon. Friend’s constituency and the compensation that residents are entitled to. It is vital that those who live in the streets next to Old Oak Common, and other urban areas, are treated fairly. Perhaps the Minister will agree to meet her to ensure that she understands those implications.
Mr Jim Cunningham
As I said, and I hope my hon. Friend agrees, Ministers should look again at the compensation package. I have constituents who will not get a penny out of this. In particular, it lowers the value of their housing. They are just outside the catchment area and have been treated very unfairly; they cannot qualify for compensation from anybody.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We are straying outside the area of discussion, which is very tight. There are MPs who want to discuss areas of theirs that are affected. I want to be as generous as I can, but it would be wrong of me to allow us to move into areas that are not for discussion today.
Lilian Greenwood
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I thank my hon. Friend for his comments.
The Committee rightly acknowledged that decisions made on compensation for phase 1 may have consequences for the compensation arrangements for phase 2. The Government’s delay in finalising the route for phase 2 is causing planning blight. In the Committee’s words, “the incoming Administration”—it was speaking in March—
“should make an early decision on whether to proceed with Phase Two and, if it decides to proceed, quickly finalise the Phase Two route.”
That was two months ago. Will the Minister explain why a decision on phase 2 has been delayed, and will he commit to making a final decision by the end of the year?
We welcome the opportunity that the additional provision mechanism offers to refine the route, but as we look to the Government’s record it is difficult to resist a verdict of “Must do better.” Labour Members continue to support this important project and will continue to subject the Bill to line-by-line scrutiny when it enters Committee.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
It is not often that I follow a Front-Bench Opposition spokesman and can say that I agree with almost every word she spoke.
Once again, I find myself on my feet to decry the process that is being used to put through high-speed rail. The motion before us is just part of a very complex process that is often unfathomable for people outside this House but also sometimes unfathomable for people inside this House. Some of my hon. Friends have not even been able to access the documentation that was made available at the eleventh hour.
Sadly, although the motion has high-level pointers to amendments that relate to my constituency, it does not contain the instructions that I would like to see for a fully bored tunnel to save the area of outstanding natural beauty in my constituency from the HS2 route and the damage and destruction it will cause. I live in hope that one day a fully bored tunnel under the Chilterns will feature in a similar instruction and that the valiant efforts of thousands of people who support that change will come to fruition.
Yesterday, the Select Committee came to Chesham and Amersham and visited Little Missenden, Great Missenden and the Lee, which are subject to the motion. I pay tribute to the members of the Select Committee, who are doing a very thorough job in examining the pain being caused by the project. It is obvious that they are getting a response from the Department and HS2 Ltd: I was so pleased to hear the cheers from my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) about the beneficial changes in his constituency. We look forward to similar changes in Chesham and Amersham. I also pay tribute to the hundreds of people who came out on a working Monday to impress on the Committee their antipathy to the horrors of the present construction plans, which will wreak havoc on the area, as well as to tell at first hand the poignant and desperate stories of their own personal circumstances.
Today, we are looking at the process, which, I say to the Minister, has once again been tested and found wanting. It was very short-sighted not only to let us know in such short order that the motion was to be on the Order Paper, but to not make available alongside it the full details. Members of this House expect to be fully informed of what is going on and to not be told that the matter will be addressed on 13 July. I raised a point of order on that very issue and then, miraculously, had delivered to me additional provision explanatory information, which is dated July 2015. Given that it is still June, it was probably not the intention to release it this month. It relates directly to the provisions and it should have been provided to all Members of Parliament so that they could fully examine the proposals.
The big problem, no matter how small or big the land-take or how big the disruption, is that there is uncertainty for our constituents. For the full details not to have been made available to the Committee to see in situ during yesterday’s visit is not the fair and transparent process I would like the Department and HS2 Ltd to pursue.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
I am glad that the right hon. Lady is sharing her experience with the House. Has she seen any evidence of High Speed 2 Ltd actually following a word that the High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill Select Committee has issued?
Mrs Gillan
As the right hon. Gentleman will know, I am concentrating on Chesham and Amersham. Fortunately, our petitioning process is at its initial phase. The Committee will hear about the tunnelling options worked up by my community and local authorities, and it will then hear from some 800 petitioners. As far as my constituency is concerned, I hope the best is yet to come, but the right hon. Gentleman’s comments reflect some anxiety that HS2 Ltd and the Department may not be listening entirely to what petitioners have to say. However, the Prime Minister assured me in a recent letter that the Department and HS2 are listening to petitioners, so once again I am optimistic and I hope my optimism will be rewarded.
The high-level changes that are indicated in the instruction lead me to question the way in which the explanatory information on the additional provisions has been presented. It is not clear who HS2 is responding to in instructing the Committee to examine a change in the plans. The instruction does not make it clear whether it is petitioners or landowners, or whether it is a petitioner who is a landowner. It could be a new landowner—perhaps HS2 Ltd itself. We need further and better particulars on that in short order.
In my constituency, farmers will be affected by the taking of more land at Mantle’s wood, which is a piece of ancient woodland. Yesterday, a lot of farmers made the point that the land-take will have an impact on their business and will not leave it in a “strong and viable condition”. We need assurances that HS2 has considered that before instructions are given to the Committee that it should examine the parcels of land in question. One complaint from farmers yesterday around Great Missenden, Little Missenden and the Lee was that in some cases, their land will be taken for compulsory replanting of trees that are not suitable. I would have liked some more information from the Minister about that. As I said, the consultation period that has been announced is terribly short, and I urge him to look again at that.
Mr Nick Hurd (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I share my right hon. Friend’s concern about the scope and ambition of the additional provisions, which bear no relation at all to the concerns that my constituents are currently expressing to the Committee. There is a complete disconnect there. I also share her concerns about process. Will she join me in pressing the Minister at least to give us some reassurance at the end of the debate that the process will be improved, not least the timing of the provision of information to colleagues?
Mrs Gillan
My hon. Friend joins me and others in saying that we do not feel well done by by HS2 Ltd and the Department. It gives me great sadness to say that, but I would have thought that after this much time—after all, it is six years since the project was announced—the communications process could have been improved. I am afraid that, as the way in which the instruction was introduced shows, the process is still lacking greatly. If we are not informed, how can we inform our constituents and represent them properly?
I have taken up enough time, because I would like to leave time for others who are more severely affected by the additional provisions. I opened the papers this morning to see that HS2 Birmingham to London passengers want onboard GPs, shops and gyms. I repeat to the Minister that I hope we get a fully bored tunnel in the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty, because I do not want our precious landscape to be sacrificed for the novel experience of high-speed shopping and muscle toning.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
As we have heard from the Minister, high-speed rail will have a great economic impact along the route between London and the west midlands. An infrastructure project of such a size and scale will also have the knock-on effect of changing communities. There are many people and many views on route choices to consider, and we have heard today about some of the impacts.
Changes will also happen through the creation of jobs both during and after construction, leaving a long-lasting legacy for future years and for the generations to follow. Indeed, as the Minister said, they will transform the economy. If it is true that the Secretary of State’s report on additional provisions has taken people’s views on board, we shall be able to see where the views of the public and petitioners have been considered and where amendments have been made. I feel sure that hon. Members have also made their views clear on behalf of their constituents, and I have heard some of them this afternoon. We have heard praise for the Minister for putting constituents at ease.
Views on the alignment of the route have been taken on board in Chesham and Amersham, as they have in constituencies such as Birmingham, Ladywood. The changes to the routing of HS2 appear to have been made to accommodate the local voices of the public and those who represent them. Taking into account the view of the public, and their representations, is always to be commended, particularly when there is likely to be a positive economic impact that creates and supports employment, speeds journey times and increases connectivity to those who need it on the periphery and to those who have suffered a paucity of investment over the decades.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
My hon. Friend rightly mentions the economic benefits in terms of jobs and communities. Does he agree that on the route there could be benefits in terms of greater opportunities for business growth of all types, including expanded tourism and faster links with partners in Europe? That being the case, should Scotland not also benefit from a guaranteed connection with HS2 and be formally included in the forthcoming development of the route?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. You do not need to answer that, because unfortunately we are having a very tight debate. As important as it may be to your constituents, the fact is that we are discussing the constituents affected by the route that is being talked about today. Unfortunately, I cannot allow the debate to wander further than where we are at the moment.
Drew Hendry
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Notwithstanding that, I think there are points—especially in local and national economies—that have to be developed through participation. We heard earlier that projects that have been designed can be improved, and the Minister said we need to avoid minor errors; he covered that earlier in terms of the report. We also need to avoid major errors, so I ask him to put more constituents at ease, to go a little further with additional provisions and to listen to the demands of the people of Scotland. He should ensure there is another alignment much further north of the west midlands and make sure that Scotland is connected.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I am trying to be helpful. Quite rightly, you are the SNP spokesperson, but even the spokesperson must stick to what we are discussing. It is not a free for all, unfortunately.
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
I know a lot of other Members want to get in, so I shall focus on some of the changes that the motion before us will facilitate.
My main concern is with the additional provisions as they affect the approach to Birmingham International railway station, the new interchange station. Hon. Members will appreciate that its location is very important in terms of the orientation of the route, and one proposed change, on page 108 of the report, would appear to change the road infrastructure on the approach to the station. The road in question is Diddington Lane, and the document refers to the changes that the “Landowner/Petitioner request”. But my difficulty, a common problem that all Members will have, is that there is more than one petitioner on some of these things. As I said in an earlier intervention, at that location there are differences of opinion. The lane has along its length an Island Project school for children with severe learning difficulties, for whom relocation remains unresolved.
I just cannot tell from the map, frankly, what the new route is, and that makes it very difficult for me to know how the change to the road network is going to affect various people in my constituency. At that point the line severs a number of landowners’ holdings, to the point where some farms might no longer be viable, so I impress upon the Minister how important it is that Members of Parliament have a better quality map than the one provided, because I cannot understand the one I am looking at.
There are some other provisions that affect my constituency. The Minister said that between pages 68 and 70 a correction is required to the map, but as far as I can tell from the original document, five existing landowners will be affected at that site. If he could let me have the corrected version as soon as possible, I would be very grateful.
At page 104, the additional provisions describing the additional land for the Kenilworth Greenway, in order to improve the HS2 design, have come at the request of the petitioners. A design change was sought, but at that very location there are considerable difficulties with the visual intrusion of High Speed 2 on a flyover, 40 feet in the air, through the village of Balsall Common. HS2’s own promotional literature describes properties in one lane in particular, Truggist Lane, as blighted, yet I have constituents on that lane who have so far been unable to secure compensation for those properties. I am anxious to know how the change on page 104 might affect residents close by.
Page 105 describes additional land required for road infrastructure at the Park Lane/A452 interchange affecting one existing landowner, but I have a constituent with an unsettled compensation claim and am anxious to know how the proposed change will affect that claim, as I cannot divine that from the document.
Although I am glad that there is a period of consultation for my constituents, as well as additional time for consultation and for petitioning the Select Committee, some of the additional proposals blight further properties, perhaps inevitably.
May I finish by recording my thanks to the Select Committee, whose members have done a Herculean job? They will certainly be familiar with all the locations to which I have referred, and the way in which they have been willing to serve across the old Parliament and into the new shows one of the best attributes that Parliament has to offer our constituents, who need people to stand up and represent them, listen to them and, where possible, to mitigate the impact of the line.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
I very much welcome today’s debate and the motion, which are about both process and detail: the process of ensuring as far as possible that the HS2 project, required in the national interest to improve national infrastructure, can be developed as part of the national network in a way that maximises employment; and the detail of taking properly into account the concerns of individual people and individual localities. I am very pleased to hear the praise that has been given by hon. Members to the work of the special Select Committee in considering this detail, although it is of some concern that a number of hon. Members say that they have not had sufficient information in time and, in some instances, that there is a lack of clarity about certain maps and charts that have been made available.
Whenever there is a scheme in the national interest such as HS2, it is inevitable that there will be local problems. It is vital that those issues are considered properly and objectively and that changes are made to the route where possible—today, we are considering the details for the part of the route that is under consideration —and where that cannot be done that adequate compensation is given. It is critical that those issues are considered properly, not just in the special Select Committee but elsewhere.
I welcome the debate. The work of the special Select Committee is essential in progressing a scheme of national importance in a way that considers proper and legitimate concerns.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
When the debate began, a colleague whispered in my ear, “Oh, so you’ve been bought off then.” I can tell the House that I have not. I believe that the route is profoundly wrong for the reasons given in my amendment on Second Reading of the original Bill. For example, it does not even connect directly with the channel tunnel. However, I welcome the orders as the changes being made in this document mean that in Lichfield we will not have the blight or damage to the environment that we would otherwise have had. The original proposal was for a flyover, some 120 feet high, soaring over the plains of the Lichfield Trent Valley. It would have been visible from Lichfield Cathedral; it would probably have been visible from my house in the close of Lichfield Cathedral, although I am not declaring an interest. However, at last we have seen sense.
I have to give credit not only to the Committee, as I and others did earlier, but to Staffordshire County Council, Lichfield District Council and individuals who petitioned about this issue. I pay particular tribute to a local farmer whose son demonstrated to the Committee the height of the flyover by getting a drone with flags attached to it running to and fro. I was slightly worried that an Exocet missile or something would shoot it out of the sky, but it demonstrated clearly to the Committee and to some people working for HS2, who accompanied the Committee when it came to Lichfield, the damage that the high viaduct would have done.
There are further changes, too. Those who know me well know that I am a keen narrow boater, and we have some beautiful canals in the Lichfield area. Originally, the HS2 route would have crossed the canals at two particularly beautiful points. Changes have been made there, too. Although, as the Minister said, the cost has been reduced by the making of those changes, I will nevertheless say that he did it because he knew it was the right thing to do, and it means that these canals are now going to be protected.
In short, I welcome the motion and I welcome, for once, the Minister, who is a good friend of mine, presenting it to the House. If it comes to a vote, I, for one, will be voting for it.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
Unlike the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), I do not welcome the order.
I have to say thank you to the Minister, who has been very courteous in informing me of what is coming up. That is in quite a degree of contrast to the HS2 project team, which has not kept Slough Borough Council fully aware of what is being proposed, and it has come as a bit of a shock to the council. As a place, Slough is very supportive of big transport infrastructure projects. Heathrow airport’s third runway will come into the borough of Slough, if it happens, yet we are backing it because we realise that these kinds of projects are essential to national economic growth. However, Slough has not been kept fully informed of what has happened, and therefore, I echo the concerns of the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) about the consultation period on these areas happening in July and August. Although the Minister is right to say that not everybody goes on holiday in July and August, that is when most of my constituents with children do. Because Slough thought that HS2 was to do with other parts of the world and had nothing to do with Slough—none of the original proposals involved anything to do with Slough—it will not be geared up for petitioning, whereas communities on the route of HS2 were geared up by newspaper stories and so on. That is a real issue.
The other issue is that paragraph 1(b) of the proposal has nothing to do with HS2; it is about the Heathrow Express. It turns out that the Heathrow Express terminal is to be moved. I wonder why. I hate to speculate, but is it possibly because, owing to the land values at Old Oak Common, the land can be flogged off for expensive housing? Those land values are rather bigger than land values in Langley, where that will not be possible. It strikes me that a possible reason for our suddenly finding that we need to move the Heathrow Express terminal is that we can make more money out of what happens in Old Oak Common. I do not know that, and if the Minister would like to intervene and assure me that that is not true, that would be nice.
Mr Goodwill
I point out to the right hon. Lady that I talked about operational problems, and one of the problems with the North Pole East depot is that it would require train movements across the Great Western main line. Maintenance works on the Great Western towards Paddington would also mean that the Heathrow Express depot at North Pole East would not be able to operate.
Fiona Mactaggart
That is what the Minister is told, but at least that depot is somewhere on the Heathrow Express route. The proposed depot is not on that route; it is actually to the west of the Heathrow Express route. I point out that the Heathrow Express franchise expires in 2023, so this is not necessarily a long-term need. I am deeply concerned about the western link into Heathrow, which is critical, and I am grateful to the Department for the way it has proceeded on that. It is obvious to me that at some point the western rail link into Heathrow and the Heathrow Express will become a merged franchise. There is land at Reading where the depot could be situated at that point.
I am worried that this is a short-term solution that has been invented because someone faced a problem with the Heathrow Express. In the motion, we are being asked to solve a short-term problem, which I accept exists, in a way that is not long-term and strategic. The Department could say, “This franchise expires in 2023 and, until then, Heathrow has a monopoly on it, but if Heathrow wants its third runway”—we do not know what the Davies commission will say—“perhaps there should be a price. Perhaps the price should be giving up the franchise and looking at how we can integrate it more intelligently into the rest of the rail network.” That would be a strategic way of dealing with this matter and it would help us to accelerate western rail access into Heathrow.
In the Minister’s courteous letters to me today, he wrote:
“The relocation of the Heathrow Express depot is both an opportunity for Slough and important part of the Phase One project”.
I do not think that it is an opportunity for Slough, because the jobs that come with it are just ones that are being moved down the line from Old Oak Common, where they are at the moment, to Langley. I tell him that that does not mean more jobs for my constituents; it means that people will commute from where they currently live to Langley.
Mr Goodwill
Some of the land that is required for construction will be returned once the depot is complete, so that land will not be lost altogether in respect of job creation in the right hon. Lady’s area.
Fiona Mactaggart
Actually, most of the land that the depot will be on is housing land. I represent the most overcrowded borough in the country, outside London, in terms of housing. In fact, it is more overcrowded than most London boroughs. There is a real need for housing in Slough. I am told by the council that this land has been identified as being able to provide 200 to 300 homes for local people. It will not be available for those homes when it has been used.
The construction of the depot will have an impact on air quality in an area that is already affected by a big incinerator, Heathrow and the biggest motorway junction in Europe, which will affect my constituents. As the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) pointed out, these plans will frustrate other issues, such as HGV links and western rail access to Heathrow.
I know that there will be petitions from Slough, but I also know that there will not be as many petitions from Slough as there have been from other communities on the route, because it came as a big surprise to the people of Slough about a week ago that this was happening to them. They can only intervene over the next few weeks—a very short space of time—when some of them will be dealing with their children’s end-of-term plays and planning to go on holiday. I predict that my constituents will be panicked about this and that, although they welcome major transport infrastructure projects because they know that we need them to create prosperity for Britain, they will think that they have been badly treated in this process. I have to say, I believe that they are right.
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)
I will make a brief contribution on the plans, so far as they concern Iver. The right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) raised the consequences of the new depot for Slough. As my hon. Friend the Minister will be aware, if one looks at the plans, they show that the land take extends beyond the boundary of Slough and as far as Iver station.
My constituents in Iver obviously live some distance from the main HS2 route and have not previously been concerned with it, except in so far as the Heathrow link plan affected them before it was withdrawn. The scheme raises two distinct problems. First, it is difficult to understand what effect it will have on the western rail link into Heathrow. I would be interested as soon as possible to hear from the Secretary of State and from my hon. Friend the Minister as to how that impact will work in practice.
Secondly, I have in the past written to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to point out to him that Iver is experiencing a catastrophic problem with heavy goods vehicle movements. The number of transport depots in the immediate vicinity of the village, many of which have grown up out of existing planning uses that predate the arrival of planning control, mean that the village is slowly being strangled by the HGV movements. If one stands in Iver village high street, one will see a heavy goods vehicle coming through every 58 seconds on average. It is a narrow village shopping street and the planning development has taken place in complete disregard of those facts.
There is a possibility of relieving that by the construction of a relief road running into the back of one of those sites, but the road has to cross the path and the line of the proposed new depot. My constituents’ anxiety is that that long-sought road project will be rendered even more difficult to achieve because it is not factored in to the construction of the depot. The construction of the depot might provide the ideal moment for the construction of the road, but if that does not take place when the depot is constructed, it might be impossible thereafter for it to occur at all.
As I have said, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been aware of my concerns for some time. I was aware that the scheme was around in the background, but there has been no prior notice to me of any kind that it would finally be brought to fruition. I am concerned that the Committee may not be in the best position to evaluate those issues when it comes to consider them under the petitioning process. I want to take the opportunity today to flag up my serious concerns about the knock-on consequences of the project. I can reassure my hon. Friend the Minister that, if we could use the process to provide reassurance that we will have such a back route into the Ridgeway trading estate, I am sure many of my constituents might even see some positives from the proposal, although I am mindful from what the right hon. Member for Slough said about Slough’s housing requirements that there are serious knock-on consequences.
I hope my hon. Friend the Minister can take those concerns on board. I want to flag up at this stage and repeatedly that the proposal will be unacceptable if it leaves Iver even more isolated and prey to the HGV traffic it suffers from currently.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly on the motion, and grateful to the Minister for setting out the process, but I am afraid the measure raises some serious questions about the integrity of the process. It raises the question of whether High Speed 2 is listening to the petitioners, to the Minister or to the Bill Select Committee, which has begun considering petitioners’ concerns with interest.
The integrity of the process is fundamental. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), the shadow Minister, said, we do not expect some kind of celestial design from High Speed 2. There are bound to be problems and they will need correcting. That is why the Bill Committee, to which I again pay tribute, is so important, and why hon. Members are so grateful that it is doing such a magnificent job.
The motion contains a couple of provisions for the Saltley business park that are intimately connected with the proposed rolling stock maintenance depot, which takes out a considerable chunk of the north of my constituency. I do not want to detain the House with the details of the proposal because I have mentioned it on the Floor of the House a number of times. Suffice to say that that area of land is the size of 100 football pitches. It represents one third of the available industrial land in the whole city of Birmingham, and it is located at the junction of two of the constituencies that are among the four most unemployed constituencies in the whole United Kingdom. If we develop the site in its entirety, we could generate 7,000 jobs, which is my estimate, or 3,000 to 3,500 jobs, which is the Minister’s estimate. That is still a very considerable number that could knock off something like a third of the unemployment in the city of Birmingham.
This is a site of such economic significance that the High Speed Rail Bill Committee has considered it in considerable detail. I was incredibly grateful that although the Committee did not side completely with my argument, it recognised that the issue of unemployment in and around the rolling stock maintenance depot had to be considered. The provisions set out today on the Saltley business park do nothing to address the Committee’s concerns; in fact, they take out even more industrial land in the city of Birmingham. It could be that the site is proposed today for the relocation of business, but we simply do not know.
The Committee said:
“We impress on HS2 the need to adjust the scheme”
to reach agreement with the site owner, AXA, to maximise the number of jobs and to minimise the time for which land would be required. HS2 was directed by the Committee to work with the site owners to deliver that solution. That judgment was passed down in December. Although there have been detailed technical committee meetings and the site owners have now presented a detailed redesign of the site that would minimise land take, we have seen nothing of those discussions reflected in the provisions this afternoon.
Mr Goodwill
It is precisely on that point that I wish to intervene. As the Select Committee’s interim report recommended, we are working with the owners and Birmingham City Council on land take to see how far land can be returned for development as early as possible to secure that development that could result in jobs being created.
Liam Byrne
I am very grateful for the Minister’s clarification, but I urge him to go further in his winding-up remarks. It is of course important to me that land is minimised and jobs are maximised, but it will be of interest to all right hon. and hon. Members of this House that HS2 not only responds to the petitioners and the Committee but is seen to do so. Frankly, we have scant evidence of that in the provisions we have seen this afternoon.
I hope the Minister will take the opportunity to endorse once again the Committee’s recommendations on the rolling stock maintenance yard. I hope he will urge HS2 to do the deal and come to an agreement with the site owner, AXA. I personally do not want to occupy the site in order to ensure that HS2 honours a recommendation from a Select Committee of this House. I hope the Minister will spare us all that spectacle and use his very good offices to ensure that HS2 will buckle down and listen to a Select Committee of this House and its recommendations.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
I want to comment briefly on paragraph 1(c), which asks the Select Committee to consider providing Crossrail with sidings at Old Oak Common as a way of future-proofing a possible link between the Great Western main line and the west coast main line. Such a link would be a very important safeguarding measure for two principal reasons.
First, in the long term, when HS2 is constructed and capacity is freed on the west coast main line for classic services, I very much hope that we will explore the possibility of extending Crossrail up the west coast main line, even as far as Milton Keynes to serve my constituents. That would be a very good enhancement of commuter services in and out of London.
Secondly, and perhaps even more significantly, having the option of Crossrail going up the west coast main line during the HS2 construction phase, in particular while construction takes place at Euston when there will inevitably be some disruption to both inter-city and commuter services, could see the transfer of some commuter services from the west coast main line into London via the Great Western main line. That could provide relief during the construction phase and minimise disruption to my constituents and many others along the line. It is for that reason that I commend the motion, in particular paragraph 1(c). I hope the Select Committee will consider it in due course.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I support HS2 and the potential for jobs, homes and regeneration in the Old Oak Common area in my constituency. I even appreciate some of the difficulties that everyone, from the Minister down, has with this scheme—not least because Old Oak itself must be one of the most complex as well as the largest development sites in London, and possibly in the country. It involves not only HS2, but Crossrail, Overground, the Great Western main line and, of course, the commercial and residential developments. The Minister will anticipate a “but” coming here.
The first I knew of some of these proposals was when I picked up the additional provision document yesterday, certainly in respect of the relocation of the Heathrow Express depot to Langley. That does not feature. Perhaps it is thought that it is more significant for my right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), where it is going, rather than for me, from where it is being removed. Nevertheless, these are—as acknowledged by HS2 itself—significant changes. Indeed, I received an email today from HS2, saying:
“I understand there is a motion tabled for debate tomorrow on changes along the proposed HS2 route, including some substantial changes to the Old Oak Common area.”
It went on to mention
“three turnback sidings for the Crossrail service and passive provision for a West Coast Main Line Crossrail link”,
which I shall return to in a moment. It referred to the need to acquire additional land
“for the diversion of a sewer…for the construction of a temporary logistics tunnel…for…a construction compound…for…a conveyer route”,
and, as an afterthought, to the relocation of the depot. There is a public meeting on Saturday, which I cannot attend, advertised to my constituents, but no mention is made of some of these changes taking place.
It is right to say that some prior notice of the west coast main line-Crossrail link was given. HS2 was very clear to me that this was not an HS2 project, but a Crossrail project. Crossrail was very clear to me that it was not really part of the Crossrail scheme either. As the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) said, it is a temporary measure to deal with the construction phase. It must be the most expensive “diversion” ever in the history of the country. I am not quite sure exactly how many millions of pounds it is costing. It may be a nice adornment to the railway network, but nothing more than that. During the construction and when it is built, it is certainly going to cause very severe disruption.
As I say, I do not object to the proposals, and I am sympathetic to the difficulties of the logistics of the task, but I do find that HS2 acts in a vacuum and often in a way that does not appear to take account of anything else going on around it—and that includes other railways. I am pleased to have one of the country’s major interchanges in my constituency, but the way things are going at the moment, it is going to be a dog’s breakfast of an interchange. I missed the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Slough, but I suspect she asked why she was getting the depot rather than it being in Shepherd’s Bush. I suspect that the real answer—the Minister cites purely logistical reasons—is that it is better to put it somewhere where prices are probably a little cheaper than in Shepherd’s Bush.
Andy Slaughter
I will give way to the Minister in a moment. There will be room for more of “Boris’s mini-Manhattans”, which is what we will be graced with: these sky-high blocks of flats—all of which are empty, all of which are sold overseas and all of which are safe deposit boxes for dirty money from abroad—that will loom over Wormwood Scrubs for the foreseeable future.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I think the Minister needs to come in on this.
Mr Goodwill
I wish that that were the cheapest option. We considered a number of options including North Pole East, the Crossrail depot, Reading, Southall, Ealing and Langley. Langley was the best option, as all the others involved operational issues, but it was certainly not the cheapest .
Andy Slaughter
I realise that the Minister is reading from his brief, and that he cannot be expected to know every single detail of all the immaculate plans that are in the document. However, those who are in the middle of this—and a very large part of my constituency is being developed: it is the largest development site in London—are genuinely worried. I plead with the Minister to talk to his colleagues in the Government, and to appoint a tsar, a sultan or whatever the title of such a person might be, to oversee what is happening at Old Oak Common, because otherwise we shall end up with a terrible, terrible mess.
Mrs Gillan
Obviously the hon. Gentleman and I do not see entirely eye to eye on this project. However, he may agree with me that it is time for the Department for Transport to sit down, have a look at the administration of HS2 Ltd, and come up with a proper communication strategy that keeps all of us informed, whether we are pro or anti. We need accurate and detailed information to be provided on a timely basis.
Andy Slaughter
I agree with the right hon. Lady, who is assiduous in her pursuit of this issue. I think that, in time, HS2 Ltd may even thank her for that. There is nothing better than a well-informed critic to keep people on their toes. I am even sympathetic towards HS2 Ltd. I know that the Government are saying, “Make sure that you keep within budget and keep to time, because any further increase in the costs will not be sustainable.” However, HS2 must be clear about the fact that it is not just building a 21st-century railway, but engaging some of the major regeneration projects in the country. It needs to think about the potential for collateral damage, and I am not referring just to the obvious problems.
Members have rightly objected, on behalf of their constituents, to the fact that the development is despoiling countryside, or causing noise or other pollution. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) intervened on behalf of her constituents in Wells House Road and Midland Terrace, who are right up against it. I visited the area, which is in my old constituency, with other members of the Select Committee. My hon. Friend’s constituents will be surrounded on three sides by the development for 15 to 20 years, which is horrific, while on the fourth side the main road, Old Oak Common Lane, will be closed for a year or two. That does not bear thinking about, and I am afraid that it either has not been thought about, or has been thought about and then dismissed and put in the “too difficult” box.
The issue that I raised in a short 80-minute speech in Westminster Hall at the end of last year, when I spoke about the effect on my constituency—particularly the environmental effect, and notably the effect on Wormwood Scrubs, a unique and very large piece of open land—has still not been addressed. I do not believe that the meetings that we were told would take place with amenity groups, environmental groups, residents’ groups and, indeed, transport groups have indeed taken place. I do not believe that the voice of local residents is being listened to. Those residents may be speaking in an entirely parochial way—quite properly—about their property or land and their need for adequate compensation, which we in the urban areas are certainly not receiving. They may be speaking for the wider public good and the environment, or coming up with innovative and better transport schemes. In any event, I plead with the Minister to go back to HS2 and say that it must take a more responsible attitude. It must balance its duty to build the railway, which I support, with its duty to the constituencies through which is passes.
Mr Goodwill
With the leave of the House, Mr Deputy Speaker.
The first point that I should make is that the motion is about the process. It is about kicking the ball into play, and it is for those who are directly affected, and the Select Committee, to carry out the game. Having said that, I should add that many Members on both sides of the House have made very effective points on behalf of their constituents and the interests of their particular areas.
I want to make it clear that I will always be pleased to engage with colleagues around the House on these and future additional provisions. We are expecting to bring forward AP3, which will relate to Euston, before the end of the year. If Opposition Members have concerns, it might be easier to arrange visits to their constituencies through the pairing Whip, and I would be happy to do that if it is at all possible.
The consultation period was mentioned. A period of 42 days is set out in Standing Orders, and I believe that that is appropriate. Looking back over the whole scheme, we have had about two years’ worth of consultations on one aspect of HS2 or another, so it would be hard to say that we have consulted too little. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) raised some important points. I should point out that, of the 20.8 kilometres in her constituency in the Chilterns, only 3.3 kilometres will not be in a tunnel. I am sure that is largely due to her doughty campaigning.
Mrs Gillan
The Minister knows that it is impossible to over-flatter a fellow politician. Let me make it clear, however, that 45% of this railway will be in a fully bored tunnel in my constituency, and that 55% will be in a green tunnel or in cuttings, which will be a scar on the landscape and will damage the area of outstanding natural beauty. This is a PR exercise too far. We want a whole tunnel.
Mr Goodwill
My right hon. Friend raises a point that I am well used to hearing, and I know that the Select Committee is in no doubt about the strength of her feelings and those of her constituents on this matter. I would remind her that one of the major political parties stood in the election on a Stop HS2 platform and that, despite that, her majority was increased. I am sure she would argue that that was due to the strength of her campaigning, rather than to the scheme itself. Two of the four changes in the additional provision that relate to her constituency have been made at the request of landowners. That shows that we are reacting to people’s very real concerns.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) asked about certain concerns in her constituency, and I will certainly write to her with full details, but many of them will be in the environmental statement. For example, the Berkswell greenway change extends the greenway to Berkswell station, which will benefit existing users.
The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) asked why information on the petitioning period was not included in the press notice. The petitioning process depends on the motion being passed today, and we would therefore have pre-empted the will of the House if we had announced that information in a press notice. She also mentioned the maps and the information on land take. That information will all be provided in the environmental statement that will accommodate the deposit if the motion passes.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) mentioned western rail access, which is important to the future connectivity of our country. I can reassure him that the depot at Langley is compatible with the western rail access to the Heathrow scheme.
The hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) raised the very real concerns of her constituents about the compensation arrangements. I should like to point out to her that the residents of Wells House Road are eligible for the need-to-sell scheme. Indeed, properties in that road that are in safeguarding can issue blight notices to have their properties purchased.
As I have said, many of the points raised in the debate should be raised in petitions and through the process that is commencing today. I congratulate the Chairman of the Select Committee on Transport, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), on retaining that position unopposed. She and the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) talked about the quality of the process. The process is about the people involved in it, and that means not only the members of the Select Committee that is considering the Bill but those involved with HS2—I know that they have had a bit of stick today, but by and large they are doing their best to address these problems—and the many people up and down the line of route who are being affected and who have engaged with the process in such a commendable way.
Liam Byrne
Do I take it, therefore, that the Minister will use his good offices to ensure that HS2 will indeed honour the recommendations that the Committee hands down to it? If those commitments are not honoured, the integrity of the process will be called into serious question.
Mr Goodwill
Absolutely, and I think I have already given that assurance about land being released as soon as possible. If necessary, I will have a meeting with the right hon. Gentleman, with officials, so that we can get some assurances that, I hope, will satisfy him.
I commend the motion to the House. The hybrid Bill process is working for people.
Fiona Mactaggart
In response to the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), the Minister said that this scheme is fitting in with western rail access. As I understand it, however, the Hollow Hill Lane bridge was to have been raised in order to improve the problems with HGVs, which the right hon. and learned Gentleman discussed. As an alternative is being proposed, those issues will not be dealt with by this scheme unless it is changed. Can the Minister answer on that point?
Mr Goodwill
I would certainly be happy to meet those concerned to get my head around precisely how we could improve the scheme to address those concerns. It is not an issue I am absolutely on top of, and I apologise for that—
Mr Goodwill
But I am going to be put right by my right hon. and learned Friend.
Mr Grieve
I assure the Minister that if he has a discussion with his officials, he will see that I have had correspondence with them about this issue. It does provide a real opportunity but, as I have suggested on previous occasions, it is going to need a bit of a push from his Department if it is going to be brought to fruition. What I certainly cannot accept is that this scheme goes ahead and leads to it becoming impossible to implement a relief road, as that would be a catastrophic state of affairs for my constituents.
Mr Goodwill
I absolutely understand that this scheme should neither confound some of our other rail plans on western access, nor confound plans for highways improvement. I am therefore more than happy to meet my right hon. and learned Friend to get my head around these issues in particular.
The motion introduces changes to address issues that have been raised. It will put these proposals under the scrutiny of the Committee, and I am sure the House will be delighted to approve it.
Lilian Greenwood
Before the Minister finishes, will he clarify when he expects to introduce the additional provisions relating to Euston and when the Government expect to confirm the line of route for phase 2?
Mr Goodwill
We expect to bring forward provisions for Euston later this year. I am working actively with officials from HS2 to ensure that we are in a position to introduce a proposal that will address some of the problems, particularly the issues about continuing to use that station for the west coast main line at the same time as construction is taking place. I will certainly give the hon. Lady some more information on the other point she raises when appropriate.
I commend the motion to the House and I hope the House will approve it.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That it be a further Instruction to the Select Committee to which the High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill is committed–
(1) that the Select Committee have power to consider–
(a) amendments relating to the vertical and horizontal alignment of the proposed railway in the vicinity of the A38 and Trent and Mersey Canal in the parishes of Fradley and Streethay, King’s Bromley and Whittington in the County of Staffordshire;
(b) amendments conferring additional power to carry out works in the Borough of Slough and in the parish of Iver in the County of Buckinghamshire for the purpose of providing a new Heathrow Express depot in the Borough of Slough (to the north east of Langley railway station), in consequence of the displacement of the existing depot because of the exercise of powers conferred by the Bill;
(c) amendments conferring additional power to provide sidings for Crossrail services at Old Oak Common in the London Boroughs of Ealing and Hammersmith and Fulham that could be extended in the future to create a connection between the West Coast Main Line Railway and the Great Western Main Line;
(d) amendments to accommodate the requirements of landowners and occupiers in
i. the London Boroughs of Brent and Ealing;
ii. the parishes of Barton Hartshorn, Calvert Green, Chetwode, Great Missenden, Grendon Underwood, Little Missenden, Preston Bissett, The Lee and Twyford in the County of Buckinghamshire;
iii. the parishes of Godington and Mixbury in the County of Oxfordshire;
iv. the parishes of Aston-le-Walls, Boddington, Chipping Warden and Edgcote, Greatworth, Radstone, Thorpe Mandeville and Whitfield in the County of Northamptonshire;
v. the parishes of Burton Green, Coleshill, Curdworth, Kenilworth, Ladbroke, Lea Marston, Middleton, Offchurch, Southam, Stoneleigh, Stoneton, Wishaw and Moxhull and Wormleighton in the County of Warwickshire;
vi. the parishes of Armitage with Handsacre, Drayton Bassett, Hints with Canwell, King’s Bromley, Swinfen and Packington and Whittington in the County of Staffordshire;
vii. the parishes of Balsall, Berkswell, Chelmsley Wood and Hampton-in Arden in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull; and
viii. the City of Birmingham;
(e) amendments to accommodate changes to the design of the works authorised by the Bill in:
i. the London Boroughs of Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham and Hillingdon and the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea;
ii. the District of Three Rivers in the County of Hertfordshire;
iii. the parishes of Chetwode, Denham, Ellesborough, Great Missenden, Grendon Underwood, Little Missenden, Preston Bissett, Quainton, Steeple Claydon, Stoke Mandeville, Turweston, Twyford and Wendover in the County of Buckinghamshire;
iv. the parishes of Godington and Mixbury in the County of Oxfordshire;
v. the parishes of Aston-le-Walls, Boddington, Greatworth, Marston St Lawrence, Radstone and Thorpe Mandeville in the County of Northamptonshire;
vi. the parishes of Coleshill, Curdworth, Kingsbury, Lea Marston, Middleton, Offchurch, Radbourne and Stoneleigh in the County of Warwickshire;
vii. the parishes of Colwich, Drayton Bassett, Fradley and Streethay, Hints with Canwell, King’s Bromley, Swinfen and Packington and Weeford in the County of Staffordshire;
viii. the parishes of Berkswell and Bickenhill in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull;
ix. the City of Birmingham;
(f) amendments to the definition of “deposited statement” in clause 63(1) of the Bill to refer to supplementary environmental information provided in relation to matters which do not require an extension of the powers of the Bill to construct works or acquire land;
(g) amendments for purposes connected with any of the matters mentioned in subparagraphs (a) to (f);
(2) that any petition against amendments to the Bill which the Select Committee is empowered to make shall be referred to the Select Committee if–
(a) the petition is presented by being deposited in the Private Bill Office not later than the end of the period of four weeks beginning with the day on which the first newspaper notice of the amendments was published, and
(b) the petition is one in which the petitioners pray to be heard by themselves or through counsel or agents.
That these Orders be Standing Orders of the House.
Use of the Chamber (Youth Parliament)
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
I beg to move,
That this House welcomes the work of the United Kingdom Youth Parliament in providing young people with an opportunity to engage with the political process and accordingly resolves that the UK Youth Parliament should be allowed to meet once a year in the Chamber of this House for the duration of this Parliament.
The motion stands in my name, along with those of the Leader of the House, the shadow Leader of the House and the Scottish National party’s shadow Leader of the House.
The United Kingdom Youth Parliament has now met in this Chamber annually since 2009, giving younger people an opportunity to debate motions, which have recently been decided upon by a national poll under the name, Make Your Mark. The number of votes cast in the Make Your Mark ballot increased from 478,632 in 2013 to 876,488 in 2014. Last year, that led to debates on exam resits, the living wage, careers advice and the voting age, as well as a commemoration of world war one.
It is important that our young people learn a sense of respect and ownership of our democracy and its institutions, just as our democratic institutions need to respect them. Giving young people the chance to debate here in this Chamber is a great privilege, which I know they value. The motion would allow the UK Youth Parliament to meet annually for the length of this Parliament, and I commend it to the House.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
It is an absolute delight, Madam Deputy Speaker, to see you in the Chair. It is something that I support very warmly. I suppose that it is fitting that you are in the Chair for this debate, as this is a subject that you have always felt very strongly about, for which you have earned the thanks of many young people. I also appreciate how keen you were to get on to my speech, which is probably a first—it will probably be the last time as well.
It is customary for me to speak in these debates on the sittings of the Youth Parliament. It is an unexpected pleasure for us to have the opportunity to debate this motion; earlier today, it appeared unlikely.
It is important to set out the background to how we have ended up in this situation. As many hon. Members will know, I do not support this state of affairs. The use of our Parliament came about as a result of a promise made by the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to some young people at an event. He made an off-the-cuff promise that he would allow them to use the House of Commons Chamber for their annual sitting. It was a promise that he was in no position to make, as it was not his Chamber to give up. It was typical of him. He would say anything and do anything in order to curry favour with a few people so that he could get a few extra grubby votes.
Gordon Brown made a promise that he could not deliver on, could not keep and was not his to make. Basically, he asked Parliament to dig him out of a hole that he had created for himself. As his party had a majority, it decided to pass what was called the “Spare Gordon Brown any embarrassment” motion, in order to allow the Youth Parliament to sit for one year only in this Chamber. It was appreciated that it was quite extraordinary and not really in order.
Therefore, for one year only, we had the “Let’s dig Gordon Brown out of a hole” motion to allow the Youth Parliament to sit here. The House divided on the issue and the motion went through, because of the Labour majority at the time. But it was done on the clear understanding that it would be a one-off occasion. The reason why some of us are against this annual routine is that it brings inconsistency to our proceedings.
I must say at the outset that I am a huge supporter of the Youth Parliament and the people who contribute to the debates. In fact, I have attended Youth Council debates in Bradford Council chamber. To be perfectly frank, the quality of the debate has often been higher than that which normally takes place there. I have attended the Youth Parliament debates in this Chamber as well, and know that no one could argue about the quality of the debate and the passion with which people spoke; no one has a problem with that. This is about not whether Members are in favour of, or against, the Youth Parliament, but whether it is appropriate for this Chamber to be used by other groups.
As the former Prime Minister made a promise that he should not have done, he was dug out of a hole. What I do not understand is why it is only the Youth Parliament that can sit on these Benches like Members of Parliament. My fear is: if it is fine for the Youth Parliament to sit and use these Benches, why not other groups that want to meet and congregate and have a debate here? The Muslim Council of Britain may want to have a debate in the House of Commons Chamber. We have always had a rule that these Benches are only able to be used by MPs and that it is a great privilege to be here. When my constituents come and visit the House of Commons, there is a big sign up that specifically tells them that they are not allowed to sit on these Benches. They are told quite politely by the staff here that these Benches are for MPs only and that they are not allowed to sit on them. If Members of the Youth Parliament can sit on them, why can my constituents not sit on them?
What is the difference? If the Muslim Council of Britain wants to use this Parliament, why can we say no to the Muslim Council of Britain but not to the Youth Parliament? On what basis is it right for one organisation to use it but not another? If one of the parish councils in my constituency decides that this Chamber would be a rather nice setting for its annual general meeting, why should it not be allowed to meet here, given that the Youth Parliament is? There is absolutely no logic or consistency to the current arrangement. Either we let other people use these Benches or we do not. My preference is that we do not, but I do not see why we should have one rule for everybody else and a separate rule for the Youth Parliament.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I am sorry that the debate started so quickly that I missed the beginning of my hon. Friend’s speech, but I probably heard it last year, the previous year and 10 years ago, because it is the same speech every time. The only thing that is different about all the groups that he has mentioned is that all of them are 18 and plus, and have the opportunity to vote. Those Members of the UK Youth Parliament who come here do not have the opportunity to vote or stand in elections. That is what makes them different, amongst many other things.
Philip Davies
If my hon. Friend is chastising me for being consistent, that is a chastisement I will take. I know it is a novel concept in politics to actually stick to your guns about something and believe in something and not change your opinion in response to the prevailing political wind. My hon. Friend may think it is a great thing to change one’s mind every five minutes, depending on the prevailing political mood. I rather think that being consistent is a virtue in politics, even if he disagrees.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Should we not do everything we can to encourage more younger people to be interested in this place, and to prevent them from thinking of it as something distant that they should not be involved in?
Philip Davies
I am grateful for the interventions of the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend. We were told originally that the Youth Parliament was different because we needed to get more young people interested in politics. By definition, the Members of the Youth Parliament are already interested in politics and political issues and are taking the lead on these things. If we want to find a group of young people that are not already involved in the political process and inspire them to get involved, we should invite everybody other than the Youth Parliament to come and sit on these Benches, because presumably they are the ones we need to reach. Those in the Youth Parliament seem to be the last people we should invite to sit on these Benches if our reason for doing so is to get more people involved and interested in politics. So I am afraid the hon. Gentleman’s arguments disintegrate straightaway.
What we have here is the usual rather sad charade of middle-aged Members of Parliament trying to curry favour with the youth and with the young vote. They ask themselves, “How can we give youthful voters the impression that we are trendy?” Basically, one way is to advocate motherhood and apple-pie tripe like this. They think that by doing these sorts of things they will prove that they are in touch with the youth and are really trendy, and that young voters will all go out and vote for them. I do not think young people are as stupid as hon. Members seem to think they are—that just because they are allowed to sit here once a year, they will all go flooding in and vote for those Members when the election comes. Hope is triumphing over reality, and it does not make them look trendy at all.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one way to call out those people who are trying to court favour is to give the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds? Then they can make their own decision.
Philip Davies
Madam Deputy Speaker, I do not want to test your patience by going off on a tangent about the merits of votes for 16 and 17-year-olds. I do not agree with giving them the vote; I make that clear. I do not want to dodge the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I may be right in saying that Madam Deputy Speaker probably would not tolerate a lengthy debate on that. I think we are really debating whether the Youth Parliament should sit in the Chamber, so I do not want to incur Madam Deputy Speaker’s wrath so early in her career as Madam Deputy Speaker. There will be plenty of other occasions when that happens.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way to allow me to curry favour with youth, which I am always aiming to do. I just wonder whether he might be a convert to votes for 16 and 17-year-olds, because on the argument we heard earlier, that would mean that they did not need to come here to have the Youth Parliament.
Philip Davies
As ever, my hon. Friend makes a telling point. However, the problem with his point is that that will indicate some kind of logic on the part of those people who so strongly advocate that the Youth Parliament should sit in this Chamber. He has probably missed out on its implication—that once 16 and 17-year-olds had the vote, and therefore that group of people did not need to sit in this Chamber for the Youth Parliament, a group of 14 and 15-year-olds would be exclusively invited to sit here because they did not have the vote, and they could sit here until enough weight built up behind their campaign to grant 14 and 15-year-olds the vote, and so on.
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for his earlier intervention. His argument is that members of the Youth Parliament should be able to sit here because they cannot vote. My children are 12 and 10, so they cannot vote either. I will happily go along to my children’s school and suggest, following my hon. Friend’s logic, that they should be able to have their annual debating competition here. They are not allowed to vote and we want to encourage them to get involved in politics, so presumably my hon. Friend would be all in favour of that.
Tim Loughton
Of course, my hon. Friend is talking rubbish. The main thrust of my argument was that those young people are not entitled to stand for election, in contrast to the members of all the other bodies he trotted out in support of his argument.
Philip Davies
I am surprised that my hon. Friend thinks that regurgitating his argument is absolute rubbish. I was trying to make that point myself, in a spirit of compromise and consensus. He said in his latest intervention that Members of the Youth Parliament should be able to sit here because they cannot stand for election. My 12 and 10-year-old sons cannot stand for election, so presumably, following his logic, and given that we are trying to encourage more young people to get involved in politics, their school should be able to hold its annual debating competition here. Presumably that meets his criteria.
Drew Hendry
The hon. Gentleman is incredibly generous to let me intervene twice. Does he agree that if the public pay for a facility, they should get maximum access to it, and that we should be allowing people to use the public buildings they have paid for?
Philip Davies
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I may not agree with him, but I admire his consistency. If I follow his argument correctly, he is suggesting that any group should be able to use the Chamber if they think that would be worthwhile—for example, a parish council holding its annual meeting. He argues that they paid for it, so they should be able to use it. I do not agree with him, but I admire his consistency. What I cannot understand is the argument that nobody should be able to use the Chamber because it is absolutely sacrosanct and only Members of Parliament who have been elected should have the right to sit on these Benches—apart from members of the Youth Parliament. There is absolutely no logic to it. At least the hon. Gentleman’s position is logical.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I was intrigued by the idea that people should be able to come here and debate if they are not allowed to stand for Parliament. Were that argument to be taken further, I wonder whether we would allow criminals to come here, or Members of the House of Lords.
Philip Davies
I do not want to go into the history of the expenses scandal, but many people would argue that criminals did sit on these Benches for a while, so I am not sure that my hon. Friend should push that particular line too hard, because that has already happened. My hon. Friend’s point is that we could have an annual prisoners’ outing to Parliament so that they could sample democracy and be inspired to engage in the political process once they leave prison. It is the same argument. I suspect that the problem with that argument, however, is that whereas those Members who are such strong supporters of the Youth Parliament sitting here think that they can get a few grubby votes by supporting it, they would probably think, even though the logic is the same, that allowing prisoners to sit here would probably not go down so well with their constituents. This is not about high principle at all; it is about people who are prepared to say anything and do anything to get a few cheap votes back in their constituencies at the next election. They think that the best way of doing that is to say, “I am all for the youth. I think that young people should be able to sit in the House of Commons Chamber.”
But why just the Youth Parliament? That is what I want to know. What about all the other young people who would love to use these Benches to sample the atmosphere and further their political ambitions? Why are they excluded? Why are we being so exclusive? What is wrong with all the other young people out there whom we want to inspire?
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
Will the hon. Gentleman join me in an approach to the Speaker to discuss broader access to this Chamber for other groups to iron out the anomaly he is talking about?
Philip Davies
I want to iron out the anomaly but in a rather different way from the hon. Gentleman, I fear. His way of dealing with the anomaly is to allow all and sundry to use the Chamber; my way is to stop the one group of people who are currently allowed to use it.
We had the Youth Parliament taking part in debates in Parliament before they were allowed to use this Chamber. I think they used Westminster Hall on one occasion. They may even have used the House of Lords, and perhaps Committee Room 14. I am very supportive of that; I have no problem with it whatsoever. One of the arguments made for them moving out of the House of Lords and Westminster Hall was, “Well, they’ve already been there. They’re bored now—they want to go somewhere else.” In that case, why do they need to come and sit in here year in, year out? If they were so bored after just one sitting in the House of Lords, and they want to be on this sort of merry-go-round, they can find somewhere else to go. They must surely be bored with sitting in here by now. I am certainly bored with them sitting in here, and I am sure that they must be too, so let us relieve them of their boredom and let them find somewhere else.
Given that we are having to decide whether we stay here in future years, we will probably end up in the ridiculous position of having the UK Youth Parliament still sitting in here while we have been kicked out. That is probably how politically correct we have got these days. No one will be prepared to tell them that they cannot sit in here any more. We will all be told that we have to move, but they will still be here once a year, every single year, using these facilities. Perhaps they could do us all a favour and go away to try to find somewhere else that we might be able to use ourselves when we might have to be removed. They could do a public service by going out over the next four or five years and looking at different locations to see how they work for these grand debates. That would be much more use than having them sit here.
I do not intend to call a Division; I would not want to test the patience of my hon. Friends in that way. However, we should not just be nodding this through and saying it is absolutely fine for one group of people to be allowed to use these Benches every year without any thought. Let us have a proper rationale. My constituents are not allowed to sit on these Benches when they come to visit Parliament. I have not yet heard anybody argue that they should be; everyone is quite happy for that to continue. Why is this narrow group of people be treated—
Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)
It has been fascinating listening to these speeches, but a convoluted argument is being made. Why can we not do one nice thing for the youth? They are very serious about coming here. It is a terrific honour to sit on these Benches, and it really shows that they are interested and encourages them from then on. We should make it a one-off. Let us not bother with any of the arguments and just let it happen.
Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman perfectly sums up the argument—let us just curry favour with a few young people. But why just this group of people? There is no logic to it whatsoever. Either one is allowed to sit on these Benches or one is not. He must accept that there is no logic to his position; it is just a load of motherhood and apple pie guff.
I shall draw my remarks to a close because I do not wish to test the patience of my colleagues any further, but it is important to put on the record the fact that not everybody is happy with this. I am sure it will be agreed, and I genuinely hope that the people who come to speak on that day enjoy themselves and feel inspired to come to Parliament, but I do not accept that the only way a young person—
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. I thought I should assure him that he is not testing the patience of the House; the House is thoroughly enjoying his speech. He may not know that while he has been speaking the only people he has been inconveniencing are the Executive, because Back Benchers and Parliamentary Private Secretaries are now on a one-line Whip.
Philip Davies
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for telling me about the whipping advice. I shall seek him out more often. It may well pay dividends for everybody to know that I know the whipping arrangements.
I do not think it is right to say that the only way we can inspire people to get involved in politics is to allow them to sit in here and have a debate. When I was first elected to Parliament in 2005, it was an absolute honour and privilege—[Interruption.] It absolutely still is a privilege, but to be able to sit on these Benches for the first time was an absolute privilege and an honour, and I thought it was very special.
Philip Davies
I would like to finish, but I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Graham Jones
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could finish with this thought: did he canvass the young people of Shipley and ask them for their views before he came here to represent them in this debate?
Philip Davies
I know that the hon. Gentleman’s part of the world does not bother with elections, but Shipley, in common with most other places, had an election a few weeks ago. It obviously bypassed the hon. Gentleman, who clearly does not have to worry about trifling matters like elections. What was put to the test in our election was whether I or somebody else should represent the people of Shipley in this House. I can report—I do not think I would be here otherwise—that 50% of the people of the Shipley constituency voted for me, and I am therefore exercising my democratic right to represent them.
Philip Davies
Now that the hon. Gentleman has learned what elections are all about, I will give way to him again.
Graham Jones
My question was whether the hon. Gentleman had asked the young people in his constituency. The voting age is 18 and I would like it to be 16, but the hon. Gentleman voted against that.
Philip Davies
The young people of Shipley have different views on different issues. Has the hon. Gentleman canvassed the opinion of every 16-year-old in his constituency? I suspect not, because how would he identify every 16-year-old in his constituency in order to be able to canvass them? In fact, I suspect I probably canvass more people in Shipley than he has in his constituency over the years.
Graham Jones
For the record, I believe that my constituency is one of the most canvassed in the country.
Philip Davies
In which case, it is a shame the hon. Gentleman did not realise there was an election on which to canvass a few weeks ago. I am here to represent my constituents in Parliament. If they want someone else to represent them, they know exactly what they need to do at an election and I will always respect their decision.
I thought it was a great privilege to sit here for the first time after I was elected and I do not want young people to feel blasé about the fact that they have already been here and say, “I don’t need to stand for Parliament, because I’ve already sat there—been there, seen it, done it.” It should be something that people who want to get involved in politics aspire to do: they should aspire to come to sit on these Benches and feel as proud as I did when I was first elected in 2005. I fear that this is gesture politics of the worst kind. It is motherhood and apple pie guff. I am opposed to it and I will always remain opposed to having an exemption for one single group.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is completely right to say that the quality of Youth Parliament debates in this Chamber continues to be exemplary. The hon. Member for South Antrim (Danny Kinahan) was also right to mention the inspiration given to the young people of the Youth Parliament by allowing them to come into this Chamber and debate.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I want to commend the member of the Youth Parliament for my constituency, Aaron Addidle, who attends Regent House school and has all the qualities of a potential MP or Member of the Legislative Assembly. He shows that today’s youth are interested. Sometimes people deride them, but today’s youth in my constituency have great qualities.
Nic Dakin
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to commend that young person, and there are many similar young people up and down the land. School councils meet daily, weekly and monthly for debates and conversations. Indeed, I recently met the school councils of Lincoln Gardens and St Augustine Webster primary schools in my constituency. They are typical examples of what is going on.
The Deputy Leader of the House made a good point when she drew attention to the way in which issues have been raised for debate in the Youth Parliament. There have been regional meetings of young people across the country to discuss a variety of issues, and those issues have eventually been brought here. It is right and proper that the debates happen here as the pinnacle of all those activities, and that is why I am happy to support the motion.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I did not think that we would be debating the motion this evening, so my apologies again for being late, Madam Deputy Speaker.
There is a sense of déjà vu all over again, because we have debated motions such as this several times in my 18 years in the House, and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has been entirely consistent in speaking against the motion and trotting out the same arguments every single time. I respect his consistency, but I absolutely take issue with the basis on which he has trotted out his view yet again. Indeed, I think it is patronising to young people. To hear comments such as he made may amuse us—it is good knockabout stuff—but there is a serious point. The young people who have made the commitment to put themselves in front of their peers and stand for election, just as he and I did a few weeks ago, have made a sacrifice, often at a very young age, and expect to be taken seriously. When they hear comments like his in this place, it can only serve to undermine their confidence. That is a great shame.
I speak as an absolutely unswerving supporter of the UK Youth Parliament. I was the Children’s Minister responsible for the UKYP, and the Government rescued it when there was a financial problem with it some years ago. It was taken on by the British Youth Council, under whose tutelage it has flourished ever since. I have sat on these Benches along with 400 members of the UKYP in their November sittings, and you have addressed those sittings yourself, Madam Deputy Speaker. It has always been a huge privilege, and we take great pride in what those young people do. We are cutting off our nose to spite our face, though, because when we come back on the Monday, Mr Speaker will remind us without fail how well behaved, well turned out, succinct and concise those young people were on the Friday, and how well they made their arguments. He inevitably says what a shame it is that the Members of Parliament assembled on the Monday cannot act and behave as well as them. They set quite an example.
The UKYP is not some random cluster of young, enthusiastic people who have some interest in politics. It was set up by one of our colleagues, Andrew Rowe, the former Member for Mid Kent, back in about 2000 or 2001. Some years ago, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said, we granted it the use of this Chamber, which was recognition of just how important a body it had become.
One of the key things that I wanted to push in my time as Minister responsible for children and young people, and which I continue to push, was the expansion of youth engagement in this country’s political process. Whether or not we believe in votes at 16 or 17, we have a looming crisis, because the number of 18 to 24-year-olds who vote in elections is derisory. In 2010, something like 43% or 44% voted, and early indications suggest that the figure fell in the general election that we have just been through. We have a crisis of engagement among young people who are already entitled to vote, so we should support anything that we can do to encourage bodies such as the UKYP, which can act as a good example of how young people can be engaged in politics and be taken seriously by people in positions of power.
I would like the UKYP to have more powers in this place. You and I have talked, Madam Deputy Speaker, about the Youth Select Committee—I am proud to be one of those who set it up some years ago, and I was the first Minister to appear in front of it. It was the biggest grilling I have ever had in front of a Select Committee. I have appeared as a Minister in front of many Select Committees. None was better prepared, and not prepared to take rubbish for an answer and to be palmed off, than the Youth Select Committee, whose members really did their homework and produced an excellent report—in that case on transport for young people and, subsequently, on education for life and other subjects.
The big issue with those young people—to take issue with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley—is that they are not random groups of young people; they have been elected. The turnout to elect UKYP members is rather impressive; in many parts of the country it is better than for Members of Parliament. Hundreds of thousands of young people have voted for members of the UK Youth Parliament and, locally, for youth councils, youth cabinets and, in some cases, the youth mayors that we have in different parts of the country.
Jim Shannon
Was the hon. Gentleman encouraged in his constituency, as I was in mine, by the young people who put their names forward for election and who were elected? The interest was phenomenal, and some of it spilled over into the elections to Westminster this year, when people voting for the first time introduced themselves to candidates. I am encouraged by that in my constituency. Is he encouraged by it in his?
Tim Loughton
I am hugely encouraged. It is a big ask, at the age of 13, 14 or 15, for someone to put their name forward, to stand up on a public stage in front of other young people and to strut their stuff—to put forward their manifesto and take questions. We take it for granted—we do it for a living; many of us have done it since we were anoraks in our teens—but doing it for the first time is a big ask. Coming to this place is hugely daunting. I have spoken to many young people, before they have come here and after they have spoken. What a huge privilege it is. They are not going to keep coming back and doing it every year; they get the opportunity only once to sit in this place. They will not have an opportunity again until they are over 18 and may then put themselves forward for public office, which they cannot do when they are under 18.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that one thing we could do is ensure that we, here in this Chamber, have a debate about the issues that those young people have discussed? That would give a certain resilience to what they have been doing.
Tim Loughton
That is exactly the point I was coming to. Something that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I have discussed—alas, you are not now in a position to advocate it so much, certainly from the Benches—is the report that the Youth Select Committee produces with the aid of resources in the House and the advice of hon. Members and House staff. The report receives a formal response from the Department responsible for that policy issue, and it should be automatically debated in this House. We should show that we take it seriously. Those people would take something like that much more seriously, and much better, than the patronising comments that a few dinosaurs—a very few—in this place still trot out every few years in this debate.
I should like to see the role of the UKYP in this House extended. It is always a huge sadness and very frustrating—despite all the time and effort that goes into the meeting every year, as well as the summer sitting which I have been to for many years, where some very grown-up, intelligent debate takes place—to see how little coverage it gets in the media. Today’s proceedings will probably be reported in the press tomorrow. I am pretty sure that some of my hon. Friend’s bons mots will make it into some of the Commons sketches tomorrow, but very rarely do we read anything about the deliberations of the United Kingdom Youth Parliament, even when they come to this Chamber, in the mother of Parliaments, to discuss their issues for the year and when they produce their Select Committee reports. That is a huge sadness, and we should do anything we can do to promote greater awareness among the public at large of the UKYP’s existence, making other young people more confident that it is something they should get involved in if they want to influence things in their community and nationally, and that Members of this Parliament are just as much there for everybody under 18 as they are for everybody over 18 who happens to be able to vote in their constituencies.
I have an electorate of 74,500 in East Worthing and Shoreham, but I always talk about having a constituency of 91,000 because I am there for everybody under the age of 18, whether they are interested in politics or not.
I am absolutely in favour of the motion. I always have been and I have always spoken on this subject.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
My hon. Friend has denigrated some of the arguments put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), but one of the points that he has not covered is whether there are any other groups he feels would be as well behaved as the Youth Parliament that should also sit in this honourable Chamber?
Tim Loughton
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. There was a lot of denigration going on from my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, as well, although in good odour. The UKYP is unique. One reason is that it is a body of young people who are not yet able to stand for public office, which would entitle them to sit in this place as we do. I can also think of no other national body based on election with an electorate similar to that which elects us, but based on age. They represent constituencies, albeit rather wider constituencies —in west Sussex, we have four constituencies electing four Members of the Youth Parliament, and this Friday I will meet my local MYP, Stephen Gearing. We need to do something to inspire young people to get engaged in the political process and to feel that this place is not something out of their reach that they can never influence. They should not feel that MPs are not there for them and are in some other world; they are just as entitled to have access to us, to have us engage with them and to be taken seriously by us.
I feel that we should extend the remit to allow the Youth Parliament to sit in this House once more. Over the past few years its Members have proved wrong all the scare stories that they would be hanging from the chandeliers or leaving chewing gum under the seats, and they treat this place with rather greater respect than some hon. Members who sit here day after day. They have earned the right to continue to sit in this House once a year and, more than that, I feel that they have earned the right to be taken rather more seriously, so their proceedings should become a matter for automatic debate by this House in future years.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
I think that some age solidarity is needed when we talk about young people, and I shall come to that in a moment.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), not because I agree with a single word he said but because of his determination to put his point of view however much he is in the minority. One lesson he teaches us, which we should not forget, is that if someone has a consistent point of view—even though it might be totally wrong—they should put it in the House of Commons. In some respects, I consider the hon. Gentleman’s politics as nearing those of the 19th century and I can well imagine him opposing every reform that came before the House. If he had been a Member 100 years ago, no one would have been more steadfast in opposing votes for women, and I am sure that in the post-1945 era he would have voted against all the social reforms that we now accept. He spoke about middle-aged people and I must confess, though it might not appear so to hon. Members, that I am beyond middle age. My age group could certainly not be considered middle aged, although I was very pleased to be in this place when I was.
The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and my hon. Friends have mentioned how well behaved the Members of the Youth Parliament are. I am not so concerned about good behaviour. They were hardly going to throw apples at each other and all the rest, but I happened to watch the parliamentary programme about their proceedings, which I knew was going to be on—I am not such an obsessive about being a parliamentarian that I want to watch parliamentary programmes over the weekend—and I was so impressed by the level of debate and the exchanges that took place that I am sure I watched it for one and a half hours or more. The hon. Gentleman and others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), have made the point that it should be a matter of the utmost concern to us, as people involved in politics who want to see our democracy defended at all costs, that the number of people who vote in the 18-to-24 age category is small compared with other age groups. We must encourage such people to vote.
I accept, of course, that having a Youth Parliament as such, and debating, will not necessarily increase voting. I have my own views on how voting should be increased, and I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill in the closing stages of the last Parliament for a voting system more or less modelled on Australia, with an obligation to vote.
On Members of the Youth Parliament coming here, I say to the hon. Member for Shipley that this is not a sacred place. When we are sitting here, we have our privileges, such as the right to debate and to ensure that no one interferes with our debates. That is when we are in session, but when we are not sitting, there is no reason on earth why this place should not be used by the Youth Parliament and perhaps other groups as well. I do not understand his view that in our absence, nothing should occur here and there should be no debates by other groups and the rest of it. I do not accept that view for one moment.
When the matter first came before the House a few years ago, a number of Conservative Members opposed it—certainly no Labour or Liberal Democrat Members did. It is interesting that today, only the hon. Gentleman is opposing it. I have already praised him for putting forward his point of view, however much he appears to be in a minority of one. The fact that what was controversial a few years ago no longer is—it is more or less accepted—is an indication that people now recognise that the Youth Parliament has a role to play in this House.
Incidentally, when I watched that parliamentary programme, one other thing impressed me: the Speaker of the House of Commons was in the Chair. It was not a Deputy Speaker—that is no reflection on any of the Deputy Speakers in the last Parliament, let alone in this Parliament—and it was impressive that the Speaker of the House of Commons chaired the whole sitting. Those who participated in the Youth Parliament also respected the fact that the Speaker took the matter seriously enough to be in the Chair all the time that the proceedings were taking place.
I hope that the motion will be carried. I hope that not only this year, but in future years, the Youth Parliament will sit where we sit. It may well be that after 2020 we will be in a different place for a few years. Wherever that place may be, it will be the House of Commons, and the Youth Parliament is most welcome.
My age is such that I, perhaps more than other Members, look around the Chamber and see Members of ages that are nowhere near my own. As someone who has reached their 80s, I want to make it absolutely clear that, as my colleagues have said, younger people should have the vote. That the people involved in the Youth Parliament are so interested to come here and to participate in political debate—hopefully some of them will become Members of Parliament and, even more hopefully, Labour Members of Parliament—is an encouragement to me.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Gentleman. He is but a boy in this House, and it would be unthinkable for this Parliament to be without his presence in his traditional place.
It is obviously a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). I commend him for his work as children’s Minister and for his work with the Youth Parliament. He has been a massive supporter of the UKYP and, like him, I hope to continue to see many more such meetings in the House of Commons.
It is also the first time I have been able to address the House with you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, so this is my opportunity to pay congratulations to you on your rightful assent. I served under you when you were the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, so it is a pleasure to serve under you as Madam Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons.
This debate would not happen in Scotland, because we are going to give the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds. I pay tribute to my colleagues in the Scottish Parliament, who last week passed legislation to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in Scottish parliamentary elections. It is such a shame that probably in the same year as those young people go and vote in a Scottish parliamentary election, this House will deny them the opportunity to vote in the EU referendum.
Karl MᶜCartney
Is the hon. Gentleman saying that if 16 and 17-year-olds were given the vote, the Youth Parliament should not meet in this place?
Pete Wishart
If 16 and 17-year-olds were given the vote, it would not make sense for 16 and 17-year-olds to meet here as a sub-Parliament.
I wish that the hon. Gentleman would take a cursory glance at the galvanising effect of involving young people in the democratic process. All of us on the SNP Benches are recipients of the engagement that we have seen in Scotland. Like all my hon. Friends, I visited most of my local schools during the referendum campaign. People would not believe the outlook that those young people had. Being questioned by 16-year-olds about “sterlingisation” and Barnett consequentials is something that I will never forget. That was a feature of the involvement of young people in the referendum campaign.
We felt that it was important to continue that involvement for every election to come. Where we have jurisdictional responsibility, 16 and 17-year-olds will continue to have the vote. It is just such a shame that they will be deprived of the opportunity to participate in the EU referendum and in elections to this House, when they should have that opportunity.
I am a signatory to the motion. I think that I speak on behalf of all my colleagues in saying that we really enjoy the fact that the young people of the UK can come to this Parliament and participate in debate. Like the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, I observed their proceedings in this House and saw their mature response, the effective and real debate that they had on a variety of issues, the way that they conducted themselves, and their sheer joy and pleasure at being in this House with Mr Speaker in the Chair, directing the debate. It is something that I am sure none of those young people will forget. Now that they have had that taste of democratic, electoral politics, I am sure that they will play a full part in the democratic process.
Mr Winnick
I am sure that Hansard will correct the hon. Gentleman, but my constituency is Walsall North.
Pete Wishart
I am so grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting me right. How could I possibly get his constituency wrong? Of course he is the hon. Member for Walsall North, and a distinguished Member at that.
I am very fond of the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), as he knows. I hope that he comes to Perth racecourse this year, where he and I can have a little flutter on the gee-gees at Scone Palace. However, I have heard him make the same speech again and again. When he started making it, he was dinosaur junior. Now, he is dinosaur senior, such is his elevated position among right-wing Conservative Members of Parliament. He is almost the sole and exclusive representative of one of the most dwindling clubs of Conservative Members of Parliament. It is heartening to see him in a minority of one in addressing the House on this issue because he is totally wrong.
This place should be opened up to young people. This is a fantastic opportunity for them to come to the House of Commons and participate in its debates and proceedings. I hope that, in years to come, we will continue to open our doors to the young people of the United Kingdom.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is the first contribution that I have made with you in the Chair and it is good to see you there.
I am not somebody who talks in this place for the sake of talking, but I feel motivated to participate in this debate because it is on an important issue that goes to the heart of our democracy and its future. I hope that I do not cause offence to anyone but, having looked around the Chamber, I think that I might be the youngest Member here. It is a sad state of affairs when the youngest Member in the Chamber is someone with quite as much grey hair as I have and someone who has very recently celebrated their 40th birthday.
I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), and the hon. Members for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), for their excellent contributions. I agree with all they said.
I put on record my full support for the UK Youth Parliament using the Chamber. I find it utterly remarkable that we are having this debate at all. The fact that we repeat this debate almost yearly will seem anathema to many of my constituents. It is a no-brainer that the UK Youth Parliament can use the Chamber. It has my full support in doing so.
It is important that hon. Members remember just how remote we are to many people. I hope I will not cause offence, but when people look around the Chamber today, they could be forgiven for thinking that it is quite male and pale, and some people would say it is quite stale. The same could not be said when people watch debates of the UK Youth Parliament and the people who sit on these Benches. We have had some excellent Members of the Youth Parliament from Lewisham. The current Member, Saffron Worrell, was out campaigning during the general election. They bring great energy to this place. Long may it continue.
It is a crying shame that, when I have work experience students visit the House of Commons and sit in the Public Gallery, often, one of the first things they say to me is, “Do you have to be posh to be an MP?” Lots of people watch the debates in this Chamber and think that it is an episode of “Downton Abbey”. We have to change that. Making the Chamber accessible to young people is one way we can do so.
I do not want to detain the House. I just wanted to put on record my strong support for the UK Youth Parliament using the Chamber.
Dr Thérèse Coffey
It is a pleasure to reply to the debate. I thank my hon. Friends the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for their speeches. I also thank for their contributions the hon. Members for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), the youngest person in the Chamber, although, as we know, not the youngest Member of Parliament elected in 2015.
All I can say to the Scottish National party Members is that, to some extent, they have been treated to a bit of a taster, if not a short masterclass, of Friday sittings. Five years ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley spoke for 77 minutes, but today he spoke for only 24 minutes. In that regard, this has been a shorter debate. Nevertheless, he has shown consistency and, I would say, intellectual rigour. It pains me to think that I might be supporting a dig-Gordon-Brown-out-of-a-hole motion, but that is not the case today. Just as the House did five years ago, we are giving permission to another group of special young people to participate in a debate in the Chamber.
The point about other groups has been made. I am not aware of any other groups that have asked to use the Chamber. It would be for them to approach the House and for the House to decide, but I recognise that the House has, on the previous two occasions it has debated this matter, endorsed having the Youth Parliament sit in the Chamber.
I was intrigued by the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. He spoke passionately about the UK Youth Parliament and behaviour. I am sure Mr Speaker will be looking to him to be a role model to colleagues during Prime Minister’s questions for the next five years.
I want to say something that might jar. It is not strictly accurate to say that Members of the UK Youth Parliament could not be elected to the House, which addresses the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) made. The UK Youth Parliament is open to anybody from age 11 to 18 and their term lasts for two years, so we could technically just about have a 20-year-old being a Member of the Youth Parliament, which, as the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Ms Black) proved, is young enough to be elected. Nevertheless, I recognise that the majority of Members of the Youth Parliament are under 18.
I was taken by the comments of the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan), who is no longer in his place—he is probably off answering his trendy ringtone. He extended across the Chamber the branch of friendship to look at this particular situation, but I come back to the fact that it is a special occasion for the Members of the Youth Parliament. The hon. Member for Lewisham East was perhaps the first hon. Member in the debate to refer to a Member of the Youth Parliament. Five years ago, lots of Liberal Democrats did the sycophantic thing of naming every one they could. I had a Deputy Member of the Youth Parliament campaigning for me in the general election. It was good to see people getting involved in the campaign.
I hope that the House, having had a wide-ranging debate, endorses the motion.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House welcomes the work of the United Kingdom Youth Parliament in providing young people with an opportunity to engage with the political process and accordingly resolves that the UK Youth Parliament should be allowed to meet once a year in the Chamber of this House for the duration of this Parliament.
BUTEC Facility (North-West Scotland)
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
I congratulate you on your appointment, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak in this debate with you in the Chair. I welcome the opportunity to raise this issue. I have heard many hon. Members in the past couple of days asking, what is BUTEC? It is the British Underwater Test and Evaluation Centre, which is operated by QinetiQ on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.
BUTEC operates facilities at Kyle of Lochalsh, the Island of Rona and Applecross, with testing taking place off Rona and in the Inner Sound between the Island of Raasay and the mainland at Applecross. The area off Rona will, from time to time, be closed to local fishing interests, with an area off Raasay being permanently closed—the so-called no take zone. When there is no activity off Rona, creels can be placed there. The fishermen are compensated when the area is closed and the creels have to be moved.
On 23 February, the then Under-Secretary of State for Defence, now the Minister for Defence Procurement, informed this House that there was to be a £22 million investment at QinetiQ. We do not know the details of that investment, but among other things the Rona facility will be closed and there will be a net loss of jobs. Perhaps the Minister could detail what the planned investment will actually result in as far as jobs are concerned. There has been considerable local coverage of the plans, including the publication of a map. I have the map with me and it shows at least a doubling of the exclusion zone for fishing, right up to the shore line at Applecross.
To a large extent, the interests of BUTEC and the local fishing community co-exist, or can be more accurately said to have co-existed up until that proposal was announced. There are legitimate concerns that the proposed expansion of BUTEC offers a real threat to the local fishing industry. My first question is: why could we not have the same circumstances that exist off Rona, where fishing is allowed when there is no activity? The same should apply to any extended area. I also want to ask why this is being proposed now. Is it, for example, to do with the existing Trident fleet, or is it, as some expect, to do with a future replacement of the Trident fleet, something that we on the Scottish National party Benches would resolutely oppose?
Since February, very little has been stated publicly. We were promised a public consultation, which was initially suggested for April and then conveniently moved until after the general election and put off until June. I now understand that it has been put back to late summer. That is simply not good enough, particularly in the light of what is happening at Applecross. People in my constituency deserve to know what is going on and the nature of the threat to employment in Ross, Skye and Lochaber.
On 29 May, one of our local papers, the West Highland Free Press, stated that a Ministry of Defence spokesman had said that no work had started on the expansion. However, the “Applecrosslife” blog of 6 June tells a different story:
“The ‘investment’ on the shore side of the Range expansion has already begun which leads me to think that the upcoming consultation may be little more than a paper exercise. No one is going to tell me that everything is not in place and that this is not going to stop if a few fishermen complain their livelihoods are going to be adversely affected.”
There is also photographic evidence on the blog of ongoing work. My questions are as follows: when will the consultation exercise start? Why has the consultation process not started? Who is responsible for commencing the construction activity? When the consultation starts, why should we believe that it will be meaningful if the construction work is already under way? Why is there a proposal to take the exclusion zone right up to the shoreline? Why are the expansion plans necessary? Let me also ask: who will be responsible for the consultation exercise? Who will conduct it and who will be consulted?
Why is this important? I welcome the jobs associated with the range. However, we understand from what has appeared in the press that, with the ending of the Rona capabilities, there will be a net reduction in jobs. I want to speak up for the work force at QinetiQ, and in doing so, I ask that the company restore union recognition for the work force and allow them to be properly represented on this and on other matters.
I turn to the implications for the fishing industry. Particularly active in this area is the Mallaig & North West Fishermen’s Association. The association was formed to promote the idea of responsible fishing within the Inner Sound between Raasay and the Scottish mainland, with the intention of maintaining the viability not only of the available stocks of fish and shellfish, but of the diverse fishing communities situated on the fringes of the area. The association fully understands the role played by the fishing industry in keeping these communities alive.
The area has a reputation for producing high-quality prawns, which are eagerly sought by shellfish buyers for the export markets in mainland Europe. The membership of the association currently numbers some 70 vessels and 120 owners and crewmen. The reports of an expansion of the BUTEC range caused considerable disquiet among the membership, and a number of meetings have been held to discuss the issue. The current situation whereby fishing activity has been banned in a swathe of the Inner Sound was accepted by the association—but with some reservations.
The area currently used by QinetiQ consists mainly of deep water—100 fathoms, or 600 feet, where the BUTEC activities are carried out. Over the years, the fishermen have learned to operate outwith this area, to rotate their activities to suit the available stocks in each location and to maintain and preserve their integrity while allowing themselves to make a living and retain the viability of the communities they live in.
The fishing industry supports not only the livelihood of the 120 people directly employed within it, but a large—and some would say equal—number of jobs associated with it. That is some 240 families in the area whose main wage earner is dependent on this industry. As I have stated, 70 boats will be affected by the proposals with a larger knock-on effect across many communities. What sustainability studies have been carried out on the issue?
The current system of rotating fishing activities to suit the available stocks would be severely hampered should any further areas be declared “no fishing zones”. It is simple mathematics: 70 vessels concentrated into a much smaller area would catch the available stocks faster. That would lead to overfishing of the area and removal of too many shellfish to allow natural regeneration of the stock. The result would be a collapse of those stocks and the end of the local industry.
There is the issue of the threat to employment in the fishing industry and at BUTEC. The current proposals will see 13 jobs at the Rona listening station at the north end of Raasay being surplus to requirements. Those jobs do not appear to be being replaced by civilian staff at the new facility being mooted under the extension scheme. If the extension is allowed, it is a certainty that those 13 jobs will be lost.
The loss of fishing grounds will no doubt force a number of fishermen to leave the industry at the very least. That will have a knock-on effect in the local communities and the whole downward spiral of depopulation will be exacerbated, leading to further local decline. These communities operate within a finely-tuned mechanism of co-dependence. Loss of a part of one commercial area impacts upon all the others; the local economies are intertwined, with the long-term viability of the area depending on that relationship. If one aspect of the local economy declines, the revenue declines elsewhere. The communities are indeed living on the edge. The loss of fishing industry jobs will mean families without any secure full-time employment being forced to leave. The ripples of that departure will resonate throughout the entire community, affecting other local businesses, schools and myriad other institutions.
It is not known how many civilians are directly dependent on the BUTEC facility. That information is apparently “classified”, but it can be safely assumed that the number does not come close to the numbers directly or indirectly connected with the local fishing industry. As a result of the range extension, the local area could lose a considerable number of full-time, year-round jobs, which would devastate the area and lead to irreversible decline.
This proposal comes at the same time as further revelations concerning the safety aspects of the UK nuclear fleet and the Trident programme. When new safety allegations are added to the well-documented grounding of a nuclear-powered submarine in the area in recent years, the general disquiet that is felt about the possibility of another accident must be considered. It would take only one mistake to devastate the entire area.
Questions are rightly being asked about why the new area is being considered for the BUTEC programme. The waters there are relatively shallow in comparison with those in the current restricted zone. It is one thing for nuclear-powered submarines to operate in depths of 100 fathoms, but it is an entirely different matter for those same vessels to operate in much shallower waters.
Those who are familiar with the history of the area will know that there used to be crofting communities all the way along the Applecross peninsula. They were hampered by very poor communications with the outside world, and for decades they fought to have their only means of access, a simple track, upgraded to a road. One by one, those crofting townships were emptied of their people as they sought a better life elsewhere, frustrated by the lack of support from the Government. By the 1960s, they were gone. What happened then? The Ministry of Defence went into the peninsula and a road was built, but it was built too late to save the communities that had existed in Applecross for hundreds of years.
In one way or another, people were cleared from Applecross—cleared from the land. I do not wish to see our people today cleared from the fishing grounds: history must not be repeated. I urge the Minister to engage in early consultation and, crucially, to recognise that we must respect the interests of the local fishing community, as well as the interests of the MOD and BUTEC.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
Let me begin by joining all the other Members who have congratulated you on your appointment, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) for allowing me to take some of his allotted time. In doing so, he recognised that this issue is important not just for his constituency but for Scotland more widely. It goes to the heart of the question of the relationship between the Ministry of Defence and local communities, particularly Scotland’s rural communities.
As my hon. Friend said, there is no doubt that work on the extension of the BUTEC range has already started, although, as recently as last month, the West Highland Free Press said that the official MOD position was that no such work had begun. The evidence is plain: anyone passing Sands Beach and looking down will see that major and extensive trench digging is already taking place—and why, if no major construction is taking place, are the Applecross guest houses full of construction workers? Some are booked up four months in advance. That is the crux of the matter: it is about engagement and respect between the Ministry of Defence and local communities.
Will the Minister please tell us what level of consultation has been entered into by the MOD with the local population about the range extension, and about the serious effects that it will have on fishermen and associated businesses? Like my hon. Friend, I understand that a public consultation was due to start in April, but it did not. Then it was due to start in June, but that has not happened either. Now there is a vague promise that it will take place some time before the end of the summer. What is the truth? When will that public consultation take place? Indeed, will it ever take place? It now appears that the first part of the extension will be completed before there has been any consultation with the local community. Will the Minister confirm this evening that there will be a consultation process, and will he tell the House when it will take place?
In accepting that the construction work is well under way despite a lack of any public consultation, will the Minister tell us what procedures the MOD believes it has to follow in order to proceed with the major part of the construction work? I ask that question because I am unaware of any planning application having been made, or of an environmental impact assessment having been carried out. As I understand it, when the Ministry sought to extend the buildings at Faslane, it used the conventional planning process. Is it the Ministry’s intention to use that process to extend the work at BUTEC?
Will the Minister tell us whether an application has been made under the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997? Does the work even require such planning permission? If not, what mechanisms are being put in place to facilitate scrutiny and consideration by the public, by the local authority and by the Scottish Government? My fear is that the development will be buried deep within the confines of a general permitted development of an unspecified nature, or that the Secretary of State will use the powers granted to him under the antiquated and anachronistic Military Lands Act 1892 and its associated byelaws to avoid any public scrutiny or consultation. Unfortunately, the MOD stands accused once again of a lack of public engagement, of secrecy and of obfuscation. I urge the Minister not to hide behind the Military Lands Act, and to ensure instead that public consultation and transparency are the hallmark of his actions.
We are forced to conclude that the Ministry of Defence is once again spending hundreds of millions of pounds of the public’s money yet is unwilling to be held up to public scrutiny. We strongly suspect that the reason this whole project is shrouded in such secrecy is that the MOD is spending this money by stealth to extend the BUTEC range in preparation for the arrival of Trident. How can the Minister explain that, when this place has yet to debate, let alone agree, Trident’s renewal?
When will the Ministry consult the people whose lives are going to be affected by the extension of the range? What safeguards are being put in place to prevent any disturbance to the local environment, to the public and to marine life as a result of the extension? And when will the MOD come clean with the people of Applecross and wider Scotland about what is actually happening at BUTEC and admit that this is further below-the-line spending based on Trident’s renewal before this House has debated or agreed to such an undertaking?
The Minister for Defence Procurement (Mr Philip Dunne)
Madam Deputy Speaker, I should like to add my congratulations to you on your election. This is the first time I have had the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship. When we first arrived in Parliament in 2005, we served together on the Work and Pensions Select Committee, and I have fond memories of the agreement that we reached on many matters despite coming from opposite sides of the Chamber. This is a great pleasure.
I should also like to congratulate the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) not only on securing this important debate for his constituents but on his presence in the Chamber tonight having won his seat in Parliament. I have listened carefully to what he and the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) have said, and I shall seek to address the points that they have raised. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute for alerting me to the fact that he was going to contribute to the debate.
Before I address those points, it might be helpful if I explain our plans for the British Underwater Test and Evaluation Centre—widely known as BUTEC—and other associated facilities. BUTEC is currently located on two sites in the Inner Raasay Sound: a control centre on the Applecross peninsula and the site support base at Kyle of Lochalsh. Together with a third site, the underwater acoustic signature range operated from the Island of Rona, these are collectively known as the Raasay ranges. All three facilities are operated on behalf of the MOD by QinetiQ under the terms of a long-term partnering agreement. The LTPA is a 25-year contract, effective from 2003, worth about £5.6 billion over the life of the contract for the delivery of test, evaluation and specialised training support services. That partnering arrangement delivers an efficient and affordable service that provides access to QinetiQ’s test and evaluation capabilities and expertise, while sustaining investment in new technology and facilities.
I would like to make it absolutely clear that there remains an enduring defence requirement for the capabilities provided by the Raasay ranges. Important work that could not easily be undertaken elsewhere is carried out there to support UK defence, including the measurement of acoustic, electromagnetic and radar signatures of naval platforms, and the testing of some maritime conventional weapons systems. As with all Departments, the MOD must continually strive to deliver capability efficiently. I am proud to have been part of the team helping to deliver more than £5 billion of cost savings since 2010. All areas of defence are regularly examined to ensure that we can deliver our required capabilities at best value to the taxpayer.
As part of our work on potential cost reductions, QinetiQ developed a proposal, at the request of the Department, to optimise and sustain the Raasay ranges. This proposal would see the closure of the Rona facility and the relocation of in-water acoustic measuring equipment to the BUTEC water space, as well as technical enhancements at the Applecross and Kyle of Lochalsh sites. This will result in a significant modernisation of the range architecture. The enhancements would mean long-term investment of approximately £22 million in the constituency of the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, although much of the investment will be made under water. This is expected to deliver some £1 million of annual operating cost savings until 2028, when the current agreement with QinetiQ expires.
As part of this reorganisation, up to 13 posts currently based at the remote Rona facility will be lost. Those posts are manned by personnel who operate in a similar way to workers on offshore oil rigs. In other words, they are not locally housed individuals—they often come from the central belt in Scotland—and therefore have no immediate impact on the local economy because they do not have the opportunity to spend their wages locally. That is because there are no facilities there, other than their own facility and a local household living on the Rona Island. It is hoped that as many of these reductions as possible will be achieved through voluntary means.
It is important to set this in context. Aside from those job reductions, the proposed enhancements will be very good news for the remaining employees of QinetiQ, about 80 of whom work at Applecross and the Kyle of Lochalsh. I understand that QinetiQ is the second largest employer, after the local authority, in that area, so it is a significant employer in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.
Brendan O'Hara
May I get clarification on something? The Minister said that this would lead to £1 million of savings for the MOD, but the knock-on effect to the local economy will be that the fishing boats will be cleared out of the new extended range. There will therefore be a devastating effect on the local economy while the MOD is saving £1 million per annum.
Mr Dunne
I shall come on to deal with the hon. Gentleman’s comments about the impact on the fishing industry, because that is the thrust of the argument being made by Scottish National party Members. In short, that vision is not shared by the MOD, and I will come on to explain why. We believe that this investment will sustain the activity in Applecross and the Kyle of Lochalsh, and in the Inner Sound, which will have an enduring future in terms of maintaining economic prosperity in the area.
Relocating the in-water acoustic measurement equipment away from Rona will mean extending the current Ministry of Defence byelaws for the BUTEC protected water space by some 28 sq km. The current byelaw covers 82 sq km, which is currently divided into two areas. The first is an outer area of approximately 56 sq km, which prohibits the fishing by any method involving the use of a net or dredge. There is also an inner area of around 26 sq km within which all fishing, whether by line, net, trawl or creel, as well as the anchoring of vessels, dredging and dumping of rubbish are prohibited.
Under the proposed changes for the BUTEC water space, there would be a single water space provided for all range activities covering an area of approximately 110 sq km. This relatively modest increase in water area would be offset by removing the fishing restrictions currently in place in the area of water around the Island of Rona.
Let me assure the hon. Gentlemen that the Ministry of Defence takes very seriously its obligations to ensure the continued and sustainable use of waters that are used for defence purposes by other users. We already work closely with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and with Marine Scotland to establish a sound informal consultation process in respect of the national marine plan development.
As part of the work to implement QinetiQ’s proposal for BUTEC, it will be necessary to revise the current byelaws. Part of that revision process involves the need for public consultation. It is intended that this formal public consultation will commence later this summer as part of a separate strand of work to review all current byelaws at some 200 defence sites. The consultation is in relation to byelaws, the timing of which is not determined solely by this site. It is affected by proposals across a range of defence sites, not exclusively in Scotland—most of them are in fact outside Scotland.
Ian Blackford
I am interested to hear what the Minister is saying. The reason there is so much concern is that some of the information that came from QinetiQ, which ended up in the public domain, referred to a much larger exclusion zone than he is expressing in his statement today. The map, which I am sure the Minister has seen, indicates a potential doubling of the area. I wish to hear some clarification on what was talked about. The information that was in the public domain is therefore not correct. My constituents and I would welcome an early consultation on that and to hear what it means for the fishing community.
Mr Dunne
My understanding is that QinetiQ enjoys a close and co-operative relationship with local fishermen and their representatives. Although it may not have engaged in a direct consultation in relation to the impact on fishing, it is absolutely our intention to do so, and I will come on to that in a moment. I cannot comment on what material may have appeared in the public domain by sources outside the Ministry of Defence, but I hope that I have given some reassurance already that the extension of the area that we are talking about is relatively modest, and not at the kind of dramatic level that the hon. Gentleman seems to think is likely to be the case.
The Ministry of Defence has a presumption in favour of public access wherever this is compatible with operational and military training uses, public safety, security, conservation and the interests of tenants. It is, therefore, important that the views of local communities are taken into account when we propose any changes to occupation or use of shared space.
To assist with the BUTEC public consultation, we will place notices in the local press that the draft byelaws will be made available on the Ministry of Defence website and copies will also be available in local libraries and other municipal buildings, providing the opportunity for anyone wishing to express their views to be able to do so.
I point out gently to the hon. Gentlemen that Members of the Scottish Parliament were notified by me in writing in February that this exercise would be undertaken in the summer. There was no suggestion in my correspondence with the local authority, the then existing Members of Parliament, or Members of the Scottish Parliament that there would be a consultation beginning any time before the summer. I am not aware that there was any suggestion that there would be a consultation starting in April coming out of the MOD, so I am not sure where the hon. Gentleman has got that suggestion from.
I would further like to make it clear to the Opposition Members present that all the views expressed by those taking part will be considered fully as part of the decision-making process, which will also require appropriate ministerial approval, ultimately, by me, and that will include consultation with fishermen. The suggestion that this has all been agreed in advance is not the case. Proposals have been made by QinetiQ. They will be consulted upon. We will consider the responses to that consultation and then we will make a decision.
Ian Blackford
If that is the case, why is it that construction activity seems to have started?
Mr Dunne
I will come on to that in a moment.
I recognise that the people who are most likely to be affected by the BUTEC plans will be those whose livelihoods depend on fishing the waters of the Inner Sound, which is the concern that has been particularly expressed in this debate. Naturally, they have legitimate concerns about how our plans will be implemented and how this might affect them in the long term, so we completely recognise that it would be wrong simply to ignore their views. For that reason, and in parallel to the byelaw consultation, I want to ensure that full and proper discussions are held with representatives of the local fishing communities, which we will start shortly, in advance of the byelaw consultation. The aim of these talks will be to investigate what options might be available that would allow some fishing to take place at certain times within the revised water space—much as happens at present in part of the area other than that which is completely prohibited, which the fishing communities are well accustomed to. Of course, this work will have to be balanced with the Ministry of Defence’s need to protect its investments and to ensure the continued operation of this vital defence capability.
As I mentioned, I wrote to the predecessor of the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, the well respected and late lamented Charles Kennedy, and met him shortly before the general election, to explain what was envisaged, the process of consultation, and that no final decisions had been taken, contrary to local press reports. I also wrote to Members of the Scottish Parliament and local authority leaders, and I look forward to developing a similarly constructive relationship with the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber.
There is work to be completed before any final decisions are made, which on current plans is expected around the end of the year. Full implementation of the changes is due to be completed during 2017.
In relation to the construction that has started already, most of this investment will be in looking at sensors under the water. There is a modest amount of investment in the existing facilities to upgrade some of the physical capacity onshore. Where that does not require planning consent, that work can continue in any event and is already starting. That is part of the £22 million investment. Some elements require consultation; respect for local planning regulations, if any, is necessary, and consultation with statutory consultees such as Marine Scotland. Of course that work cannot be done until that process has been completed, but initial preparatory work can be undertaken. It is nothing to alarm hon. Members, as though that was prejudging that consultation. Much of this work needs to be done routinely as part of a 25-year contract. You would not expect there to be no improvements during the course of a contract as long as that.
I shall try to allay some of the fears of the hon. Gentleman, who represented an apocalyptic vision of the impact of these proposals on fishermen. I have seen nothing to suggest that that vision is remotely applicable to what we are proposing here. We are actively keen to engage with fishermen who, in particular, undertake creel fishing for prawn and other crustaceans in the sound. There is an established relationship with QinetiQ and a channel for communication to allow that to happen when there is no testing going on. There is no reason to suggest that that would change. There might be specific areas of the sound where we will be looking to extend the prohibition, but they are relatively modest, and certainly nothing like the scale that the hon. Gentleman suggested, which might lead to the devastation of the industry to which he referred.
Ian Blackford
I look forward to the consultation exercise, and I will be satisfied if what the hon. Gentleman has laid out turns out to be the case. Hopefully he understands why there are legitimate concerns. The information that came into the public domain from QinetiQ paints a very different picture from the one that he has put forward today; it suggests a much larger expansion in the area. Therefore, one can understand why people in my community are concerned when they see construction activity starting. If that is in any way related to the expansion plans, would it not be more respectful to the local community if that did not happen until after the consultation exercise?
Mr Dunne
All I will say to the hon. Gentleman is that I think it behoves him to act responsibly as a Member of Parliament and not to foment his constituents into getting overexcited about something until he is well informed about the situation. We all have to deal with contentious issues in our constituencies, and having been a Member of Parliament for 10 years, I think that it is always better to adopt an informed position before reaching for the panic button. Therefore, I hope that this debate has helped reassure the hon. Gentleman on how we propose to conduct ourselves and the extent of the consultation we are looking to undertake, because we will take into account the legitimate views of his constituents who might be inadvertently affected.
I would like to answer some of the hon. Gentleman’s questions. He asked who will be responsible for the consultation. The byelaw consultation will be undertaken by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation’s byelaw review team. The consultation with the fishermen will be undertaken primarily by QinetiQ, as it has the direct relationship with them. He asked whether the depth of the water would have an impact on what we are proposing, and the answer is no; the extension of the range would be in water of a similar depth, rather than shallower water. He asked whether we have any expectations of an adverse impact on the fishing community, which I think I have already addressed. The answer is that we do not think so, but we are keen to explore any concerns there might be.
On the question asked by the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara), I do not think that there is a question of undue secrecy by the MOD. As I have said, we have been very clear with his colleagues in the Scottish Parliament about what we are seeking to undertake, and we will do a consultation. However, we will maintain secrecy over the precise nature of some of the equipment and the capability it delivers, because that has a clear defence purpose. I do not think that he would expect us to be as transparent about that.
The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute also raised in a traditional way his concerns about whether this might be some underhand way of encouraging Trident renewal. I do not think that is a relevant concern here. This is about providing capability that is used for a wide variety of submarine testing, including the strategic deterrent, but it is by no means exclusively in relation to it.
Brendan O'Hara
Can I be absolutely clear that the extension of the range has absolutely nothing to do with the proposed renewal of Trident? I find it difficult to comprehend that such an investment would be made in an underwater submarine test facility when the Government are clearly on record as supporting Trident renewal. Is this not just under-the-line spending, by which we have seen billions spent preparing for Trident renewal before this House has had a chance to debate it?
Mr Dunne
As I tried to make clear at the outset, this is about improving the efficiency of the facilities that exist at the moment in the Inner Sound. We are, in essence, taking two separate locations under the water and combining them into one. The functionality of what happens under the water is being improved because of technological advances. This has to do with seeking to upgrade the existing facilities to make them fit for purpose for the future; it has no specific relationship to the strategic deterrent.
I think I have sought to address all the points that hon. Members have raised. I hope that the House will understand why the changes I have outlined for the BUTEC water space are required. Put simply, they are key to sustaining the continuing operation of this vital facility, which happens to be one of the largest employers in that part of the constituency of the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber. I hope that he will come to recognise that this is something that he should support.
Question put and agreed to.
Westminster Hall
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English as an additional language (Pupil Support)
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government policy on support for pupils with English as an additional language.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and I welcome the Minister for Schools, whom I have known for many years, to his place in the new Government.
This is a timely debate, not for outlining a detailed policy proposal or indeed criticising what has gone before, but for inviting the Department for Education and its Ministers to explore options for how they can assist a small number of localities and local education authorities to deal with the consequences of very large-scale immigration and pupil mobility, and specifically the impact of these factors, particularly on primary school education, the provision of primary school places, teacher recruitment and retention, and—most critically—educational attainment.
As someone once said, “It’s déjà vu all over again,” because, Mr Hollobone, you were also in the Chair when I secured a similar debate with the same Minister on 15 February 2011, which was on the pupil premium. In that Adjournment debate, I raised similar but not identical matters to those I will raise today.
On that occasion—[Interruption.]
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. Mr Jackson may now carry on. Of course, he could simply refer us to the remarks he made in the debate that he just mentioned and sit down. However, I hope that he will not do so, and that he will add some additional material.
Mr Jackson
Thank you, Mr Hollobone. After that alarm, I trust that there will be no incendiary activity in the next 90 minutes.
On that occasion in 2011, I argued—evidently, it transpired, not that persuasively—that although the pupil premium was indeed an excellent idea and a useful tool to assist the most deserving pupils by the deployment of scarce resources, it was nevertheless a blunt instrument. That was because it only related to deprivation as measured by the sole indicator of access to free school meals. It was perfectly possible to nuance and finesse that criterion to drive up education standards in discrete circumstances.
That proved to be the case: in the last Parliament, the coalition Government extended the provision of the flat-rate pupil premium to looked-after children—it was called “pupil premium plus”—and later to the children of service personnel, quite rightly. The deprivation indicator and eligibility criteria were also broadened, as were the differential payment rates between deprived pupils in primary schools and secondary schools. Between 2011 and 2015, per capita funding rose from £430 to £935 for deprived pupils in secondary schools, to £1,100 for deprived pupils in primary schools and to £1,900 for looked-after children. It was £300 for service children.
I am proud to be associated with the Government that did that, and they did it for the right reason, because there is plenty of evidence that the pupil premium has had considerable impact cumulatively across a wide range of LEAs in supporting disadvantaged children and improving their educational attainment. The Department for Education report published in July 2013 under the auspices of TNS BMRB, Tecis, the Centre for Equity in Education, and the Universities of Manchester and Newcastle demonstrated such positive outcomes, as did Ofsted’s pupil premium update, which was published last July.
Naturally, I am delighted not only that the pupil premium worked but that the new Conservative Government remain committed to maintaining it. For the current financial year, it will be £2.545 billion in total. Indeed, one in six children in the Peterborough LEA were in receipt of free school meals in 2013-14.
I accept the central premise that Ministers have prayed in aid of the pupil premium, namely that the link between free school meal eligibility and underachievement is strong. That is undoubtedly the case, but must we accept that the pupil premium cannot be a more flexible vehicle in resource allocation? Let us be clear about what the pupil premium has not addressed historically, and still does not address. There is now no de facto targeted funding for those LEAs that, by dint of their economic profile or geographical circumstances, have to accommodate and deliver the best educational outcomes on an equal statutory footing with all other LEAs to students whose principal language is not English.
The pupil premium has been reconfigured, rebooted, nuanced, reset and expanded, but regrettably it still fails to take account of the real impact of large numbers of English as an additional language pupils. With the demise of the ethnic minority achievement grant, dedicated funding has effectively been removed for EAL pupils. Such funding was rolled up into the dedicated schools grant in 2011-12 and effectively subsumed into mainstream schools funding.
Current LEA funding formulae allow for support for LEA pupils only for a maximum of three years, and the bulk of LEAs elect to fund pupils for less time than that, either 12 or 24 months. That is despite the fact that research indicates that it will take between five and seven years for EAL pupils to match the performance of peers whose first language is English.
There are national initiatives, such as the British Council’s EU-funded Nexus programme. That is good as far as it goes, but it is a national programme that cannot provide bespoke local solutions that reflect the knowledge, skills and experience of teachers, governors, parents and LEAs to deliver the most appropriate local education service.
Each LEA and each school has its own priorities. For instance, if a school was seeking to get the best outcomes for a Somali or west African child in Southwark, that would be a completely different challenge from the challenge of dealing with a Slovak or Lithuanian child in Peterborough, Boston, Wisbech or other parts of eastern England.
It is disappointing that the strong advocacy and campaigning by Westminster City Council for a cash passport system for new entrant EAL pupils has yet to result in any Government action or even, as I understand it, a commitment to investigate the efficacy of such a system in a pilot scheme. I am at a loss to understand why EAL has not featured more prominently in the analysis of the impact on results of the pupil premium by both the DFE and Ofsted since 2011.
This is not a generalist complaint about schools funding, as I am well aware that the Government are committed to rebalancing historical anomalies and unfair funding allocations by providing an extra £390 million for the least well funded education authorities in the current year, 2015-16. Also, in the interests of transparency and lest I be accused by the Minister of being churlish or ungrateful, I concede that he himself committed to Peterborough LEA an exceptional circumstances grant of £1.5 million in 2010-11 to deal with the EAL-related pressures, for which we were extremely grateful. However, that does not negate my case for a strategic and systematic appraisal of such challenges over the medium and long term, and for a focus on those LEAs that are most seriously affected by these unprecedented population pressures. The fact remains that there is effectively no provision for EAL support in pupil premium funding. EAL is only one of a number of pupil-led factors used by local authorities to top up their basic allocation per pupil within the schools block grant funding. In practical terms, such considerations are effectively crowded out by other factors, such as deprivation and prior attainment.
For a small group of LEAs, the pupil premium therefore goes only part of the way in dealing with the huge societal and demographic changes and, indeed, massive challenges they face, centred on EAL issues. Peterborough is encumbered by a vast array of such challenges. It has been described as being like a ‘London Borough without the funding largesse’. Although the number of EAL pupils in England has risen by 21% since 2011, to 1.19 million, in Peterborough it has risen by 46%, from 7,100 pupils to 10,395 pupils—the equivalent of eight new two-form entry primary schools. The largest rise in Peterborough is in primary schools in years 1, 2 and 3, where over 40% of pupils are EAL. The number has risen by 34% across the city. Nearly 70% of pupils are EAL in the primary schools in my constituency.
Two Peterborough schools, Gladstone Primary and Beeches Primary, both in the Central ward, have more than 90% of EAL pupils. In one Peterborough school, 192 pupils speak a language that is called “other than English.” The biggest increase is among Lithuanian speakers, with 410 extra pupils: a 63% increase since 2012. Change is rapid. At one secondary school in Peterborough, two years ago, 40% of year 7 pupils were EAL; the figure is now 70%.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Given that it was based on the numbers of pupils involved, is he making a case for the reinstatement of the ethnic minority achievement grant as a way of solving the problem that he outlines?
Mr Jackson
I will elaborate on my reasoning, but it is a matter of public record that I cited the effective abolition of the grant, in so far as it was rolled up into the mainstream generalist dedicated schools grant in 2011. The hon. Gentleman knows that there was some specialist opposition to that decision. There was a feeling that a deprivation-linked indicator alone was not sufficient to take account of the large changes in school rolls. One of those changes is churn, which I will talk about shortly.
There has been huge organic population growth in Peterborough, driven by new house building and inward migration, rising by 17% from 156,000 to 184,000 in the 10 years to the 2011 census. It also has a younger age profile than the east of England and the UK as a whole. Since 2007, the city council has spent £110 million on a capital programme to create 8,282 new school places. Even so, Peterborough was identified by the DFE and the Local Government Association in 2013 as the fifth most over-capacity LEA in England, with its being predicted as having a 24% deficit in primary school places by 2017.
The city also has the second highest rate of in-year school admissions in England. Such churn is enormously disruptive and resource intensive, and has a major impact on educational attainment. The 2013 Royal Society of Arts report, “Between the Cracks”, estimated the effect of each change of school on a pupil as equivalent to the loss of one term’s worth of progress. Of the 1,263 headcount increase between October 2013 and October 2014, 958 of those pupils have English as an additional language: 76% of the increase.
It is not just eastern European children who present big challenges for schools. Peterborough’s long-standing Pakistani community, and the growing preponderance of Panjabi and Urdu speakers—even fourth generation—for cultural reasons, results in many young Pakistani-heritage pupils struggling with English reading and writing. In 2003, the DFE commissioned a piece of research from Leeds University, entitled “Writing in English as an Additional Language at Key Stage 2”, which examined this phenomenon.
Non-standard entry, challenging work conditions, a higher preponderance of deprivation and poor parenting and inadequate league table results at key stage 2, all make effective and suitable recruitment and retention of good and talented teachers an even bigger challenge than that faced by more traditional LEAs.
Not long ago, a well-respected primary school head told me that in the previous week a Czech Roma family of six children with no English, who were poorly socialised and parented, had been enrolled in her school. Although that is not typical, it is not untypical for Peterborough. Not every head, school or LEA has the skills, confidence or expertise to cope with that, but Peterborough has had to cope—and over many years, too.
Of course, the news is not all bad. It is appropriate to give credit to the work being undertaken in Peterborough to tackle what seems to be a series of insurmountable barriers and pay tribute to the heroic efforts of classroom teachers, teaching assistants and headteachers, and to those in the LEA, and others, who despite everything have succeeded in developing an innovative EAL strategy.
In an era when many LEAs have disbanded their in-house EAL specialist teams, Peterborough has grown its own talent and utilised the expertise from the team that developed the EAL element of the successful London Challenge programme. Thirty-eight schools have received on-site training and/or consultancy, with a focus on school-based training. West Town Primary Academy, Fulbridge Academy, Gladstone Primary, Longthorpe Primary, the Beeches Primary, Thorpe Primary, Highlees Primary Academy, and Ken Stimpson Community School in Werrington, have all led the way as hub pathfinders and exemplar institutions. An EAL reference group has been monitoring their performance and developing new ideas through school-to-school contact and online training, and data-sharing, with high-quality written materials and networking, all progressed against a detailed implementation plan.
Inevitably, this bespoke strategy comes at some cost to mainstream school budgets received through the direct schools grant. The cost to the LEA in the previous financial year was almost £750,000, a not-trivial sum for a medium-sized unitary authority. It is a mark of the strategy’s success that the LEA has been able to defray a proportion of its revenue costs, to an extent, through selling on its skills and expertise to other education professionals. It is appropriate to recognise those who have worked so hard to develop this important specialist work in the LEA and beyond. I thank Jonathan Lewis, among others, Gary Perkins and Graham Smith, who is in the Public Gallery, and the new leader of the city council, Councillor John Holdich.
In 2014, EAL attainment at key stage 2 rose by a modest seven percentage points, but that rise halved Peterborough’s EAL attainment gap. Despite this, 12 out of the city’s 54 primary schools missed the benchmark for the key stage 2 standard assessment tests in reading, writing and maths, and it was disappointing that the city languished at 148th out of 152 local authority areas for the performance of youngsters at key stage 2.
In many respects, the issues I raised in February 2011 are much the same, if not more acute and pressing. So I beg your indulgence, Mr Hollobone, because they bear repeating, and you invited me to do so. I said at the time:
“I will not go into minute detail about how resource-intensive those children are in terms of lesson planning, teacher training, and interfacing with pupils’ parents, many of whom do not speak English. Culturally, those parents do not need to speak English—many are in low-wage, low-skill occupations where the need to speak English is not apparent. For example, even if Polish children, who are extremely good at science and mathematics and are generally very gifted, are up to speed in English and mathematics, when they go home there is no cultural pre-disposition to speak English. It is very difficult for them. Other children, whose parents are less skilled, from, say, Lithuania or the Czech Republic, are in a situation where their parents’ contract for packaging fruit or picking vegetables in the fields of south Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire or Northamptonshire finishes after six months. They then leave their rented accommodation and withdraw the children from school, or they may go to another part of the UK. It is debilitating and resource-intensive to train teachers and to have the capacity to deliver real improvements and added value for those particular families.”—[Official Report, 15 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 244WH.]
The Minister and his colleagues are committed to consulting on bringing in a national schools funding formula, and EAL will inevitably play a part in such calculations. Given that the Government remain strongly committed to maintaining relatively generous ring-fenced allocations for pupil premium, is it too much to ask that they consider developing a discrete and dedicated EAL challenge fund? That fund could be aimed at a small minority of LEAs with a demonstrable record of success in creating, inter alia, EAL hubs, centres of excellence, skills and knowledge bases, human resources, leadership, and strategies that can be audited and that are outcomes-linked. The fund should be related to a small number of key performance indicators linked directly to education outcomes.
The Minister would benefit from seeing the work being undertaken in my constituency. After our debate in 2011 he came to meet the excellent team at Fulbridge Academy headed by principal Iain Erskine. The academy has gone from strength to strength, given that more than 100 languages are spoken there and it is one of the largest schools in England. It was rated as outstanding by Ofsted in the last inspection. If the Minister accepts my cordial invitation to visit my constituency, he will see for himself the exceptional difficulties faced by teachers and the city council.
I ask the Minister to honour the undertakings made to me in 2011, in good faith, to look at the issue seriously, weigh up the evidence and talk to the professionals who helped to deliver the London Challenge, as well as to do a proper, rigorous and robust cost-benefit analysis and to consider the longer-term savings that could be achieved by a modest, well-targeted and ring-fenced budget. I fear that teachers in Peterborough cannot bear the burdens placed upon them without extra help for much longer. There is a strong case to be made, but I hope merely to have provoked a much needed debate this morning.
The Minister made a superb speech last night—the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) might not concur—on Second Reading of the Education and Adoption Bill, speaking with great passion about the moral imperative of education, the concept of one nation and driving up standards. His words were resonant:
“The Bill is about social justice. It is another important step to ensuring that all our state schools are delivering the quality of education currently found in only the best and that our adoption system is swift and efficient, so children can escape the unhappiness of a life of neglect or the uncertainty of life in care as swiftly as possible.”
Later he said:
“We want those standards for everyone, regardless of social or economic background. That is what we mean by social justice. It involves taking on the vested interests, which is why in this Bill we are asking for the powers to say no to those who frustrate or delay improvement—enemies of aspiration and rigour. If hon. Members across the House believe in social justice…I urge them to support this Bill.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2015; Vol. 597, c. 722-723.]
Those fine words are true to the commitment to help all the children in my constituency. Whatever their background, race, creed or colour, they just happen to be in Peterborough. Irrespective of all such factors, every child in my constituency and in those of other Members deserves the best possible education. With some thought, a proper plan and a little political willpower, that is what they can get.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I will talk a bit about my experience of pupils with EAL needs in my previous job as a teacher.
Scotland has a long and rich history of multilingualism. Throughout the ages, we have had various languages running through our culture—Scots, Gaelic, Irish and English.
Kevin Brennan
I could not let that pass without pointing out to the hon. Lady that one of the finest poems in the Welsh language, “Y Gododdin”, was written in the south of Scotland in the early medieval period.
Carol Monaghan
I thank the hon. Gentleman; I will add Welsh to that list.
Over the past 20 years, we have seen an influx of people with different languages and cultures. EAL pupils have had a huge, positive impact on our schools in Glasgow. I taught in an inner-city comprehensive in Glasgow where asylum seekers and refugees were housed in the late ’90s. We had a huge number of EAL pupils, and attainment levels increased almost instantly—not only were those pupils delighted to be in school, but they had a positive effect on the native Glaswegian pupils. Throughout the school, we saw a huge benefit from EAL pupils.
The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) talked about the impact on primary schools of large-scale immigration, in terms of teacher recruitment and attainment. I fundamentally disagree with him about attainment and I will talk more about why attainment levels benefit when there are pupils with different languages, but I agree that there is an issue with teacher recruitment. We need to be training and recruiting more teachers to support pupils with additional needs.
The Scottish Government are following the European Union with the “one plus two” languages learning policy. The “one” refers to pupils’ native tongue and the “two” to the additional languages, which could be English, French or Spanish. More and more we are seeing a rise in Gaelic-medium education; for some of those pupils, English is not their first language, so they are also getting English support. In Scotland, a lot of parents now want to send their children to Gaelic schools, and attainment levels are increasing hugely. Such pupils do not learn English until the age of seven, and by eight they have overtaken their peers in English-speaking schools.
There are huge benefits to learning two languages, and the Polish children that the hon. Member for Peterborough mentioned will have those benefits. My children attend Gaelic-medium education. Unfortunately, I have no more than pidgin Gaelic, so I cannot support them with their Gaelic education, and they speak only their native language at home, as the Polish children do. However, they are fluent in Gaelic and in English. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that Polish pupils who go home and speak only Polish will be getting two languages, so they are being further challenged and will develop far more skills.
Mr Jackson
The hon. Lady is making an interesting point, but she is missing the kernel of my argument. As far as I know, there is no district, region or parliamentary constituency in Scotland where more than about 5% of people speak Scottish Gaelic, and a small city in Scotland will certainly never have experienced a 17% population rise in 10 years, with the vast bulk of the new residents speaking Gaelic. We cannot, therefore, necessarily compare the two situations, and the hon. Lady is perhaps rather obscuring my central premise.
Carol Monaghan
In areas such as the Western Isles, Gaelic is still the native tongue for many people—the figure is far more than 5%, so my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) would probably disagree with the hon. Gentleman.
On the number of pupils coming in with English as an additional language, I am not sure that any area in Scotland has a figure of 70%, but we do have figures of up to 20%. However, I am trying to explain the benefits. Certainly, in the school I was in, which had a huge number of EAL pupils—up to 50%—attainment rose greatly.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about the additional funding under the pupil premium, which is for disadvantaged pupils. He spoke about using some of that money for EAL pupils, but there is an argument for looking at dedicated funding. These pupils have a positive impact, and we need to see how we can support them. Unfortunately, in Glasgow, the Labour administration recently cut 15 EAL teachers, despite the best efforts of the opposition in the city council. That was a major blow.
We need to look at the benefits that these pupils bring. It is important to remember that we have had a £20 billion net benefit from having EU immigrants in our country and our communities, but we need to look at how we fully include them in schools and training.
The all-party group on modern languages stated:
“speaking only English is as much of a disadvantage as speaking no English.”
In terms of intellectual development and pupil attainment, having multilingual pupils is a benefit and makes great educational sense.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that, unless we support teachers, schools and LEAs so that they can provide a proper environment in which these pupils can learn, we will have issues.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
I realise that this does not affect Scotland, but the English baccalaureate is a combination of GCSEs, including a modern language. Would the hon. Lady support the Government’s endeavours to get all pupils to take it to the age of 16, to ensure that more young people take a foreign language to GCSE?
Carol Monaghan
Taking languages at GCSE is a matter for pupils at that point in their school careers. The baccalaureate system is really robust, with pupils looking at different areas and having specialisms in different subjects, and that is really positive. However, the issue is more about language learning in the early years. There will be huge benefits if we can deal with that, whatever the additional languages are—English might be the additional language for some pupils, while, for others, it might be French, Spanish or Gaelic. The way we go about language learning is not conducive to a real, deep understanding of a language. The learning must take place far earlier, and it must be far more serious. We start picking these languages up at 11 or 12, which is why the Scottish Government are introducing them much earlier, at primary level.
To finish, I would like to talk once again about the positive impact in our schools of having pupils with an additional language, be it Polish, Urdu or Gaelic. That is positive for attainment, and we welcome those pupils in our schools, but it is important that we put in place structures that will allow them to learn properly and to access the education we provide for them.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
It is extremely pleasant to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) again on securing the debate. He set it on fire when he spoke—at least, the fire alarm went off when he started speaking. It might be a good idea if you made representations to the House authorities and pointed out that, if they want to carry out a routine fire alarm test, they should perhaps do so when we are not debating in this Chamber. The interruption did not, however, prevent the hon. Gentleman from making a compelling case about the issues raised in his part of the country by the numbers of schoolchildren with English as an additional language.
I would like to say from the outset—this is the tone that hon. Members have adopted—that we should celebrate the diversity and cultural richness that result from immigration to the UK, as well as the undoubted benefits to education from having such a diverse population. Yes, there are obviously challenges, which we are debating, but we should not let this moment pass without celebrating the cultural diversity and richness that immigration has brought to this country for many hundreds of years.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the pupil premium. He described the practical challenges that the abolition of the ethnic minority achievement grant is beginning to cause in the system—the pressures that are coming about as a result of getting rid of that ring-fenced, pupil numbers-based approach to provision for pupils with English as an additional language. The grant might not have been perfect or perfectly targeted, but that does not take away from the fact that it was the right approach in principle to offer additional support based on pupil numbers and the challenges faced by schools in different parts of the country.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
It has been interesting, given my background—I had some interest in doing educational research—that everyone has talked eloquently about the need for teachers and teachers’ development, with teachers being able to support pupils. Does the hon. Gentleman agree, however, that this goes beyond even the teaching profession? In Scotland, for example, we are blessed with a range of well-qualified speech and language therapists, many of whom have specialisms in dealing with pupils, particularly at the primary stages, who have multilingual assets. If we are going to support those pupils, we need to look beyond simply the teaching profession, at the specialists who surround it, who can give further support.
Kevin Brennan
I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. Of course, speech and language therapists also play a very important role in other parts of the United Kingdom. I have always believed strongly in providing services around the child, beyond the school. That was part of the children’s plan, which I was involved in drawing up under the previous Government. I recommend it to the hon. Gentleman for when he has some spare time to do some additional research, which is his background. As a researcher, he will be aware—bearing in mind some of the other comments in our debate—of Professor Steve Strand and Professor Victoria Murphy of the University of Oxford. They have done extensive research on the impact of English as an additional language in classrooms that shows that some of the lurid stories in the popular press about its having a negative impact on other children’s education are completely wrong. When we look at the evidence, we see that the contrary is the case.
The hon. Member for Peterborough made the case strongly for looking again at the need for a ring-fenced budget for EAL. I know that the Minister has a pathological dislike of anything that is ring-fenced or that directs schools to act in a particular manner, and an almost religious faith that they will always do the right thing in any circumstances, but there is a case, which the hon. Gentleman made out, to look at the matter again. I hope that the Minister will set aside his usual dislike of these things and look at it with an open mind. The hon. Gentleman quoted the Minister’s words at the end of last night’s debate. Fine words are all very well, but ultimately we have to will the means in order for a policy to have an impact. There must be a transmission mechanism for a policy to translate into action on the ground. Unless we will the means and unless the Government take a lead, the problem will continue to grow, because the budget system in place does not give an incentive or the necessary direction to ensure that resources are spent in this area.
The hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) spoke today, and I again congratulate her on her maiden speech last night. I am sorry that the early hour at which the winding-up speeches started meant that I was not able to do so with her present. That was not her fault. It was an entirely unexpected development.
Carol Monaghan
Actually, I was there. It was my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) who was not. I enjoyed the hon. Gentleman’s winding-up speech.
Kevin Brennan
I apologise to the hon. Lady. Clearly, my memory is going if I cannot even remember what happened last evening. I do remember her very fine maiden speech and I again congratulate her on it. She pointed out today the benefits to attainment of having more than one language. I completely agree, not least as my own daughter attended a Welsh medium school and benefited greatly, as I did; my Welsh improved greatly as a result of her attendance at that school. The hon. Lady pointed out that the Gaelic language is predominant in parts of Scotland, including the constituency of her hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who often reminds us of that in the main Chamber. As she pointed out, English as an additional language need be no hindrance; in fact, it can be the opposite and be of great benefit to educational attainment.
As of June 2015, 1.2 million children in England—17.2% of all pupils—had a first language other than English. Until April 2011, as we have heard, the ethnic minority achievement grant, which was set up originally in 1999, provided funding based on the numbers of children from underachieving ethnic minority groups and of pupils with English as an additional language. In 2011, that grant amounted to about £200 million of support across the country. Now, that has been absorbed into the school grant; and as ever when these things are absorbed, somehow or other some money falls from the table. Ultimately, the amount of money in the direct schools grant may or may not reflect that funding, but certainly schools can now receive additional money for pupils with English as an additional language from their local authority and school forums. School forums decide at local level whether any school receives an EAL factor to its funding because of the number of those pupils. The minimum funding from the Government in the 2015-16 school year was £466 for primary and £1,130 for secondary. That is what they have identified would need to be spent.
The problem is that there is no compulsion for local authorities to include an EAL factor in their funding, nor for the value of that to be at the minimum level or above. The Government’s funding rules stipulate that a factor can be paid only for the first three years of compulsory schooling with respect to the pupil with English as an additional language. That is an odd stipulation, given the Government’s professed desire to allow schools to decide at local level what the best thing to do is. I hope that the Minister can explain why that rule is still in place.
Academy schools, of course, receive their funding via the Education Funding Agency, which uses the same funding formula as the local authority, so funding levels for children mirror those for neighbouring maintained schools. However, there is considerable variation among local authorities when it comes to EAL funding. Under this system, if we can call it a system, there is no accountability mechanism whatever for schools’ use of that funding, which essentially means that schools are not obliged to use the funding to meet the needs of pupils with English as an additional language.
There is a very interesting report by the Education Endowment Foundation, and this is a point of agreement between me and the Minister for Schools, although with regard to last night’s debate, perhaps he should be renamed the Academies Minister, as maintained schools never get a mention or any praise whatever from the Government in speeches in the House. Perhaps he will correct that in the future. There is one point of agreement between us, which is that the Education Endowment Foundation is a very good initiative. The Government have provided support to it, and we support that provision because in a sense the foundation is the beginnings of what I talked about last night—a NICE for education, a national institute of clear evidence, as I called it.
The Education Endowment Foundation looks at the research evidence on what works in education policy. That is extremely welcome, as so much of education policy seems to be based on think-tank quackery. The foundation’s report on English as an additional language is very interesting. One of its key findings was that the attainment of pupils with English as an additional language varies widely. At the end of reception, only 44% of EAL pupils are recorded as having achieved a good level of development, compared with 54% of non-EAL pupils. The gap narrows considerably, as we would expect, by the age of 16, when 58.3% of EAL pupils achieve five A* to C GCSEs, compared with 60.9% of non-EAL pupils; by some measures, EAL pupils do better, particularly in mathematics. However, that masks, as the report interestingly points out, the huge range of outcomes within that for different groups of EAL pupils. That makes sense, because there will be a very big difference between an EAL pupil who is the son or daughter of a French banker living in London and some of the pupils whom the hon. Member for Peterborough described, who do not have the same sorts of advantages when they go to school for the first time in this country.
In addition, the report points out that certain factors determine whether pupils are significantly more likely to underachieve. One is entry to England from abroad during a key stage at school. Such EAL pupils tend to be about a year behind their non-EAL peers. Changing school during a key stage is a significant factor. The report says:
“Students joining their primary school in Y5/6 have lower achievement than those joining in Y3/4.”
Being from particular ethnic minority groups also has an impact on pupil outcomes, with a particular impact on speakers of Somali, Lingala and Lithuanian at the age of 16. The report also finds:
“Almost half of schools with a majority of EAL pupils are located outside London.”
That emphasises the hon. Gentleman’s point that we should not simply think of this as an issue affecting London. The report also points out:
“High proportions of EAL pupils in a school do not have a negative impact on the attainment and progress of other pupils.”
It is useful to have research evidence, and the other evidence I quoted earlier, confirming that that myth is incorrect.
Carol Monaghan
The hon. Gentleman says that the presence of a high proportion of EAL pupils does not have a negative impact on other pupils, but my experience is that it has an extremely positive impact on other pupils. In fact, the presence of such pupils in their class gives other students something to aim for because they can see a different way of working, which is a huge advantage.
Kevin Brennan
That is my experience, but I am quoting the academic research to get us into the habit of using evidence to make education policy, which is something that has disappeared in recent years. The Education Endowment Foundation report backs up the research I quoted earlier from the University of Oxford. It says:
“the percentage of EAL students in the school had minimal association with student attainment or progress when controls for student background were included.”
EAL students obviously bring richness and cultural diversity, and they do so without affecting attainment.
As a result of its research, the Education Endowment Foundation makes certain recommendations. The Minister will be intimately aware of the details of the research, being briefed so well by his excellent civil servants and, as he is likely to have a bit of time, I hope that he will respond to those recommendations. The first recommendation is that schools should be accountable for showing attainment impact. It says:
“Schools should be held accountable for how their EAL funding contributes to improving pupil attainment”.
Schools are held accountable for the pupil premium in the same way, as the hon. Member for Peterborough said earlier. If schools are to be held accountable for how they spend the pupil premium, surely there should be a way to hold them accountable for how they use public money provided for the specific purpose of helping pupils with English as an additional language. Even if schools are not told exactly how many pennies they have to spend in their particular location, surely there should be some way in which they can be held accountable for whether they are doing what that public money is intended for. The recommendation continues:
“Although the report finds that where EAL pupils have attended English schools for the whole of a key stage they make greater progress than non-EAL pupils, and indeed that by age 16 they have caught up…this reflects a long history of considerable additional funding being directed to address language learning needs.”
Considerable under-attainment by specific groups might be masked by that general finding, so the Government need to listen to that recommendation.
The report’s second recommendation clearly follows from the first. It is that:
“EAL funding should be targeted at those most at risk of under-attainment.”
Again, the problem is that the current definition of EAL does not reflect a student’s proficiency in the English language or their exposure to it at home. Schools need to hone how they identify the language and learning needs of children within the EAL category to ensure that funds are targeted at those who most need them, and the Government should do the same because they are able to identify those parts of the country where that is a particular problem. The Minister should reflect on that and consider what action should be taken.
Obviously, the three-year cap on the availability of additional support might be more than some pupils need because of the factors associated with how proficient they are likely to become in the English language, including their home life and background, whereas other pupils are likely to need considerably more than three years. The research evidence clearly shows that it will take longer than the three years of allocated funding for some pupils, which is why I do not understand the Government’s rigidity about the three-year rule when, philosophically, they seem to be in favour of being more flexible about funding. There is a strong case for additional funding to be made available to schools with such EAL pupils to ensure that they are able to achieve their full potential. Professor Strand’s report states:
“Fluency in English is…the biggest factor influencing the degree of support an individual student will require, and schools need to be able to assess this need accurately using their own procedures and expertise.”
The third major finding of the Education Endowment Foundation report is that:
“More research is needed into the best strategies to improve outcomes for EAL pupils… there is a lack of robust research evidence on effective approaches and interventions to raise the attainment of EAL pupils. There were no…randomised controlled trials or studies where the effectiveness of the intervention was evaluated by an independent review team.”
More research certainly needs to be done, and I hope that the Minister will tell us his view on that. Is the Department helping to facilitate, undertake or fund research to ensure that such public resources as are being allocated to this are getting to the right pupils and are having the correct impact?
Mr Jackson
I have no wish to be disobliging towards the hon. Gentleman, but he says that there is not enough research into the impact of EAL on educational attainment, yet earlier he blithely agreed with the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) that EAL pupils, of themselves, are a good thing vis-à-vis the educational attainment of non-EAL children. He cannot have it both ways. Either there is robust, empirical evidence to support the former or he is right on the latter. It cannot be both.
Kevin Brennan
The hon. Gentleman is never disobliging. I will examine the record very carefully. I think what I have said throughout this debate has been internally consistent, but I will check my earlier comments in case I have contradicted myself. If I have done so, I will give myself a good talking to later on, but I think I have been consistent in saying that such research as there is indicates that EAL pupils do not have a negative impact on others in the classroom. The third conclusion, which he attributed to me but is actually the conclusion of the Education Endowment Foundation—a body funded by the Government to provide us with such research—is that more research is needed into the best strategies to improve outcomes for pupils with EAL.
What assessment have the Government made of the disparities in EAL pupil achievement, and what are they doing to help such at-risk children? What are the Government doing to address the facts that EAL pupils entering school in years 5 and 6 do not achieve as well as EAL pupils entering school in years 3 and 4, and that children entering school from abroad during a key stage are, on average, 12 months behind their non-EAL peers? What are the Government doing to encourage and support better research into these issues, which affect more than 1 million children? Will the Government consider more generally the impact of bilingual education? The hon. Member for Glasgow North West mentioned the experience from across the United Kingdom. There is obviously experience in Scotland and Wales, and there are the beginnings of such education in Northern Ireland, too. Given the Minister’s support for free schools and so on, is he still rigidly opposed to bilingualism in schools? That has been the Government’s position until now, but I understand that that opposition may be decreasing, provided that it is one of their favoured free schools advocating bilingual education. What is the Government’s current position on bilingual education, and has it changed?
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Before I call the Minister, I gently remind him that under the new rules, Mr Jackson gets a second go, so will he be kind enough to conclude his remarks no later than 10.57 am.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
I am grateful for that guidance, Mr Hollobone. It is a pleasure to serve again under you, although even your powerful chairmanship was unable to stop a disembodied voice from engaging in our debate; I will be interested to see how Hansard reports an unelected person taking part. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) on securing this important debate and on his excellent speech. As always, he campaigns effectively and argues coherently and persuasively for the interests of his constituency and constituents.
The Government are committed to social justice, as my hon. Friend, who supports and campaigns for it himself, acknowledges. That means that we want all pupils to achieve their full potential, including those with English as an additional language. However, I understand the challenges faced by local authorities such as Peterborough in delivering that objective.
The definition of English as an additional language is broad. It reflects pupils’ exposure to a language other than English at home, but it gives no indication of their proficiency in English. Some may use English as their everyday language and be fluent in it, while others may be new to Britain and speak very little English. The percentage of pupils in England recorded as having English as an additional language more than doubled between 1997 and 2013, from 7.6% to 16.2%, with enormous variation across the country. In the south-west, only 6% of pupils have EAL, compared with 56% in inner London.
There is also a great deal of variation between individual schools. At more than half of schools, fewer than 5% of pupils have EAL, but 8% of schools have a majority of such pupils. The evidence shows, as other hon. Members have said, that although pupils with EAL face disadvantages early in their school careers, they are not at a significant long-term disadvantage on average. Again, however, attainment levels vary. As the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) pointed out, swift on the heels of her excellent maiden speech last night, learning two or three languages aids educational attainment—not just in languages, but in other subjects too. We must ensure that we support all children to achieve their full potential and overcome barriers to success, whatever those barriers are. We must also recognise that some communities with high numbers of pupils with EAL face particular challenges. I welcome my hon. Friend’s focus on the issue.
At the beginning of schooling, the average performance of pupils who speak English as a second language is significantly lower than the average for all pupils, but it significantly improves by the end of key stage 4. The latest data show that about 67% of EAL pupils achieved five or more good GCSE grades A* to C, compared with about 66% of all pupils. There are examples of local authorities with very high proportions of EAL pupils that perform well against national averages for attainment. In Newham, for example, where 76% of pupils at KS2 have EAL, 83% of pupils achieved the expected levels in reading, writing and maths at that stage. That exceeds the national average of 79% for all KS2 pupils. In fact, in 2013-14, of the 18 local authorities where more than half of pupils at key stage 2 had EAL, all but two had attainment levels above the national average for all pupils.
I remember visiting Fulbridge academy in 2011; I have remembered it ever since. I was struck by the fact that it was the first school that I had visited that year where all the primary school pupils whom I tested on their multiplication tables knew them. The rate has increased steadily over the years since then, but I was struck by that particular primary school visit, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough for taking me there.
Unfortunately, EAL pupils do not perform that well across the whole country. Although 79% of EAL pupils in Westminster achieve five or more good GCSE grades A* to C, only 50% of EAL pupils in Bradford achieve the same. The disparity in the quality of education available to pupils in different parts of the country has driven us to reform the school system. We have taken steps to ensure that every child, regardless of their particular needs or background, has a greater opportunity of attaining well at school than before 2010. There are now more than 1 million more pupils in good or outstanding schools. We have intervened in more than 1,000 weak and failing schools and are delivering improvements in performance by matching them with academy sponsors. Those academies have transformed the life chances of thousands of pupils.
King Solomon academy is one example. It is an all-through school sponsored by Ark Schools. More than half the pupils are eligible for free school meals, and 65% do not have English as a first language. In its report last year, Ofsted found the school to be outstanding, stating:
“Achievement is outstanding at all key stages. All groups of pupils, including those who have special educational needs, make excellent progress. The academy is working to provide even greater challenge to the most-able pupils.”
Kevin Brennan
I join the Minister in congratulating the academy on that achievement. Can he bring himself, for once, to praise a maintained school that has improved its performance?
Mr Gibb
I will come to that in my own good time. We are unapologetic about taking Labour policy by turning underperforming schools into sponsored academies. What I cannot understand is the ambiguity of Labour’s current position on the academies programme. It has proven highly effective in raising standards, and all we hear from the Labour party is carping and criticism of the policy, which began life under Lord Adonis during the last Labour Government.
Kevin Brennan
The Minister cannot bring himself to praise a single maintained school.
Mr Gibb
There are many maintained schools. I hesitate because 60% of secondary schools are now academies, so schools that I remember as maintained schools may well have converted. Good and outstanding schools throughout the country are rushing to convert to academy status. Many of them performed extremely well as maintained schools run by local authorities, and they are performing well now as academies.
Carol Monaghan
In Scotland, we do not have academies, although some schools might have the word “academy” in their title; we have comprehensive schools and private schools. Does the Minister agree that a school’s success is not down to its name but is the result of leadership within the school and the systems put in place to ensure that staff and pupils are supported fully?
Mr Gibb
I agree that a school’s success is not to do with its name, but there is something about the freedom that academy status brings that enables innovation and professional autonomy to raise standards. Again, I cite King Solomon academy. It is run by some remarkable young people, most of whom are Teach First teachers; the headteacher, Max Haimendorf, became a head teacher in his late 20s. In that school’s first GCSE results in 2014, 93% of pupils achieved five or more good GCSEs, including in English and maths. That would be a remarkable result in any school in any location, but it is particularly so given the high levels of deprivation in the area served by the school. Furthermore, 75% of pupils at the school achieved the English baccalaureate, with high levels of achievement across the ability range.
Carol Monaghan
The Minister mentioned some staff members: a headteacher and some inspiring teachers. Is the Minister suggesting that if the school had not been an academy, it would not have had the same success, given the staff that it has in position?
Mr Gibb
I am. I do not think King Solomon academy would have delivered that kind of educational attainment in that part of London had there not been an academies programme. It has freedom and autonomy, and the professional approach that it takes to how it teaches its children is very different from that of any local authority school that I have visited. It would not have been able to do that if it had been run directly by the local authority in that area.
There is, of course, more to do. Although the overall quality of education in England has dramatically improved, 1.5 million pupils are still taught in schools that are less than good. The Education and Adoption Bill, which we debated last night on Second Reading, will strengthen our ability to deal with failure, and much more swiftly. Its provisions are designed to speed up the process by which the least well-performing schools are transformed in order to bring about rapid and sustained improvements, making sure every child gets the best start in life.
We have made it clear that we want to improve the literacy proficiency of all pupils; improving the teaching of reading is a key priority for the Government. Our aim is to help every child become a confident, fluent and enthusiastic reader. The latest available data show that 84% of pupils for whom English is an additional language achieved level 4 or above in reading at key stage 2 in 2014. That is just below the national average for all pupils, which is 89%. It shows that we still have further to go if we want every child to be reading well by the age of 11.
Key to our approach is the use of systematic phonics instruction; the hon. Member for Cardiff West will have expected me to use those words. The evidence shows that systematic phonics is the most effective approach to teaching early reading. The latest phonics screening check results show that across the country there is a difference of less than half a percentage point between pupils whose first language is not English and those whose first language is English. Phonics has been used to great effect in local authorities such as Newham, where, in year 1, three times as many pupils have EAL as those who do not. Some 81% of all Newham’s pupils met the expected phonics standard, well above the national average of 74%.
At secondary school, we are ensuring that all pupils study the core academic subjects of English, maths, science, history or geography, and a language: the English baccalaureate. We know already that pupils with English as an additional language are above the national average for entry and achievement in respect of the English baccalaureate. Last year, 41% of pupils with English as an additional language entered the EBacc and 26% achieved it, compared with 39% of all pupils entering it and around 24% achieving it. We want more pupils, including those for whom English is an additional language, to achieve the EBacc. Such subjects give young people a strong foundation for progress into further study and for work, and they help to keep their options open.
My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough focused on funding. We have supported local authorities to provide additional support for EAL pupils in their local funding formulae. Local authorities can provide additional funding to pupils who speak a language other than or in addition to English, and who entered the school system in the past three years; the hon. Member for Cardiff West touched on that issue. The vast majority of local authorities include EAL as a factor in their funding formulae, and 132 local authorities allocated funding to schools teaching 450,000 pupils with English as an additional language in 2015-16. That totalled some £267 million, with schools receiving on average about £591 for each pupil who speaks English as an additional language.
We recognise that EAL pupils are more likely to be mobile and arrive in school during the academic year. Local authorities can hold money centrally to support the growth in the number of pupils below the age of 16 in schools. That growth fund allows local authorities to top up funding in-year for schools experiencing an increase in pupil numbers due to growth in the local population. Local authorities also have the power to use a mobility factor in their funding formulae. The method allows funds to be allocated to schools with a high proportion of pupils entering in-year in the previous three years. Some 66 local authorities used the factor in 2015-16, allocating a total of £24 million through it.
In Peterborough, 18% of pupils have English as an additional language. It has the 23rd largest proportion of pupils with English as an additional language among all the different authorities. The area has seen a rise of more than 5,000 such pupils in its schools from 2014-15. I note that Peterborough City Council allocated some £3.7 million for pupils with English as an additional language in 2015-16 and that it has a growth fund of about £2.25 million.
I am enormously grateful for the support that my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough has given to this issue today. He has raised important concerns. The steps that we have taken underline our ambition to give more pupils the preparation to succeed in school, whether that is getting a place at a good university, starting an apprenticeship or finding a first job. Such steps will provide the foundations of an education system with social justice at its heart, in which every young person reaches their potential. I congratulate my hon. Friend once again for airing this important debate.
Mr Jackson
We have had a wide-ranging debate; I have been privileged to sit in on this Labour and Scottish National party seminar on structures in modern British education. Unfortunately, the subject is a bit of an obsession, particularly for the official Opposition, even though it is eloquently and charmingly articulated by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan).
The substantive point has been touched on by my hon. Friend the Minister, but I want to leave him with this thought. As I made clear in my remarks, there has been an evolution in how the pupil premium has been used to drive up attainment. Could there be a competitive system—a bidding process for LEAs that have developed bespoke solutions, such as in Peterborough, that are successful and have achieved good results under their own financial steam? They could bid for ring-fenced money, although the Minister does not like ring-fenced funding, and there could be a competitive element so that the Government rewarded best practice and tackled the long-standing endemic issues to achieve what the Minister laudably aims to do: improve social justice in educational outcomes. I leave him with those thoughts.
Finally, the Minister is welcome to come to Peterborough. I look forward to a visit from him and/or the Secretary of State some time in the next few years.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered Government policy on support for pupils with English as an additional language.
House of Lords Reform
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered reforming the House of Lords and the number of peers.
Thank you for chairing this debate, Mr Hollobone. It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship.
This debate is not designed to diminish the Lords’ responsibility, status or powers. I am trying to find a way forward that will allow us to retain the Lords’ expertise and keep them there for life, as was originally envisioned when they were appointed. It must not be seen as ageist or in any way derogatory to what goes on in the other place. I value the Lords; the Lords are valued. Their expertise is second to none, irrespective of their type, and their constitutional role should not be underestimated.
There are currently 786 peers, with 40 peers on leave of absence or otherwise disqualified from sitting. The Conservative party has 228 peers; the Labour party has 212; there are 178 Cross Benchers; the Liberal Democrats have 102; the Democratic Unionist party has four; the UK Independence party has three; Plaid Cymru has two; the Ulster Unionist party has two; the Green party has one; there are 28 non-affiliated peers; and there are 26 Lords Spiritual. It is a bit long-winded to state how many Lords there are, but it is important that I do so because our upper Chamber is one of the most highly-subscribed democratic institutions in the developed world.
The numbers in attendance by age were supplied to me by the House of Commons Library. The analysis reveals that the mean age is currently 70.4 years—in effect, 70 years. The median is roughly the same, implying a symmetrical distribution, with roughly as many peers above that age as under it. The oldest party is the UK Independence party, at a mean age of 76.3 years, although there are only three of them. The mean age of the Cross-Bench peers is 76.2 years; for the Labour party it is 71.3; for the Conservatives it is 70, and for the Liberal Democrats it is 70.3.
It is difficult to analyse peers’ activity, yet a brief analysis using Hansard data reveals that the mean age of the 20 most active Members of the House of Commons, excluding Mr Speaker, is 64.9, which is more than five years younger than the average of the House of Lords. That may suggest that younger Members are more active, although I would be cautious about drawing that conclusion, given that it is based on only a partial analysis of the data.
In the previous Parliament, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) wanted to have a partly elected upper Chamber. He proposed that the upper Chamber continue to be known as the House of Lords for legislative purposes; that the reformed House of Lords should have 300 Members, of which 240 are elected Members and 60 are appointed independent Members; and that up to 12 Church of England bishops may sit in the house as ex-officio Lords Spiritual. His proposal would have halved the number of Lords and created a semi-elected second Chamber, which would have huge ramifications for our unwritten constitution and our intellectual talent. I believe that that would be the wrong way forward, and would cause a drought of our intellectual talent in the other place.
Dan Byles, the former Member for North Warwickshire introduced a private Member’s Bill for the retirement of Lords. Some peers have utilised that provision. I contacted Dan, and he disclosed that the retirement age was always aimed at 75, although that was never mentioned.
My proposal is to reduce the numbers in the House of Lords. It could be seen as radical, although I hope it is not. I want it to be seen as a constructive way forward. I believe that there is a better way to slim down the Lords by 250 Members, so it becomes more proportionate to the Commons over a 20-year period. I propose that the Lords eventually settles at 450 to 500 peers, who should remain in the House of Lords as life peers, but retire from the Lords as we know it at the age of 75. They may wish to retire from the Lords under Dan Byles’s law, but that would be up to them.
I propose that Lords over 75 become the Lords council. They would still be able to attend functions and use the facilities of the House of Lords. In fact, they would be able to go about their daily business as they do now. They would still be remunerated, and it would cost no more than it does now. The problem is not the number of Lords, but the number we appoint, so we have to find a way forward that enables us to value our existing Lords and appoint new ones in a manner that reflects where we want the House of Lords to be in 20 years’ time.
Members of the new Lords council would be able to sit on Committees, based on their expertise and choice. They would be able to influence their colleagues and the Government as before. However, they would not be able to attend the Chamber and vote. That would have a significant effect on getting down the numbers, improving the working environment and creating a Chamber atmosphere similar to the Commons.
The benefits of my proposal are that it would enable us to value our peers without losing them as we reduce their number over two decades. It would allow a tapered reduction to take place in a sensible and measured manner. It would allow the more active peers to debate and work on a regime suited to their stamina. Therefore, the Lords who, to put it bluntly, are getting older and cannot attend the Chamber regularly will have options. They would not be able to go into the Chamber in the first place, although they would be able to advise. It would create a career path from the Commons into the Lords, and make both Chambers more efficient. The new appointees would be strictly limited and appointed in the same way as before. However, there would be constraints that I will not mention in this debate that will have to be looked at to ensure we have the correct political system at work. We must prevent the perception that the Lords is being stacked by political means. The main benefit would be that we retain the expertise of all ages and reduce the numbers sensibly.
As the median age is currently 70—there are as many under that age as over it—the maths naturally state that if the proposal were to become law, roughly a third of peers would go into the new Lords council in the first five to 10 years. The restriction of the numbers of new appointees would ultimately reconfigure the look of the new Lords structure. I firmly believe that my proposal is a viable and credible means of reducing the number of Lords and, more importantly, preventing the loss of our valued intellectual talent that an elected second Chamber would cause. It is very simple and straightforward.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I am happy with most of what my hon. Friend said, but I am concerned about the age being fixed. Some peers are very effective beyond the age of 75. I suggest a slightly different arrangement, whereby a percentage—I will not say what that is at the moment—retires or is requested to retire, and people compete for the remaining places. How about that?
David Morris
That is a valid and constructive way forward, as an annexe to what I am trying to do. I would like hon. Members reading this debate in the future to understand that this is a simplified view of what could happen. Further debates would have to take place, and legislation would have to be enacted to make it actually work. However, what my hon. Friend has just articulated very well is that we could have a percentage of Lords who assist a transition, and so still retain the intellectual expertise in the other place—that is the whole ethos behind this debate.
I have nothing more to add, but this is an important subject. For literally decades we have been trying to sort out the problem of the number of Members of the House of Lords. Although I voted for the proposals of the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam in their initial stages, I did not like them. We should look into the issue in a more measured and stately way—one that suits the House of Lords as it currently stands.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
I must apologise, Mr Hollobone—I have not spoken in a Westminster Hall debate before and so am not quite sure what I am doing.
I am the SNP spokesperson on the House of Lords. Our policy is no longer to have a second Chamber, but I understand that this debate is about finding a way forward by reforming the House of Lords rather than getting rid of it. The way forward that has been suggested is really interesting and would reduce the number of Lords. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) mentioned that some Lords are active and effective over the age of 75; that was an interesting point and should be taken into account.
One concern I have with the proposal of the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) is that in the interim period of 20 years he suggested there is a risk that the House of Lords as a whole will continue to get older. If we are aiming to reduce the number of Lords, presumably we will not be appointing many more in that interim period, which will push the average age up, even with a cut-off point of 75.
David Morris
I agree with the hon. Lady. I have looked into this, and if we do the maths, as I said earlier, the average age in the Lords is around 70, and the average active Lord is 65 years of age. She is correct that there is a mathematical schism, in that not appointing new Lords would push up the average age. However, over a period of 20 years it would come down to how many Lords were appointed in the initial stages. We could have a calculated assessment that kept in mind the ages of the Lords and how many might be around in 20 years, which would allow us to work out a taper.
Kirsty Blackman
Absolutely. If the youngest Lords at the moment are in their 30s and we do not appoint any more, in 20 years the youngest will be in their 50s, which is a concern.
There could be a degree of election for the pool of life peers, as well as for the hereditary peers. The SNP policy is to abolish the House of Lords entirely, but if that is not going to happen, we want something that is closer to representative democracy. That would mean some form of election, and a House that represented the breadth of the population. A mean age of 70 is nowhere near doing that—I am not in any way being ageist, but simply suggesting that there is a lack of representativeness. If there were a system whereby a group of the current life peers was chosen democratically to continue in the House, we would be more likely to have a swathe of peers who were more representative of the population.
David Morris
I understand where the hon. Lady is coming from and share some of her sentiments. However, we looked at that in the previous Parliament and could not get the proposals through the House. I think the House of Lords should be kept as it is now; the issue is how we get the numbers down. I do not have a panacea and am hoping that this debate will be the start of a process. I share her sentiments, which could be looked at in future.
Kirsty Blackman
Absolutely.
I do not have much more to say. I appreciate the chance to contribute to the debate and hope that we can find a constructive way forward that includes reform of the House of Lords and, in particular, reduces the number of its Members.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)
It is a pleasure to have you looking after our debate so carefully and in such an accomplished manner, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) on securing this important debate. The debate on this topic has gone a little quiet in the past couple of years, and it should not have. It is important that we wake it up again. My hon. Friend has made a good start on that, and has perhaps lit some blue touch paper—I will come on to that in a minute.
I should start with a small declaration of interest, as my wife has recently been appointed to the House of Lords as a life peer. We have had the conversation over the breakfast table in which I tell her that I have already voted to abolish her and replace her with an elected representative at least three or four times during this Parliament; she has each time informed me, in return—with slightly too much pleasure—that she is no longer able to vote for me in general elections. I will not detain hon. Members any longer with the politics of the Penrose breakfast table, but thought I should make sure everyone knows that part of my family background, if I can put it that way.
To return to the argument of my hon. Friend, as he said, there have been attempts, big and small, to reform the House of Lords. It is a hardy perennial of debate both in this place and in debating societies up and down the country. It prompts deep and great thoughts among constitutional experts, from historians and academics through to think-tanks and policy wonks of all kinds. It has been so important because it clearly needs to be dealt with—any democrat looking at the House of Lords thinks it looks odd.
To be fair, their lordships understand that and in the past few years a number of different measures have been introduced both from the Lords and jointly by Members of the Commons and the Lords. My hon. Friend mentioned the Bill introduced by Dan Byles and Lord Steel dealing with the retirement of peers; there was also a Bill introduced by Sir George Young and Baroness Hayman on expulsion and suspension from the House of Lords. There have been successful attempts at Lords reform, albeit on a relatively small scale, as well as less successful attempts at grander Lords reform, such as the House of Lords Reform Bill that failed to make progress during the previous Parliament.
It is therefore a little odd that this area of policy seems to have run out of steam in the past couple of years. I thought my hon. Friend’s proposals were interesting and thought-provoking. His proposal for peers who are over 75 to be part of a Lords council would retain much of the Lords’ expertise and ability to provide advice. It would also reduce the number of voting peers while retaining their advice to be drawn on if needed.
I also found it fascinating that, even during my hon. Friend’s brief remarks setting out his interesting proposal, we heard a couple of additional suggestions from my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) and the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman). Each sparked off the initial idea and contributed variations and additional thoughts—right here, my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale has succeeded in beginning a revision and expansion of this rather neglected area of debate.
My hon. Friend has done something important by lighting that blue touch paper, and I would like him to carry on, if he is willing. If we can get other parts of the body politic that are interested in constitutional reform to start considering the issue with a bit more energy and focus—perhaps spurred on by his ideas—we may well get a series of other proposals. They could be tremendously helpful in broadening and enriching the debate.
The Government’s election manifesto states:
“We will ensure that the House of Lords fulfils its valuable role as a chamber of legislative scrutiny”.
I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend start his remarks by saying that he thought the House of Lords fulfils that role, and that it is an important role that should continue. We want to help the Lords continue to do that, and hold the Government to account.
Also, while it is difficult to envisage a return in the immediate future to the bigger, bolder issue of massive, whole-scale Lords reform, we want to continue to consider ideas about limiting the number of peers, and further ideas around retirement. My hon. Friend’s proposals are therefore bang on the money. They are exactly about where it might be possible, as a practical measure, to take these sorts of things forward, and that is why we should encourage other people to propose alternatives, so that we are not faced with having only one idea from one brave soul who has decided to try to light this issue up again; others should participate as well.
I encourage my hon. Friend not just to talk to think-tanks or constitutional experts outside Parliament; it is crucial that he gets the Lords involved as well. It was noticeable that the two successful attempts recently have been made in close conjunction between Members of the Commons and Members of the Lords, effectively as private Members’ Bills. That element of buy-in from the upper House has been absolutely essential. Who is better placed to make proposals that might get buy-in and consent from their lordships than other Members of the House of Lords?
Mr Andrew Turner
May I suggest one problem? Throughout the period we are considering, that process would require a denial—a self-denial—from the Prime Minister, and I am talking about not only this Prime Minister but future Prime Ministers, because the number of peers created during the last 15 years has been staggeringly high. It cannot go on at that rate. I would like to know how we can persuade Prime Ministers of all possible political colours—I realise that only one is likely to be in Government—to prevent them from using their power to create too many peers.
John Penrose
My hon. Friend makes my point for me, which is that I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale is pretending that his proposal is a complete answer. I think that he is putting it forward as an interesting and thought-provoking contribution to a broader debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight is quite right to point out that this question about how we reduce the size of the House of Lords will depend not only on people leaving, standing down, retiring or—as this proposal suggests—entering as councillors, but on the number of people coming in and at what age they come in. This proposal does not necessarily address that issue directly—I think my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale was quite straightforward about that—and that is why I suggest that we ought to have other people contributing to this debate, because it will require other proposals for us to come up with a full suite of potential answers.
David Morris
I know that the Minister may not be able to answer this question, but could he possibly point me in the right direction in the House of Lords to like-minded Lords who would like to take this matter further? I know that previously Dan Byles worked closely and respectfully with the Lords.
John Penrose
I am sure that the Whips in the Lords and the Leader of the Lords will be happy to point my hon. Friend at particular people who might be interested, and I also suggest to him that he might want to talk to some of the Lords who sponsored the two successful private Members’ Bills that have gone through recently. They might be interested themselves, or they might know other colleagues who would be interested in picking this matter up. That would be my starting point.
I hope that other people outside Westminster Hall have listened to this debate, that their interest is piqued and that they will start to consider this important and—as I have said—currently unexpectedly neglected area of constitutional reform, because we have only just started to focus on it. Therefore, this debate is an incredibly valuable starter for 10—a way of beginning a wider debate and kicking things off—but we need to be clear that it is a starting point and not the final answer. To be fair to my hon. Friend, I do not think that he is positioning it as anything else but that.
With any luck, those outside this place will listen to what we have said today and start work. If they start work and then have weighty thoughts on a variety of approaches to pursuing this important area of constitutional reform, I will be delighted to hear what they have to say.
Question put and agreed to.
Crown Prosecution Service
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the work of the Crown Prosecution Service.
I am honoured to open this debate under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I think that this is the first time I have opened a debate with you in the Chair. It is very nice to see you there.
The debate is on the important topic of the challenges facing the Crown Prosecution Service in the light of significant cuts in resources. Its purpose is to consider whether the institution is sufficiently supported to carry out its work effectively, or whether the cuts to staff and resources are leading to a permanent decline in its performance.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the CPS to all of us. It ensures that the laws that knit together our complex society are adhered to, and that those who transgress are brought to justice in a timely way and in the best traditions of a free and fair democracy.
When people are asked to name a Great British institution, the CPS may not be on the tip of everybody’s tongue, but it plays a crucial practical role by bringing to life two of the core rights of every British citizen: the right to a fair trial; and the right to get justice as a victim of crime. It is not a criticism of the CPS to say that it is not at the forefront of everyone’s mind, because in some ways it is a measure of its success that it does not garner much attention when it is doing its job well. It is when things go wrong that the organisation is scrutinised in the brightest of public spotlights, as has happened this year. Across the press, from The Daily Telegraph to The Plymouth Herald, there have been headlines such as “Cuts plunge CPS into crisis” and “‘Shocking and unforgivable’ court delays cause more crime”. Indeed, today the Justice Secretary has added his voice to the debate.
There is no doubt that there are many talented and dedicated staff who make sure that the CPS does all it can to fulfil its obligations to society and to safeguard the core rights of every British citizen. However, serious concerns have been raised about whether the CPS, which is a demand-led service, is being sufficiently resourced to deal with the spike in historical sexual offences, child abuse cases, and those cases arising from an increasing and complex terror threat. In these circumstances, does it seem right that the CPS has experienced a 28.3% cut to its budget, which is estimated to be around £200 million per annum, since 2010? Does it seem right that the most vulnerable participants in the criminal justice system—the victims and the witnesses—are being detrimentally affected because of these cuts?
There is a legal and a moral obligation on the CPS to serve the needs of every single victim. I am proud that my party has been at the forefront of improving the position of victims in the criminal justice system by establishing a victims’ taskforce. The taskforce comprises leading criminal justice specialists and campaigners, who lead work on establishing a “victims’ law” and who advise on further improvements to the way that victims and witnesses are treated by the criminal justice system.
It does not take a rocket scientist to know that delays in case progression put increased pressure and strain on victims and witnesses, so that many of them face prolonged periods of time in limbo, not knowing where cases stand and unable to move on with their lives.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the cuts in the CPS not only lead to problems in progressing cases and in arming prosecutors with the correct information in court, but increase the number of diversions from court, which obviously also has a negative impact on victims and witnesses?
Teresa Pearce
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and I totally agree. Court cases are a very stressful time for people and delays just make matters more stressful.
I will say a few words about the current experiences of witnesses at criminal proceedings, although I anticipate that others may also mention it. There is a widening gulf between the ideal world of a system that should support victims and witnesses, and the real-world experience of a system that so frequently fails them.
An editorial in The Independent last year said that
“procedures are designed with little consideration of the needs of the victims and witnesses in whose interests they are supposedly working.”
Anyone who has ever attended court—I have, as a witness in a criminal case—knows how difficult it is to understand court scheduling. Someone might mentally prepare all day for an appearance that does not happen or that is adjourned till another time, and decisions are rarely explained or laid out.
Sometimes the situation is even more difficult. In my case, I was witness to a very violent crime outside my house. It was arranged that I would be able to give evidence behind a screen, so that I could not be identified. However, when I got to court, I was put in the waiting room with the family of the accused, which meant the whole experience was absolutely terrifying for me.
If courts were private businesses, witnesses would be the “customers” of court proceedings and they would be well within their rights to complain about the service they receive. The Ministry of Justice agrees with that view. It has admitted:
“For victims and witnesses, the criminal justice system can be baffling and frustrating, and their experience all too often falls below the standards they might expect from a modern public service”.
Staff cuts have hit hard. Between 2010 and 2013, the number of witness care managers, whose job is to aid victims and witnesses, fell by 43%. The services that witness care managers provide are little known to the public, especially when compared with those provided by the police and the CPS, and given the current rate of cutting, there is genuine concern about whether they will even exist in future.
My constituency is partly within the London Borough of Bexley, and the magistrates court observers panel operates in Bexley. It has suggested that if the public were more aware of witness care managers, that would encourage more victims to come forward and report crimes, especially in cases of domestic violence, hate crime and sexual assault, because awareness of such managers might give them the confidence they need to pursue a complaint.
The magistrates court observers panel has expressed its concerns, particularly about domestic violence cases and the fact that a high number of complainants
“withdraw their statements or fail to attend the trial”.
Its most recent report states that in more than 65% of the trials that it had examined in which the CPS offered no evidence, it was because the complainant or witness had withdrawn or failed to attend court.
I understand that that lesson has been learned, and that a separate team has now been set up to deal with domestic violence cases, which is an intelligent move. I hope that it will allow skilled professionals to prepare cases in a thoughtful way and give the support that is required to move matters forward.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. I certainly agree with her that we need to put the victims of crime at the centre of the criminal justice system and its work.
I have worked at Bexley magistrates court, to which the hon. Lady referred. Does she welcome the work of the witness support service there, which has assisted, over many years now, both prosecution and defence witnesses when they attend court? And does she also—
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that interventions are usually brief and of a singular nature.
Teresa Pearce
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Yes, I welcome the work of the witness support service at Bexley magistrates court; it does a fantastic job. Often, when people consider coming forward as a witness or to report a crime, they are not aware that such support exists and we must do more to publicise it, because the witness support service does a very important job.
Being a witness in a criminal proceeding is hard enough. The pressures of enduring cross-examination, bewigged barristers and the alien environment of a sterile courtroom are all enough to make a witness feel massively intimidated. However, sometimes getting even basic support from a witness care manager can make the difference between having a difficult time and enduring an absolutely impossible ordeal.
In the light of the reduction of nearly 43% in witness care manager numbers, what will the Minister do to safeguard the right of every witness to receive support? If witnesses continue to be unsupported, they are less likely to come forward in the first place. They are also less likely to turn up at court, less likely to give good evidence when they are cross-examined, and less likely to look back on the experience as being anything other than demoralising.
The costs of rescheduling hearings, postponing trials and abandoning prosecutions midway through will surely outweigh any savings made through cuts. This is an area where we could actually “spend to save”, because cutting the number of witness care managers is a false economy of the worst kind.
I will say just a few words about a special category of crime that the CPS prosecutes—historical sexual abuse cases. Perhaps there are few more compelling examples of victims who need support than the victims in such cases. If we fail them, we really must look again at the logic of cutting the CPS budget.
Historical sexual abuse is a crime that, regrettably, is coming to define our times. It represents a moral stain on society’s character. The late Lord Bingham, a former senior Law Lord, was right to hold up what he called “Equality before the law” as a “cornerstone of our society”. Too often, victims of crimes that took place sometimes decades ago have felt they have been treated unequally and ignored by our society and our criminal justice system. We legislators cannot undo the terrible things that victims have had to endure, but we can strive for justice for them. We can try hard to address their concerns and their years of not being listened to—and the way we do this is by properly funding the CPS in these cases.
The Director of Public Prosecutions has requested that the Chancellor provide £50 million-worth of funding to effectively prosecute cases of historical sexual abuse. Will the Minister commit to doing everything possible to provide the funding requested for these cases and make sure that the victims are fully taken care of while undergoing such an ordeal?
It is clear that the CPS is a demand-led service and cannot function appropriately if it is not adequately resourced. The opposing forces of increasing crime and decreasing funding mean that the system is struggling to cope, and the rise in the number of terrorist suspects being investigated is a further burden on the service. Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has been forced to consider doubling the number of prosecutors to cope with the magnitude of the challenge of complex, terrorist-related cases and suspects. The complex nature of these offences means that much more time and resources have to be put into preparing them.
It is imperative that we reflect on what the CPS does well and what it is failing to do as a result of these cuts. We must ask ourselves what we can possibly expect of the service, in rising to increasing challenges, during a time of austerity and budget cuts of 28%.
It would be wrong to blame the CPS solely. Poor casework preparation and delays are not always its fault, but with staff cuts and growing workloads, administrative errors are more likely and, increasingly, cases are being dropped because of unnecessary mistakes. The CPS is trying its best to modernise: it is pursuing digital working, moving from a paper-based system to a digital one. If that is successful, it stands to save taxpayers money in the future. However, there have been huge criticisms of that service and it must be reviewed to ensure that it really is providing value for money, because expensive mistakes must be avoided.
We, as a society, depend on the CPS to bring to justice those who cannot or will not observe the laws that we make for ourselves. Will the Minister undertake to look again at where the CPS cuts are falling, not least to make sure that savings are not outweighed by money lost because of delays and lack of witness support?
Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) for securing this debate, which certainly needed to be had.
My involvement with the Crown Prosecution Service in recent years has mainly focused on the failure to prosecute child sex abusers. We know that in the 1960s, 70s and 80s people like Cyril Smith and Victor Montagu were allowed to continue to abuse children because the CPS was unable or unwilling to bring cases against them, even when it had the evidence. It is a legacy that should shame the CPS and the entire justice system, but these failures are not just a thing of the past. The case of Lord Janner is an interesting case study of the workings of the modern day CPS and its attitude towards alleged child abusers. We know that the CPS failed to press for prosecution of Lord Janner in 1991, 2002 and 2006, and the current Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, has admitted that he should have been prosecuted. Now we hear that he cannot face justice because he is too ill.
Before discussing the case in detail, I want to make the point that we cannot underestimate the effect that failed prosecutions have on the survivors of abuse. There are many people—
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. I caution the hon. Gentleman against discussing the case of Lord Janner in detail, rather than discussing the process of the Crown Prosecution Service. I am sure that he will stay completely in order, but I am just careful to ensure that he discusses the Crown Prosecution Service and its relationship to the case, rather than the case against Lord Janner itself. That is on advice from the Clerks.
Simon Danczuk
I understand that, Mrs Main. Although there is no case against Lord Janner—
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
No, it is not sub judice. There is no case against Lord Janner, but it is a long-established practice of the House not to criticise Members of the other House except on a substantive motion. I will let the hon. Gentleman carry on and, if he does not mind, I will jump in if I think he is going off piste, so to speak.
Simon Danczuk
Thank you, Mrs Main. I always appreciate your guidance in these matters.
The CPS’s failure to prosecute cases can have a real impact and can be extremely damaging. Research shows that child sexual abuse victims die on average 20 years early: they may commit suicide, become alcoholic or drug dependent, or just struggle to cope with life because of what has been done to them by their abusers. We know that abuse victims die in their 30s, 40s or 50s, while their abusers live into their 70s or 80s. Such a failing by the CPS also reduces the public’s faith in the justice system. It discourages people from reporting child sexual abuse because they think the CPS will say that the victims are unreliable; that it is not in the public interest; or, as in the case of Lord Janner, that the alleged perpetrator is too ill.
Most importantly, failure by the CPS emboldens the perpetrators of child abuse. When the CPS failed to prosecute Cyril Smith in the 1960s, he went on to abuse for decades; and when the CPS failed to prosecute the Rochdale grooming gang in the early 2000s, it carried on raping Girl A for years afterwards. Poor white working class boys were considered unreliable witnesses in the 1960s in relation to Cyril Smith. Fast forward and poor white working class girls were considered unreliable witnesses in the 2000s.
Returning to the case of Lord Janner, the shocking thing is that the CPS admits that the witnesses are not unreliable. It admits that Janner should face prosecution, but refuses to bring a case. I know the police are furious about this, and rightly so. Anyone who has heard the accusations would be similarly outraged. I have met Leicestershire police and discussed the allegations in some detail: children being violated, raped and tortured, some in the very building in which we now sit. The official charges are: 14 indecent assaults on a male under 16 between 1969 and 1988; two indecent assaults between ’84 and ’88; four counts of buggery of a male under 16 between ’72 and ’87; and two counts of buggery between 1977 and 1988. My office has spoken to a number of the alleged victims and heard their stories. I cannot overstate the effect that this abuse has had on their lives.
To sum up, I want to make the following points about the case. If Lord Janner really is too ill to face prosecution, why cannot the courts establish this with a fitness-to-plead process? This would clear up doubts that still linger. For example, why was he still visiting Parliament on official visits after he was declared unfit to face justice? Why is he able to contribute to the law-making process in the House of Lords, but unable to face the law himself? If it is found that he is genuinely too ill to stand trial, why not conduct a trial of the facts? This would allow the victims to tell their stories and gain some sense of justice. The DPP has said that a trial of the facts would not be in the public interest. Personally, I fail to see how the knowledge that a peer of the realm is a serial child abuser is not in the public interest.
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. I caution the hon. Gentleman about alleging anything against Lord Janner and making assertions about his guilt or innocence.
Simon Danczuk
Thank you, Mrs Main. I appreciate that.
The Director of Public Prosecutions has said that Lord Janner will not offend again. But the failure to prosecute Lord Janner offends every principle of justice. He may not abuse again, but the legacy of the abuse continues. His victims need the truth and they need to be heard.
Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing the debate.
Since Neath magistrates court closed last year, my constituents have had to travel to Swansea, which is more than 20 miles away, denying them access to local justice in their own community and putting an added strain on the Crown Prosecution Service. Constituents and local solicitors have told me that the closure of the local court has had a negative impact locally. Those on low incomes might have to choose between buying everyday necessities and travelling to court, causing them hardship at an already stressful time. The closure has caused great inconvenience to those in Neath who have to attend court as the victims of what might be spurious allegations or charges, or attend to find their case adjourned.
The cuts in legal aid and the two-tier criminal justice contract have left constituents without legal aid representation. When residents of Neath are arrested, they are taken to Bridewell custody suite in Bridgend, which is more than 20 miles away, and they have no way of getting home when they are released. Constituents and local solicitors have told me that policing has declined in Neath since the court’s closure. The reorganisation of courts has therefore not worked for Neath. Today’s further announcement by the Justice Secretary of more reorganisation is alarming, and I urge the Government to consider the proposals very carefully.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing this important debate.
It is more than 10 years since I first picked up files from the Crown Prosecution Service, when I was a young pupil barrister, to prosecute what was known as the magistrates list. Much has changed at the CPS since then—I used to handwrite the results of every single case on the outside of each white file. Technology has brought us an online system, and the criminal procedure rules have also streamlined the system.
However, streamlining and management changes cannot take human judgment out of the system. In reality, decisions in the Crown Prosecution Service have to be taken by individual lawyers. Of course, I welcome the role of CPS Direct at a very early stage and at the charging stage, although I gently suggest to the Solicitor General that there could be a little more clarity throughout the system about when police have to take advice from CPS Direct, particularly in cases where there is a clear lack of evidence, which would render such a step unnecessary.
The availability of lawyers, and no excessive delays at that early stage, are crucial to CPS Direct’s working well as part of the system. The charging decision itself is, of course, a matter of judgment. The Solicitor General, having practised criminal law for so many years in Cardiff, will be only too aware of the two-stage test. The evidential test of a realistic prospect of conviction, and the public interest test, are judgments that human beings have to exercise. Having fewer people exercising that judgment will mean that those left have to work longer hours, which will inevitably lead to errors becoming more commonplace. That will show in the Crown Prosecution Service performance statistics.
In addition, it is critical that Crown Prosecution Service lawyers have the time and space to prepare trials properly. For example, watching CCTV, watching a DVD or listening to audio evidence take time, and that time has to be built into the system. If it is not, there will simply be delays further down the line. The position of complainants and witnesses is critical, as is transparency in the Crown Prosecution Service’s work.
I welcome what the Director of Public Prosecutions has said about the recent consultation on greater support for witnesses in court, which I hope will lead to a strong CPS policy on pre-trial assistance. There is no conflict, in my view, between robust cross-examination by a solicitor or barrister at court and ensuring that witnesses and complainants are fully supported and familiar with the environment that they are entering. I praise the work of Victim Support and the victims’ right to review scheme, in particular in situations where there has been a decision not to charge, to discontinue or withdraw in the case of the magistrates, to offer no evidence or to leave charges on file.
We do not serve victims, complainants or witnesses well if the Crown Prosecution Service is inefficient, under-resourced and understaffed. That will have a knock-on effect throughout the criminal justice system. Delays at court, poorly prepared trials, sub-optimal charging decisions and problems in cases at a late stage all fail witnesses and victims, as well as undermining public confidence in the criminal justice system as a whole. I urge the Government not to wield the axe indiscriminately on the Crown Prosecution Service budget without carefully considering the knock-on effects and the overall corrosive effect on the system.
Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I am pleased to be able to make a short contribution to this debate. Before being elected to the House, I was a solicitor in private practice for some 20 years, and I spent many happy hours in courtrooms defending clients. In Scotland, we have always had an independent prosecution system, unlike in England. The hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) made some powerful points about child abuse, but my understanding is that the CPS came into being only in 1984, so some of the earlier decisions were police, rather than CPS decisions. It may be a bit unfair to blame the CPS for all the problems. However, the collapse of some recent high-profile trials has undoubtedly done nothing for the CPS, leading to some of the criticisms against it.
I was interested in what the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) said about people appearing in court. As a solicitor, I often cross-examined witnesses, but I, too, was once a witness in a case and found it a terrifying experience. After that, I took a much more sympathetic attitude to witnesses. It is difficult for a witness to go to court, even in a relatively simply case. Even I, who was used to the court system, found it difficult. I spent years saying to people, “Well, are you sure that’s what happened six months ago?” but when I was asked it, I realised how difficult it is to remember such things. That is an argument for getting cases to court more quickly.
Today is an interesting day for the hon. Lady to have the debate. In the Tea Room at lunchtime, I happened to read The Independent and an article headlined “Crusading Gove slams justice for the wealthy”, which was about the Justice Secretary. He is speaking today about the court system, promising
“rapid and radical reform to criminal justice through the greater use of technology, to accelerate prosecutions and make it less traumatic for witnesses to appear in court.”
He also called the existing system “creaking” and outdated, which is interesting, because that chimes with what the hon. Lady was saying. How things happen in an era of cuts to the CPS will be an interesting balance. I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say.
Whatever the system, one of the biggest problems in dealing with cases is that people do not turn up in court. I often had the experience of turning up in court, ready to do a case, only to find that the accused or a witness had not turned up, and the whole thing collapsed. That is also difficult for the witnesses who turn up, having screwed up their courage to come along and do this, only to find that they are sent away and told to come back at some indeterminate time in the future. In Scotland, we have tried various things such as intermediate diets, or pleading diets, to avoid that happening, but it still happens in some cases—there is always a problem with human nature in such things.
I am not sure how Victim Support works in England, but certainly in the Scottish courts Victim Support Scotland does excellent work in dealing with the victims of crime who come to court, and often also with the witnesses giving evidence. Its role should not go unnoticed.
There are differences between the English and Scottish systems. We have always had an independent system, through procurators fiscal and advocates depute. They have always been independent of the police and Government, and make decisions on whether to prosecute cases and on their conduct, although for obvious reasons in both systems the police are the primary investigatory body.
One crucial difference between the two systems is the role of barristers, or advocates as we say in Scotland. Under the Scottish system, all procurators fiscal and advocates depute are full-time prosecutors, whereas my understanding of how the CPS works is that it is almost like a client and it engages barristers for particular cases; those barristers might be prosecuting one week and defending the next. That seems slightly odd to us, because, as I say, our prosecutors are full-time prosecutors—that is what they do. I am sure that barristers can compartmentalise their day-to-day cases, and many will do so, very well, but it seems a curious way to go about things.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that that is the special thing about the criminal Bar—its independence? A barrister may well be prosecuting one day and defending the next. That allows for impartiality.
Mike Weir
I am not questioning the impartiality, but it seems curious. In our system, people can go from being an advocate depute to being a defending solicitor, but they would leave the Crown Office to do that—they would not do it at the same time. In our system they build up expertise in prosecution. It is a matter of personal opinion. I know that the hon. Gentleman is a long-time practitioner and I am sure that he has a different view; I am simply putting forward my view.
The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead also mentioned cuts to the service. Cuts are a concern in many areas. In Scotland, again, the system is slightly different: the Lord Advocate, who heads the Crown Office, negotiates his own funding deal directly with the Deputy First Minister, who also happens to be the Finance Minister, separate from the wider Budget. Although it is true that the Scottish system’s budget over the past few years has been largely flat in cash terms, which is a reduction in real terms, this year there has been a real-terms increase for the Crown Office. That increase was made in recognition of some of the problems in the court system.
The hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees) made good points about access to justice locally. We have struggled with that issue in many areas of Scotland. Rationalisation and new technology and services are relevant here. When I was practising there were two sheriff courts—the equivalent of English magistrates courts—in my constituency. One has now been closed down and its services transferred to the other. However, there has been a lot more investment in the second court, in particular, in video technology; witnesses can give video evidence and the court has a facility for children to give evidence over video link. I am sure that much of that also happens in English courts, but it needs investment. That was the interesting thing about what the Justice Secretary said today, because greater use of technology means investment, and I question how much he will be able to do when cuts are being made.
The hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) gave a good exposition of his own experience in the prosecution service. I do not have that experience, but I understand what he was saying.
The CPS is a good service. The principle of an independent prosecution service is important. It is unfortunate that in some ways the CPS has got a bad reputation in recent years because of some high-profile cases that have not gone well at trial or have collapsed early. However, as was rightly said at the outset, any justice system must be about making sure that everyone has a fair trial and that witnesses are dealt with properly at trial. That needs investment, and we make cuts to such systems at our peril.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing this important debate. I immediately declare an interest, as I was the Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service from 2008 to 2013. The current DPP was head of CPS London as a member of my staff and is known to me.
The CPS is a demand-led organisation that has taken significant cuts in recent years. As a result, it has significantly fewer staff and less resilience, and faces probably a greater challenge now than it has for many years. I pay tribute to the staff who work in that environment and deliver the best they can in the circumstances.
One of the unknowns for a demand-led organisation such as the CPS is the caseload. In the years that I was DPP, the number of cases coming into the service from the police undoubtedly reduced, which significantly softened the impact of some of the cuts. The difficulty as I see it, and the risk that the CPS was running when I was DPP, is that the reason for the reduction was never properly understood—no one could explain why the numbers were going down and, equally, no one could properly predict when they would twist and go up. I note the recent reports of increased numbers of sexual abuse cases coming into the CPS; those cases are highly resource intensive.
The cuts to the CPS are not dissimilar to the cuts to other parts of the criminal and civil justice systems. As the Solicitor General will know, a series of very critical reports on the cuts to the civil side, from this House and elsewhere, have indicated that the strategy for the past five years has been to cut first and look at the evidence and the impact later, rather than the other way round. That is a very serious criticism of any strategy. One of my concerns has been whether over the past five years there has truly been a criminal justice strategy that goes beyond simply taking the money out and focuses on the services to be delivered.
Against that background, and recognising what Sir Brian Leveson said in his recent report on the efficiency of the courts, namely, that there is an irreducible core minimum of funding below which we cannot deliver services, will the Solicitor General tell us what arrangements are currently in place to ensure that the Government have a line of sight on the risks being run by reducing resources for the CPS? Have there been evidence-based assessments of the impact of the reduced resources? If so, will some or all of those impact assessments be published? If, as the Lord Chancellor indicated this morning, the rights of victims will be taken more seriously in future, are there currently plans to increase resources for the CPS so that it can deal more effectively with victims?
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
I welcome my hon. and learned Friend to the House—his expertise is widely welcomed here—and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) for securing this debate. My hon. and learned Friend mentioned the CPS staff; does he agree that it is totally unacceptable that they have to work weekends, unpaid, with an increasing workload?
Keir Starmer
There is of course concern about the workload of CPS staff. One effect of the reduction in resources is that staff have to work much harder in different circumstances and at different times. That is part of the risk when the resource of any organisation is reduced. It does not mean that one must always return to the status quo and that there cannot be change. However, it does highlight my point that there needs to be a constant risk assessment when resources are reduced in the way they have been.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
I should declare an interest as somebody who has been a practising barrister—in fact, I was probably instructed by the hon. and learned Gentleman. Does he agree that culture is sometimes as important as cost when helping victims and witnesses? There has been an extraordinary change—this was the case even during his tenure as DPP—in the way victims and witnesses are treated. That ranges from victim impact statements, to the screens provided for under the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, to getting counsel to meet witnesses before they give evidence, which is critical to giving them a good court experience.
Keir Starmer
I accept that, and I have always said that, if we are to provide properly for victims, we need not only resource but a culture change.
I share the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) raised about Cyril Smith and other old cases. For the record, Cyril Smith was not, of course, considered by the CPS, because it was not in existence at the time. However, the case was considered by the DPP, and I have gone on record to express my concern about the decisions that were made.
This is about making a cultural change. When I was DPP, I was concerned that there was a cultural inhibition against prosecuting some of the sexual grooming cases, and that was most acute in the Rochdale cases, but a new approach was heralded to prosecuting those cases. I accept, therefore, that, when it comes to victims, the issue is not just resource but a culture change. The culture is changing, but it needs to be pressed harder, and it needs to be pressed in other parts of the criminal justice system, although there has been good work. However, if we are to take victims more seriously, that will require more resource, and it will require us to be clear about the risks that will be taken if further money is taken out of the criminal justice system.
Let me finish by observing that the decision before the DPP on the Janner case was not an easy one; it was a stark and difficult choice between two unattractive approaches. The DPP has followed the victim right to review policy and has put the decision out for review. We should respect the independence that she has brought to the decision making and the fact that she has had the courage to put the decision out for review. To that extent, we should inhibit our comments on the case.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I suspect that I will be rudely interrupted at any moment, because we are expecting a Division on the Floor of the House. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing this important debate.
The CPS is going through profound changes, and it is right that we carefully consider the consequences of budget cuts and stretched resources in this demand-led service. The CPS plays a vital role in the criminal justice system. It has been well led in recent years, not least by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and, recently, by the current DPP, Alison Saunders. I have met her on a number of occasions to discuss the challenges that the service faces, and she is doing an excellent job in an extremely difficult situation.
Since 2010, we have seen cuts to the CPS budget of more than 28%, which has led to office closures and reductions in staff—the figures I have show that it has lost 571 prosecutors and 500 administrative staff. Those numbers are absolutely massive, given the previous size of the CPS. The cuts in resources are unprecedented, and they have left a gaping hole in the organisation.
Savage cuts are being made against a backdrop of historical sexual abuse cases, increases in reported child abuse and complex cases involving terrorist offences. The CPS must be afforded the flexibility to respond to complex cases when the need arises. In the last couple of years, we have seen an unprecedented and unexpected rise in the number of historical sexual abuse cases and the strain that the CPS has been put under as a consequence.
In recent weeks and months, the DPP has been on bended knee, pleading with the Chancellor, through the Attorney General, for £50 million of emergency funding so that the CPS can properly prosecute the large number of historical sexual abuse cases. I am afraid that the Chancellor is yet to award that money, and he will no doubt expect the CPS to shoulder more cuts in the forthcoming Budget. In my respectful view, that is a huge mistake. If the Chancellor and the Government decide to continue down this path, the problems in the CPS are bound to get worse.
We all agree that the criminal justice system, including the CPS, needs some reform to be fit for purpose in the 21st century. It needs to meet the complexities and challenges of modern demands. However, simply slashing the budget and hoping for the best is wrong and dangerous.
Just today, we saw the Justice Secretary come to the sudden realisation that the justice system is in disarray. He is right that victims and witnesses are adversely affected by inefficiencies and bureaucracy in the criminal justice system. The Opposition welcome his warm words, but we need to see the colour of the Chancellor’s money. Victims and witnesses are often an afterthought, and we need to see them front and centre of any reforms to the CPS and the criminal justice system.
The Lord Chancellor is right to point out that there are two nations in the justice system, although he should not be surprised—it was his Government, I am afraid, who introduced savage cuts without thinking them through. Let me say, before I am intervened on by Conservative Members, that it is true that any party coming into power in 2010 would have made cuts, but my colleagues and I would have thought very carefully about where the axe should fall. The two previous Lord Chancellors did not think their cuts through very well at all.
The move towards the CPS Direct model is taking CPS prosecutors away from local offices and police stations, which has probably led to a slowdown in charging decisions. The timeliness of such decisions has become a real issue, and there have been reports of police officers waiting to get through to CPS Direct for hours on end. Every area visited in the recent joint inspection of charging decisions had serious concerns about the mechanisms used. Worryingly, the report found serious failings in the timeliness of charging decisions, with two thirds of the calls made to CPS Direct not answered within its target of three minutes. Once officers actually make it through to a prosecutor, they are taken through a long process, which often takes more than an hour.
Cuts to the CPS have not been cost-effective, as Her Majesty’s former chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service, Michael Fuller, concluded in the report he published on 15 March. The vast reductions in the workforce have meant that the CPS is unable to deliver value-for-money advocacy and the service has made poor progress in most areas.
Alex Chalk
Is it right to say that by 2013 the Crown Prosecution Service, not least because of the intervention by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), was in a better state than it was in 2008, when he took over, and certainly than it was in 2010? It is simply crude to suggest that it has all got worse since 2010. That is simply not the case.
Karl Turner
I am bound to disagree. I am sure that vast improvements were made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras when he was at the helm of the CPS. I remember cross-examining him when I was serving on the Select Committee on Justice, and he made very well the points that the service—[Interruption.] The Solicitor General says from a sedentary position that he was there, too. I remember him being there. It is right to say that improvements were made, but the reality is this. When the Crown Prosecution Service is receiving a 28% cut without the entire criminal justice system having been reviewed, problems will materialise, and when it comes to victims of serious crime, such as historical sexual offences, we need to—
Karl Turner
Before the Division, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who unfortunately has not yet made it back, said that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras improved the CPS in his time as Director of Public Prosecutions. I entirely agree, but the vast reductions in its workforce mean that the CPS has been unable to deliver value-for-money advocacy. Those are not my words; users of the service—victims and witnesses—are telling us that there is a definite problem. That point was made by Her Majesty’s chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service. There have been reports of CPS advocates turning up for trial without being properly prepared—in some cases not having read the case at all—and not having sufficient evidence, and even of witnesses not being warned to attend court. Those advocates are not necessarily CPS in-house solicitors and barristers; it is the independent Bar, too.
Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary recently reported that there is a postcode lottery, which is troubling. In some areas of the country, prosecutors are proceeding with only a third of cases, whereas in other areas, such as my area of Humberside, the figure is closer to nine out of 10 cases—88%. Victims are being failed by a system that is obviously not coping. People should not be denied justice because they report an alleged offence in one area rather than another. Confidence in the criminal justice system is essential, but I am afraid that the system is not working. Victims must be able to come forward and report crimes with confidence that the justice system will work for them. In London, the review of Dame Elish Angiolini, QC into investigations and prosecutions of rape found the criminal justice system to have serious deficiencies in dealing with the number of rape allegations. Since 2005, there has been a 68% rise in recorded sexual offences but only a 17% increase in charges. Last week’s report by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children shows a dramatic 39% rise in the number of reported cases of child abuse. Very worryingly, there is a distinct increase in terrorist-related prosecutions, with the DPP projecting that the number could top a frightening 600 this year alone. The Solicitor General will appreciate from his pre-eminent career at the criminal Bar, and from sitting as a recorder of the Crown court, that such cases are often unresolved before trial, which means that more time and resources are needed to prepare the cases, with the effect that other cases fall by the wayside.
Alongside cuts to advocates and administrators, and office closures, there has been a massive cull in the number of witness care officers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead said. Almost half of those employed to ensure that victims and witnesses are dealt with appropriately have gone—their jobs have been axed. With increased pressure on resources, there are concerns about the timeliness of case progression. There has been an increase in the number of cases dropped by the CPS, leaving many victims and witnesses in despair and feeling let down.
The Government need to decide what their vision for the criminal justice system is and what they want a 21st-century CPS to do. Their slash-and-burn approach to the CPS is putting justice at risk. Although the CPS is a demand-led organisation that must respond according to the circumstances in which it finds itself, the Government have removed vital resources and expertise. What goal are they trying to achieve? If it is cuts for the sake of cuts, without a proper review of the entire system, including legal aid—criminal solicitors, of course, also provide a vital service within the criminal justice system—I fear that the CPS is heading for further and more major difficulties.
We have heard in this debate that the CPS is struggling to cope with increased demand, and that prosecutors, whether in-house or at the independent Bar, are expected to achieve the unachievable. The combination of massive budget cuts and large increases in complex cases has created the perfect storm in which cases are not being dealt with effectively. I invite the Attorney General, through the Solicitor General, to set out what steps his office will take to remedy this worrying problem. Can the Solicitor General say whether the Chancellor will provide the £50 million requested by the Director of Public Prosecutions? What assessment have the Law Officers done of the impact on the CPS? What inquiries, investigations or even discussions have the Solicitor General and the Attorney General had with the DPP about whether the service is coping? I think that it is not coping at all well; as I said earlier, that is the evidence of service users.
As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras said, there must be a strategy beyond just taking the money out. It seems to me that there is no strategy, just cuts, and regrettably, the axe is falling on victims and witnesses.
The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing this debate. I am never clear when there is a Division whether we are given injury time in the form of an extra 15 minutes. If so, be warned that I might have to use it all, because I want to ensure that I refer to the excellent contributions made by Members from all parties.
It is perhaps right of us—it is certainly right of me, as one of Her Majesty’s Law Officers—to remind the House why the Crown Prosecution Service was set up 30 years ago: to deliver justice for the public through the independent prosecution of crime across England and Wales. I was interested in the comments of the hon. Member for Angus (Mike Weir) about the question of independence, which is at the heart of how the criminal justice service in England and Wales operates. There are parallels between the work of employed prosecutors in Scotland and those employed by the CPS in England: while prosecutors remain in the employ of the service, conflicts should not and cannot arise, but where we have an independent referral service, such as the Bar of England and Wales, the independence and objectivity that it can bring to often difficult and sensitive cases is without parallel in the western world.
We should celebrate that, as well as the work of Crown prosecutors the length and breadth of England and Wales, and all the support staff who work so hard in offices and courts throughout the country. I speak with 20 years’ experience as a prosecutor who has worked closely with the CPS, particularly in Wales, dealing with a wide range of serious crime. I not only cherish that experience, I find it incredibly useful in my work as a Law Officer.
I am delighted to welcome not just to this debate but to this House new Members with similar experience of the criminal justice system. We have two in the room today—my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), to whose excellent speech I will return—but it would be wrong of me not to refer as well to the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), who went down a more civil path in his career at the Bar but reminded us of his early days, an experience that I think several of us have shared.
The hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees), of course, is also a qualified member of the Bar, which should be put on record. I am grateful to her for her contribution, albeit on an issue that is perhaps more within the purview of the Ministry of Justice. The delivery of justice is achieved by working with other agencies, and her contribution brought that into perspective. Although the CPS is a large cog in the system, it is but one part of that system; it must work with the police and court system to ensure that criminal cases are brought not only to court but to a conclusion.
The test that is applied is one that loads of us who are close to the service can probably recite in our sleep, but it is none the less important to remind ourselves of it. It is the two limb test. First, is there a realistic prospect of a conviction? Secondly, is it in the public interest to bring the prosecution? I hope that answers somewhat the criticism made by the hon. Member for Angus about the bringing of cases by the CPS that have not ended in a successful conviction and that have, in his words, brought into question the reputation of the service. With respect to him, if the CPS were to adopt a test involving risk of acquittal, no cases would ever be brought, because there will always be a risk of acquittal in taking a case to court. That should not deter Crown prosecutors from doing their job.
Mike Weir
I agree entirely. I was merely making the point that there have been some high-profile cases in which convictions were not secured, and perhaps some in which the evidence was shaky at best. That has reflected on the CPS in the public mind. It is not a criticism of the CPS; I understand that not all cases are successful, and not all cases should be.
The Solicitor General
I am sorry to disagree with the hon. Gentleman, but therein lies the problem. If we as politicians and commentators start making such value judgments, we undermine confidence in the independence of the prosecutorial system. We must trust an impartial and objective application of the threshold test. Any questioning of that causes me and many others great concern about the integrity of our prosecutorial system.
Keir Starmer
Does the Solicitor General agree that, when a case is charged and the judge decides that there is a case to answer, that case is properly brought, even if there is an acquittal? It is important to our criminal justice system that we adhere to that. The mere fact that a case, high-profile or otherwise, does not end in a conviction is not a test of whether the charging decision was right or wrong. A better test is whether the judge left it to the jury. If that is so, it normally means that the case should have been brought.
The Solicitor General
I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman. He presages the point that I was going to make about sufficiency, and about the checks and balances throughout the court process. Arguments can be made about the sufficiency of the evidence at the beginning of a case, at the end of the prosecution case, and, indeed, in some rare circumstances whereby judges withdraw cases from juries—it does not often happen—at the end of defence cases, but the power remains.
In making such criticisms, we are also in danger of calling into question the jury process and indeed the whole system, which is so integral to the rule of law in this country. I was asked—rhetorically, perhaps, but I will give an answer—what strategy this Government have. It is a criminal justice system that upholds the rule of law, enhances public confidence in the system and ensures that there is a consistent approach to bringing cases and sentencing, so that the public feel confident and are protected by due process within the system. That is nothing new—it has been with us for generations—but this Government believe in it as passionately as previous Governments, of whatever colour.
I want to deal with each contribution in turn, but particularly with the opening speech by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead and her experience of giving evidence in a trial. It does not sound to me as though best practice was followed in her case. I am glad she has brought it to the attention of the House, because those with responsibility for the administration of justice, not only in the magistrates court in Bexley but elsewhere, will do well to remember that the housing of witnesses for the prosecution with either defendants or their families is wholly inappropriate and leads to all sorts of complications that I need not recite here.
[Nadine Dorries in the Chair]
The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead asked specific questions about witness care officers. I accept that the numbers have been reduced in line with other staff reductions, but, importantly, those reductions have been accompanied by reforms to better target our limited resources to help witnesses who are intimidated or vulnerable, and those who are in greatest need. Even more is being done with regard to the change of culture to which my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham referred. For example, the Government are now improving access to information for victims through the new online and telephone-based victim information service that was launched in March. The increasing commissioning of victims’ services through local police and crime commissioners will create a more responsive service—a more localised service—that I do not believe will create a postcode lottery, but will emphasise best practice from which other areas can learn. Although I accept there have been reductions in expenditure, the change in culture that everybody in the system—counsel, solicitors, and lawyers in their role in explaining matters and reassuring and supporting witnesses and victims—has experienced continues to grow.
Alex Chalk
On precisely that point, if counsel apply the victims’ charter and explain the situation to witnesses and victims as they come to court, it can have an extraordinary impact on how they end up viewing the criminal justice system, and it does not cost a penny.
The Solicitor General
Very much so. A lot of us who pioneered such work in the ’90s now find that a lot of what we said and believed then is becoming standard practice, and that is absolutely right. We have heard reference to the victims’ right to review, and, as was made clear in an intervention on the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk), there is an ongoing process in relation to a particular case that means that it would be inappropriate for me to comment on it. However, I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and I will come back to his point about historical child sexual exploitation in a moment.
Importantly, the new victims’ right to review scheme that was established last year gives victims a further opportunity to ask the Crown Prosecution Service, with the help of independent advice, to consider again the merits of particular decisions. So far, between June 2013 and the end of September last year, 263 decisions have been overturned by the new system. It is a small proportion of the number of Crown Prosecution decisions that are made, but it is an extra safety valve that goes a long way, as I said in relation to our strategy, to enhance public confidence in the criminal justice system.
I have referred en passant to the hon. Member for Rochdale, who talked with his usual power about child sexual exploitation. It is a national emergency. I entirely agree with him, and so do the Government. The way in which complainants were dealt with historically in towns such as Rotherham and the town that he represents was wrong. There was far too much emphasis on the reliability of the individual witness, who was often very young and vulnerable, rather than an overall view of the merits of the case. That is rightly acknowledged to have been an incorrect approach. The thrust of the work being carried out by the Crown Prosecution Service now very much reflects the fact that lessons have been learnt, and there are a number of marked successes when it comes to convictions in such cases. A number of so-called celebrities have rightly been brought to justice, and young victims in larger conspiracy-based cases involving many young and vulnerable complainants have now had their voices heard, as the hon. Gentleman says, and can now see that some justice has been brought in order to help them get on with lives that have been torn asunder by the abuse that they suffered.
The hon. Member for Torfaen rightly talked about pressure and efficiency and how decisions are to be made where there is a reduction in the number of lawyers. The way to measure that is by looking at some of the efficiency measurements that the CPS has conducted. The percentage of guilty pleas at first hearing is a good measurement, because that clearly demonstrates that there has been an excellent level of pre-trial and pre-plea preparation in terms of case management, which means that the evidence has been presented clearly and that those advising defendants can confidently tender advice in a proper way. The percentage of guilty pleas at first hearing has increased from 63.4% in 2010-11 to 70.6% in the last financial year. That is a significant increase.
Another vital piece of information relates to the percentage of magistrates court proceedings that are dropped at a third or even fourth or fifth hearing. That percentage has fallen from 44.2% to 34.1%. In the Crown court, cracked and ineffective trials owing to prosecution failure have fallen from 18.2% to 13.5%. That shows that those who are responsible for decision making and case preparation in the CPS are rising to the challenge and yielding significant results. I pay tribute to chief Crown prosecutors in regions such as the west midlands and the south-west for understanding the importance of the management of the huge volume of cases that come across the desks of prosecutors week in, week out, and for making sure that further improvements are made so that, from the CPS’s point of view, they are doing everything they can to ensure that the Courts Service is efficient.
It would be churlish of me not to put on the record my grateful thanks for the service of the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras as Director of Public Prosecutions. He came in at a time when the service already knew that it would face important financial challenges under his stewardship, and he managed them admirably. It is in no small part due to the leadership that he showed that the sorts of figures I have been able to bring to the debate today, and the improved efficiencies in the CPS have been achieved. We are grateful to him.
The hon. and learned Gentleman asked about strategy, and I have given him the answer that I think needs to be set out. He also talked about lines of sight and the risks being run with regard to the impact of reduced resources at a time when it is clear that case loads are increasing. I agree with him: case loads are increasing. We have more terrorism cases and an increase in child sexual exploitation cases. He is right to ask questions. I can reassure him that, as in his day, there continue to be regular meetings between the Director of Public Prosecutions and chief Crown prosecutors to ensure that the current director is fully aware of the impact of changes in case load and resources on individual CPS areas. Further to that, both the Attorney General and I regularly meet the CPS’s director and its chief executive, Peter Lewis, to discuss a range of measures that crucially include resources and its case load mix.
Karl Turner
In discussions the Solicitor General has had with the Director of Public Prosecutions, has she mentioned to him and the Attorney General that the CPS urgently needs £50 million now to prosecute historical sex cases properly? What representations has he made to the Chancellor about that?
The Solicitor General
I wanted to come on to finance and I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the CPS continues actively to discuss its requirements and resourcing pressures with the Treasury. The idea that somehow there is a nonchalant, sit-back approach to that is wholly wrong.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman is reassured that not only are the pressures understood, but discussions continue at the highest levels of Government with regard to making sure—[Interruption.] I reassure him that when it comes to the prosecution of serious crime, whether terrorism or child sexual exploitation, the question of resources does not come into it. What does come into it is the threshold test that I referred to at the beginning of my speech.
The CPS continues to look at the impact of resource changes and it is working with colleagues in the Treasury as part of the ongoing spending review. It would not be appropriate for me to prejudge the outcome of that review. The debate is timely and I accept that Members are impatient, but that is where we are on the ongoing pressures and risks that the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras talked about.
Alex Chalk
On resources, is it not right that where there is a specific need, the Government will step in? There is no clearer example of that than when the Serious Fraud Office had to consider whether it had sufficient resources to go after so-called LIBOR fraudsters and money was found for detailed and complex investigations. When there is a need, resources are delivered.
The Solicitor General
I think my hon. Friend was talking about blockbuster funding and the SFO. It would be invidious of me to make direct comparisons, but that point is very well made indeed.
On finance, I hope to demolish the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East’s attractive but somewhat false—I will say colourful—characterisation of the Government’s approach to the CPS budget, which I think he described as a “hope for the best” approach. I am sorry to disappoint him, but that is neither accurate nor fair. As I said, under the stewardship of the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras, preparations were made before the 2010 spending review for the CPS to start to reduce its costs by, for example, releasing resources from the back-office at HQ to the frontline; renegotiating important IT contracts to achieve significant savings; introducing a new IT equipment and workstation ratio strategy; and looking at the closure of uneconomic smaller offices.
That all began before the spending review, and those policies have been taken further since then. We have seen the consolidation of operations into regional hubs, the end of occupying unnecessary buildings and the number of CPS geographical areas reduced from 42 to 13 together with a reduction in management numbers. In fact, back-office functions have taken the greatest cut, with a 50% reduction in HQ staff; 20% savings from the renegotiation of the IT and communications contracts, and the estate reduced from 95 offices in 2010 to 40 this year. With respect to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East, that is not “hope for the best” or “back of a cigarette packet” stuff, but a carefully calibrated and planned structural change largely authored and led by the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras. That process continues.
When it comes to the prosecution of offences, there is no question of negotiations with the Treasury somehow having an impact on individual decisions; the independence of the Crown Prosecution Service is a self-evident truth. To reinforce that, perhaps I should look at some overall results. The CPS’s conviction rate in the magistrates courts is now 83.5%, which has increased from 80.6% back in 2004-05. Similarly, in the Crown court, the conviction rate is now 79.4%, up from just over 75% 10 years ago.
Guilty plea rates continue to rise in both Crown and magistrates courts and I am struck in particular by the increase by both volume and proportion of convictions in cases involving violence against women and girls. The past year saw the highest ever volume and proportion of cases charged: 88,359 cases, which is a rise of nearly 12,000 compared with the previous financial year. We also saw more than 107,000 defendants prosecuted to completion in the past year in cases involving violence against women and girls—the highest ever number. The number of those convicted increased from 67,380 in the previous financial year to 78,773 in the past year.
Those figures are far more eloquent testimony to the success of the Crown Prosecution Service’s continuing work than anything else that I can summon up. I commend its work to the House and thank once again the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead for giving me the opportunity to address that.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the work of the Crown Prosecution Service.
Local Government Finance (Tameside and Oldham)
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Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered local government funding in Tameside and Oldham.
I want to use this opportunity to highlight the impact of the drastic and unfair cuts to local authority spending on local people and public services in my constituency. I also want to set out a better way.
Since 2010, the Government have cut cash funding to Tameside Council by just over 41%, forcing it to cut its budget by £104 million—more than half. The council has lost 1,700 jobs, almost half its workforce. A further £24 million in cuts is now set for 2015-16 and another £14 million for 2016-17. Together, that total of £142 million in cuts amounts to a real-terms equivalent of 53% of the total budget and more than twice Tameside’s council tax income.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on her tremendous contribution since being elected. As a former Tameside councillor, I could say much about our local government funding settlement, but the fundamental point I wish to register is that we want local authorities to continue to be the deliverers of core public services—I do, and I think there is consensus for that. However, the local government settlement system for areas such as ours is simply not sustainable.
I believe there should be an incentive system—a way of rewarding councils for house building, economic growth and so forth—but there must also be a floor to ensure that vital, core public services are met. In Tameside, we are very close to falling through that floor.
Angela Rayner
I thank my hon. Friend for illustrating what I am trying to portray. Some fantastic councils up and down the country are facing genuine difficulties.
Oldham Council, which is also within my constituency, has done even worse than Tameside Council. It has been forced to cut £200 million from its public services since 2010—the second-largest cut in Greater Manchester. Taken together, my two boroughs have already lost from their public services more than £300 million—that is, incidentally, the annual cost of running the royal household.
Across Greater Manchester, local councils are making almost £450 million of cuts, which comes after 15,000 jobs were lost from our town halls after the last round of budget reductions.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I, too, welcome my hon. Friend as the Member of Parliament for Ashton-under-Lyne. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), I served as a Tameside councillor before entering this place.
The situation is worse than the picture my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) is painting, because such reductions in council spending have an impact on wider public services. For example, the cut in adult social care budgets has had an enormous impact on the ability of the NHS in Greater Manchester to deliver quality health services.
Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the impact will be felt across all the public services, which are struggling with their own cuts.
Local government is facing the biggest challenge in its history. Spending as a proportion of GDP is forecast to fall from 4% in 2010 to less than 2.5% in 2019, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. One of the consequences of the cuts she is experiencing, apart from the fact that they are disproportionately affecting areas such as Greater Manchester while more affluent areas are receiving increases, is the long-term effect on life expectancy, about which there is a solid evidence base.
Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. After five years of austerity, it is becoming increasingly difficult for well-run councils such as Tameside and Oldham to protect the most vulnerable from the impact of Government policies.
Demand for core services, particularly in social care—formerly, I worked in home care—continues to rise steeply, while funds are being drastically cut. Who will pay the price for the mismatch between the demand for services and the resources available to fund them? Will it be the 5,000 adult care service users in Tameside who have a physical difficultly, a frailty or a sensory impairment? Will it be the 4,000 people who use reablement services to help them live at home, or the people the council supports by providing nursing or residential care? Will it be the 1,300 mental health adult social care users, the 556 adults receiving learning disability services or the 410 vulnerable looked-after children in Tameside? What about the 1 million telephone callers to the council every year? Should staff just ignore the ringing phone, stop cleaning the 715 km of highways and footpaths every month, stop emptying the 45,000 wheelie bins and forget the 140 tonnes of street sweeping and the 290 tonnes of litter per month?
The Local Government Association believes that by 2020 the money available to fund some basic but essential council services, which we all rely on, will have shrunk by 90% in real cash terms. More than 60% of council spending will be on adult and child social care. Local authorities up and down the country are facing difficult choices.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
My local authority, Salford City Council, is in a similar situation: up to £4.7 million is going to be cut from adult services alone. Its Labour mayor has tried to limit the effect of such swingeing cuts by implementing the living wage and employment standards charter, supporting local people into work with free nursery care and raising £5 million from the proceeds of crime.
Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)
Order. Ms Long Bailey, please do not make a speech if you are making an intervention.
Rebecca Long Bailey
Thank you for that guidance, Ms Dorries.
Does my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) agree that we need a fairer funding settlement for the whole of Greater Manchester, based on the real needs of localities?
Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend is right. I know her constituency well enough to realise that there is much more that unites us than divides us, not least on the issue of needing funds to provide basic services for our constituents.
Of course, not every local authority is facing the same agonising choices. Analysis by the all-party Local Government Association has shown that Labour local authorities have suffered average losses of £108 per person in spending power, while Tory councils have lost just £38 per head. Is that the Government’s one-nation Britain? Of the 50 worst-hit councils, 43 are Labour-run; of the 50 least-hit councils, 42 are Tory-run.
Even using the Government’s own carefully constructed figures on spending power, the unfairness is stark. Tameside has seen a 3.6% cut in spending power for 2015-16 alone—a cut of £74.77 for households in my constituency. Meanwhile, Oxfordshire’s spending power has risen by 1.3%, and Cheshire East’s has risen by 1.5%. Let us be clear: households in my constituency have lost almost £75 each, while households in Witney have gained almost £22 and those in the Chancellor’s Tatton constituency have become £25 richer. The number of food banks in Tameside has increased sixfold under a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who are busily feathering their own nests.
The Chancellor has announced a so-called stability Budget on 8 July, which will contain another £12 billion of cuts that will no doubt hit out-of-work benefits, disability allowances and personal social services. Inevitably, local government services will be hit once again.
The Independent Commission on Local Government Finances said today that councils are already at a cliff edge, which means that everyday services may not exist for much longer. People who depend on council services are already teetering on the edge of that cliff, and the Chancellor’s so-called stability Budget will push them over.
Tameside Council is forecasting that £4.5 million of cuts will be made to social care by the Chancellor’s stability Budget. Cuts to benefits would add another £4.5 million of extra pressure on council services. One cannot be taken without the other. Those cuts come on top of the £1 million cuts to public health services already announced in Tameside. The total in-year cut for Tameside will be up to another £10 million, and the situation in Oldham is exactly the same.
We are not alone. Sheffield Hallam University estimates that the Chancellor’s £12 billion of welfare cuts will take £5.2 billion a year out of the pockets of families in the north. Coincidentally, almost the same amount is lost in tax evasion every year. I look forward to the Tories pursuing multimillionaire tax avoiders with the same fervour as they are punishing poor working people, but I am not holding my breath.
I have no doubt that Tameside and Oldham Councils will continue the difficult work of managing the cuts and tackling the enormous challenges they face, but I fear that, for all their best intentions, many local people will inevitably suffer. There has to be a better way. I know that many Government Members genuinely believe in local democracy and local government, and will join me in congratulating Tameside, Oldham and many other local authorities for their work in stimulating private-sector investment, creating decent jobs, providing strong civic leadership, innovating services and being prepared to do things differently.
All that is at risk if local government services continue to be the whipping boy for austerity. That is why we need a new settlement for local government in our country. Devolution and more local decision making will undoubtedly play their part and I welcome the progress made, particularly in the development of the northern powerhouse. However, devolution is only part of the answer; in itself, it will not solve the funding crisis and cannot be used by central Government as an excuse to transfer responsibilities.
Rebecca Long Bailey
My hon. Friend shares my keen interest in the devo Manc proposal. In light of the facts she set out, there is concern—among northern MPs, in particular—that Ministers see it as a chance to palm off the blame rather than hand down the power. Does she agree that, whatever the final shape of local government in Manchester, resources much match responsibilities?
Angela Rayner
Once again, my hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. She anticipates my next point. If the northern powerhouse is to succeed, it cannot be used as a Trojan horse for more cuts. There must be a fairer settlement for local government: a settlement where reductions in spending do not fall on the most vulnerable in society and the places where they rely on a strong public sector; that puts public need first; that takes a place-based approach to finance, ending the madness whereby cuts to preventive local government services only fuel increasing demand for more expensive NHS treatment; and that helps to cut the appalling gap in outcomes between the most affluent and most deprived areas, ensuring that everyone has an equal chance to get on in life, regardless of where they started.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. This is the first opportunity that I have had to welcome the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) to the House. I congratulate her on securing the debate and commend her on her speech about the situation in Tameside and Oldham. She and her colleagues are not necessarily enthusiastic about what is happening in her area as a result of the northern powerhouse talks, but I certainly take her comments today seriously.
The way local government is funded is extremely important and creates a great deal of debate. Thanks to the Government’s long-term economic plan, the deficit is falling, the economy is growing and employment is at a record high. The Government are putting public finances back on track. The past five years have seen huge changes in the way in which councils operate. Local government accounts for almost a quarter of total public expenditure. It was therefore inevitable that local government would have to play its part in reducing the deficit, but it has done so efficiently and effectively, delivering sensible savings while protecting front-line services. In fact, public satisfaction with local government services has increased or been maintained across the country over the past five years. That illustrates how successful councils have been. However, the job is not yet done, and the next five years will present further challenges. The Government still need to take difficult decisions about local government funding, to ensure that the public finances are on a sustainable path, and councils will need to continue to play their part.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way?
Mr Jones
I will in a moment, but I will make further progress first.
For Britain to be truly successful, every part of the country must thrive. With the 2015-16 settlement, the Government attempted to be fair to all of our great cities, counties, rural shires and coastal communities. The overall reduction in local authorities’ spending power in 2015-16 is 1.7%. When taking account of the funding provided to support local transformation, the overall reduction is lower still—1.5%. To answer one of questions from the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne, those authorities with the greatest demand for services continue to receive substantially more in funding. Only London and the north-east have higher spending power per household than the north-west.
Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way on that point?
Mr Jones
I will give way in a moment.
Just to put that in context, in Oldham the spending power per household is £2,400 and in Tameside it is £2,070, against a national average of £2,086. Furthermore, we have ensured that no council will face a loss of more than 6.4% in their spending power in 2015-16, the lowest level since we started out on the road to recovery.
During the past five years there have been unavoidable changes to local authority funding from central Government. We have ensured that these changes have been applied fairly and sustainably.
Mr Jones
I will give way in a moment.
Through our reforms to the local government finance system, we have established a basis for a more self-reliant local government, and a sector that is less dependent on Whitehall and is instead increasingly confident in using the tools and incentives that we have provided to grow local economies.
Andrew Gwynne
The Minister talks about a fair funding settlement, but does he not appreciate that, because of their make-up, local authorities have different needs from and demands on services? Tameside and Oldham, for example, are grant-dependent because the council tax base is low and their ability to raise additional finance is therefore limited.
Mr Jones
I understand what the hon. Gentleman says. That is why the north-west—particularly the Oldham area—has greater spending power than many other parts of the country. However, he undersells his area’s potential to raise revenue locally, through additional council tax and business rate retention. Councils have a greater stake in stimulating local growth. Authorities throughout the country are benefiting from greater powers in this sense, including—
Mr Jones
I am going to make progress.
Councils benefiting from those powers include Newcastle, Sunderland and Northampton, which had the greatest growth in business rates retention in 2013-14, as a result of enterprise zones and new development deals. Authorities’ own estimates for 2015-16 show that 94% are expecting growth in their business rate income, above the level of assumed growth of £544 million in total. In response to the point made by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), I remind him that Oldham and Tameside forecast growth of £1.8 million and £2.4 million respectively, putting both councils in the top 100 authorities in England in terms of additional income.
Mr Meacher
On that point, I ask the Minister for a fourth time to give way.
Mr Jones
I will give way in a moment. I am just going to finish this point.
As those authorities are members of the Greater Manchester and Chester business rates pool, which benefits from a zero levy, they will avoid paying any levy on the additional income that they bring in.
Mr Meacher
Can we get to the real point of this debate, which is that Oldham in particular, which I and my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) represent, is having to take a £200 million cut by 2017, as she said? In this current year, it is having its spending power cut by 4.3%, whereas Oxfordshire, which happens to contain the Prime Minister’s constituency, has an increase of 1.3%, and Cheshire East Council, which happens to contain the Chancellor’s constituency, is having a 1.5% increase. Does that not clearly indicate a flagrantly politically partisan distribution of resources between Tory areas, where the need is less, compared with Labour areas where it is far greater?
Mr Jones
I should say to Opposition Members that I will not take any further interventions after the right hon. Gentleman’s lengthy contribution. He needs to put this matter in the context of the authorities that he mentioned having far less spending power than those we are discussing in this debate.
The other way that the areas in question will no doubt benefit is through the new homes bonus. Councils benefit directly from the number of new homes built in their area and from bringing empty property back into use. We have provisionally allocated £1.2 billion of new homes bonus funding to local authorities in England for 2015-16. Of that, Oldham will receive £2.1 million and Tameside £3.5 million. Since the scheme began, local authorities have been rewarded with a total of £3.4 billion.
As well as growing their economies, the best authorities are transforming how they do business and demonstrating innovation, including in how they work with local partners. We are supporting them as they do so, helping them to achieve savings and, perhaps most important, improving outcomes for the people who use local services.
In November, the Government announced the 73 projects that were successful in bidding for the transformation challenge award. The projects will receive £90 million to improve services and ultimately will save the public sector more than £900 million. I would like to give several examples, particularly one in Manchester, but I do not have time to do so during this debate.
One critical area where the Government must work with councils to transform services is adult social care. I hear what the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne says about her experience and I am sure that the House will welcome that experience. The Government are clear that the NHS and social care services must work together and move away from operating in financial silos. They must secure the best possible value from the local funding available for health and care in order to improve people’s lives. The Government are committed to making that happen, but just putting more money into the system is not the answer, despite Opposition Members’ comments. We need radical reform of how health and social care are delivered. The better care fund provides a new approach to protect social care services, breaking new ground in driving integration between health and social care.
Despite the challenges that I have mentioned, most local authorities have coped well. Most authorities froze council tax in 2015-16, helping people with the cost of living. The Government once again provided additional funding equivalent to a 1% council tax increase to help them to do so. This was the fifth successive year of freeze funding provided by Government, bringing the total package to £5 billion. That has helped to reduce council tax by 11% in real terms since 2010, with the average band D household saving up to £1,059. That is in stark contrast to the 13 years of Labour government, when council tax bills doubled.
Mr Jones
I cannot, due to the length of the interventions that I took previously.
The financial constraints facing councils make it even more important that we deliver on our critical agenda of devolving power to local places and local people. That is one of the most exciting agendas in local government at the moment. Local government should no longer think of itself as a manager of central programmes, but should embrace its new power and responsibility.
The Government’s commitment has been demonstrated by the inclusion—the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne will have seen this—of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill, which has started its progress in the House of Lords. Alongside the Bill, we will be talking to councils about their ideas for devolution, so that we can agree deals that make devolution a reality. The Government want the process to be bottom up and recognise that the right approach will be different in every area. We want to devolve power to cities, rural areas and neighbourhoods. The Bill will bring about the most far-reaching decentralisation of power in living memory and in particular will create a northern powerhouse with Manchester and other northern cities. It will create a directly elected mayor responsible for co-ordinating significant powers and budgets across transport, back-to-work support and health and adult social care.
Last November, Greater Manchester and the Government agreed a devolution plan that saw powers over transport, planning and housing transferred from central Government control to the Greater Manchester combined authority. In February, building on that, 10 local authorities, including a number that Opposition Members represent, came together with 12 clinical commissioning groups and NHS providers in Greater Manchester, along with NHS England, and agreed that from April 2016 they would take joint control of the estimated £6 billion health and care budget in the region. That will enable Greater Manchester to be freer to respond to what local people want, using experience and expertise from across government and the NHS to help improve outcomes and change the way in which public money is spent.
There is little doubt that the next five years will bring further financial challenges but, with the spending review approaching, hon. Members will appreciate that I cannot say much more about our financial plans today. The Government wish to work constructively with local government on these issues, and we are ready to listen to the views of councils.
Question put and agreed to.
BBC Investment (East and West Midlands)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)
I will not impose a time limit on speeches. I am sure that hon. Members can work out the times for themselves.
Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered BBC investment in the East and West Midlands.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. The east and west midlands have a proud history of broadcasting. Looking back through time, the first regional TV station was established in Sutton Coldfield in 1949. We were also the first to have a regional radio station, which was established in Birmingham in 1922, and the first ever colour TV studio was established in Birmingham in 1969.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
It is not only in broadcasting that Birmingham and the west midlands lead the way. The west midlands is, of course, the centre of Britain’s creative talents. William Shakespeare, Jerome K. Jerome and J. R. R. Tolkien were all from the west midlands. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is a disgrace that, although the west midlands contributes 25% of the licence fee, the BBC spends just 2% of its budget fostering creative talent in the region?
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I will speak briefly on behalf of the east midlands. The hon. Gentleman missed out that the BBC Asian Network was created in Leicester and, under current proposals, will be moved from Leicester down to London, which is totally unacceptable.
Mark Spencer
I am grateful for that intervention. From the mood in the room, it is clear that we are proud of both the east midlands and the west midlands, and it is a shame that the BBC management in London do not recognise the importance of the broadcasting ability in the midlands. As the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) indicated, more than a quarter of all licence fee money is collected from the midlands, but investment in the region is as low as 2.05%, which is outrageous. The figure is a sixth of the amount spent in the north, 21% of the amount spent in the south and less than the broadcaster spends in London every 12 days.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
I have served as a Member of Parliament for the east midlands as well as for the west midlands, so I hope that I take a balanced approach to my hon. Friend’s excellent speech. Does he agree that it is astonishing that the BBC should neglect investment in Britain’s second city of Birmingham? The city is a centre for the creative arts, in addition to the point raised by the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin). The BBC is cutting off its nose to spite its face; it is missing out on the huge array of talent in the east midlands and particularly the west midlands.
Mark Spencer
I am grateful for that intervention. Many of us will remember the great facility at Pebble Mill, which closed in 2004. Currently, the midlands has no network TV studios at all. The north has dozens. Once again, that demonstrates that the BBC does not invest in the midlands and does not take us seriously.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Birmingham is the city not just of Chamberlain but of Pebble Mill. Does he agree that it is absolutely wrong that £9 out of every £10 raised from the Birmingham licence fee payer is not spent in the midlands? Will he also join me in congratulating The Birmingham Post and Birmingham Mail on their outstanding advocacy of a fair share for Birmingham and the midlands?
Mark Spencer
I absolutely join the hon. Gentleman in congratulating the Birmingham Post. Its campaign has been a long-running one. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), who since his election to this House has been very active in pursuing the issue.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
To come back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), there is a lot of history in the west midlands, particularly in Coventry, where “The Italian Job” was made. Film producers can do it in the midlands, so why cannot the BBC, when it is disposing of its resources? The west midlands could be called the economic powerhouse of this country, but we would not know that from the BBC.
Mark Spencer
I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman. When we consider what the east and west midlands have to offer as backdrops for TV programme makers—the beautiful city of Lincoln, Sherwood Forest in my constituency—the great creative talents of Birmingham and Coventry, the spectacular restaurants of Leicestershire and the rolling hills of Derbyshire—[Interruption.] I am not familiar with what Stoke has to offer, but I am sure the hon. Gentleman will educate me.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Ms Dorries, I will not try your patience by giving a long list of the marvellous things in north Staffordshire and in Stoke-on-Trent in particular, but will make the very serious point that Birmingham and other large conurbations are hard done by, but the far-flung places in the west and east midlands, such as Stoke-on-Trent, are even more neglected.
Mark Spencer
I acknowledge that. I hope that this debate will help the BBC management to understand its poor decision-making processes.
It is worth making comparisons on a per-head basis. If spending per licence fee payer was the same in the north as in the south, £473 million would be spent in the midlands.
Ian Austin
The hon. Gentleman is making a really important point about expenditure on broadcasting, one that was brought home to me by my constituent Jean Vincent and her children, who all work in the creative industries and are having to travel further and further from Dudley to find work. She told me that it is estimated that, for every pound the BBC spends, £2 is generated in the wider economy. That makes BBC investment even more important and means that our creative industries in the midlands are losing out on hundreds of millions of pounds. Does he agree?
Mark Spencer
I wholly agree. If we pursue the hon. Gentleman’s argument that every pound that the BBC spends creates £2 in the local economy, the economy of the east and west midlands would benefit by £786 million—a substantial amount of investment.
Let us compare the midlands with other areas. In the midlands, the BBC spends £12.40 per head. In Wales, the figure is £122.24 per head; in Northern Ireland, it is £103.14 and in Scotland, £88.73. In the north of England, it is £80.24, and in London, it is a staggering £757.24. By any stretch of the imagination, that makes the midlands the poor relation when it comes to BBC investment.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that one fundamental problem is that the BBC’s funding mechanism—the licence fee, which is backed by criminal sanctions for non-payment—means that midlands licence fee payers have little influence over the BBC’s spending strategy? However, if the BBC’s funding were moved to a voluntary subscription mechanism, that would give subscribers in the midlands a lot more power, and the BBC would not be able to ignore them in its spending strategy.
Mark Spencer
My hon. Friend has a long-standing record of being supportive of the BBC—of being a critical friend. The licence fee and a subscription service are a separate debate for another occasion.
One could argue that the midlands has always been the poor relation, but that is not true. Since 2009, spending in the midlands has fallen by 35.25%, to well below what is spent in London. In the same period, spending in London fell by 16.5%, but investment in the north rose by 217%, and every other region has seen increased investment, apart from the midlands.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
I am sure the hon. Gentleman and other east midlands MPs will join me in bidding farewell to John Hess, the BBC’s political editor in the east midlands; we wish him well. I mention that to raise a serious point. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the BBC should continue to invest in good political journalism that explains to our constituents what is going on in this place? We would not want any of that to be cut in future months.
Mark Spencer
I absolutely agree. Not only do we have John Hess, the esteemed broadcaster, on east midlands TV, but we have good journalists right across the midlands, and they hold politicians like us to account very efficiently. The amount spent in the midlands is very low, but the quality of programmes is often very high. To me, that is an argument for the BBC to invest more in that efficient model, which is delivering more bang for every buck.
Robert Flello
I draw the attention of Members and of anyone listening to the debate, or reading it afterwards, to “Marvellous”, the story of Nello, which is a perfect example of a fantastic production by the BBC. If only we could have more.
Mark Spencer
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing attention to that.
Every year, the BBC spends £89 million on its Broadcasting House headquarters in London—more than on the entire midlands region. As has been identified, none of the output for Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 5, BBC 2, BBC 3 or BBC 4 was made in the midlands last year, and no peak-time BBC programmes whatever were made there.
The midlands has no network TV studios, after the closure of Pebble Mill in 2004. As I said, there are dozens of studios in the north. BBC regional spending is up by 35%. Every region has seen an increase in spending over the last five years, except the midlands. It is an outrage that the midlands is pouring in more than a quarter of the licence fee money to get only a 2% return.
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for his brilliant speech. Has he found in his constituency, as I have in mine, that people support the BBC as an institution, but oppose the total unfairness we are seeing in the midlands?
Mark Spencer
Absolutely. I wholly agree. When the BBC gets programming right, my constituents certainly respect and love what it does. My argument is not with what the BBC is doing; it is that the BBC should be doing more and investing more in a model that is very good and very robust and deserves more investment and support from London.
I am conscious that many other colleagues want to speak, so I will draw my comments to a close. I recognise that the Minister’s power to influence what the BBC does with its budget is small, but he meets its representatives regularly, and I hope that he will use the influence he does have to draw their attention to investment in the midlands and to the fact that we are the poor relation compared with other regions. Other colleagues in the House will also continue to draw the attention of BBC managers to the issue. I hope that at some point the BBC will listen, so that we can make some progress and get real investment in the midlands.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) for securing the debate. He is a strong advocate for his constituency and for the midlands as a whole. I declare an interest: I worked for the BBC from 2002 until 2007. I was the BBC News personal finance and consumer affairs reporter, based—I hasten to add—in London.
The motion is about BBC investment in the east and west midlands, and the truth is that there is far too little of it. In 2014, for each £145.50 of licence fee raised in the west midlands, only £12.40 came back to the region; as has been pointed out, that compares with a staggering £757 in London. There is also what economists call a multiplier effect, whereby every pound spent multiplies through the economy and people employed. As a result, licence fee money has a massive and disproportionate impact in London and Manchester rather than in Birmingham, which is the heart of our country and the only part of it to have a trade surplus with the EU; it is a strong powerhouse that is under-represented by the BBC, a national broadcaster.
Robert Flello
A mischievous thought has crept into my mind: if every licence fee payer in the midlands, east and west, were to pay only £12.40, the BBC might start to take notice.
Julian Knight
Obviously, I would never countenance mass civil disobedience over the matter, but something will certainly be shared on social media later. A lot of people are interested in the debate. I am following on my iPad the live blog by Trinity Mirror Midlands’s Birmingham Post online, which is looking into this. Perhaps that is something that will spread around.
Ian Austin
The hon. Gentleman is the MP for Solihull, so he knows, as I do, that the central problem facing the west midlands is our inability over decades to attract new jobs in new industries to replace the ones that we lost in traditional industries. Clearly, creative industries will generate hundreds of thousands of well paid jobs in the future. Does he agree that all of us—on both sides of the House and in the wider west midlands economy—should make it a priority to establish some sort of broadcasting hub in Birmingham and the west midlands to attract such jobs? We need to get our universities and the BBC working to attract jobs to the west midlands for the future.
Julian Knight
That is an interesting idea and I would hope that the BBC would play such a role; it would if it were doing its job properly. It is ridiculous that the Mailbox seems to be full of the HR department, rather than of people making programming for our enjoyment. If the BBC were to do its job properly and to be genuinely representative of the strength of the east and west midlands, we would be seeing greater programming and a real hub—the broadcast hub that we are talking about.
I am wondering how we got into the situation that we are in, with a bipolar organisation between London and Manchester—a carve-up, perhaps. The last time the charter came in, after the sad demise of Dr David Kelly, the Hutton report and all those things were going on, as well as the falling out between the Government and the BBC. The then director-general, Mark Thompson, decided to have what I call a “Jim Hacker” moment—as in the “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” programmes. Suddenly the idea was to move lots of people from one part of the country to another and to call it regional diversity. The initiative was sold to the Government in good faith as extending regional programming and as the creation of a new hub in Manchester.
Looking at the output of the BBC these days, I question the purpose of moving thousands of staff to Salford from west London to produce the same programming in a different studio. The BBC has no regional character. When I was growing up in Chester and the west midlands—Biddulph, to be precise—we used to enjoy a lot of regionality in our programming; there were many more programmes and outside broadcasts specific to our region than there are today. Many of the studios established throughout the east and west midlands have now gone, and we are left with a skeleton staff in our region.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
In that context, would the hon. Gentleman question the BBC’s figure that more than 50% of its output is produced outside London? All it has done is increase regional commuting, with people travelling from London to various hubs across the nation. It has not really changed anything.
Julian Knight
The hon. Lady is spot on. The BBC has created a bipolar organisation that transports people from London to Manchester. There is no real regional diversity to its broadcasting. I am horrified to learn of the BBC Asian Network’s being moved from Leicester to London, a prime example of that. I commend the campaign by Trinity Mirror and The Birmingham Post, and in particular the journalist Graeme Brown, who is highlighting an important matter that has brought many parties together.
We are in a bit of a dead zone for the national broadcaster in the west and east midlands. The BBC has perhaps seen regional diversity as something to be endured rather than embraced. If the BBC is to reconnect with the public at a time of mass digital communication, when we have many different ways of viewing and listening to content, it should consider drilling right down into the regions and offering something more regionally-based.
Andrew Bridgen
Whenever the BBC’s income stream is considered to be under threat, the first thing it says it will have to cut is regional radio in the east and west midlands, further reducing its already small presence there. Is my hon. Friend as horrified as I am at that? Should the Minister not tell the BBC at charter review that that would be completely unacceptable?
Julian Knight
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Regional broadcasting seems to be seen as an expense to be endured, rather than something that would deliver value for viewers and listeners, be valued and reconnect the BBC with the wider public once again.
Many Members here are of a certain age and can remember the time of mass broadcasting, with the shows of Morecambe and Wise getting 20 million viewers. These days, younger people, under the age of 25, will not understand the connection that many of us have with the BBC. If the BBC is going to survive in the long term, it needs to reconnect with the public. One key way of doing that is greater regional broadcasting and developing regional talent.
I appeal to BBC management to consider the case for the midlands, to redress the balance and genuinely to embrace regional diversity at the next charter renewal—not see it as some sort of sop that will buy it another seven years, which is what happened last time. We need not a bipolar organisation but one that takes its broadcasting out to individuals.
I am not that encouraged at what I have heard so far from the BBC. Its agenda for charter renewal seems to involve a crackdown on those not paying the licence fee for content on digital devices, retention of criminal sanctions against non-payers and a potential inflation of the licence fee. The BBC needs to understand that we are in the antechamber to the end of the licence fee and that we need to see a path out of it in the long term. The BBC can reconnect and offer better value for what it delivers by focusing on its core services. I argue strongly that its core service is regional broadcasting and delivering for the people of the east and west midlands.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
I must declare a narrow interest: my moment of glory was on 7 May 1997, when Pat Archer was heard to say from Pebble Mill, which was in my constituency, that when Edgbaston was won, we would know we had a Labour Government. I was disappointed when the BBC moved out of Pebble Mill and I was no longer the MP for “The Archers”.
I am going to do something that may seem slightly counter-intuitive: I will partly defend the BBC, because we have to be careful what we wish for. If we want a public service broadcaster—most of the rest of the world would give their eye-teeth for the BBC and the World Service—we should realise that our desire for it has consequences. That does not mean that I agree with everything the BBC has done, but the Government do not get off scot-free. If we wish the BBC to be a public service broadcaster that can survive in the modern age, the funding structure and stream must be protected as well. What that means for the midlands is quite significant.
First, we must acknowledge that when he saw those empty offices in the Mailbox, Tony Hall was horrified. The BBC has tried to fill them, so far only with human resources staff, and it has moved its academy there. At least the BBC is moving that way. It has appointed a regional director.
For me, the bottom line is that if we do not start commissioning programmes from the midlands, nothing will flow from the midlands. We may become a production area, but for the west midlands to reflect its own culture and output, we have to commission programmes in the midlands and have commissioners there. We come across the issue on a daily basis. Turn on “Woman’s Hour”, and it will have vox pops from Manchester’s Oxford Road. The BBC is not asking people in the Bullring. The whole culture is just the wrong way.
What that means for us as MPs in the region is that we have to stress a number of things. If the BBC wants to survive in the future, we in Birmingham are the future: 40% of Birmingham’s population is under the age of 25, and 30% is under the age of 15. The ethnic diversity of the stable population in that region is enormous. It is not just the Asian Network, which started 40 years ago in the midlands, but the whole cultural production that is happening there. Frankly, if the BBC does not reflect the culture of that significant area—the chunk in the middle of England that is so easy to overlook, and it seems to be overlooked—then the BBC, as a public service broadcaster, will not fulfil its function for the whole of the country.
I say to colleagues that we have to keep up the pressure and say to the BBC, “Step by step, you are trying to move in the right direction, but you aren’t there yet.” I also say that we must be clear that if we do away with the licence fee, that will also have consequences. Let us just think for a moment. Those of us who think that the Union—the United Kingdom—is important should remember that the British Broadcasting Corporation is one of the very few British institutions that still embraces the entire British Isles and the nation.
Julian Knight
The hon. Lady said that the BBC “embraces” the nation. However, we noted during the referendum campaign that the Scottish National party was very angry with the BBC, and claimed bias in that respect. Given that the modern BBC does not embrace regional broadcasting, as we are discussing today, is it fulfilling that true national broadcaster remit?
Ms Stuart
That is a really important point at which we should pause. The SNP would like a national broadcaster; I would like a public sector broadcaster—and there is a very important distinction between the two, which we must not lose. The BBC must fulfil its duty to the regions—for example, in the political output in radio broadcasting, which it is neglecting.
What happens in the midlands is extremely important for northern Wales, because it looks to output from the midlands more than to that of the south of Wales. To be a proper public sector broadcaster, the BBC has to represent the regions and be more than just the national broadcaster: it also needs to commission programmes in the region.
The challenge for us is to be clear about the ask to the BBC; the challenge for the BBC is that unless it starts commissioning programmes in the whole of the midlands, they will not reflect us. That takes us back to the challenge for the Government in the charter review. A public sector broadcaster requires certain funding streams that will allow the BBC to fulfil that function.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) on securing this important debate. His constituency and mine are at opposite ends of the midlands, but we have in common a sense of injustice about the poor return for our licence fee payers on the investment that they make.
What we need from the BBC is simple: a fairer share of the spend and a much firmer commitment that BBC production will be brought to our region. For far too many of my constituents and, I suspect, people across the midlands, the BBC means London, Cardiff, Salford, Bristol, Belfast and Glasgow—the big six—and indeed anywhere but our region. Various people have cited the figures; the simple fact remains that midlands licence fee payers contribute about £942 million to the BBC and get back about £80 million in investment, less than 9% of the total licence fee. I do not think that anyone would see that as fair.
Andrew Bridgen
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the BBC spent £1 billion on the new Broadcasting House and wrote off £100 million on a failed digitisation project last year?
Steve McCabe
We can all criticise failures in spending, but the central point that I am making is about inequitable spending. However, I take the hon. Gentleman’s point.
A brief that the BBC sent me for this debate reminded me that the Mailbox is the home of the academy, the workplace and outreach. That is great, but what the brief did not contain was the number of new jobs and apprenticeships associated with those initiatives. I would like to know how that compares with the £180 million new studio and the 1,000 new jobs for MediaCity in Salford. I would also like to know why, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) pointed out, the bulk of production is technically still located in London.
I am told that the BBC is anxious to use Birmingham as an innovative test bed because we are the youngest city in Europe and we are truly multi-ethnic and multi-cultural, but I want to know where the substance is. Where are the new formats, technologies and jobs for the midlands? It is time we saw some of the hard data. I want to know that all those promises will come true and that there is plan to work with the Ormiston academy, the Rep theatre and Birmingham City University. I have heard plenty of talk; it is time we saw some action. We need to know that there is a real programme for mentoring and apprenticeships in the midlands, and we need to know that digital innovation is more than just a form of words.
Julian Knight
On apprenticeships, does the hon. Gentleman have any thoughts about pay differentials within the BBC? According to the latest reports, 91 BBC staff members currently earn more than the Prime Minister, while many people who do the programming, such as broadcast assistants, broadcast journalists and senior broadcast journalists, might take home a quarter of that. They are the ones putting in the work, while those who move people from place to place earn bumper salaries. What does he think about that?
Steve McCabe
It is a challenge for the director-general, and it is one of the things that he must tackle. It contributes to the sense of unfairness that many of us have about the organisation. Of course, like my hon. Friend, I welcome the news that human resources and training jobs will come to Birmingham, but it was only a couple of years ago that the BBC announced a nationwide search for new talent among disabled presenters and managed to exclude Birmingham from the process entirely. Where are the new jobs in the midlands for performers, directors and creative people?
I conclude by congratulating the hon. Member for Sherwood again on securing this debate. We need to hear that a more equitable share of the money will be included in any future discussions on charter renewal and the licence fee. We cannot contribute nearly £1 billion to the BBC pot and get back a paltry 9%.
Mark Spencer
When the east and west midlands are given an opportunity, we are really good—Notts TV, which works alongside Nottingham Trent University, has been a successful model—and it is such a shame that people in London do not recognise that and invest more in that talent.
Steve McCabe
I totally agree. There is a wealth of creative talent across the midlands. As someone said earlier, we keep hearing about the desire to help the regions to grow and rebalance their economies. One of the things we need to do is to recognise the creative potential in our region. I do not know how helpful it will be, but I have come to the conclusion that midlands licence fee payers will not tolerate the situation any longer. The game is up—they have had enough.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) on securing this debate. The Minister will understand that feeling on this issue runs deep across both the east and west midlands. The feeling is cross-party, and it will not go away. It is vital that something happens on regional broadcasting in the Government’s negotiations on charter renewal; it must not be something that is simply written in the right words in the right documents. The Government have a role to play in pushing the BBC quite hard on that in the coming period.
Members have talked about the figures, which are stark. They have talked about the contribution that licence fee payers in the east and west midlands make to the BBC and what comes back to the region. Many of us feel that we have been around this track so many times before, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and me. I have lost count of the meetings we have attended. I can just about count the directors-general and acting directors-general to whom we have put these points, and each of them has said that they agree. It might have been easier if one of them had said, “No, you are wrong. We think that the east and west midlands are a bit of a backwater and are not where the action is. We need to do what we are doing.” But every time they told us that they agreed with us and that things were going to change.
The situation was not entirely the BBC’s fault in the early phases. When Mark Thompson was director-general, a memorandum of understanding was agreed between the BBC and Birmingham City Council. At the time, the lack of ambition to put the memorandum of understanding into practice was equal on both sides. The words were all there but, when we asked afterwards what was being done to follow it up, not much was going on at all.
Ms Gisela Stuart
If I recall the moment correctly, it was obvious that neither the leader of the city council nor Mark Thompson had actually read the memorandum of understanding or could tell us what it contained.
Richard Burden
As somebody is meant to have said in this place, my hon. Friend may say that; I couldn’t possibly comment. [Laughter.] I will comment: she is right.
Mark Thompson was followed by a couple of other directors-general, and they both said that things were going to change. My hon. Friend is right about Tony Hall. In October 2013, a cross-party group of midlands MPs presented a petition that had been put together by the Campaign for Regional Broadcasting—I pay tribute to that group for keeping this issue in the public eye and putting up in lights the inequity in funding. In November 2013—this was significant—the BBC committed itself to a new vision for Birmingham and the midlands as a whole, with a pledge to invest £23.5 million; Birmingham is to become a new centre for digital excellence for skills, recruitment and talent, creating hundreds of jobs. That was a change—some action was taken and I like to believe that Tony Hall is serious about that.
However, I am worried that, since the announcement, everything has ground to a halt again. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak mentioned the briefing we received from the BBC. It basically says, “It’s okay, we’re doing it,” and runs through the kinds of things we have been told before—the kinds of programmes that were announced some time ago. At the end, the briefing simply says, “The BBC is committed to providing audiences with programmes and services to reflect the many communities across—”
Julian Knight
I have seen similar documentation. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, with the BBC, it always seems to be a case of jam tomorrow for the midlands? We want our jam today, or at least in time for the next charter renewal.
Richard Burden
The hon. Gentleman is right. At the risk of mixing jam metaphors with glue, the ambition that Tony Hall says he has for the BBC in Birmingham—the kind of thing we are all talking about—needs some glue to stick it all together. It needs something behind it to make it happen. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston hit the nail on the head, and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak also made this point: that glue is commissioning—it is crucial. We all talk about the BBC network. Everyone I have spoken to—both in the BBC and beyond, in related creative industries—has said that networking is vital. People have to know one another. When people commission a programme, they think of who they will approach, the production companies they will use and where they will get the new talent. If the focus remains on London, we will not get change in Birmingham and the east and west midlands. The kind of change there has been in the north—the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) had this right—is not real change, as there is still that commuting south.
We therefore need a commitment by the BBC to match its ambitions for the network with real networking. It should be looking out for the new and existing talent in our regions and particularly in the east and west midlands. If that can be done, it can pull behind it the apprenticeships and the training that can make such things fly.
Under the current director-general I, too, have noticed a change from what has gone before. I hope that when he reads the transcript of the debate he will understand that we are trying to be friends. To remain friends, however, action has to follow words. If we are to be the centre for broadcasting and for digital broadcasting in the future—in many ways digital broadcasting is the future—he has to do more than he is currently doing. That means a vision beyond the HR-related and training jobs that are being brought to the midlands at the moment. Crucially, we need a focus on commissioning, production and getting in place the networks that can make the east and west midlands vital parts of the BBC’s ambition for the future.
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) on securing this important debate and on drawing attention to the appallingly inequitable funding allocated by the BBC to our region. I will endeavour to be brief, not least because my hon. Friend set out the issue so well with his usual clarity. I must say that, on being elected to the House—I am making my first contribution in this Chamber today—I never expected to find myself as fully in agreement with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) as I am.
The proud tradition of broadcasting in the east midlands highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood and the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) extends to Leicestershire, too. For example, BBC Radio Leicester does a first-class job of serving the people of Leicester and Leicestershire. That organisations such as BBC Radio Leicester continue to be trusted and listened to in such numbers by my constituents is in large part down to the talent and hard work of the journalists and broadcasters, and not down to their receiving fair levels of BBC investment, which, as we have heard, certainly does not reflect the licence fee paid by our region.
Andrew Bridgen
I would like to make sure that the Chamber is fully aware of the size of the BBC. If we include BBC Worldwide in the BBC revenue stream, it gets about £5 billion a year. That is comparable with the United Nations and twice the annual budget of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Edward Argar
My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point with force and clarity, as always. My constituents have no choice about paying their licence fee. On this occasion, I will not labour my view that non-payment should be decriminalised, but the least they should be able to expect is a fair deal and a fair share from what they pay. I hope that as we look towards charter renewal, issues such as the BBC spending bias against the midlands will feature in that debate. I fully endorse the points that the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) made about local political journalism in the east midlands and its importance to our democracy and to all of us being held to account by local journalists producing local content.
Some 25% contributed and 2% received is disgracefully unfair as an equation, however we look at it. That cannot be allowed to go on. It is time for the BBC to escape its apparent London-centric investment bias and once again fully seize on the talent and energy of the midlands by investing and producing more in our region. I hope that the Minister will ensure that the BBC receives the strength of hon. Members’ views clearly, particularly in respect of how much we and our constituents value truly local content. The point was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) that the BBC needs to approach charter renewal recognising that it must continue to change and to listen to those who listen to it and who have no choice but to pay the licence fee, and not simply ask us for more money.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I thank the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) for securing what has been a passionate and committed debate. I was fascinated as he went through the history and heritage of TV and radio broadcasting in the east and west midlands. I thank all hon. Members who have made speeches and interventions. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden). I thank the hon. Members for Solihull (Julian Knight) and for Charnwood (Edward Argar). I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) for his perceptive and incisive interventions in this important debate.
I pay tribute to the long-time campaigners. The campaign has been truly cross-party and has the support of the new Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. I also pay tribute to the campaigning of The Birmingham Post and the Birmingham Mail, which has been so important in placing the issue on the national agenda.
We are here to discuss BBC investment in the midlands. The main investment the BBC makes is in BBC Birmingham. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston is right: those of us who live in the borders of north-east Wales have seen a lot of it—sometimes by choice, sometimes through transmitter problems; we do not always get BBC Wales, which is a subject for another day. There is no question but that BBC Birmingham has a proud history, having produced “Pebble Mill at One” and “Boys from the Black Stuff”. Across the midlands, the BBC produces “Midlands Today”, “East Midlands Today”, “Look East” and online content, and there are 14 local radio stations. BBC Birmingham makes great shows, such as “Doctors”, and it is the home of the BBC Asian Network, which was mentioned earlier.
BBC Birmingham also produces the great, popular radio drama, “The Archers”—I confess that I always thought it was based somewhere in the west country, not in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston. “The Archers” is more than 65 years old, but its listeners are of all ages and live around the world. Since FM radio waves travel through space, we can confidently say it reaches as far as Pluto. It has even been suggested that the theme tune of “The Archers” should be the English national anthem. It does not quite compare to “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau”, but it is pretty good, and the programme is an extraordinary international production.
There are clearly very serious concerns about this issue. For instance, a quarter of licence fee payers live in the west and east midlands, but the area receives 2% of BBC spending. Last year, that meant the BBC received £942 million, and the midlands got £80 million back. The BBC is investing only £12.40 per capita in the midlands. Such figures have real consequences for infrastructure, and therefore for programming.
The BBC has little to no commissioning or production facilities in the midlands, and no primetime BBC 1 programmes are made there. In fact, the BBC does not make anything on BBC 2, BBC 3 or BBC 4 in the midlands, nor on Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3 or Radio 5. A small chunk of investment means a small chunk of infrastructure, which means a small chunk of programming.
At least three main problems have been raised in this debate. The first is the simple matter of fairness, which has been mentioned by many hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston previously referred to it as a mismatch, and she is absolutely right. One estimate is that the midlands pays out 12 times what it gets back.
The second problem relates to the infrastructure of creativity. The BBC is the central part of the United Kingdom’s creative and cultural ecosystem, and at a national level it plays a key role in training and fostering talent, encouraging investment and exports, and raising standards across the market. The £3.5 billion we pay for it is our single biggest investment in the arts. At a regional level, it helps to ground creative clusters, which can be seen most clearly in its move to Salford. The MediaCityUK cluster of creative firms and workers is grounded by the BBC. The investment it makes in the midlands—particularly in training and digital—helps to ground the area’s growing creative scene. More investment would mean a better and more flourishing creative ecosystem.
The third problem relates to what we see on our screens and hear on our radios. The hon. Member for Solihull spoke about diversity and regional content. This issue is about not only wanting more spending, but reflecting our country back to itself. It is important that we have stories from every part of the country. In every nook and cranny of the United Kingdom there is a unique viewpoint and a voice that we need to hear in our national conversation.
The Labour party is clear that we believe in a BBC for everyone, which is why we support the existence of the licence fee. The fundamental principle is that everyone pays in and everyone gets something out. People need to feel they are getting something out and that the BBC is worth it. I accept that not everyone agrees with that, but that is where the Labour party stands.
Andrew Bridgen
Will the hon. Lady clarify the Labour party’s position? Is it in favour of or against the continued criminalisation of non-payment of the TV licence?
Susan Elan Jones
There are major issues to be looked at, and we believe that that needs to happen in this debate on the BBC charter. It is not a little opt-out alone; the debate is much too important for that.
The BBC has recognised that there is a disparity. When Tony Hall become director-general in 2013, he visited the Mailbox and announced additional investment. In particular, the focus on training and digital was a sign of investment in the future of the BBC, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield said earlier. However, the issue has not gone away; the question is what we do now.
On 19 March, the Prime Minister was asked about BBC investment in Birmingham and the midlands. He said that
“the charter renewal is a good time to have that conversation”
and that
“these are the questions we will be able to ask in the charter renewal process which starts after the election.”
We agree with the Prime Minister on that. We are past the election and should be getting on with charter renewal, which is the right time to have that conversation. Charter renewal is our opportunity, every decade, to ask ourselves, “What do we want the BBC to do?” We re-examine the BBC’s purposes, governance, funding and investment in the round.
The Culture Secretary’s Select Committee report, “Future of the BBC”, laid out a road map for how the process would work. It basically means copying the successful model that Tessa Jowell, Labour’s Culture Secretary, took us through 10 years ago. That was a vibrant, open, consultative, national conversation about the BBC’s future. It is time to do that again. Labour wants an open and transparent national debate to start as soon as possible. We want all the excellent campaigners to be able to make their case in an open, transparent process, so the Government need to get on with it. The last charter renewal process was three years long. In a week’s time, it will be half that—a year and a half—until the charter runs out. Today, there are only 557 days to go. It is worrying that the Government seem inactive, saying, “We’ll make an announcement in due course.”
Susan Elan Jones
I do not think that there is time, unfortunately. I would love to, though.
A year and a half is not long for an important debate. In recognition of that, the Culture Secretary’s report even floated the option of extending the existing charter for a year. We think that this time the Government should hand their homework in on time. They should not leave it all to the last minute and then bash something out late at night behind closed doors—exactly what they did in 2010. They certainly should not ask for an extension because the dog ate their draft charter. They need to start the charter renewal process as soon as possible to ensure an open debate. Then we can get on with debating the real issues, such as how to ensure a diversity of viewpoints and voices. Labour will be arguing for a BBC that does something for everyone. Everyone pays into it and everyone should get something out of it. The Conservatives have flirted with a different view, some of which we have heard today—if not wholesale privatisation, then drastically reducing the range and breadth of the BBC’s output. If that is the debate, very well. Let us get on with it.
The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)
It is a pleasure to appear under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I often say that when I appear before a new Chairman, but in this case I mean it. I have obviously been an enormous fan of yours since we came into the House together, and I want to celebrate you as one of Britain’s foremost authors. I am referring to the famous Four Streets trilogy: “The Four Streets”, “Hide Her Name” and “The Ballymara Road”, which was published this month. What we see before us is a multi-thousand-selling British author. It perhaps says something about the tone of arts coverage in this country that the Chairman we see before us is not as celebrated as some other authors who sell far fewer books. Thank you, Ms Dorries, for allowing me to indulge myself in this way. When I tried to praise Louise Bagshawe, when she was an MP, Mr Speaker slapped me down, but thankfully we have a more enlightened Chairman for this debate.
I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) for calling this important debate. It has been much more lively than I expected. Before talking about his remarks and those of other hon. Members, I pay special tribute to the brilliant journalist Graeme Brown, of The Birmingham Post and the Birmingham Mail, who has brought this campaign to great prominence. He has worked with many hon. Members who are in the House this afternoon to get the campaign to critical mass.
I cannot improve on the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood in terms of the statistics that he talked about—the hundreds of millions of pounds spent on the licence fee by people living in the midlands and the return on investment that they get from the BBC. A more important point, because one can always play around with statistics, is that it is clear, from what he said, that investment has increased in all regions except the midlands. It has fallen in the midlands and in London, but that is not really relevant because London has huge funding already.
I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight). He was that rare species—a Conservative in the BBC. For that, he is to be treasured. Part of me wishes that he was still in the BBC, flying the flag for the Conservative party. One would have thought that he had been working not for the BBC but in the House for the past 25 years, such was the assured point that he made—that there is a north-south link, as it were, at the BBC, missing out the midlands.
Of course, this was not a one-sided debate. We had valuable contributions from the Opposition and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) in particular. I join with her in defending the BBC; we are its critical friends, but we want to see it thrive because it is both a fantastic asset to viewers and listeners in this country and one of our most important—if not the most important—global calling cards.
The hon. Lady made points about why the BBC should have a greater presence in the midlands as well as represent youth and diversity to a greater extent. Diversity in particular is a passion of mine and we urgently need far more diversity in our media. The BBC could lead the way and, as she pointed out, with such diverse and young communities in the constituencies represented by Members in the Chamber, the BBC should be working at that.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) made forceful points about the need for the BBC to invest in the midlands, as did the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden). It was not his debut, but it was good to see my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar)—he is also my old personal friend—make such an impassioned speech. He has only just arrived in the House, but to say that he has found his feet would be the understatement of the century.
Hon. Members here represent some fantastic cultural institutions in the midlands. I want to tell the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) how much I have enjoyed my visits to Dudley zoo, which has two of the finest tigers that I, or indeed my children, have met. The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) has the Curve. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) has been instrumental in trying to save the collection at the Wedgwood museum, and hopefully the potteries are now thriving even more. Of course, in Birmingham we have the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the symphony hall, the largest library in Europe and the Birmingham museum and art gallery. All hon. Members made valuable contributions that emphasized the thriving nature of culture in the midlands, but there was also an element of nostalgia for Pebble Mill studios that points us in our future direction.
The right hon. Member for Leicester East, the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, made a specific point about the BBC Asian Network. The minute he brought that up, I looked into it, and my understanding is that one programme from the BBC Asian Network is moving to London, but the network will remain split between Leicester and London.
Robert Flello
I thank the Minister for his kind words about Wedgwood and the other magnificent potteries in Stoke-on-Trent and north Staffordshire. He mentioned Pebble Mill and much has been said about the Mailbox, but Members who have been called down to the Mailbox in recent years to take part in the “Sunday Politics” show will have seen a dramatic reduction in its facilities. Indeed, the programme is now pre-recorded on a Friday to make savings, though there is no saving in terms of battling Birmingham’s traffic on a Friday compared with a Sunday. The dumbing down, if I can use that phrase, that we have seen at the Mailbox is quite shocking.
Mr Vaizey
The hon. Gentleman is not mincing his words.
I must mention contributions from my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), the hon. Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) and for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham), and my hon. Friends the Members for Redditch (Karen Lumley) and for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), who has been so helpful to the BBC in the past 12 months. They, and all the other Members I have mentioned, have all made incredibly valuable points and pointed to their constituents’ concerns.
We can play fast and loose in politics, but I would not dream, for example, of taking the comments from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South out of context by saying that the Labour party was advocating a licence fee of £12.50, because that is not what he meant. He was simply trying to compare the contribution of people living in the midlands with what they receive back.
Mr Vaizey
I will not take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention yet; I will make a bit of progress and then see if I have time for more interventions.
However, I will make a point that I think plays to the concerns that have been set out in Westminster Hall this afternoon. First, the BBC has a strong regional presence in many other parts of the country. If people go to Glasgow, they will see a fantastic BBC presence; in Belfast, of course; in Cardiff, where the BBC now films “Dr Who”; we know about the move to Salford and we can say whether or not that is a good or bad thing, but it has happened, although I hear the point about the BBC making a real move rather than simply a commuting move; in London; and of course in Bristol, which is the centre of the BBC’s wildlife programming.
Has Birmingham missed out? The BBC would say that it is doing what it can. For example, it points to the fact that it is making the Mailbox, which was referred to earlier by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston as the base for the BBC academy, the diversity unit and internal communications. The BBC is also increasing jobs there; I understand that investment will go up from £80 million this year to £89 million next year, and up to £125 million the year after. There is also a training remit, with the establishment of the drama village in Selly Oak and the digital innovation unit, too. Of course, there is drama itself, such as the highly successful “Peaky Blinders”, and the BBC has just finished filming Lenny Henry’s semi-autobiographical drama, “Danny and the Human Zoo”, which may indeed take place in my much-loved Dudley zoo.
However, the point that I think is being made here today is about much more than those things. Obviously, we should welcome what the BBC is doing to invest in Birmingham and the east and west midlands, but what I think hon. Members are calling for is much greater cultural representation, if I can put it in those terms.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I have just one example. There is a brilliant radio broadcasting series that follows world war one, day by day, in 15-minute slots. It is great, and recorded in Birmingham, but not a single storyline involves the midlands. That is the point—production on its own is not sufficient. We need commissioning that recognises the input of the midlands.
Mr Vaizey
That is exactly the point. To a certain extent, where the BBC makes its programmes matters, because it effectively acts as an anchor for a creative cluster. Nobody would argue that “Dr Who” reflects Welsh culture, but people could certainly argue that it supports the Welsh creative industries, just as the BBC’s investment in S4C does. However, one would perhaps argue that the transmission of some programmes from different cities helps to reflect the wider cultural aspects of the United Kingdom.
Andrew Bridgen
When my hon. Friend the Minister speaks to the BBC about its lack of footprint in the midlands, I ask him not to accept the fact that it has had its licence fee frozen for five years, because that has not diminished the income stream—
Mr Vaizey
Good point.
Basically, I am but a junior Minister and I think that hon. Members in Westminster Hall today can reflect on the fact that they have the support of the Prime Minister. He has already been quoted, but I will quote him again; quoting the Prime Minister never does one any harm. He said that
“the charter renewal is a good time to have that conversation and make sure the West Midlands gets a fair bang for its buck.”
Mr Vaizey
And the east midlands, but the quote is about the west midlands; the Prime Minister meant to say the west and the east midlands. And the Mayor of London, my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), has spoken, and of course the Chairman of the Culture, Media and Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), describes himself as a midlands MP representing Hereford. So there is strong support for this idea.
Before the recess, we will set out what we will do in terms of the charter review, so I hear what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston says about getting on with it, and I can guarantee to hon. Members in Westminster Hall today that they have made such a strong case that it will be reflected in what we set out.
Written Statements
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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ECOFIN
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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The First Secretary of State and Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)
A meeting of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council was held in Luxembourg on 19 June 2015. Ministers discussed the following items:
Bank Structural Reform
Council reached a general approach on this file.
European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI)
Ministers were updated by the presidency on progress in relation to the EFSI. The Council presidency anticipate reaching a First Reading agreement on the regulation by the end of June.
Administrative Co-operation
Ministers held an exchange of views on the presidency proposal on mandatory automatic exchange of information on tax rulings.
Interest and Royalties Directive
Ministers held an exchange of views on the presidency compromise on the proposal for a common system of taxation applicable to interest and royalty payments made between associated companies of different member states.
Current Legislative Proposals
The presidency gave a state of play update on current legislative proposals in the field of financial services.
Commission Communication on Corporate Taxation
The Commission presented the main elements of the action plan on corporate taxation, which was released on 17 June.
Implementation of Banking Union
The Commission updated the Council on the status of implementation of the banking union, focusing on the ratification of the intergovernmental agreement on the single resolution fund and implementation of the bank recovery and resolution directive.
Capital Markets Union
Council adopted Council conclusions on capital markets union.
Contribution to the European Council Meeting on 25-26 June 2015—European Semester
Council discussed country specific recommendations and prepared a discussion for the June European Council on the European semester.
Contribution to the European Council Meeting on 25-26 June 2015—Broad Economic Policy Guidelines
Council adopted a report to the European Council on the recommendations on broad economic policy guidelines.
Contribution to the European Council Meeting on 25-26 June 2015—Report on preparing for next steps on better economic governance in the euro area
Council received a state of play update on the report on preparing for next steps on better economic governance in the euro area.
Implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact
Council adopted Council decisions and recommendations in the context of the excessive deficit procedure.
[HCWS47]
Equitable Life Payments Scheme
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Harriett Baldwin)
As of 31 May 2015, the scheme has now issued payments totalling over £1.06 billion to 902,508 policyholders. The scheme will today be publishing a further progress report, which can be found at www.gov.uk/equitable-life-payment-scheme.
Eighty-seven per cent of eligible policyholders have now been traced and had a payment issued; this represents nearly 92% of the total amount estimated to be due to policyholders.
The scheme encourages any policyholders who believe themselves to be eligible to call the scheme on 0300 0200 150. The scheme can verify the identity of most policyholders on the telephone, which means any payment due can usually be received within two weeks.
[HCWS48]
EU Payment Accounts Directive
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Harriett Baldwin)
I am today publishing a consultation on the draft payment accounts regulations 2015.
The regulations make provision regarding the transparency and comparability of fees charged in relation to payment accounts; payment account switching and access to payment accounts with basic features for all consumers legally resident within the EU.
The regulations are required in order to implement the requirements of the payment accounts directive (2014/92/EU) (“PAD”) which was adopted on 23 July 2014. In order to meet treaty obligations, EU member states must implement the majority of the measures set out in PAD by 18 September 2016.
The Government have already taken forward a number of initiatives for the purposes of improving the experience of UK current account customers. For example, the seven-day current account switch service (CASS) supports current account switching and basic bank accounts have been available in the UK for over 10 years, most recently augmented by the December 2014 agreement concluded by the nine largest providers of current accounts in the UK. That new agreement clarified and improved the terms upon which basic bank accounts are offered.
To complete the transposition of PAD, the UK must establish these initiatives in legislation and amend existing legislation related to the provision and regulation of payment accounts. However, due to the measures that the UK already has in place, the proposed regulations aim to minimise any negative impact on structures and services that are working well.
PAD allows member states to extend provision in a number of areas. Under the draft regulations, application will not be extended beyond what is necessary.
The exception to this is chapter IV of PAD—payment accounts with basic features—where UK policy on basic bank accounts is more developed than that set out in the directive. As a result, the Government intend to implement PAD in such a way as to preserve the UK’s existing basic bank account policy, while creating the necessary legal certainty for consumers required by PAD.
The consultation closes on 3 August. The consultation document is available online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/latest?departments%5B%5D=hm-treasury
[HCWS51]
Telecommunications Council
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)
The Telecommunications Council took place in Luxembourg on 12 June 2015. I represented the UK and below are the agenda items and the positions, where applicable, I took on each of them. Please be aware that the order of the agenda, as laid out in the pre-Council statement was changed by the Latvian presidency at the last minute. This statement reflects those changes.
The first item was an exchange of views on the Commissions digital single market strategy, which was published on 6 May. The debate was informed by two questions from the presidency. My intervention was as per the pre-Council statement. The Commission Vice President Ansip opened the debate by identifying three priorities for the digital single market––goods and services; infrastructure; and e-commerce and e-society. He also noted the need for progress on geographic price blocking. On copyright, he also suggested that more work was needed to harmonise exceptions currently invoked by member states.
Member state interventions covered a range of issues, including e-skills, infrastructure, e-commerce and the internet of things. Copyright and platform regulation were also two of the more commonly raised issues, with clear emerging divisions between member states. The UK, Finland, Netherlands, Poland and Sweden also linked the Commission’s better regulation agenda and the digital single market, noting the benefits of industry-led approaches where possible.
The second item was for Council to reach agreement for a general approach on the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a programme on interoperability solutions for European public administrations, businesses and citizens (ISA2, First reading, EM11580/14). As per my pre-Council statement, I abstained from voting for the general approach. However, the rest of Council agreed to the general approach and this approach will now form the basis of the Council discussions going forward.
I hope that the improvements to the text that could not be agreed in Council will be made during the trilogue negotiations, so that the UK may support the proposal when it comes to final agreement. The UK continues to encourage the inclusion of more tangible efforts to make ISA2 a more effective programme, including clearer prioritisation and evaluation of programme actions based on user needs and clearer analysis of how actions support efforts in other parts of the Commission.
The presidency then presented a progress report on the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the accessibility to public sector bodies’ websites (First Reading, EM16006/11). There was no debate on this item.
This was followed by the adoption of draft Council conclusions on the transfer of the stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions to the multi-stakeholder community. Council agreed to the adoption of these conclusions and there was no debate on this item.
There were three items under AOB on the agenda. The first two items were information from the presidency on the “state of play” on negotiations regarding “a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down measures concerning the European single market for electronic communications and to achieve a connected continent” (EM13562/13 and 13555/13 + ADDs 1-2) and information from the presidency on a proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning measures to ensure a high level of network and information security across the Union (NIS directive). (First Reading, EM6342/13). The presidency updated Council on the progress of both, which are each in the middle of trilogue negotiations between the Council, Parliament and Commission. There was no substantive debate on either of these items and I did not intervene.
As noted in my pre-Council statement, the readout from the presidency on the connected continent package was informed by the informal ministerial breakfast whose aim was to reach political agreement on the regulation.
At this breakfast, Council could not reach such an agreement and the negotiation of this package therefore continues. At the breakfast, I intervened as per my pre-Council statement, especially pushing the cessation of EU roaming charges in the near future and the importance of a future-proof approach to net neutrality. I was given strong support on this approach by Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. However, the majority of Council did not agree with this approach.
Finally, under AOB, the Luxembourg delegation informed the Council of their priorities for their forthcoming presidency before Council adjourns until the next meeting in quarter four 2015.
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Justice and Home Affairs: Post-Council Statement
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
The Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council took place on 15 and 16 June in Luxembourg. My right hon. Friend, Lord Faulks QC, Minister for Civil Justice and I attended on behalf of the United Kingdom. The following items were discussed.
Justice day started with the Latvian presidency securing a general approach on the data protection regulation, following three and a half years of negotiations. The UK supported the text as a basis for negotiations with the Parliament. However, UK support had a number of caveats. The UK stressed the need for a balanced instrument that strengthens privacy rights in a simple, coherent and informed way and does not threaten innovation or the success of the digital single market. The UK also voiced strong concerns on the effect on SMEs and other business, about the overly bureaucratic “one stop shop” model, and the threats posed to freedom of expression by the so-called “right to be forgotten”, which the UK opposes on principle. The UK sees no justification for an expanded right such as that contained in the data protection regulation.
Luxembourg, as the incoming presidency, stressed that it would keep all of these concerns in mind during trilogue negotiations. Luxembourg is committed to keeping both the regulation and directive (covering personal data processed for investigating and prosecuting crime) together as a package, with the aim of full agreement on both instruments by the end of the year.
This was followed by agreement on a general approach on the simplification of public documents regulation. The Council supported the presidency compromise text, with many states noting that this helped to remove barriers and administrative burdens within the internal market. The UK and Ireland highlighted the importance of equal respect for common law and civil law traditions. The incoming Luxembourg presidency would take forward trilogue negotiations with the European Parliament on the basis of this general approach.
Over lunch, justice-related aspects of the Commission’s digital single market strategy were discussed. The Commission wanted clear, simple and legally certain rules, with targeted legislation to harmonise only where there were gaps; they stressed they were not seeking a repeat of the proposed common European sales law. The UK highlighted domestic legislation on online purchases of digital content and the UK’s vibrant e-commerce sector, suggesting that this model could be a useful starting point for EU-level work. The UK emphasised that work on these proposals should respect better regulation principles, including appropriate consultations and impact assessments. The UK also raised combating illegal content online, arguing that a voluntary removals approach, working with industry, had greater global reach than legislation and could deliver more effective results on removals.
On the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), Ministers agreed “broadly expressed conceptual support” for the text of articles 1 to 16 of the draft regulation, which cover the balance of power between the central office and delegated prosecutors. The UK reminded member states that we would not participate in this measure.
Under AOB, the presidency noted progress on the data protection directive and work with the European Parliament to reach a compromise on the small claims regulation. The presidency and the Commission updated the Council on the recent EU-US JHA summit in Riga. The Commission highlighted co-operation with the US on combating money laundering and terrorist financing, as well as progressing on the data-related umbrella agreement and safe harbour.
The incoming Luxembourg presidency, starting in July, presented its priorities for the justice field: the two main priorities would be data protection and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. Linked to the European public prosecutor, it planned to drive forward progress on the draft PIF (“Fraud against the EU’s financial interests”) directive and Eurojust regulation. In civil law, it would introduce proposals on family law and continue work on the simplification of public documents. A motion underlining the Council’s will to move towards EU accession to the European convention on human rights would be put to the October JHA Council. Finally, the Luxembourg presidency said it planned to present a proposal to improve political discussions at Council at its informal JHA Council meeting in July.
The interior session began with a policy debate on migration. While there was broad support for elements of the Commission’s European agenda on migration, there was no agreement on the relocation proposal. The Commission pointed to the development of “hotspots” to ensure processing of arriving migrants, beginning in Sicily, and progress on the proposed “multi-purpose centre” in Niger to try to mitigate flows through that country, alongside enhanced efforts to combat the facilitators. The European External Action Service (EEAS) confirmed that the first phase of the common security and defence policy (CSDP) mission in the Mediterranean would be launched shortly. The UK joined other Ministers in emphasising the need to tackle the root causes of migration, to tackle people smugglers and traffickers, and to break the link between rescue at sea and the expectation of remaining in the EU by returning economic migrants while supporting their reintegration in their home countries. The UK also recalled the European Council’s clear agreement that EU relocation and resettlement schemes should be voluntary rather than mandatory.
The incoming Luxembourg presidency gave a presentation which confirmed the following priorities in the area of migration: more effective returns including use of readmission agreements; progress on operational proposals such as the centre in Niger and “hotspots”; agreement to the draft regulation currently under negotiation that would clarify the treatment of minors under the Dublin regulation;n and political agreement on the visa package and the students and researchers directive. Other priorities included: combating terrorism (in particular dealing with the threat from foreign fighters), implementing the new internal security strategy, concluding trilogues on the Europol regulation, and seeking agreement with the European Parliament on the passenger name records (PNR) directive by the end of the year.
During lunch there was a discussion on returns which saw broad agreement that greater ambition was required in this area as part of the comprehensive approach on migration. More effective EU readmission arrangements were seen as an important element.
The Council conclusions on the internal security strategy were adopted without substantive discussion.
The presidency presented papers which updated Ministers on progress since the 12 February informal European Council statement on the EU response to the Paris terrorist attacks.
The Commission (Avramopoulos) drew attention to its communication “The European agenda on security” and highlighted that in the short term counter terrorism (CT) priorities included: a high-level internet industry forum event in the autumn; making the Europol internet referrals unit (IRU) operational as quickly as possible; swift adoption of an efficient and legally sound EU PNR directive; and preparing for a revision of the EU framework decision on terrorism.
The EU CT co-ordinator (Giles de Kerchove) called for detailed planning on handling the increasing wave of European returnees from Syria/Iraq. This meant investing now in exit and rehabilitation programmes and supporting Commissioner Jourova’s work on prison radicalisation. In his view, the EU also needed to find the resources to enable Europol, Eurojust and CEPOL to enhance co-operation and capacity building in third countries.
The UK welcomed progress on the Europol internal referral unit (IRU) and announced a UK secondee into the unit. The UK also praised the work of the Syria strategic communication advisory team (SSCAT). While welcoming the Commission’s action in establishing the industry forum, the UK cautioned that certain aspects of tackling terrorist abuse of the internet (including encryption and interception) were matters of national security and thus for member states rather than the EU. The UK called for robust minimum standards on legislation on firearm deactivation; for enhanced data sharing on illegal firearms and ammunition; and for the Commission to step up its work on proactive sharing of criminal records via the European criminal records information system (ECRIS). Finally, the UK again underlined the urgency of adopting, with the European Parliament, a strong and effective PNR framework, including intra-EU PNR, before the end of the year.
Europol drew attention to the excellent co-operation it has received from member states’ intelligence agencies. Europol also reported significant increases in the use of their existing CT tools. Most notably, this included the terrorist finance tracking programme (TFTP) which had led to 3,000 separate intelligence leads since the Paris attacks (some 1,500 of which were related to foreign fighters). Europol was on track to establish the IRU by 1 July and had worked constructively with social media companies in recent months.
The presidency urged renewed vigour to implement the post-Paris conclusions in order to keep pace with the threat. The presidency would report the priorities outlined during the debate (and those identified in the Internal Security Strategy Council conclusions) as the JHA Council’s input to the June European Council’s review of the post-Paris statement it agreed in February.
Under AOB, the Commission provided a brief overview of the biannual report on the functioning of the Schengen area, noting that Schengen was the solution not the problem providing that all member states fully applied the rules of the Schengen acquis. The Commission also confirmed that a new smart borders proposal would be published following the results of the pilot phase. The presidency provided an update on the EU-US ministerial meeting which took place in Riga on 2/3 June; this agreed a statement defining the common EU-US JHA agenda over the next five years. The presidency also provided an update on ongoing legislative negotiations including on the European Police College (CEPOL) and the European Union’s law enforcement agency (EUROPOL) regulations and the students and researchers directive.
[HCWS52]
Scottish Independence Referendum: Campaign Expenditure and Regulation
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Gary Streeter
(Representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission): The Electoral Commission has today published a report in the Scottish Parliament on its analysis of the spending and regulation of campaigners at the Scottish independence referendum.
This is the Electoral Commission’s second report on the referendum and fulfils its statutory duty to report to the Scottish Parliament, under the provisions of the Scottish Independence Referendum Act 2013 (SIRA), on the use of its investigatory powers and civil sanctions. For further background and information on the wider context of the referendum on independence for Scotland, this report should be read in conjunction with the report the Commission published in December 2014 on the conduct of the referendum, which is available on its website and copies of which were placed in the Library of the House on its publication.
This report analyses the funding and spending of those people and organisations that registered to campaign at the independence referendum. It builds on last December’s report and makes further recommendations for the future based on the information campaigners were required to submit in their post-referendum returns. These additional recommendations are intended to inform the regulation of future referendums, not only in Scotland, but elsewhere in the UK including an EU referendum.
SIRA contained a number of rules drawn from those that applied at the 2011 referendums on increased powers for the National Assembly for Wales and the UK-wide referendum on the UK parliamentary voting systems. These rules clarified aspects of the regulatory controls, reduced burdens on those that wished to campaign and ensured that voters had access to the information that would enable them to make an informed decision when they voted. Overall, the Commission concludes that the regulatory controls that applied at the independence referendum worked well and improved on the rules from previous referendums.
After the independence referendum, registered campaigners were required to submit a campaign spending return to the Commission. The returns included details of the spending that the campaigners incurred campaigning at the referendum and all donations and loans they accepted over £7,500. Campaigners were also required to provide a total figure of the donations and loans they received over £500 but below £7,500. Anything with a value of £500 or less was not counted as a donation or loan for the purposes of the referendum rules.
The report shows that 42 campaigners registered with the Commission, 21 indicating they supported the yes outcome to the question asked, 21 supporting the no side. Registered campaigners reported spending a total of £6,664,980 campaigning at the independence referendum and reported having received donations and loans totalling £7,318,545.
SIRA also gave the Commission the role of monitoring and taking steps to ensure compliance with the referendum campaign rules. To enable the Commission to undertake that role, it had access to investigatory and sanctioning powers. The report finds that the Commission’s powers under SIRA enabled it to effectively investigate matters. While the Commission found that it was able to obtain the information that it required through voluntary co-operation with campaigners, it also sets out that the powers SIRA provided it were useful to point to as part of its discussions with campaigners.
Copies of the Commission’s report have been placed in the Library and it is also available on the Commission’s website: www.electoralcommission.org.uk
[HCWS49]
Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Harris of Richmond) (LD)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [HL]
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Barker
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, good afternoon. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, to his first Committee. No doubt he has been briefed extensively and told that these are occasions on which their Lordships are allowed to do absolutely anything they like. I think this is the point of maximum terror for the spokesperson, although I am sure we will treat him gently.
This might well seem the most pedantic amendment that noble Lords have ever seen but we are dealing with charity law, are we not? Let us start as we mean to go on. However, it is a rather important amendment. I want to start the Committee’s deliberations by trying to ensure that, throughout our proceedings, we do not stray into the realms of viewing this legislation simply in terms of the extent to which it adds to the arsenal of weapons at the disposal of the commission and without thinking of the impact that some of these measures can have on trustees.
When some of us undertook the work of the scrutiny committee, under the able chairmanship of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, we were presented with witnesses who were, by and large, people with professional interests from around the charity world. At times, we rather lost the sense that on the end of this legislation will be individual trustees, the majority of whom we know are perfectly decent and honest. Just a few are not.
On the committee, we considered at some length whether this power to issue a formal warning was really necessary. In the end, we were persuaded that on balance—it was on balance—perhaps the Charity Commission could make fair and good use of it to issue a warning rather than open a statutory inquiry and go through all that that entails. Simply having the power to issue a warning to trustees where it was considered that the actions in which they were engaged presented a fairly low-level risk to the charity or to charities in general is absolutely fine. I agree with that. However, it is still a public warning. It is still something likely to cast a shadow over, if not leave a stain on, a person’s reputation. The majority of trustees hold the commission in very high regard. They take very seriously the actions of the commission. For the majority of trustees the prospect of a public warning would actually be quite difficult for them personally if not professionally.
We deliberated long and hard, and were influenced a great deal by the wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. He argued that this was meant to be a proportionate response to very minor misdemeanours, albeit recurring ones, and because this is not meant to be a draconian power, we should not allow an appeal mechanism, making the process a bureaucratic nightmare. I agree, but that makes it all the more important that trustees are alerted in good time that they may be the recipients of a warning, giving them a chance to put right their failures. That is what this power is supposed to be about—the prevention of fairly minor misdemeanours.
For that reason, it is important to ensure that people know where and when the warning will be published. It is one thing for a notice to be published on a part of the Charity Commission’s website, where only those of us who are sufficiently intrepid or boring to make our way will find it. It is quite another for it to be published prominently somewhere in a local paper, for example—if local papers still exist—in an area in which the charity operates. That could have quite a profound and damaging effect on the charity’s reputation.
In putting this apparently small and fussy amendment before your Lordships, I am trying to echo the points made by the Charity Law Association which thinks that trustees ought to be given fair notice that they will be subject to this so that they can try to put matters right. If we do that, this power will serve to act in the preventive way that was envisaged rather than being a rather heavy-handed hammer to crack a nut. In that spirit, I beg to move.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, there is a great deal that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said with which I agree. Perhaps I can take this opportunity to pay my own tribute to the work that she, along with other Members of your Lordships’ House who are present, did on the committee. There is a great deal of force in her point about the importance of the notice that is being given to trustees as to what the Charity Commission wants to do with regard to publication. However, I have a concern about the removal of the word “how” and the substitution of the words “when and where” for this reason: when you think carefully about what the words really mean, the effect of the amendment is to narrow the amount of the information that is required by the provision. There are other things built into the word “how” which are not there—the manner in which this is to be done, and how often, are two examples. One point that the Charity Law Association raised with us and is in a memorandum it sent to us in connection with the Committee stage of the Bill is the element of publicity itself and whether anonymity is to be given to the trustees who are the subject of the publication. If one restricts the amount of information simply to “where” and “when”, it leaves out the possibility of further inquiry as to the precise way in which this is to be done.
I appreciate the word “how”. After all, a three letter word seems very weak but, if you think about it, it is actually quite a powerful word because it embraces so much within it. If you read that together with what is in subsection (6) which enables people to make representations as to “how”—I repeat the word “how”—the publication is to be done, one can see that it gives scope for a good deal more inquiry.
I have huge respect for the noble Baroness, Lady Barker—I am entirely in sympathy with what she is seeking to do—but I would respectfully suggest that “how” is probably the best word to use. If it is to be replaced by something else, then there would need to be more in it than simply “where” and “when”. I find that a little untidy, which is why I suggest that we leave the word “how” as it is.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, I have some sympathy with the noble Baroness’s amendment. I hoped that she would have inserted those words in addition to “how”, so that it would have been “how”, “when” and “where”.
Before I address the pros and cons, because this is the first time I am speaking in Committee, I want to take this opportunity to let noble Lords know of a potential, tangential interest that I may have in a matter which will come before them at a later stage. It concerns fundraising. The charities report that I produced, which was published in July 2012, has a whole chapter—Chapter 8—devoted to fundraising. It is 17 pages long and makes a number of recommendations, none of which I resile from. In fact, I think many are equally, if not more, appropriate today.
In my non-political life, as can be seen on the register of interests in your Lordships’ House, I am non-executive chairman of a company called Nova Capital Management. Nova is a specialist private equity firm which is focused on what are known as “secondary directs”. This means that Nova purchases groups of companies on behalf of groups of institutional investors—often an unloved and neglected division of a much larger company. Nova provides intensive support for management of the individual companies within the group with a view to achieving improved operating and financial performance which, in due course, is reflected in a superior sale price. I play no part in the day-to-day operation of Nova, let alone of any of the individual companies in the various portfolios.
In December 2011, Nova created a company called CNH Capital Partners to take over a public company called Parseq plc. It has three divisions—two need not concern us at all. The third, Parseq Services, has a series of subsidiaries which provide business processing outsourcing services to banks, local authorities and utility companies from locations stretching from Glasgow to Brighton. In February 2013, seven months after my review was completed, the board of Parseq decided to expand its operations by acquiring a company called Panther Group. This, in turn, has a number of subsidiaries. One of these, Pell & Bales, undertakes telephone fundraising for a number of leading charities, including Christian Aid, RNIB, Cancer Research UK, Barnardo’s, the National Trust and the Royal British Legion.
As a result of the death of Olive Cooke, Pell & Bales has been caught up in the storm over charity fundraising, in particular because an undercover journalist from the Sun was embedded in the business in order to investigate the sector. In its major article of Saturday 6 June, the Sun concluded:
“There is no suggestion Pell & Bales did anything illegal. Indeed, the company is scrupulous in instructing its employees to stick to acceptable practices”.
I understand that the management of Pell & Bales has since reported the Sun to IPSO as a result of what the company believes are breaches of the press guidelines.
As I have explained, my very tangential association with Pell & Bales began six months after I completed my review. There can be no suggestion that it was in any way influenced by that association. Some might argue that I have nothing to declare. I think it best if I explain this position on the first occasion I speak in Committee. This amendment is not about fundraising but I judge that the sooner I lay out the facts and explain my position, the better. In the highly charged atmosphere of cases such as the tragic death of Olive Cooke, truth and accuracy can be early casualties.
With that declaration, I turn to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. As I explained, the ideal situation would be to have “when and where” added to “how”. An example is the impact not only on a trustee, but on a charity. The charity might have been given an official warning—or a warning of a warning under new Section 75A(3)—but perhaps I and my fellow trustees do not agree with the commission’s determination. We make representations, but the commission decides not to accept them. Our charity has a significant funder and I want to talk to him or her about this case and give the trustees a view of the issues. Such a conversation or discussion is made much clearer if I know when and where the news of the official warning is to be released—the date, time, methodology and so on. “How” could mean no more detail than by a press release on a date yet to be determined. That would be unfair to the charity, which may be contesting the view and wants to be able to talk to its funder to ensure that its side of the argument is heard, without which the case might go by default.
With respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, I do not entirely take his point because, for a charity trustee, some further clarity in the wording would be a good idea. Therefore, I look forward to hearing my noble friend’s response.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I am very pleased to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, to his first Committee. I am sure that we will have some productive discussions over this and the other Committee sessions, and, indeed, beyond that.
When I looked at the amendment in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, I thought that there is not really much to disagree with, but because they are Lib Dems I thought it was worth a go anyway. As it appeared, we on these Benches reached the conclusion that we could not really see anything untoward about it. But perhaps not unsurprisingly, given his legal brain, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, has raised an issue that certainly had not occurred to me.
With noble Lords’ indulgence, as a brief aside, the noble and learned Lord and I take our titles from the same county, Perth and Kinross. I am more towards the eastern end, on the outskirts of Dundee where I grew up. The noble and learned Lord mentioned the word “how” and how such a small word could, perhaps, have significant meaning. Let me just enlighten noble Lords that, in Dundee, “how” has a different meaning than is more normally associated with it. If you are at your desk at work in Dundee and you turn to your colleague and say, “It’s 15.47, I’m going home now”, he or she might say to you, “How?”. You might say, “By train or bus”, but the answer would be, “Because I’m not feeling very well”. “How” tends to mean “why” in Dundee. I use that as an illustration of the fact that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, was indeed right in pointing out that that little three-letter word can contain a bit more than might at first be obvious.
More seriously, I take the noble and learned Lord’s point that it could be seen to be narrowing the wording in the Bill. It is certainly right that, wherever possible, individuals should not be identified unless the Charity Commission is very clear that that is the appropriate thing to do. If they are to be identified, they have to have as much notice as possible and an indication of the form in which the commission proposes to publish the warning. Whether that means them saying, “We will put it in these newspapers”, or whether they say just “in the media”, or “on such and such a date” I do not think is of huge concern. But I accept that the main thrust of this part of the legislation should be to ensure that the individual is given the protection that he or she deserves until such time as the commission reaches its conclusions.
Like other noble Lords, I was a member of the Joint Committee that looked at the draft Bill. In response to the Joint Committee’s report, the Government set out new criteria in Clause 1, which are very welcome. However, the remarks we have heard, particularly those from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, mean that we should perhaps return to this issue on Report with a view to coming up with some wording that would be more appropriate. I am not going to suggest anything off the top of my head because I initially thought there was nothing to which you could object in this amendment. Given what we have heard, it may well be that further consideration is needed. It is important for the commission to have this power, but the individual has to be given some consideration. What happens to charities is important, and it is the Charity Commission we are talking about, but let us not forget that individuals as trustees do invaluable work for charities and we have to give them due consideration.
Lord Scott of Foscote (CB)
My Lords, noble Lords need to bear in mind that each of the three words “how”, “when” and “where” is a preposition, and each word has a slightly different meaning. Since the intention of this part of Clause 1 is plainly to give as wide a discretion to the commission as is practicable, I respectfully suggest that all three words should be included, each meaning something slightly different. If the words were “how, when and where”, all would be covered.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Lord Bridges of Headley) (Con)
My Lords, before I address the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, I should repeat my declaration of interest as a trustee of the Foundation Years Trust.
The noble Baroness began by suggesting that she might be seen as pedantic, and I think the other word she used was “fussy”. I would not dream of accusing the noble Baroness of being either. Indeed, the whole purpose of this Committee is to kick the tyres of this policy and to do precisely what we are doing, which is to examine every word, even thin little words such as “how”.
The noble Baroness began by making an excellent overarching point which I endorse wholeheartedly. We need to ensure that this Bill and all the measures within it are balanced. We are mindful of proportionality. We must also ensure that proper safeguards govern the measures and all the new powers in the Bill. I very much welcome the debate that we are going to have. I would also like once again to put on record my thanks to all noble Lords who spent so much time in the pre-legislative scrutiny committee shaping the Bill before us today.
Taking a step back, the Charity Commission asked for these powers following criticism from the NAO and PAC about its regulatory approach. These powers were a specific recommendation of the NAO in its December 2013 report. Further calls for tougher powers for the commission came from the extremism task force in December 2013 and from the Home Affairs Select Committee.
We consider the Bill is a “must have” because it forms just one part of a multistrand approach to addressing criticisms of the Charity Commission by ensuring that it has the tools it needs to do the job that we and the public expect of it. One of these powers is the power to issue an official warning. As my honourable friend the Minister for Civil Society said to the Joint Committee in pre-legislative scrutiny, this is one of the most important new powers in the Bill. An official warning could be issued to a charity trustee or to the charity itself where the Charity Commission considers there has been a breach of trust or duty or other misconduct or mismanagement. The power would enable the Charity Commission to publish a warning, as we have been discussing. The Charity Commission has said that it would not publish all warnings, which is an important point to note. The decision to publish would be in line with its current policy on publishing the announcement of statutory inquiries, which are considered on a case-by-case basis. The Charity Commission would not publish an official warning if it considered that it would not be in the public interest to do so.
Let me give the Committee two brief examples of when the Charity Commission might consider issuing an official warning. Fist, a charity is consistently a little late in submitting its accounts. An official warning would remind the trustees of the seriousness of their non-compliance. Secondly, a charity makes unauthorised payments to a connected company or one that benefits a trustee. The size of the sums involved means that it would be disproportionate for the commission to take firmer action, but it could issue an official warning on future conduct.
As the Committee would expect, and as I mentioned, the power is accompanied by a number of safeguards; I know these were discussed in the committee, and others have been added since then. The first is as follows: the Charity Commission must give notice of its intention to issue a warning to the charity and its trustees. The notice must specify a number of matters, including the grounds for issuing the warning and any action that the commission considers should be taken by the charity to rectify the breach that has given rise to the warning. The notice must specify a period for representations to be made about the proposed warning, and the commission must take account of any representations before it issues any warning. An official warning could also highlight the likely consequences of any further non-compliance, which would be likely to require a more significant intervention by the regulator.
This is the one new regulatory power in the Bill that we and the Charity Commission expect may impact on more charities than the other proposed powers. Most of the powers in the Bill are targeted at serious, deliberate abuse of charity. The official warning power would be used more frequently by the commission as a more reasonable and proportionate way of dealing with breaches where the risks and impact on charitable assets and services are lower.
The Charity Commission’s current policy is to consider publishing reports of its non-inquiry work where, first, there is significant public interest in the issues involved and the outcome and, secondly, there are lessons that other charities can learn from them. The commission has explained its proposals for publishing official warnings in evidence to the Joint Committee on the draft protection of charities Bill. In its written evidence, it said:
“We do not intend to publish all warnings. Whether or not we do so will, in line with our current policy on publishing the announcement of statutory inquiries, depend on whether it is in the public interest. We would not publish an official warning if we consider that it would not be in the public interest to do so”.
It went on to say that it would follow its existing practice of inviting comments on factual inaccuracies, which it would take into account, and would publish guidance on the criteria that it would use in deciding whether or not to publish an official warning.
The requirement for certain information to be specified in the notice of an official warning was added in response, as I said, to a recommendation from the Joint Committee on the draft protection of charities Bill. In terms of where the official warning would be published, the Charity Commission already publishes around 25 non-inquiry regulatory case reports on its pages on www.gov.uk. Details can also be published alongside the charity’s register entry. It also summarises its regulatory casework and, in particular, identifies each year wider lessons that charities can draw from it in an annual report. To pick up the noble Baroness’s point about publication, only in certain cases might the commission consider issuing a press release, and this is always shown to the charity in advance. The commission will also share with the charities where it is to be published.
As to when the commission would publish the official warning, this would always be after the period of representations, and a period for the commission to consider any representations made by the charity. There may be some cases where the commission needs to have further engagement with the charity before it can publish an official warning, based on the representations that it receives from the charity. So it is not possible for the commission to specify exactly when it would publish an official warning at the point at which it issues a notice of intention. However, it would tell the charity before publication. If the charity needed to have such discussions and needed to have an extra time period, I am sure that the commission would listen carefully and respond accordingly. The commission already has in place a procedure and published policy that works which announces the opening of inquiries, and it has had no complaints from charities about the process. The commission would engage with the charity and would not publish without letting them know but, as I have said, it would not be possible to do this in the original notice of intention.
Any published details of warnings would have to be removed by the commission after a period of time. Its current practice in relation to inquiry and case reports is to archive them after a period of two years. The commission will set this out in its guidance on official warnings, which will be published before the power is commenced. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, suggests, the amendment might well narrow the requirement if it were brought into effect.
I am sympathetic to the intention behind, and I agree with the spirit of, the noble Baroness’s amendment to provide further clarity around the publication of an official warning. I think that we agree in principle and I hope that I have been able to offer some reassurances about the way that the process would work. As I have stated, the criteria would be published and the commission would engage with the charity throughout. However, logistics and the nature of the response from the charity to the notice would mean that it would not be able to say when it would be published at such an early stage. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Barker
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for the range of contributions, which showed just how important a three-letter word can be. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, that I speak Scottish as well. It is a good job that the word “aye” is not written into legislation very often because it has a multitude of meanings.
I thank the Minister for his response. I proposed this amendment for two principal reasons. One was picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. When one works with charity trustees, as I have done a lot, it is not unusual for the administration and so on to take much, much longer than it would in, say, a commercial firm. Simply because people are volunteers, processes take time to complete. Whenever I drew up things such as grievance and disciplinary procedures, I used to look at people who had grievance procedures and had taken them either from a local authority or from a standard suggestion by lawyers. The timescales were longer because things just took longer to do. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, is right that it is necessary to have something that concentrates the minds of trustees. It is important that they say, “We have to sort this by this date or else this warning is going to be issued”.
There is a second reason why I thought it important to put the amendment forward. The Minister said that the Charity Commission would, after a period of time, remove notices and archive them. However, these days, given the development of the web, the issuing of a statement is irrevocable—it is there for ever. I therefore think that it behoves us all to be slightly more careful than we might otherwise have been in the days when things were issued solely on paper and could be torn up without anybody knowing. We need to be that bit more careful about the way in which we pursue these matters.
I bow to the assessment of the terminology given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. I understand the inclusivity of words which lawyers love so well, but I rather favour the suggestion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott, that we should perhaps think about putting all three of these words together. It seems that if the Charity Commission is to exercise this power, it needs to give the utmost consideration to how it communicates with trustees. The one thing that a charity and a charity trustee must value above all else is their reputation. That is the thing that is most vulnerable to attack.
I thank noble Lords for taking part in this debate, which I hope they think was useful, and for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) The Charity Commission may call for and randomly or systematically check the Disclosure and Barring Service checks undertaken by charities on trustees.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I remind the Committee of my interests as a trustee of a number of quite small charities. In moving Amendment 2, I shall speak also to Amendment 7, both in the names of my noble friend Lord Watson and myself. As with the next group, these amendments are to improve the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults, particularly in regard to sexual abuse.
Amendment 2 concerns the power for the Charity Commission to check on disclosure and barring service checks undertaken by charities. It follows concerns raised by Mandate Now, a pressure group supported by the Survivors Trust, which lobbies for mandatory reporting of abuse, and is led by adults who experienced child abuse in establishments that were also charities. Mandate Now told us of a charity providing education; in its inspection report, there were references to failure to return—that is, notifications—but the staff concerned went on to abuse elsewhere. They also told us about a charity providing education where the press reported that the head in that case had phoned a receiving establishment to warn it of an abuser who was applying to work there. However, no formal notifications were found that might have ensured the known abuser would not offend elsewhere, and—this is the important thing—the trustees do not appear to have challenged the head.
In 2010, an inspection report on another educational establishment registered with the Charity Commission said that there was no,
“established policy for reporting directly to ... the Independent Safeguarding Authority, responsible for such referrals … The advisability of making such referrals is now clearly understood even when there may not be a strict legal obligation to do so”.
Our concern is that it is advisable only—there is no compulsion. In the case that I have just mentioned, neither the management nor trustees made any referral to what is now the DBS, which meant that it did not lead to any action. No action was taken about those trustees for not making those reports.
I think we can all agree that notification should not be an optional extra. More than that, the Charity Commission should be able to check that the system is working as intended. Relying on trustees always to do the DBS checks obviously does not always work.
Another example occurred in an educational establishment which happened to be run by a religious order, where the head ignored the enhanced check, which showed a history of child abuse offences for the new chair. It appears to be rather discretionary as to whether trustees act on information provided by the DBS, when there are no independent checks by a third party that the correct procedure is happening. Amendment 2 gives a power—not a duty—to the Charity Commission to undertake such checks.
Amendment 7 covers perhaps the most glaring anomaly in the current law, which is that someone who has got into debt and is subject to an individual voluntary arrangement, or a person with financial misdemeanours behind them, is automatically excluded from being a trustee, but people on the sexual offenders register, who have surely done far worse than run up their credit card debt, can happily serve as a trustee. To date, the Government have said that when something comes to light, or in areas covered by the DBS, such people should be identified. That is not good enough. We do not want to wait until something has happened, or until other trustees get suspicious and then have to act, possibly against someone with whom they have been working closely on the trust. Nor is it sufficient to deal only with charities which obviously are in contact with children, and thus covered by DBS. There may be other examples, such as a church hall that gets used by guides, or for children’s parties. That would not have been covered.
An alcohol misuse charity could decide to run a special programme for the children of problem drinkers or, similarly, a cancer group could offer support to the children of cancer patients. They would not be covered by the current safeguarding regime. Who would think to check on the background of someone, particularly if they were offering to be the treasurer of such a charity? It is a thankless task, as I know. Trustees are all too willing to sign up a suitably qualified person without a thought for their wider background. Indeed, I have had dealings with an accountant who, unbeknown to the trustees using him, admittedly as an adviser rather than a trustee, had been convicted, although not imprisoned because he was having a kidney transplant, as he had been found with more than 1,000 images and videos of child sex abuse on his computer. None of the trustees knew about it.
I know that many trustees are very sympathetic to our proposal to add sexual offences to the criteria that trigger automatic disqualification from being a trustee. Of course we would want a waiver for charities working with ex-offenders which need that input to help them in their work. Those charities would know of the record and there would be no secret.
We also know that many smaller charities, particularly parish charities, depend on hard-pressed volunteers and already find the expanding vigour of the Charity Commission guidelines and reporting somewhat burdensome. Expecting those trustees to think and risk-assess before they approach a new trustee is quite a burden to put on them. Surely the onus should be on the person on the sex offenders register to know they should not, without a waiver, be a trustee. We should not to leave it to chance that someone else would spot it and consider whether it makes them a risk.
This is an opportune moment to add being on the sex offenders register as a category for automatic exclusion, subject to waiver, as this Bill adds terrorism, money-laundering and bribery to such automatic exclusions. I assume that the Government are as concerned about safeguarding children, women and other vulnerable people as they are about debtors and money-laundering. I am therefore very hopeful that this amendment can be accepted. I beg to move.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, talked about concentrating the mind of trustees. The main attribute of my noble friend’s amendment is to work further on that concentration of the mind. Contrary to the assumptions often made that charities regulated by the Charity Commission are the large household names which have skilled, informed trustees who are offered training and induction, most charities are not like that. They are small, with governance that can be a bit hit and miss for some of the reasons we have heard: the difficulty of getting volunteers and so on. I venture to suggest that the majority have no idea about the Charity Commission and its powers and have a very hazy concept of collective responsibility, which we will discuss in the next group of amendments. History shows us that we cannot take the protection of children too seriously. We must also be aware of the serial, repetitive nature of some sexual offences and of the great skill in deception that sexual offenders often have. I therefore very much support these amendments. However, I am wary of the need for balance, which the Minister reminded us about, so I am very pleased that the amendment acknowledges that some charities need positively to seek trustees with experience of, even convictions for, these offences so that they can be helped in their work of rehabilitating offenders.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I would like to focus on Amendment 2. I do not doubt that it is an exceptionally well-meaning amendment. If that sounds patronising, I do not mean to be at all; I think that it is very well meaning. We have all been horrified by the Jimmy Savile cases and the other cases of that nature, and we all want to do everything we can to protect children. The easy option is to say, “Absolutely, we should agree to this”, and that would avoid the by-product that one might be accused of being careless about the safety of children.
However, this afternoon I shall resist that temptation and ask my noble friend to reject the amendment. I do so on three grounds: those of efficacy, proportionality and impact. I want to say a word about each of those in turn but, before doing so, I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that, before doing the charities review, I produced another report for the Government on what stopped people volunteering—what stopped people giving money and their time. The report was called Unshackling Good Neighbours. I took a lot of evidence from people about this and I should like to refer to some of it.
First, on efficacy, there are not many good outcomes from the terrible saga of Jimmy Savile and other prominent people, but one is that now the doziest trustee of the sleepiest charity is aware of CRB vetting and barring, as well as the legislation and the importance of complying with it. That is for two reasons: first, the risk to trustees themselves if they fail to do so; and, secondly, the risk to the charity they represent. We were talking about fundraising. The rows that there have been over unauthorised fundraising will be as nothing compared with the damage to a charity’s reputation if it is shown to be light-handed over the need to check its volunteers as appropriate.
The evidence that I had when preparing the Unshackling Good Neighbours report was that screening to prevent undesirable individuals becoming involved with children or vulnerable adults is now pretty fine. Indeed, if I heard the noble Baroness aright, the example that she gave was from 2010, about five years ago. We learned that the dangers, such as they were, were not so much within the institutions, because these undesirable people go where the softer targets are. They know that they are going to be checked if they work in schools with vulnerable adults, so the dangers are outside the school gates and, above all, on the internet, and that is where society needs to apply the pressure to ensure that our children are safe. Therefore, at the moment I do not see why this amendment would add to the efficacy of the vetting and barring arrangements vis-à-vis charities.
Secondly, on proportionality, vetting and barring legislation has nothing to do with charity law. It is the statute on its own that needs to be enforced. Vetting and barring is to do with a well-run organisation, whether it is a charity or not, but it does not particularly apply to charities. I think that government departments and the police need to enforce their own legislation and not pass it around, trying to find somebody else to do the checking for them. I am always concerned that if more and more is passed to charity trustees, fewer and fewer people will wish to take on the risks and responsibilities of what appears to be becoming a very one-sided state of affairs. If, as I believe, the mesh on the screen is pretty fine, should we be imposing another specific role on the Charity Commission? It should do it anyway, and in any case it has the powers to ask for this. The commission is already stretched. Vetting and barring is a role that is not part of charity law and there is already an established enforcement procedure for it.
If we are concerned about the situation with charities, why are we concentrating just on vetting and barring? Why do we not include health and safety? That, too, is very risky for people. Without sounding too flippant about it, a school headmaster whom I talked to said, “Actually, if you want to safeguard children with a new level of screening, the best way is to make sure that everybody everywhere drives at below 30 miles an hour, because that is how most children are injured”. Therefore, I think that proportionality is the second important issue.
The third is the question of impact. Surely our shared objective must be to encourage as many of our fellow citizens as possible to become involved in our civil society and to volunteer. It may be strange to the Committee but many potential volunteers find vetting and barring legislation intrusive, especially in the way that it is implemented and shows a lack of personal trust. The law says—I think that the Minister will put me right if I have got this wrong—that it is a question of frequent and intensive contact. Nervous trustees interpret those words pretty widely, and amendments like this will increase that nervousness and increase the likelihood of wholesale vetting and barring checks even when they are not needed.
One of the examples that I received was from a retired doctor living in the north of England: she was 65 and wished to do some work reading to Alzheimer’s patients. She was required to carry out the CRB vetting and barring check. She said to me, “Look, I’ve been before the GMC now for 35 years and if you can’t trust me now, what else do you require from me? I’m not going to do it as a matter of principle”, and she did not. That seems to me to be a shame. It is important that we do not allow this to become out of all proportion.
I have a second example, from a lady who got involved in a Manchester drama group. She was required to be checked and was happy about that but, she says,
“having been approved, we were invited to a session with the local child protection officer. I came away from that meeting with a number of very serious questions as to whether I should get involved with this sort of group. The talk left me feeling I would potentially be placing myself in situations of real risk. The child protection officer focussed the session on ensuring no adult put themselves in a vulnerable position e.g. if a child requests to go to the toilet—in no circumstance should an adult accompany them. If a child (with particular reference to girls) falls and cuts her knee, whilst wearing tights—under no circumstances should any adults remove the girl’s tights and help stem the bleed. No adult, whatever sex, should ever be alone with either one or more children. Needless to say, I came away from the session questioning the sense in many of the messages conveyed. As a caring responsible adult … I did not feel at all comfortable with the prospect of not being able to help an injured child”.
In accepting the spirit of the noble Baroness’s amendment, we have to be prepared to step back from this issue and accept that there is another side, however difficult it is to interpret. Why does this matter so much to us? All of us, particularly as parents, are of course horrified by child abuse and wish to stamp it out. Less attractively, however, there is an industry out there that actually profits from CRB vetting and barring checks. If noble Lords receive the same emails that I do, they will have had one today from one of the agencies that provide vetting and barring checks saying, “If you get checks through us for the next month, we’ll put £1 of the check cost towards charity because our chief executive’s going to run a marathon”—a way of appearing user-friendly. That is fine, but they are not going to tell us that fewer checks are needed; they will tell us that we need more. Some of the big charities have vetting and barring sections, and they too—after all, it is their job—are going to say, “We need more checks and more emphasis on them; that is the right way forward”.
I am not so sure. I think that right now the mesh performs its task pretty well. Is it perfect? Of course not. Whatever the size of the mesh, though, there will be failures, and when they happen we shall be told by someone that if the mesh had been finer we would have caught the person in question, and that will be very hard to rebut. Still, we need to stand back now and not impose further responsibilities on the Charity Commission that, as a by-product, may reduce the willingness to volunteer.
Baroness Barker
My Lords, I wonder if I might ask the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, a question about her Amendment 11, which, as she explained quite clearly, deals with children. A lot of my work with charities is about vulnerable adults. In fact, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, is right: if there has been any silver lining to the horrors that have been unveiled over the last five years it is that there is now a much clearer focus on the need to protect children in all settings. That includes in charities.
The law governing abuse of vulnerable adults is much less robust. If one were to think about this in a strategic way, the increase in dementia that will happen over the next 10 to 20 years, barring the discovery of an effective medical treatment, means that scope for abuse of older people will be far greater than it is now. That is something to which good charities—there are many of them—are alive. They put in place robust procedures with their staff and their volunteers. I happen to think that it is no less serious than abuse of children. If I have an objection to that amendment it is that omission.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I believe we are still on Amendment 7. I will deal with that when we come to Amendment 11.
Baroness Barker
I am sorry; I thought that they had been grouped together. I apologise to the noble Baroness.
Lord Hope of Craighead
My Lords, I will say a word or two about Amendment 7, which seeks to add a new “case K”, where:
“P has been found guilty of a sexual offence or has been placed on the sex offenders register”.
I will sound a note of caution about this amendment, for a variety of reasons.
The previous cases listed, some of which are the subject of other amendments, deal with incidences of dishonesty, failure to observe court orders and things of that kind. They cast doubt on the probity of the individual managing trust funds and are reasons for thinking that there might be some mismanagement of the funds. Indeed, terrorism is added, for reasons that we all understand. What is being introduced here is something that is not generic to the others, although it deals with an undoubtedly very disturbing social problem, which is people who abuse children, although it is not confined to child abuse, which I will come back to in a moment. There is a question of whether it is right to bring other criminal offences into the automatic disqualification field. One can think of other cases—extreme violence, for example. Crimes of violence are not listed here. There may be other crimes of a kind that society would regard as repugnant, but they are not listed here either. I have some doubt as to whether it is right to put the sexual offences chapter into the automatic disqualification field.
There are other reasons for being concerned about the wording. There are two chapters here. First, there is being found guilty of “a sexual offence”. There is no qualification as to how serious that offence may be. Anything that falls within the broad chapter of sexual offences would be included here, some of which may not require or justify a sentence of imprisonment at all. Then there is “the sex offenders register”. The position is that a person is placed on the sex offendering register as a matter of law if a sentence of 30 months or more is passed. So far so good: you are dealing with the more serious categories to justify being put on that register, but the initial part—conviction for “a sexual offence”—does not include everything.
There is a feature of the register that has been cured by order, but which caused concern in a case on which I sat in the Supreme Court. An 11 year-old boy who had committed a sexual offence—a very serious one, because he was sentenced to more than 30 months’ imprisonment or detention—was placed on the register. As it stood at that time, in 2010, the presence of his name on the register was without limit of time. It is an indefinite feature.
Lord Hope of Craighead
My Lords, I will resume what I was attempting to say. Before we broke for the vote, I drew attention to the width of the expression “a sexual offence”, which is a cause of some concern. There are a number of points to be made as far as the sex offendering register is concerned. First, it applies to people who have been sentenced to 30 months or more of imprisonment or detention. Secondly, subject to an order that came into force in 2012 and gives a certain power to the chief officer of police, the entry on the register is indefinite, without limit of time.
The case that I was about to mention came before the Supreme Court in 2010 and led eventually to the making of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (Remedial) Order 2012. It was a case where a child aged 11 was convicted of an offence. It caused real grounds for concern in that the crime he committed meant that he would have had a permanent position on the register. One has to wonder whether somebody who committed an offence of that kind when a teenager and who reached the age of 60, let us say, should really be subject to the automatic disqualification which would flow from this amendment if it were to stand as it is.
I appreciate that the chief officer of police has the power to remove people from the register but I do not know how often that power has actually been exercised. It may be that the Minister can find out from other sources as to the efficacy of the order, but it is a ground for concern that placing on the register has such a powerful effect on the individual. We heard evidence from a body called Unlock. It made the point that there are some people for whom rehabilitation is so important. Contributing to public life by participating in charities, years after an event which happened at a much earlier stage in their life, is something that they would greatly value. There are real grounds for concern about the width of the amendment and its suitability, and whether it really falls into the nature of offences that would justify automatic disqualification.
I raise these issues as a note of caution. I would not go to the point of voting against the amendment if it were pressed to a vote—which, of course, it cannot be in Grand Committee—but these points suggest that the question requires careful consideration before the noble Lord would accept the amendment.
Lord Bridges of Headley
My Lords, let me start by echoing what my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts said. We all agree that we must do all we can to ensure that the vulnerable—be they young or old or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, said, those with dementia—are protected within charities. The question we are grappling with is how best to do so.
The Charity Commission takes safeguarding issues very seriously. Its statement of regulatory approach makes it clear that the abuse of vulnerable beneficiaries is a matter to which the commission will pay particular attention, alongside terrorist abuse of charities and fraud. The Charity Commission’s director of investigations, monitoring and enforcement has said:
“The public relies on trustees to have robust procedures in place so that people working in a charity with access to beneficiaries are suitable to hold those roles”.
Trustees must,
“ensure their charity has appropriate and robust policies and procedures in place to safeguard the charity’s beneficiaries, including a process for recording incidents, concerns and referrals”.
The Charity Commission publishes detailed guidance for charities on their safeguarding responsibilities. It explains the legal requirements for charities working with children and vulnerable groups and how they must safeguard them from harm. It covers what safeguarding involves, what child protection policies and processes should include, and explains the Charity Commission’s role in ensuring that charities follow the law.
The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 established, as your Lordships know, the Disclosure and Barring Service or DBS, which processes criminal records checks and manages the lists of unsuitable people who should not work in regulated activities with children or adults. The DBS decides who is unsuitable to work or volunteer with vulnerable groups. There are two points to stress: it is an offence first, for a barred person to apply for such work, paid or voluntary; and secondly, it is an offence for a charity to employ a barred person in such work. Furthermore, Sections 35 and 36 of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 imposed a duty on regulated activity providers and personnel suppliers to provide the DPS with information where there is a risk of harm to a child or vulnerable adult. There is an established policy of reporting abuse directly to the DBS.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I will certainly take up that offer. I want to make only a couple of comments. I thank noble Lords who participated in this debate. My noble friend Lady Pitkeathley quite rightly said that this is about concentrating the mind. If we do not get this movement, I hope nobody reading this in a few years’ time says that the Minister was being very complacent. I do not think anyone who spoke was complacent, but the feeling coming across is that everything is fine as it is, and I am not sure that that is correct. It is quite right that the case was five years ago but the charities that have dealt with abused children have been with us this week and last. They retain those concerns and will not be reassured by some of the things that they have heard along the lines of, “Don’t worry, it’s all there”.
I was not suggesting that the Charity Commission had to check that charities were doing their job with DBS; I was suggesting that it has the power to do so. I want to read Hansard very carefully about whether it has that power or not. At one point the Minister was saying that there was a power for the regulators that had not yet been implemented, but at another point he seemed to be saying that the commission could do this. Whether it could, short of an inquiry, I am not certain. Perhaps that is something we could clarify. I think that I read out some of the stuff that was said. The charities concerned have been told that these spot checks, if you like, could not be done.
There is also something beyond the charity itself. We have seen the damage that was done both to the NHS and to the BBC by their complete failure over Jimmy Savile. I would hate to find that a charity where this sort of thing happened then damaged the whole of the charitable sector. That risk remains.
I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, for his comments. I certainly think that the wording of this could be greatly improved. It would be about serious sexual offenders. I think that some of the comments about being on the register for life probably affect other things even more than this particular one, and that is more a question about the register itself. I think that I emphasised the word “waiver” a few times, not only for ex-offenders in general but for here. A waiver to get someone back into charitable work or into civil society is great. As people know, I was and still am very involved in alcohol misuse. If we did not have ex-offenders working for us, we would be rather short of hands to do it, so the waiver is very important.
My concern remains that we are more concerned about money than about people. We are adding money-launderers to the people who will be barred and we are very worried about people’s ability to look after funds, but beneficiaries are probably rather more important.
The issue remains that we do not know which charities these people could be involved in—even, I have to say, a charity working to restore historical buildings and churches. If a woman gets raped in one of those buildings, I would not want to be the Minister who said, “Oh well, that’s a safe charity because it doesn’t see children”. Those are empty properties late at night. As a woman I would be very worried if someone who could have been on the sex register, not for a child but for a serious sexual offence, looked terribly respectable in preserving an old building, and I was the one there late at night. Having said that, though, I welcome the offer from the Minister to discuss this further, particularly Amendment 7, because, as I say, I am very worried that debtors, money-launderers and terrorists, or the people who help to fund terrorism, should be excluded but people with perhaps quite serious findings, not just about children but about women, would be able to be a charitable trustee unknown to all of us. I look forward to discussing that further, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Reporting misdemeanours
A trustee must report to the Charity Commission any serious incident that results in, or risks causing, significant harm to their charity’s work, beneficiaries or reputation.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, this is in a way part of the same issue—it is about where we put responsibility. In moving Amendment 3, which relates to reporting misdemeanours, I shall speak also to Amendment 11, which concerns the power to disqualify all trustees where there has been a collective failure to protect children or, indeed, vulnerable adults, as the amendment should have said. They are not mentioned in the current wording, but I will come on to that.
The Charity Commission’s guidelines on reporting serious incidents list—I shall keep to the order used—significant items to report. They include loss of money, damage to property and, only thirdly, harm to beneficiaries. The examples given have the same order of priority. They start with fraud and theft, go on to a large donation from an unverified source linked to terrorism, a disqualified person acting as a trustee, then not having a policy to safeguard your charity’s vulnerable beneficiaries, not having vetting procedures to check prospective trustees, and, only lastly, suspicions, allegations or, indeed, incidents of abuse of vulnerable beneficiaries. That order does not seem to give great confidence that beneficiaries rank very highly.
In the same guidance, the commission warns that if trustees fail to report a serious incident, the commission “may”, not “must”, consider this mismanagement and take regulatory action. Therefore, it is possible that trustees could have failed to record an incident of abuse of a vulnerable beneficiary and still no regulatory action would be taken. So not only does abuse of vulnerable beneficiaries rank below big donations or theft but failure to report is only possible evidence of mismanagement.
We should compare that with the duty on auditors, which, again, relates to money rather than to beneficiaries. The Charities Act 2011 places a duty on auditors to report matters of material significance to the Charity Commission, so there is a higher requirement on auditors for anything relating to money than there is on trustees for abuse of beneficiaries.
For that reason, amendments are needed both to make reporting mandatory and also, where there has been a collective failure of a board to identify, report or deal with serious allegations or incidents, to enable—not force—the Charity Commission to replace the whole group. At present, the Charity Commission would have to seek to disqualify each trustee one by one, probably showing evidence of individual responsibility, whereas if on the watch of a whole group of trustees things were seriously amiss and there had been a collective failure, the amendments would enable them to be removed as a collective so that the charity could move forward in the interests of its beneficiaries.
Although, as has already been pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, Amendment 11 deals with a failure of trustees to protect children, we also have in mind other vulnerable beneficiaries, including older people who may be at risk of elder abuse. Perhaps I may cite some examples of why we think that these two amendments are necessary and important. We know of cases in more than one charity where incidents of abuse of children were not reported as serious incidents by trustees. That shows that the general duty is not strong enough and not sufficient. We also know that trustees who may not be expert in child abuse and safeguarding work very much at the behest of the staff, who may have little more than cursory training in safeguarding.
This is particularly the case in trusts which do not concentrate on children. The Charity Commission may be notified by relatives of children that major incidents are not being taken seriously by the charity and the trustees. However, in one such case the families were advised by a government department that the Charity Commission was the only party able to address the failings of trustees to protect children. In that case the Charity Commission disagreed, feeling that it did not have the powers to intervene. It could only trigger the beginning of an inquiry. It appears that it lacks the power either to remove the trustee board as a whole, because it can do it only one by one, or indeed to appoint a new trustee with relevant experience to assist the board with the complex area of child protection.
This need for a power to remove all trustees also arises from the case of an institution where there were several instances of child-to-child abuse. An investigation by families and their lawyers showed that the staff had failed to appreciate the cumulative danger facing children, and they therefore failed to report. The fact of repeated sexual injuries involving different children over time should have led the trustees to ask some very challenging questions of the child protection officer there, as well as of the management, but they failed to do so. In that case the charity finally had to close. However, had the Charity Commission had the power to act in the way that we are proposing and been able to remove several trustees simultaneously, the closure might not have been necessary. Without the scope for agile action, matters can drag on, further damaging not only the children concerned but the charity’s reputation and, ultimately, its future. I beg to move.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I was slightly surprised to see that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, was not going to rise to his feet to take us through the significant words “any serious incident”, as serious incidents obviously can be in the eye of the beholder, the second point,
“results in, or risks causing”,
which requires one to take a view of the future, which is also quite demanding, and the definition applied to “significant harm”. I wonder about the wording of this amendment, which I think would have a pretty chilling effect on trustees and might well lead to them ringing the Charity Commission with inquiries about the nature of particular incidents and whether they qualified under this quite broadly drawn clause, or indeed might lead to a rash of reports to the Charity Commission, which may or may not be a good use of the commission’s time and energy to follow up.
For my part, I go back to my wish to expect trustees to behave responsibly and for the Charity Commission to check them, but not to impose other and further duties. I drew a different conclusion from the noble Baroness about the Charity Commission’s guidance on its website, which seems to be a much better way of dealing with this than putting it into statute. The charity’s trustees would have to be aware of that guidance and follow it. I think that the noble Baroness was slightly unfair to the commission about the order in which it has rated the different offences. Just because child abuse comes a bit further down the list does not mean that it is considered less important; I do not think that is a fair conclusion to draw. It is more important that we should have flexible guidance and that the Charity Commission empower trustees. We should not impose in statute quite wide-ranging and imprecise duties that will be a further reason why people do not want to act as a trustee.
Baroness Barker
My Lords, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that I do not think anyone in this House feels that the whole matter of child abuse has been done and that there are no more protections to be had. There is a question about the extent to which we need to change the law as opposed to the extent to which we need to give advice and change practice within organisations. I rather think that large organisations, such as the BBC, and indeed small organisations, are very far from having fully worked out their response to the revelations that have come out over the past couple of years.
I, too, take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson: I think that the order in which things appear on the Charity Commission website, to be fair to the commission—and we are not always very fair to it—is as much to do with history as with anything else. In the time of Anthony Trollope, financial misdemeanours were at the forefront of the commission’s mind, not child abuse. I really think that the climate has changed. I shall not repeat the arguments that I made about older people under the previous group, because I misread the groupings, but I take the point about the protection of vulnerable adults.
I wanted to ask the noble Baroness about her Amendment 11—and perhaps the Minister might help with the answer to this—and the power to disqualify all trustees of a charity. My understanding is that it is a basic tenet of charity law that trustees are jointly and severally liable for decisions that are made or for failures within the charity. So I am surprised to learn that trustees can be removed only as individuals. I should have thought that their joint and several liability would mean that, if something as bad as the examples given by the noble Baroness were to happen, the whole board of a trust would be equally affected by it and would therefore they would all be removed. But maybe my understanding is slightly out of date.
Lord Hope of Craighead
I have a point to make on the wording of the amendment, although it is not quite the same as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, thought it might be. It is about Amendment 11, and it is a rather technical point. I am aware that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott of Foscote, who knows much more about drafting trust documents of this kind than I do, may have a different view. The point that troubles me is the phrase,
“who are direct beneficiaries of the charity”.
As I understand it, to qualify as a charity, individuals as such are not direct beneficiaries. That is the creature of a private trust, where a trust is framed to confer a defined benefit on a particular individual. It would meet the noble Baroness’s point if the rather less attractive phrase,
“who are within the objects of the charity”,
was substituted. That would then bring in the point that she is considering people on whom the trustees would focus as possible recipients of benefit. That would be the kind of phrase that I would use myself, but I am conscious that the noble and learned Lord may know more on this than I do, although he is shaking his head. It is a point on wording, which would arise if the Minister was attracted by the amendment.
Viscount Eccles (Con)
I shall add a thought. I think that we are talking about charities that are deliberately set up to benefit children and added-in vulnerable people, but may I move to museums for a minute? I refer to a registered museum that allows children under 16 to enter free, for example. Let us say that somebody gets into a fracas, one child hits another and somebody else enters in. Widening the responsibilities of the Charity Commission and the trustees of that museum as the amendments propose is completely unrealistic. If there are remedies to be sought, they should be sought under another piece of legislation and not under charity law. We have already had reference to the chilling effect on people volunteering to be trustees if they see that the responsibilities are made so wide and so difficult to adhere to. We really have to be careful. The Minister referred to the limited resources of the Charity Commission. Under existing circumstances, it is not likely that those resources will be added to, to any great degree, at least for a while. We need to be very careful about what responsibilities we place on the Charity Commission and trustees under this proposed legislation.
Lord Scott of Foscote (CB)
My Lords, I think I had an invitation to speak on this from my noble and learned friend Lord Hope. I have puzzled a little bit over the object of Amendment 11. There is a reference in it to where there is,
“sufficient reason to believe there is a collective failure of all trustees to ensure the safety and protection of children who are direct beneficiaries of the charity”.
The children may be the objects of the charity in the sense that the charitable money is meant to go to them. However, if all that is intended in the charitable trust in question is that charitable money be applied for the benefit of the children, it is a little difficult to see how the safety and protection of the children comes into it. Any misuse of the funds of the charity would be a breach of trust. You do not need a provision in the Act to say so. That could be remedied at any time by any of the trustees.
I find it difficult to quite understand what is meant by a,
“failure of all trustees to ensure the safety and protection of children”.
If the children are the objects of the charity in the sense that the funds must be used for their benefit, it is not the duty of the trustees to ensure their safety and protection. Their safety and protection may be put at risk by any number of different means that have nothing whatever to do with the objects of the charity. I am little puzzled by the intention behind that as it stands.
Lord Bridges of Headley
My Lords, following what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said in response to the last amendment, I will just put on record that I would certainly not wish to give the impression that I am complacent about these issues. I completely understand that we need to debate and discuss them. As I said right at the start, we need to kick the tyres here. I just wanted to make that perfectly clear.
Let me start by dealing, first, with the proposed new clause on serious incident reporting. It might help if I explain briefly the position as it currently stands. The Charity Commission already requires serious incident reporting from charities with an income of over £25,000 as part of annual return requirements and encourages all charities to report serious incidents immediately as a matter of good practice. The Charity Commission’s annual return regulations require charity trustees to sign a declaration each year that there have been no serious incidents in the charity in the year or to give reference to any serious incident reports already made to the regulator and also report serious incidents that have not previously been reported.
On the lists that have been referred to in the debate, I do not think that the order of the listing suggests how serious the Charity Commission thinks those issues are. However, I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that the Charity Commission will look again at the issues it defines as serious.
There are various other legal requirements on charity trustees to report certain matters immediately. For example, there is a duty under terrorism legislation to disclose information about certain possible terrorist financing based offences to the police. Specifically on safeguarding, the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 places a requirement or legal duty on employers and volunteer managers of people working with children or vulnerable adults to make a referral to the DBS in certain circumstances where a person has been dismissed or removed from working with children or vulnerable adults. That is in addition to any referral to a body such as a local authority safeguarding team.
As regards charities themselves, charity trustees are ultimately responsible for safeguarding within their charity. The Charity Commission’s role in safeguarding is to ensure that charity trustees take steps to protect and safeguard their beneficiaries. This means that charities working with vulnerable beneficiaries must have in place appropriate safeguarding policies and procedures, and must monitor them on an ongoing basis to ensure they are effectively implemented. The Charity Commission can and does take action against charities and trustees where they fail to do so but it is not the role of the Charity Commission to investigate suspected abuse. If there are allegations of abuse of vulnerable beneficiaries, the Charity Commission expects trustees to handle them properly and, where appropriate, report allegations to the police, social services or other agencies. Where the commission itself has serious concerns, it can and does refer them to the police or other agencies.
As I said at Second Reading, the Bill is about striking the right balance. While on the face of it there are many attractions to imposing a new serious incident reporting duty on charities, we have to acknowledge that it would be a new reporting requirement that would affect tens of thousands of small charities. Furthermore, and this is an important point, there is also the concern that the charities that would meet their obligations under a duty to immediately report serious incidents are those charities that would do so as a matter of good practice, and have already taken appropriate action to address the issue. Charities bent on abusing their position of trust would be unlikely to report the matter to their regulator. The danger would be that we would simply create a lot of red tape for the vast majority of honest charities, while those poorly managed or involved in abuse would ignore the requirement.
Under the amendment, diligent trustees might consider it necessary to report to the Charity Commission every time there was a risk to beneficiaries or the charity’s reputation. It is not hard to see how the commission could be inundated with queries and unnecessary reports. There is also the question about whether the commission would be able to cope, and what it would do with such a volume of reports.
The Government are committed to minimising regulatory burdens for charities, particularly small charities. We do not want to impose new burdens, particularly when the implications for the commission and the impact on charities have not been fully considered.
I do not want to appear overly negative towards this amendment as I believe there is much to be said for it, but I hope that the noble Baroness will also accept that there are downsides and that we do not want to tie up small charities with red tape. I hope that on that basis she will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
I have a question, which does not have to be answered today. The Minister refers to the fact that the Charity Commission generally refers matters to the police. Are we satisfied that police forces around the country always refer matters to the commission? I wonder sometimes if the commission is not up here while the police forces down there are looking into things. Is the information flow sufficiently strong? I am not asking for a response today; this is something that we can pick up later. However, it is an issue that has come up from time to time in the discussions that we have been having.
Lord Bridges of Headley
My noble friend makes a very good point about the information exchange between agencies across government, and I am more than happy to pick that up with him in writing or at a later stage.
I turn to the noble Baroness’s Amendment 11. This amendment seeks to empower the Charity Commission to disqualify an entire trustee board where it collectively fails to ensure adequate protections for children who are the charity’s beneficiaries. Later on we will come to debate Clause 10, which will confer the power for the commission to disqualify on a case-by-case basis; suffice it to say that it is one of the most important powers in the Bill. That clause is relevant to this amendment so it may help the Committee if I give a short overview of it now before going on to consider the noble Baroness’s amendment.
Most unfit individuals will be caught by the existing—and, under the Bill, extended—automatic disqualification criteria, but the Charity Commission needs a power to act in cases where individuals are not excluded by automatic disqualification. The whole point of this power is to give the commission the ability to disqualify an individual whose conduct clearly makes them unfit to be a charity trustee, where, if the commission were not to act, there would be a real risk, or at least a reputational risk, to charities.
We carefully considered the report of the Joint Committee on the draft protection of charities Bill, and made improvements to this provision as a result. More detail about the operation of the provision has been included in the Bill, and it is now a three-limbed test: first, one of the conditions A to F must be satisfied; secondly, the commission must consider that the person’s conduct makes them unfit to be a charity trustee, and draft guidance has been published on that; and, thirdly, the commission must consider that exercising the power is in the public interest, to protect public trust and confidence in charities. While the power may be relatively broad, its use would be targeted. The commission has said that it expects to use this power on a relatively low number of occasions each year.
The commission already has the power to act, and has done so, in cases where there has been a collective failure of trustees in relation to systemic governance issues. The powers to remove trustees in Sections 79 and 80 of the Charities Act 2011 do not explicitly or implicitly contain any restriction on removing trustees where that leaves one or none in place. Neither does the proposed disqualification power in Clause 10. There is, therefore, no reason why the commission would not remove all trustees on the ground of ensuring the safety and protection of children, where this was appropriate, proportionate and in accordance with best regulatory principles.
In circumstances where there is an impact on the beneficiaries of the charity, the commission has tended to appoint an interim manager, under Section 76 of the Charities Act 2011, to ensure the continued operation of the charity and to get it back on track before new trustees can be appointed and take over. However, there has been a case—and I will not name the particular charity concerned—where the commission has removed all 10 trustees on the board for collective governance failings.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, made a point about trustees having joint liability. The Charity Commission is required to act proportionately and so, in most cases, would target regulatory action on those most culpable or responsible for misconduct or mismanagement.
The noble Baroness’s amendment deals specifically with collective trustee failure relating to safeguarding. We would not want to cast any doubt on the commission’s existing liability to take action relating to collective trustee failures, or limit that by making specific provision. On the basis that the commission can, and does, already act to address collective trustee failures where it is proportionate to do so, I hope the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I thank the Minister, particularly on that second point. The reassurance that action for collective failure can be taken answers the point we were seeking to make.
On reporting, I have greater concerns. In answer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott, we know of schools where abuse that was taking place was not being reported. Clearly, the recommendations and guidelines for reporting are not being followed. This is the problem. You have an educational establishment where abuse is going on and it is not being reported. It is that failure to report which gives rise to concern.
The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson said that we expect trustees to behave responsibly. Of course—but this issue is where they do not. I have now heard the phrase “red tape” used twice and I jib slightly every time I hear “red tape bandwagon”. It is not red tape. We are talking about protecting vulnerable people.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
The noble Baroness has used the word “complacent”. She has used the phrase “red tape”. Nobody is in any way complacent about the importance of protecting children. The question is how do we do it effectively and are we getting the right answers to make it happen, or is it coming at a cost that is out of all proportion? One can argue that there is no cost too high, but the reality is that we have to have a system that ensures we get the proportionate, right result. Is this system going to be perfect? I have never said that it would be, but we need not be complacent about it. What we are trying to do is to give trustees the confidence to decide what is best for their charity, rather than saying, “Here is all this wraparound that you have to look at”, which terrifies them and means that people do not become trustees at all.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
The noble Lord is absolutely right. Are we doing it properly? Representatives of abused people are coming to me, saying, “No, it is not working right”. That is the difference between us. We are hearing that there is a failure at present. There has to be a balance. The noble Lord is saying, “No, we have it about right”. The people representing the families of abused children where something did not happen are saying, “No, it is not right”. This is a charity Bill. If they are correct that it is not working properly, this is our opportunity to make it better. This is what we are seeking to do.
The order of the guidelines may be historical, but the issue is that, sadly, we know far more about sex abuse than we used to. It is probably already going on. It happened to my aunt when she was a child—she would be 109 if she was alive. This is not new, but we know more about it. Sadly, we know that it is far more common than we think. We are trying to do something to make reporting and awareness of it better. The only difference between us is that we are hearing from the charities concerned that the policies and the reporting requirements do not seem to be working. We are trying to get it right.
I, of course, defer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, about whether the phrasing should be “direct beneficiaries” or,
“who are within the objects of the charity”.
We were trying to say,
“those people for whom they provide a service”.
I am not going to try to draft, but we are talking about establishments that provide a service for a group of people where there is some sort of abuse going on and they fail to notice it. It is well hidden; people do not come along in dirty macs to abuse children. Either trustees really do not know because they do not have the qualifications, or they are not dealing with it properly and are not reporting it. We are trying to lift the bar.
Lord Bridges of Headley
I want to make this one point to the noble Baroness. I asked the commission what its communication to the sector would be when the relevant changes on automatic disqualification come in. I completely agree that we need to ensure that not only are these new measures properly communicated, but we take the opportunity to remind all charities of their existing responsibilities, not just on this, but on other issues, although I would suggest especially on this. I will not bore the Committee with the six bullet points that I have been given about e-newsletters, press releases et cetera, but I can assure the noble Baroness that I have asked the Charity Commission to do this. It has given me its assurances, which I am happy to pass on.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
That is helpful. Having been reassured about the ability to take action where there is a collective failure, we probably will not pursue that. We may, however, want to come back on the bar on reporting.
Lord Scott of Foscote
I wonder if the noble Baroness could help me with one point. If a scholarship is set up for a particular school, the money is charitable money and is used to provide scholarships for people who perhaps otherwise would not be able to go to the school. I find it extraordinary to suppose that the trustees of the charity must examine what is going on in the school to see that there are no misdemeanours among the staff towards the boys or things like that. If that is the intention of the proposed new clause, it seems to me that it is full of difficulties. If that is not the intention then the wording is not quite right.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
If they are the trustees of the school they have that responsibility now.
Lord Scott of Foscote
They are not trustees of the school; they are trustees of the charitable trust that is funding the scholarships.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
The wording may not be right, but we are talking about where, basically, they are running an establishment, such as a music school. They are the trustee running the school; they therefore have these responsibilities. They cannot say, “I am a trustee, it is not my responsibility”. They have the responsibility to ensure that they have the right management and that they are trained correctly. It is some time since I have done that, but they have to have those policies in place. This group of people, who are running an organisation either for children or for vulnerable people, has that responsibility.
The bit that we are trying to add is where it has come to their notice—or they have not asked the question right—that abuse is going on in those areas where they have responsibility. We want it to be a duty on them, not just in guidelines, that they should report that abuse. I am not a draftsperson, but what we are driving at is probably clear. It is raising the bar of when they need to report. The guidelines are already there, the duties are on them, and what we are hearing is that sadly some trustees fail to report what they should. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hope of Craighead
Lord Hope of Craighead
I shall speak also to Amendment 9 which is in my name and is grouped with Amendment 4. The amendment takes out the words “privy to” in the two places to which these amendments refer and inserts the words “participated in”. This is really a discussion about the use of language. The background can be narrated by referring to paragraph 122 of the committee’s report, in which we mentioned that a number of witnesses expressed concerns about the wording of this clause. Among the phrases referred to are “privy to the misconduct or management” and “facilitated it”, which we decided did not require further comment.
However, we picked up “privy”, which had been drawn to our attention by, as footnote 157 states, four charities: Bond, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Muslim Charities Forum and NCVO, which all expressed concern about the wording. “Privy” is a curious word and really rather antique. In the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary one of the definitions is,
“sharing in the secret of a person’s plans”.
I am not quite sure what that means in this context. The other possible meaning is,
“a person having a part or an interest in an action, matter or thing”,
which perhaps comes closer to what the draftsman has in mind.
When we were trying to find an equivalent formula, we suggested, in paragraph 125 of our report, “aware of”, but there may be more in it than that. There may be something more active than simply knowledge, which is why I am now suggesting “participated”, which is actually doing something to assist the act of misconduct or whatever it is. Either way, I suggest that “privy” already looks antique, and if this Bill is going to survive for a number of years, it will become increasingly so. It may be in the spirit of the present Government, as expressed by Mr Gove yesterday, to try to modernise and clarify language, and here is an opportunity to try to do the same thing. I offer the words “participated in” as an alternative to what we put into the report, but the basic suggestion is that something should be done to clarify what “privy” means.
This is an important clause because it deals with a situation where these very important powers may be exercised. Not only does the Charity Commission need to know what it should be driving at but the people against whom the powers are being exercised are entitled to know as well. I beg to move.
Lord Scott of Foscote
I entirely support the amendments proposed by my noble and learned friend Lord Hope for the reasons he has given. As he said, in the Oxford dictionary there are two alternative definitions of the expression “privy to” and neither would be appropriate in this part of the Bill. On,
“sharing in the secret of a person’s plans”,
I suppose that spouses share in the secrets of the plans of their partners, but that does not make them people who ought to be subject to the provisions of this Bill. The other meaning is,
“a person having a part or an interest in an action, matter or thing”.
“Interest” is not appropriate. The substituted words suggested by my noble and learned friend—“participated in”—seem much better and should be accepted.
Baroness Barker
My Lords, as a member of the committee, I want to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. I love going to Hampton Court. When you go there, particularly if you are a kid, you get to understand how this term came to be. We are not in Tudor times but it is a very important matter. A number of the charities we talked to in the course of our discussions work internationally. They work in very difficult situations, such as in war situations around the world, and at times it can be quite difficult to ascertain the extent to which the trustees know what is happening in their charities.
On the last set of amendments, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, tried to take us to a place where we could understand the difference between management and governance. We are talking very much about governance here, not about the people who run or manage charities and are therefore close to the day-to-day activities of those charities. If the question is about the extent to which trustees in a position of governance need to know what is being done by their charities or can inadvertently be assumed to have known that something adverse happened, then that is absolutely wrong.
I am always interested in things that clarify governance for trustees. Governance is very difficult to pin down. This change of language is an attempt to help the trustees of today understand that distinction between governance and management, and that is laudable.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, I start by saying that the Opposition support these amendments as well. One of the issues arising among a number of organisations in response to the Bill is that it lacks clarity in various ways. If one of the more straightforward means of overcoming some of that lack of clarity is changing the wording as suggested here, then we should all welcome that.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, mentioned the recommendation of the Joint Committee and that the wording “aware of” was suggested. In response to the committee’s recommendations, the Government stated in their report of March this year:
“The Government will explore implementing the Committee’s recommendation to replace ‘privy to’ with ‘aware of’ with Parliamentary Counsel. The term ‘privy to’ is already widely used in the existing legislation and we want to carefully consider the implications of any change before committing to a change of wording”.
Following that consideration, the Bill was not changed and, of course, “privy to” remains in it.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, told us why he came back with amended wording. My only thought on the matter is that a former Law Lord’s understanding of the law would be something to which I would give weighty consideration—to put it mildly. Can the Minister say why, and indeed whether, Parliamentary Counsel continues to believe that that wording is right? This is a fairly straightforward change that should be made to the Bill.
Lord Bridges of Headley
My Lords, I stand with some trepidation to debate with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, on this matter. Mention has been made of my right honourable friend the Justice Secretary and his remarks yesterday. I have been very careful in this debate not to use “impact” as a verb. I am also very intrigued by this area. This debate over the word “privy” makes me wonder whether it needs to be modernised in terms of the Privy Council, but I do not want to get into that right now.
It strikes me that what we are debating is what the layman understands versus what is legally accurate and watertight. The Joint Committee that considered the draft Bill, chaired by the noble and learned Lord, recommended, as the noble and learned Lord just said, that the term “privy to” be removed and replaced with “aware of”, so that the Bill referred to a person who was aware of an action that constituted misconduct.
Lord Hope of Craighead
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for his very helpful reply. I take the point that we are talking about thresholds. The problem is that the word “privy” could be read as meaning “aware”, which is a low threshold. It could be read differently to mean “participating”, I suggest, which is a somewhat higher threshold, although perhaps not the highest conceivable one. I understand the Minister to be saying that he will look again at this with a view to seeing whether it could be more clearly expressed to avoid doubt.
Of course I understand the point that within the 2011 Act the word “privy” appears, which I suppose might mean that I should have asked for more amendments to be put in at each point where the phrase occurs and I had not done my homework sufficiently to find them all. That would be a rather laborious exercise. However, there is an opportunity here to try to remove the doubt as to where exactly the threshold should be placed but, on the basis of what I understand the Minister to say, I am happy to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Barker
Baroness Barker
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 10. I hesitate to suggest this, but these are perhaps two of the most substantive amendments before us today. During the work of the pre-legislative scrutiny committee, it became clear that there was broad agreement that the commission should have the power to disqualify some people from being trustees. Furthermore, there was agreement that there should be an automatic power to disqualify some people from being trustees. We listened to various people from all around the sector, who agreed on many of the measures in this Bill that we might not debate in great detail, such as the power to disqualify someone who might well have evaded disqualification because they had already resigned. There was a general consensus that the commission needed more powers to disqualify unsuitable people to ensure that the reputation of individual charities, and charities as a whole, was upheld. However, we also heard that by and large trustees are overwhelmingly, for the most part, honest people who very occasionally, in rare circumstances, make mistakes, and in even rarer circumstances commit criminal acts. It was against that background that we deliberated the powers in the draft Bill.
The two elements of the draft Bill that received the widest criticism of all were the conditions under which these powers would be exercised, which are the subject of these two amendments. In Clause 3, the range of conduct to be considered by the commission when exercising its powers to disqualify includes many with which we would have no quarrel whatever, where people have been found guilty of misconduct and mismanagement. The point on which there was the most discussion and disagreement among the witnesses who came before us was Clause 9(3)(b)—that the commission could take into account not just a person’s conduct in relation to the charity of which they had already been deemed guilty of mismanagement and misconduct such that an inquiry had been opened but,
“any other conduct of that person that appears to the Commission to be damaging or likely to be damaging to public trust and confidence in charities generally or particular charities or classes of charity”.
So, any other conduct at any time or in any other circumstances. That is a very wide power, and it is one that has drawn criticism not just from bodies that exist to champion charities, such as ACEVO, but, most significantly, from the Charity Law Association working party, the body of charity lawyers who have spent a considerable amount of time working on this. The association agrees that the commission should have this power but, if it is going to have it, there needs to be clarity and transparency about how it would be exercised. Any trustee who found themselves subject to the power would then clearly understand the evidence that was being used to come to a judgment about them.
The government response to the draft report noted that the commission was already required to produce a statement of reasons under Section 86 of the Charities Act 2011, when it exercises its compliance powers, but noted that it would explore whether an amendment to the Bill was needed to make this clear. There has not been any such amendment. So in introducing this probing amendment, I wish to discuss and get on the record some of the criteria that would be used.
As the Minister said in the debate on the previous group of amendments, the Charity Commission has produced a draft policy paper on how it might use this proposed power to disqualify people. Eventually perhaps the commission could get round to sending it to those of us who were members of the Select Committee and who are discussing the Bill. It is a guidance paper that is comforting in that it makes a series of heartening statements, particularly in relation to Clause 10, but it raises a number of problems too. As the Minister said, the power to disqualify in the new sections introduced by Clause 10 comes in three parts: somebody has to have been guilty of one of the conditions labelled A to F as set out in new Section 181A(7); the person is unfit to be a trustee; and the order to disqualify somebody is desirable in the public interest in order to protect public confidence.
I cannot take exception to conditions A, C, D and E. Condition A states that,
“the person has been cautioned for a … offence against a charity or”,
in the administration of a charity, for which the conviction would be automatic disqualification. Condition C is that,
“the person has been found by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs not to be a fit and proper person to be a manager of a body or trust”.
Condition D states that the person was,
“a trustee … officer, agent or employee of a charity at a time when there was misconduct or mismanagement”,
and the person was responsible for, contributed to or facilitated the misconduct or mismanagement. Condition E is that an officer, employee or corporate trustee was responsible for, contributed to or facilitated misconduct or mismanagement of a charity. I do not think anyone would think that any of those would be a reason not to disbar.
The problems lie in conditions B and F. Condition B has already been the focus of some discussion and will be so again. Under that condition, which is in two parts, where a person has been convicted of an offence in another country that is against, or involves the administration of, a charity or a similar body, the person would face automatic disqualification from acting as a trustee if—this comes in the second part—the offence would have constituted a disqualifying offence if committed here. In the Charity Commission’s policy paper there is no “and” or “or”. There is no interrelationship between those two parts; they are just stated as bullet points.
I have a question for the Minister. If someone who is active in parts of the world where gay people are persecuted is found guilty in a court of law of breaking the law of that country and then comes to Britain, would they be barred from being a trustee of a charity? After all, they broke the law in their own country. If someone was found guilty in Russia of breaking the law under that country’s increasingly draconian laws against NGOs and charities, would they then be regarded in this country as ineligible to be a trustee of a charity under this provision?
By far the biggest problem with this clause is condition F, which we are seeking to delete. It states,
“that any other past or continuing conduct by the person, whether or not in relation to a charity, is damaging or likely to be damaging to public trust and confidence in charities generally or in the charities or classes of charity specified or described in the order”—
in the view of the Charity Commission. That, I rather think, drives a coach and horses through all the other conditions, because if I could not debar someone under any of the other conditions I am sure that I would go to that one.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I was sorry not to be able to take part in the Second Reading debate on the Bill, particularly as I was fortunate enough to serve under the excellent chairmanship of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, on the pre-legislative scrutiny committee. I declare my interests as chair of a charity, International Students House, as a member of the councils of two universities—UCL and Nottingham Trent—and as a member of the advisory council of NCVO.
As a member of the committee, I want to comment briefly on this amendment. I certainly do not want to repeat the points made by the noble Baroness. However, it was quite clear that we felt that, in the course of a statutory inquiry, the commission should not be limited to evidence of misconduct and/or mismanagement in the administration of the specific charity subject to such an inquiry. One discussion we had was around the Cup Trust, where the promoters of the scheme had a history of using charities in tax schemes.
However, we felt that the provisions of this part of the Bill were very broadly drawn since what is damaging to public trust and confidence in charities is obviously an open and potentially very subjective test. We shared the concerns of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which expressed its anxiety about the breadth of this provision. We also shared the concerns of NCVO and several other witnesses—as the noble Baroness said—about the risks associated with this power and its lack of clarity. In particular, I know that NCVO was concerned that, in the absence of guidance, trustees and charities will be uncertain about the possible consequences of their conduct in relation to matters that will probably not have anything to do with the management or administration of the charity. I am very conscious of the points made by so many noble Lords about the reaction of trustees to the chilling effect of some of the commission’s powers. We are very unclear about the impact those powers will have.
As I said, I want to speak on this only briefly. I do not wish to exclude the reference to conduct not associated with charitable activities because that is very important. I hope the Government will look again at this. They said they would. They have not included any reference to this in the Bill, so I hope they will look again and be more explicit about the constraints on this apparently unlimited power.
Lord Hope of Craighead
My Lords, I just add a word to what the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, said by drawing attention to two paragraphs in our report—paragraphs 120 and 121. In paragraph 120, we refer to evidence from the Charity Law Association. It told us that, in its view,
“the wording of this power was ‘very wide’ and that it had concerns about how conduct would be deemed relevant for consideration by the Commission”,
if it was given that very wide power. In paragraph 121, we referred to the Muslim Charities Forum—this is on page 41 of the report—which expressed a concern that,
“the provision would allow the Commission to pass judgment on the political views of charity trustees, potentially infringing upon freedom of association and expression”.
A particular concern—and we quote from its evidence—was that trustees might, in a personal capacity,
“express support for Palestinian Statehood, speak out against the crack-down on Freedom of Association in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, or merely voice their anger at aspects of Western foreign policy”.
That could all,
“potentially fall under the net of supporting terrorism and/or extremism”.
It would then fall within the very broad description which is given in the two paragraphs to which these amendments refer.
I have to confess that we did not make any specific recommendation in our report. However, in paragraph 124, we state:
“we share the concerns of the JCHR and other witnesses about the risks associated with the power and its lack of clarity”.
I wanted to make these points to emphasise that there was a strong evidential basis for the concerns that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, has expressed. These two references are in addition to those that the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, mentioned in her short speech.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, having served on the pre-legislative scrutiny committee, I understand the concerns about the width of this clause, but if we were to accept this amendment, we would go from a very broad power to a very narrow one. As I read it, we have to take into account, first, the effect of a person’s behaviour within the charity about to be inquired into and secondly, the conduct of that person in any other charity. That does not seem satisfactory because there are clearly issues that range more widely. The behaviour of a trustee in general life is an indication of their seriousness. For example, the existence of county court judgments would indicate that their personal financial behaviour may be a bit erratic. It may be that they had been a director of a commercial company which had gone bankrupt and which had been unfavourably commented upon by the companies’ inspectorate. It might even have resulted in them being banned as a company director for a time. These are all issues which the Charity Commission might reasonably take into account when considering a particular situation, if what can be seen as a proven rotten apple is likely to result in damage to the position, reputation, trust and confidence in the charitable sector generally.
While I have some sympathy with the concerns of the noble Baroness, I do not think striking out subsection (3)(b) of new Section 76A is the right answer. It would be too narrow a prism and the Charity Commission would have its hands unduly tied. We must find some better way to sort it out.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, we think this clause in its generality provides an important addition to the powers of the commission. It is appropriate that a person’s activity outwith their work with or for a charity should be taken into consideration. That is not to say that we are uncritical of the wording of the two paragraphs referred to in these amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker.
One reason it is a useful addition is that it would only apply after a statutory inquiry had begun. That would be a sign that the Charity Commission already believed that there was evidence of misconduct or mismanagement. That is clear from the last two lines of page 2 of the Bill. Of course, there are concerns—some of which noble Lords have referred to in the Joint Committee’s report. It is again a question of provisions being drawn too widely and lacking clarity.
The Government’s response to the Joint Committee’s report stated that they would,
“look to revise the draft Bill to make this clearer”.
Unfortunately that has not been done. I invite the Minister to say why the Government eventually proved unable or unwilling to do so. It is regrettable, although I do not think it constitutes a reason to remove the wording completely from the Bill. I do not think that is appropriate. We agree with comments that have been made about the need to refine the wording, and perhaps some attention might be given to the report published yesterday by your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution on this and two other Bills. Paragraph 41 of the Select Committee’s report was critical of new Section 76A to be inserted by the Bill. I am sure the Minister has already read that report and taken it on board. It is important that that should be considered further before Report.
The final paragraph of that report states:
“The concerns identified by the JCHR from a human-rights perspective are mirrored by corresponding constitutional concerns on the grounds of legal certainty. We draw these concerns to the attention of the House”.
That simply adds to the arguments we have already heard in relation to these amendments.
An important suggestion of the Select Committee’s report is that conduct should be qualified in terms of its seriousness. It must be recalled that this activity does not need to lead to a charge or a conviction. On these amendments, and I think in a previous amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, mentioned that things that you do at one stage in your life these days follow you around through social media. It is very possible that a person a lot younger than me and a lot more able on social media might well do something that seems relatively trivial but that could come back to haunt them in later years. That has to be borne in mind.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, referred to evidence that the Joint Committee received about political causes. That is a concern. It could be that somebody who was publicly critical of government policy or of the Charity Commission might find that coming back to them. I do not mean that as a trivial point. The point is that we do not know what would be regarded as something that could effectively add to charges already assembled by the Charity Commission in targeting an individual. It is a question of uncertainty. We have heard this point several times this afternoon. In light of what the Minister has heard, I hope he will reconsider this matter, possibly with a view even to bringing forward a government amendment on Report. Given those remarks and the report of the Select Committee on the Constitution, I hope we may be able to look forward to that when we consider this matter again.
Lord Bridges of Headley
My Lords, this has been a very stimulating debate and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, for provoking it. I shall first address Amendment 5 about the proposed powers of the commission to take into consideration the conduct of a person outside a charity. I recognise that these are broad powers in that they allow the commission to take into account any outside conduct. However, these powers are necessary to enable the commission to address conduct which could seriously damage public trust and confidence in charities and need to be viewed in the context of the other criteria that apply to their use, along with the various safeguards in place.
Just as we have to place a large degree of trust in charity trustees to exercise their discretion properly in running their charities, we need to trust the Charity Commission to regulate independently and in the public interest. Of course, there is a range of safeguards, not least the independent judicial oversight provided by the Charity Tribunal, which has shown since it started work in 2008 that it is not afraid to criticise the Charity Commission in the few cases where it considers that the commission has overstepped the mark and acted disproportionately.
As I and others said on Second Reading, the Bill seeks to achieve a balance. The powers that it would confer on the Charity Commission need to be broad enough to make them useful. If they are too narrow they would be impractical and go unused—a point that my noble friend Lord Hodgson made. But charities need to know the circumstances when the powers may be used and I believe that the Bill achieves that balance.
The purpose of the noble Baroness’s first amendment would be, as we have discussed, to limit the other conduct that the Charity Commission could take into account when considering the exercise of its compliance powers. It is important that we retain this part of the clause as it prevents the undermining of public trust and confidence in charities, as all relevant—I stress “relevant”—conduct ought to be taken into consideration before the commission determines how to act accordingly. The commission could not take account of any irrelevant conduct. Indeed, I argue that the commission could be criticised for failing to act, or for taking only weak regulatory action, if it were unable to take into account relevant evidence of misconduct of an individual outside of a charity.
I shall illustrate this with an example. The Charity Commission opens an inquiry into charity A regarding concerns of financial mismanagement. It establishes misconduct and mismanagement against trustee X, an accountant, as large payments have been taken out and not accounted for. Blank cheques have also been signed by trustee X. The commission then approaches other relevant regulators which provide them with information that trustee X has had two cases of professional misconduct for accountancy irregularities in previous employment. Under Clause 3 as proposed, the commission would be able to take this other evidence into account before deciding what action it would be proportionate to take in the circumstances. If the amendment were to be accepted, the commission would be able to give no weight to this other, potentially compelling, evidence.
I emphasise that safeguards would be in place to ensure that any conduct outside of a charity would be only that which was relevant to the decision being considered by the commission. I shall illustrate those safeguards. First, there must be a statutory inquiry open and the Charity Commission must be satisfied that there is misconduct or mismanagement linked to the individual in the charity under inquiry before it can rely on any conduct from outside the charity as a makeweight in its decision-making.
Secondly, the commission, when exercising its powers, must provide a statement of reasons under Section 86 of the Charities Act 2011, which would set out the evidence it relied on in making the decision. This would include any evidence it relied on from outside the charity. No amendment to the Bill is needed to ensure that that is the case; we can amend the Explanatory Notes to make that clear.
Thirdly, as with all the Charity Commission’s compliance powers, the commission would have to be satisfied that the exercise of the power would be in line with the principles of best regulatory practice, including that it is proportionate, accountable, consistent, transparent and targeted only at cases where action is needed, as set out in Section 16 of the Charities Act 2011.
Finally, there is, of course, a right of appeal to the Charity Tribunal in relation to the exercise of the commission’s compliance and remedial powers, ensuring judicial oversight of the exercise of the relevant power.
The noble Baroness’s second amendment would remove the condition that enables the Charity Commission to consider disqualification on the basis of conduct likely to damage public trust and confidence in charities. The power to disqualify from charity trusteeship and senior management positions is indeed a significant power. As such it is important that the process is rigorous but fair, and, once again, balanced.
I shall explain what that will mean in practice. First, the individual must have met tougher new criteria to become a trustee and not be automatically disqualified in the first place. Secondly, before the commission can decide to disqualify an individual, three new conditions need to be met, as set out in the guidance issued by the Charity Commission. First, one of criteria A to F is met; secondly, the individual is considered to be unfit to be a charity trustee, defined by that guidance; and, thirdly, the commission considers it,
“desirable in the public interest in order to protect public trust and confidence”,
in charities.
The commission then has to give notice of its intention to disqualify and give a period for representations to be made before any decision is made. If a decision is made to disqualify, the disqualification could take effect only after a period of time has elapsed in which the individual can lodge an appeal with the tribunal—that is, 42 days. If the decision is appealed to the tribunal, obviously the tribunal would be able to confirm or overturn the disqualification. In making a decision, the tribunal would consider the case entirely afresh on the basis of all the evidence before it; it would not simply review the Charity Commission’s original decision. Lastly, all the commission’s actions in this process would have to abide by Section 16 of the Charities Act 2011.
As was said just a moment ago, the Joint Committee that undertook pre-legislative scrutiny agreed that there was a,
“need for a broad power to disqualify an individual in certain instances, not all of which can be specifically identified and encapsulated in legislation”.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, referred to one scenario and asked whether a person could be disqualified on the basis of an overseas conviction in a country where homosexuality is illegal. An overseas conviction is not enough on its own. As I have said, the commission must also be satisfied that a person is unfit to be a charity trustee and that disqualification is in the public interest to protect public trust and confidence in charity. Furthermore, the conviction must concern a charity; on its own, it would not trigger disqualification. I draw the noble Baroness’s attention to that point in the little box on page 3 of the guidance, where it talks about a,
“conviction abroad for bribery or terrorist financing in connection with a charity or similar body”,
and says that such a conviction,
“would take account of any concerns raised about any court or other legal processes, their compliance with right to a fair trial … and whether the standards of evidence and justice would not be accepted in a UK or European court”.
I think that that is all pretty relevant with regard to her scenario.
Baroness Barker
Before the Minister moves on, the point that I made about Russia is that it is entirely possible that someone could be prosecuted there under its new, draconian laws about NGOs. That is not far-fetched; it could well arise that someone comes to this country from Russia having been found guilty of an offence under those laws against a charity, and that person then wants to serve as a trustee of a British charity. Believe me, organisations such as Stonewall are regularly subject to challenge as to whether their activities comply with all sorts of things, which they do. So it is not a far-fetched scenario.
Lord Bridges of Headley
I thank the noble Baroness for that point. The power would be discretionary and on a case-by-case basis. I refer her to test 3, which says that a,
“disqualification must be desirable in the public interest in order to protect public trust and confidence”.
It goes on to say that that the,
“test will, for example, allow the commission the flexibility to take account of circumstances in which the risk of (further) damage to charity is minimal and it would not be in the public interest to act against the individual”.
I am happy to write to the noble Baroness and illustrate this issue further, as she makes a good point.
As I was saying, condition F is a comparatively broad criterion, but we consider it necessary to enable the Charity Commission to address conduct that could seriously damage public trust and confidence in charities but which would not be caught by one of the other criteria. The condition needs to be considered in context of the other limbs of the exercise of the disqualification power—those that I have just described: fitness, and that disqualification is desirable in the public interest to protect public trust and confidence in charities—and the safeguards relating to the operation of the power, including the right of appeal to the Charity Tribunal.
Baroness Barker
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his comprehensive and considered response. I say to other noble Lords that this is Committee and these were probing amendments. Although I am rather glad that we have had this discussion, I am not sure that we have satisfactorily answered the point.
I say to the Minister that I understand why lawyers, particularly charity lawyers, wish to have powers that are broad and can be used in a number of different circumstances. However, when those powers are as broad as they are in the Bill, they do not help individuals to understand their fitness to serve as a trustee. Part of the law must be about enabling those who use it to know what it means. It would have been possible, had the Government been so minded, to have addressed this problem in a different way, particularly on the matter of fitness or unfitness. They could have heeded the advice given to us by the Charity Law Association about the list of matters and criteria that could be taken into account, such as the Company Directors Disqualification Act, which has a long list of factors, which would enable somebody to know the criteria that would be used to determine whether they are fit.
On the reliance on the tribunal, in the Joint Committee debates there was a level of agreement that the tribunal works perhaps far better than anticipated by those who took part in the painful process of debating the legislation that set it up. However, I say to the Minister that, as it stands at the moment, it is only when there has been an order to disqualify and that matter has come before the tribunal that anybody will be in a position to make an independent assessment of whether the commission is acting correctly and proportionately. By that time, a person will find themselves on the end of a potential disqualification which could have a profound impact on not just their involvement as a trustee but their professional life, too.
These provisions are way too wide. They do not serve the purpose of explaining matters to people who may wish to put themselves forward as trustees but who would be so unsuitable that they would be disqualified. It does not help charities to have this lack of clarity about who they should or should not have on their trustee boards. This is a matter to which I think we may return at a later stage but for the moment I thank noble Lords for their contributions and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
House of Lords
Oaths and Affirmations
Housing: Private Rented Sector
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are committed to creating a bigger, better private rented sector. We are empowering tenants through information, including our How to rent guide, and legislation to require transparency of letting agent fees while avoiding excessive regulation that would burden good landlords and raise rents. We have also taken action to tackle the minority of rogue landlords by legislating to prevent retaliatory evictions and providing £6.7 million to tackle rogue landlords and beds in sheds.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure the Minister will be aware of the recent Citizens Advice report which showed that 750,000 households live in substandard rented accommodation, presumably owned by the rogue landlords the Minister was talking about, and that this substandard accommodation includes damp, rat infestations and the threats of fires and falls. What are the Government going to do to ensure that private landlords meet their responsibilities, and will not the Government’s policy of the enforced sale of housing association homes only make the situation much worse?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the Government are ensuring that private landlords do not welch on their obligation to do work that needs to be done in terms of health and safety and substandard accommodation, and that they will not be able to evict tenants should they ask for that work to be done.
Earl Cathcart (Con)
My Lords, one of the problems is not knowing who the landlords are. Some suggest that there ought to be a national register of landlords, but the good ones might register while the bad ones will not bother and thus remain below the radar. Surely a better way is if all new tenants, who are required by law to complete a council tax registration form, put on that form the name, address and contact details of their landlords; then, councils would build up over time a complete picture of all the landlords in their area.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, one of the areas of concern in the private rented sector is houses in multiple occupation—HMOs. In areas where it can be demonstrated that licensing is needed, it is put in place and councils therefore know where some of those HMO landlords are. The Government intend to expand that.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I press the Minister again about the quality and maintenance of houses in the private rented sector. I know of a landlord who refused to mend a leaking roof, to the detriment, obviously, of his tenants. The landlord lived in South Africa and had no interest at all in undertaking the repairs. I press the Minister again to say what she is planning to do about it.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I myself have been a private landlord of a house in multiple occupation and know that, if a landlord refuses to do something, the tenant can inform the council. The council can come out and insist that the landlord does the work. If the house is in such a state that it is not fit for occupancy, the landlord has to make provision for alternative accommodation for those tenants in the interim.
Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)
My Lords, if I heard the term correctly, the Minister used the inappropriate term “welching”. Will she define it, please?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I did not mean it as a derogatory term to the Welsh.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
In all sincerity, I did not. There is a term, “to welch on an agreement”. I meant it as no insult. I simply meant to not meet one’s obligations.
Lord Naseby (Con)
Is my noble friend aware that those of us who were in local government in the 1960s lived through the Rachman and De Lusignan eras, and that at that time local authorities such as the London Borough of Islington, where I was chairman of the housing committee, had to have a register of all rented accommodation? If there is a real problem at the moment, surely that is something Her Majesty’s Government should look at, and they should authorise local authorities to compile such a register. However, this has absolutely nothing to do with the sale of housing association properties to their tenants. The same scare was put up when we proposed selling council houses.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I agree with the noble Lord that this has nothing to do with the sale of housing association homes. I think there will have been more council ownership of houses back in the 1960s. There are now a number of ways to guard against substandard accommodation, and tenants have more rights through various mechanisms than ever before.
I say to noble Lords opposite that I did not realise that, in using the term “welch”, I was insulting anybody. I do apologise if any bad feeling was caused through the use of that term.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, following up the last question to the Minister, is she aware that only 30% of council houses sold under right to buy remain with their original purchaser and most of the rest have gone into buy to let or been sold on, and, in places such as Norfolk, have been bought as second homes? Therefore, surely she accepts that, as my noble friend Lord Dubs said, there is a very real connection between what her Government are proposing for housing association properties and what will be available for affordable rented accommodation.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, once someone exercises their right to buy, it is up to them whether they rent the property out. If they choose to sell it on within a five-year period, some or all of the discount can be clawed back. But once a tenant has purchased their home under right to buy, it is their house.
Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)
My Lords, will the Minister agree to scotch the use of the expression that she used?
Health: Palliative Care
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Farmer
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report Dying Without Dignity, what steps they are taking to ensure that everyone in need has access to good palliative care.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)
The cases highlighted in the ombudsman’s report are appalling. Everyone deserves good-quality care, delivered with compassion, at the end of their life. Last year we introduced five priorities for care—the key principles that underpin the care that all people at the end of life receive.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. In the light of the parliamentary ombudsman’s report, Dying Without Dignity, is it the Government’s policy to encourage all schools of nursing to ensure that their graduates have core skills in end-of-life care by having the subject included in the formal assessments of their students’ competencies?
Lord Prior of Brampton
I thank my noble friend for that question. I cannot answer it specifically, but the report prepared earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and other subsequent reports have stressed the need for nurses to be properly trained. That is true both in hospitals and in community settings. I agree with the sentiments behind my noble friend’s Question but would like to take advice on whether what he is suggesting is indeed incorporated into nurses’ core training.
Baroness Emerton (CB)
My Lords, yesterday I was at the Royal College of Nursing, where a lot of work has gone into producing advice on end-of-life care. It has produced a small pocket handbook—and a larger one that goes with it. If the Minister has not seen the handbook, perhaps he would find it useful from the point of view of spreading it through care homes and hospitals. End-of-life care is in the curriculum for nurses but there is always a need for a reminder. These little cards that are to go in the pocket provide the essentials about end-of-life care.
Lord Prior of Brampton
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for those comments. Over the years I have spent quite a lot of time with nurses who are specialists in palliative care and I have always been hugely impressed by their work. I have not seen the booklet produced by the RCN to which the noble Baroness refers and I would certainly like to do so.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, was the Minister as shocked as I was, when reading some of the case studies in this report, to realise that the problems did not require further legislation or regulations but required staff who would follow guidelines and who had common sense, compassion and good communication skills? Why are people who lack these skills and attributes not being weeded out at the training stage, before they get anywhere near a patient?
Lord Prior of Brampton
My Lords, if Members of this House have not read the report by the ombudsman, I recommend it. It consists of 12 short, fairly straightforward case histories, which make for appalling reading. There are many nurses in hospitals and community settings who deliver wonderful care. The issue is their ability. The CQC is now making regular inspections of end-of-life care in all its hospital visits. It is one of the eight core services that it looks at. It has found that in the vast majority of cases, end-of-life care is caring. The noble Baroness asked why such care is so variable. I think that in hospitals it is partly because they are often busy places. They are not ideal places to die in. Who would wish to die in a clinical setting in a very busy ward unless they had to? That may be a part of the explanation.
Lord Wills (Lab)
My Lords, my father-in-law died this February. He died at home, surrounded by those he loved and who loved him. However, he died in profound agitation because he was denied the palliative care that he so desperately needed. The local GP surgery said that that had to be delivered by the local Macmillan nurse. She was rung repeatedly throughout the day but never answered the phone. Finally, at 4.30 pm she picked up the phone and said that she could not come until the next day—even when the nurse who was looking after my father-in-law said that he was likely to be dead by then. She said there was nothing she could do about it and rang off. He died later that evening, without the comfort of any palliative care. What assessment have the Government made of the ability of Macmillan nurses to deliver palliative care at home?
Lord Prior of Brampton
The noble Lord describes a truly tragic situation and I am very sorry for him and his family that this happened. I am afraid that variation is at the root of this. There are many parts of the country where good local care is delivered. The noble Lord’s story illustrates the fact that it is not just where people die but how they die that matters. It is clearly preferable that people should die in their own home with their loved ones, surrounded by the love that the noble Lord described, but symptom control, pain relief and everything that goes with palliative care are just as important. Indeed, most of the stories in the ombudsman’s report are about a lack of symptom control for people dying in pain. That can happen at home, as in his father-in-law’s case, but it can equally happen in hospitals. NHS England is reviewing this whole area and will come to some final views towards the end of this year, when I might report back to the House.
Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of Hospice UK. Is the crux of this issue not the fact that most people do not want or need to die in hospital, and that not enough help is given to allow and help those people who do not need to die in hospital to leave hospital and get the palliative care which can be provided in hospices or elsewhere? Is my noble friend the Minister aware that Hospice UK has put forward a plan to the Government which would enable 50,000 people a year to leave hospital before they die so that they can get the proper palliative care that they need? That would save the Government money, and all we need is a modest sum to carry out an evaluation exercise to see what is the best way of achieving this eminently desirable objective. Will he go back to the department and urge his colleagues to make this modest sum available?
Lord Prior of Brampton
I thank my noble friend for that question. Perhaps I could suggest that he and I meet outside this Chamber, along with some colleagues from NHS England, to discuss his proposal in more detail.
The Lord Bishop of Bristol
My Lords, given that both NICE and NHS England have commended the services of spiritual, pastoral and religious care in the care of all people and in delivering great services to patients, clients and staff, can the Minister give us any assurances that a chaplaincy will be funded, going forward, in all NHS facilities that provide palliative care?
Lord Prior of Brampton
I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question. I share his sentiments entirely but that is a decision for local hospitals and local trusts.
Mental Health Services: Young People
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Storey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to develop mental health services for pupils and young people.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)
My Lords, we are committed to transforming children and young people’s mental health and well-being across health, social care and education. The Department of Health is working with the Department for Education and other key partners to develop more seamless and integrated mental health services for pupils and young people. Work is under way to pilot single points of contact in schools and mental health services, and joint training to improve access to mental health advice and support in schools.
Lord Storey (LD)
I thank the Minister for his reply. It is a sobering thought that, in every classroom, three pupils have a diagnosable mental health problem. Does the Minister agree that, when pupils are referred, there should be an agreed, minimum time by which they are seen?
Lord Prior of Brampton
I thank the noble Lord for that question. He is right that, out of a class of 30 children, three are probably suffering from diagnosable mental health problems. The Government are commissioning a prevalence survey to establish more precisely what that number is. There is a feeling that it will be increasing with the use of social media and more bullying in schools. I agree with the noble Lord that we must make it easier to access talking therapies in particular and the Government have plans to do that.
Lord Patel of Bradford (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister assure the House that children and young people with serious mental health problems are not treated on adult psychiatric wards, alongside fairly dangerous adults, that they can access appropriate child mental health services, and that they do not have to travel hundreds of miles across the country to do so?
Lord Prior of Brampton
The Government have committed to spending £150 million over the next five years on children who are suffering from eating disorders. This may partly answer the noble Lord’s question. They have also now committed to spending £1.25 billion over the next five years to develop mental health services for children and young adults. That is against a background of our current spending of about £700 million, so we are talking about doubling the spend. Doubling the spend does not mean doubling the benefit and output, but the noble Lord can be assured that it is an absolute priority of this Government to tackle mental health problems right where they start: when people are young.
The Lord Bishop of Peterborough
My Lords, mental health cannot be considered in isolation from the rest of life. For example, a number of recent deaths of young people by suicide have been connected to their use of the internet or social media. Is the Minister prepared to work with the Department for Education, other education providers and others to produce a rounded programme of support for the whole person in their context? Will he also indicate the Government’s support for the Online Safety Bill, introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe?
Lord Prior of Brampton
I thank the right reverend Prelate for his question. I am not aware of the Bill to which he refers. I hope he will excuse me for that; I will find out about it after today. The right reverend Prelate asked whether we will work with other parts of the Government, particularly the Department for Education. I assure him that we are doing so.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the Government’s prevalence survey. However, does the Minister’s department have any idea at this time of the length of waiting lists and the number of children waiting for very specialist intervention from psychiatrists and psychologists? I hear from groups of people that the waiting lists are growing and the time children spend waiting is getting longer. For a child with a mental health problem, every day makes it worse. What are the Government doing about that? Does the Minister have the numbers?
Lord Prior of Brampton
I do not have the numbers to hand, but I can tell the noble Baroness that the number of beds that have been commissioned has increased significantly over the last three years and I think 1,250 tier-1 beds are now available. The noble Baroness puts her finger on it: the way we provide treatment for people suffering from mental health conditions—and have done for many years—falls far short of what we would expect for people suffering from equivalent physical conditions. We often talk about parity of esteem quite glibly, without putting the necessary resources behind it. The Government are determined to do so.
Lord Bradley (Lab)
My Lords, it is welcome that the Government have decided to ban the use of police cells for children detained under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act. However, what action is being taken to ensure that there are appropriate places of safety in every locality? Will the Minister confirm that adult psychiatric wards will not be used as places of safety for children?
Lord Prior of Brampton
The use of police cells for anybody suffering a mental health crisis, but particularly for children, is wholly unacceptable. Last year, the number of children who were held in a police cell was 160. That has come down from a much higher number. The Government and my right honourable friend the Home Secretary are determined to stop this happening—indeed, legislation is about to go through the other place to ensure that it does not happen. But that leads to the question of where, if not to a police cell, they should go. I have been told that there is a risk that young people going through a mental health crisis might actually be arrested to make them eligible to come into a police cell, which would of course be equally unacceptable. The number is getting much smaller and I hope that if I am here in a year’s time it will be down to zero.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, we have not heard from the Conservative Benches yet on this Question. I think my noble friend Lord Elton is next.
Lord Elton
My Lords, the previous answer made it clear that a significant proportion of the pupils and young people the Question refers to are in custody. Can the Minister assure us that there is equality of treatment, within both the spend and the survey he referred to, for those children in these dire circumstances?
Lord Prior of Brampton
I thank the noble Lord for that question. I am not sure that I totally got the question, but I can say that keeping a young person in custody is the absolute last resort. The police do not wish to do it and do so only when there is no bed available in an appropriate, safe setting. The issue is the availability of beds. It is better for a child to be in a single room on an adult psychiatric ward than in a police cell.
Energy: Onshore Wind
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Worthington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on investment in renewable energy of their decision to end the subsidy for onshore wind farms.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, onshore wind has made a valuable contribution to the United Kingdom energy mix in recent years, but there is now enough capacity in the pipeline for the United Kingdom to meet its 2020 renewable commitments. We will consider carefully the level of investment that developers are likely to bring forward under the proposals announced by the Secretary of State on 18 June.
Baroness Worthington (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. However, would he agree with me that we are not in fact on track to meet our renewables targets because they apply to all energy, and the targets for heat and transport are not on track? Therefore, this is an imprudent blanket ban on one of our cheapest and fastest-to-deploy technologies. Will he not reconsider?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, the noble Baroness is right about the importance of onshore wind, but it is already delivering for us. On that basis, we are convinced that the mix of other renewables, together with nuclear and CCS, means that the challenging commitments that we indeed have on heat and transport are deliverable.
Lord Vinson (Con)
My Lords, as we learn from experience which type of renewable to back and which not to back, and as wind turbines have shown themselves to produce extremely expensive electricity due to their intermittency, would the Minister consider moving on to one of the greatest developments of our age, which is small nuclear reactors? That means that, instead of having one huge nuclear power station that probably takes 10 to 14 years to develop, you could have 10 factory-built nuclear units in a row—if one is closed down for maintenance, the other nine continue to work. This is the technology of tomorrow, which will give us limitless CO2-free cheap energy. Will the Government consider putting some serious resource into this to make Britain a world leader in this technology?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, renewables are important, but it is absolutely right that some renewables are intermittent and we therefore need back-up. Nuclear is certainly vital to us and we need it. We are looking at the possibility—I put it no stronger than that—of smaller nuclear as an additional part of the mix.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, the Minister was unable to respond to my question after the Statement yesterday as to whether a jobs and supply chain impact assessment had been carried out by the Government in advance of the Statement. I think that is to be regretted. One way to restore confidence within that community would be to signal that the Government have no plans to change their proposed contract date for contracts for difference from October this year. Can the Minister confirm that they are on course to do that and the details will be published before recess?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, first on the economic impact, it is possible to overstate that. That it is why I did not really dwell on the issue. Two hundred and fifty projects are likely to be affected, but a clear majority of those would not be processed even within the old limits, so the economic impact is small. With relation to contracts for difference, as my right honourable friend the Secretary of State said in another place, we will be making a Statement on that in due course.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
Why did the UK Government not consult with the Scottish Government before making this decision?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
The noble Lord will be aware that this is a reserved issue. There was correspondence with the Scottish Government and tomorrow my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will be meeting with Fergus Ewing, the Minister for Energy in Scotland.
Lord Hay of Ballyore (DUP)
My Lords, in the Statement that the Minister made yesterday in the House on renewable energy and the ending of subsidies, he indicated that the Government consulted with the three regional assemblies: the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Assembly. Could the Minister indicate who the Government spoke to within the Northern Ireland Assembly, and was there forthcoming support from the Northern Ireland Assembly for what the Government announced yesterday?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, there is ongoing discussion with the devolved Administrations. I am not sure whether I used the word “consult”. I said there had been contact, certainly, with the devolved Administrations and contact that is continuing, particularly on the issue of the grace period where we have indicated that we are very happy to talk to stakeholders.
Lord Cunningham of Felling (Lab)
My Lords, every nuclear submarine built in the United Kingdom has had a propulsion unit built by Rolls-Royce. We have decades of experience in the construction of small nuclear reactors. This is an amazing opportunity for our country to take up the point made by his noble friend and develop these small nuclear reactors for urban use.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, the noble Lord speaks with great experience. He used to represent the area of Sellafield and I take his contribution very seriously. As I have indicated, we are looking at the issue of small nuclears at the moment.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that on 19 January 2015, which was the coldest day of the year so far, electricity demand in the UK was at its highest and yet wind turbines—both onshore and offshore—produced less than 1% of the UK’s total electricity demand?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I was not aware that was the coldest day of the year, or indeed that that was the case. Renewables are a vital part of the contribution to our decarbonisation. That remains very much the case. We have a range of renewables, which are of key importance to us in meeting our targets and particularly in meeting the climate change agenda in Paris this year.
Built Environment Committee
The Chairman of Committees
That Lord Woolmer of Leeds be appointed a member of the Select Committee in place of Lord Haskel, resigned.
Information Committee
The Chairman of Committees
That Baroness Byford be appointed a member of the Select Committee.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL]
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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16:29 - Division on Amendment 1 - Ayes: 98 / Noes: 316 - Amendment 1 disagreed.
Lord Paddick
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I will speak also to the other amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee in this group. This group is fundamental to our debate on the rest of the Bill, as it asks the Government whether they are really committed to an evidence-based approach to combating drugs—basically, whether they are committed to doing what works in practice.
Amendment 1 is a minor amendment which sets out our proposals in the overall context of the Bill. The key amendment is Amendment 5, which would require the Secretary of State to commission an “independent evidence-based review” of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and its implementation, and to publish the results. Amendments 111, 112 and 115 would ensure that this review had to take place before the rest of the provisions in the Bill came into force. If, in the face of the evidence that such a review would produce, the Government were still determined to press ahead with this, so be it. However, our amendments would give the Government time to consider whether a different approach, based on evidence of what works, would produce the outcomes we all seek.
I will be clear: the Liberal Democrats are as concerned about the harm caused by the misuse of drugs in general, and the misuse of new psychoactive substances in particular, as anyone else in this House, including the Government. Liberal Democrats want what parents and families want. Parents want their children to avoid taking drugs. The evidence suggests that education, rather than criminalisation, is more likely to achieve that end. If their children use drugs, they do not want them to be harmed by taking them, let alone be killed by them. The evidence suggests that the best way to do that is through education and concentrating resources on the drug dealers, not the users. If their children use drugs, the last thing they want is for the rest of their children’s lives to be ruined by a criminal record for simply having small amounts of a relatively harmless substance on them. Educate them if they are being reckless, and if they are addicted, treat them.
Our concern, borne out by the evidence from other countries, is that prohibition and the criminalisation of drug users do not reduce the harm caused by drugs. They do not save lives, reduce addiction or deal with the serious criminality associated with drugs, such as the violence associated with drug dealing. Our concern is that the Bill—yet another Bill based on prohibition and criminalisation—will not only be ineffective in reducing the considerable harm caused by new psychoactive substances but will increase that harm, cost more lives, increase addiction and boost the profitability of drug dealing.
I expect the Government to say that they do not believe this will be the case, and that they have a manifesto commitment to enact this legislation—and of course under the Salisbury convention we on these Benches will not try to wreck the Bill. What we are asking for is an independent, evidence-based review of how effective current legislation is in achieving what it sets out to achieve—that is, a review of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971—before we give effect to another piece of legislation which is very similar to that.
I can tell noble Lords that making drugs illegal is not an effective deterrent, and that the classification of drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act lacks a sound scientific basis in the case of many of the drugs listed in that legislation, and therefore it lacks credibility in the eyes of those whom the system of classification is designed to deter. However, rather than taking my word for it, I ask the House to support an independent review. We are not asking for a major piece of new research but for a similar exercise to that carried out recently by David Anderson into the far more complex area of surveillance, which he completed in less than 12 months. We are not trying to delay the passing of this legislation, just asking that we hold back from giving effect to it until after the review has been conducted. It may well be that, having seen the review, the Government decide to adopt a different approach.
The Liberal Democrats want a health-based and harm reduction-based approach to dealing with the problems caused by the misuse of drugs. If I thought that making even more drugs illegal would save one life or stop one person becoming addicted, I would not be asking for this review. Therefore, will the Minister commit to having such a review so we can ensure that, before this Bill comes into force, we learn the lessons of the past? I beg to move.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, it is indeed time for a fundamental review of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. It is now almost half a century old and was the product of the prohibitionist orthodoxy that developed during the 1960s. It was the way in which our country implemented the requirements of the UN convention of 1961; subsequently, we doggedly signed up to the 1971 and 1988 conventions. It is through this legislation that the full panoply of prohibition was established, with the criminalisation of supply and possession. It is more than time to look again at the principles underlying this legislation, because there is an abundance of evidence that the legislation has failed in its purpose of protecting society from harm. I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that our objective has to be to minimise the damage that drug usage causes in our society.
Since this legislation was introduced, we have seen, generation by generation, very significant increases in the use of drugs. There have been fluctuations in the use of cannabis, but if noble Lords study the latest annual report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, they will see that it sounds alarm bells over the rising problem of cannabis, in particular the increasing potency and purity of herbal cannabis and cannabis resin. The cannabis that is available in the market for consumers in this country is now far higher in THC, the most dangerous component of cannabis, than the cannabis that people were accustomed to using in the 1960s. A far larger proportion of our population now uses cannabis than in those days. Britons are among the largest consumers of controlled drugs in Europe. Therefore, there is evidence that the system is not working.
Prohibition is based on a false analysis of supply and demand. Where supply is interdicted, demand does not consequentially fall. Prices rise and the profits of criminals rise, but demand is displaced to different drugs. One reason we have the problem of new psychoactive substances, which the Bill seeks to address, is the prohibition of other substances, which has displaced demand, and people are looking for new opportunities to find the experience that they seek.
MDMA, better known as ecstasy, is another controlled drug, but the control has simply failed. Statistics indicate that some 300,000 young people each week are using ecstasy. As I mentioned at Second Reading, in universities its use is widespread, as is the use of smart drugs that are supposed to facilitate mental concentration and help people do better in severely competitive situations.
It is more than time for an analysis of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has recommended—an objective expert review of the way that this legislation has worked. It has been a gift to criminals. On the black market, price increases of 100 times between production and retail are not uncommon. In 2013, it was estimated that taxpayers across the world were spending something in the order of $188 billion on the enforcement of prohibition regimes, with the effect of creating an illegal drugs market of some 240 million users, with a turnover of $320 billion. This is a massive illicit business created by the prohibitionist orthodoxy.
At the same time, the Home Office estimated that the social and economic costs of organised drug crime in England and Wales were £10.7 billion a year. The collateral damage of the war on drugs has been immense, with diversion of public spending from health, education, development and other good causes—or, if you prefer, from the lowering of taxes and the reduction of deficits—and from tackling social exclusion and violent crime on estates in this country. That extends to the countries of production and transit: there have been 100,000 deaths in the drug wars in Mexico for which our people, as consumers, have to take serious responsibility. There is corruption of public life in many countries, and the proceeds of the illegal drug trade are used to finance terrorism. There are abuses of human rights, the use of the death sentence in a number of countries across the world, and environmental damage; for example, in Latin America, where the coca bean is produced.
Money laundering is a very significant problem, which is greatly exacerbated by prohibition. Banks in this country—unburdened by any particular sense of civic responsibility or by effective regulation—fund money laundering of drugs money, which is a profitable activity, as do money transfer services. It is not just the financiers, though. Other white collar professionals—accountants and lawyers—do not ask the questions they are required by the law to ask and are happy to facilitate the transfer of the proceeds of the illicit trade into the licit economy. It is ubiquitous across the country. At the other end of the scale, nail bars, taxi firms, car washes and, I am told, even childcare organisations are local small businesses that are used to facilitate the laundering of the proceeds of the drugs trade.
The Chancellor now wishes to make the City of London an offshore centre for trading in the Chinese currency regardless of the fact that the great majority of new psychoactive substances emanate from China. Prohibition is an engine of crime, of international organised crime, of gang-related street crime and of acquisitive crime. It accounts for between one-fifth and one-third of acquisitive crime. More enforcement leads to more violence and more profit. Prohibition drives innovation.
The Misuse of Drugs Act was never effective, but to attempt to overlay a regime that was not effective in the circumstances for which it was designed on today’s world of digital communications is, I believe, doomed to failure. The internet has made it far easier for people to obtain the information they need to know how to synthesise such drugs, to market them and to make them available. Smartphones enable people to tell each other about the arrival of new consignments of drugs—I am told even that invitations to parties contain links to suppliers. To extend the prohibition regime as the Government propose in the Bill seems a project doomed to failure.
Over the years, the Government have lacked conviction in the enforcement of prohibition. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, to his immense credit, when faced with the challenge of HIV and AIDS in the 1980s, wisely and humanely decided that to provide clean needles and needle exchanges was the right thing to do and that harm prevention should trump law enforcement. There has been vacillation by successive Home Secretaries about the classification of cannabis. In 2010, when cannabis had once again been moved to a different classification, the Lancet stated:
“Politics has been allowed to contaminate scientific processes and the advice that underpins policy”.
The noble Lord, Lord Bates, may correct me but I understand that in the preparation of this legislation the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, created under the 1971 legislation to be the Government’s statutory adviser in this field, was sidelined. As the noble Lord said in moving this amendment, this seems to be an end to evidence-based policy and the attempt at a rational assessment of harm. Ministers have done this through this legislation and the broader policy. They have further discredited the Misuse of Drugs Act, on which they rely and which they insist is so necessary.
In an interview in the Independent in 2005, David Cameron said:
“Politicians attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator by posturing with tough policies and calling for crackdown after crackdown. Drugs policy has been failing for decades”.
I greatly fear that this Bill will be another failure, and I commend to the Minister and the Home Secretary the course of action proposed in this amendment.
Lord Condon (CB)
My Lords, I cannot support these amendments, not because I challenge the sincerity of those who wish to encourage wider debate about drugs and the value of criminalising or decriminalising them, but because I think this is the wrong Bill at the wrong time to try to bolt on this wider debate. There is a real mischief that needs to be dealt with now: the mischief of so-called legal highs, which, tragically too often, are lethal highs. Many families are grieving in this country because youngsters, in particular, have taken these substances and died as a result. The mischief that needs remedying as soon as possible is the spread of so-called head shops and other such shops in many of our major cities around the country. We are just getting into the serious music festival season. Many of those festivals will have the equivalent of head shops on open display. There is real confusion among many vulnerable, naive youngsters, who assume that, because there are head shops or stands at music festivals selling these substances, they must be medically safe.
I spoke yesterday to the chief constable of Hertfordshire, Andy Bliss, who leads for the police service on these issues, and the police are adamant that there is a real need for this legislation as soon as possible. So let there be a wider debate around the big issues of evidence, prohibition and legalising or not legalising drugs, but we need to deal now, laser-like, with this real and present mischief. Any attempt to make this Bill into a wider debate will dilute, probably defer and possibly damage our intent to deal with this real and present mischief. Although there is a need for this wider debate, I hope that it will not destroy the laser-like focus of this Bill, which deals with a real and imminent problem.
Lord Richard (Lab)
The specific terms of the amendment are:
“The Secretary of State shall commission an independent evidence-based review of the effectiveness of the Misuse of Drugs Act … and the implementation of the Act”,
and,
“The Secretary of State shall lay a copy of a report of the review before both Houses of Parliament within one year”.
Is the noble Lord saying that he approves of the amendment but does not think that it should be linked to the passage of this Act? If so, I would be grateful if he clarified that he is in favour now of an independent review of the way in which the Misuse of Drugs Act is actually operating.
Lord Condon
Certainly, I am not against such a review. It is for those who wish to make the case for it to put it forward and to find a mechanism for it to take place. I would very happily give evidence to such a review or assist in any way I could. The point I am making today is that, at the very least, there would be a 12-month delay, probably longer, and there is a pressing need to get legislation now to do something about the production, supply and distribution of these so-called legal highs, which, as I said, are lethal highs on some occasions and are killing young people.
Lord Patel of Bradford (Lab)
My Lords, I have listened to arguments on both sides and I am struck by the point that we somehow think that the introduction of legal highs is a phenomenon we have never come across. We had cheap, smokeable heroin in the early 1980s. There were outbreaks in various cities across England where people were smoking heroin. There was anxiety. We had a knee-jerk reaction and we set up services for heroin users. Then we had amphetamines in the nightclub scene, and in the mid-1980s kids were sniffing solvents and glue. There was huge panic and uproar and we banned children from buying solvents in supermarkets. We thought that thousands of kids were going to die because they were sniffing solvents. Things moved on.
Then we had MDMA, GBH and crack cocaine, and then heroin came back again. These things keep coming. We do not want to have a knee-jerk reaction to yet another drug that young people will take. The evidence, from watching last night’s “Newsnight” report from Ireland, is the opposite of what the noble Lord said his police officers wanted here. Officers there were saying that they could not enforce this law. This is simply imposing a blanket ban on new drugs as they keep coming out—and they will keep coming out. We can ban one thing and I guarantee that in the next five years, there will be another substance that young people are using and we will be panicking again. We cannot continue to do this.
There is a desperate need to review the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. We have had all these policies and other Acts dealing with prescription drugs, and we have never looked at the evidence—not just this Government but the Labour Government as well. We have never looked at the evidence because, as my noble friend Lord Howarth said, Ministers look at what the public want and they want hard, strong enforcement tactics on tackling the use of drugs. The evidence is fairly clear and we have a lot of it in this country, so we desperately need a review. Whether we need to tag that on to this Bill I do not know, but my anxiety is that we will be passing a Bill because of a knee-jerk response.
We have not looked at the connections with existing legislation. We are creating legislation that is not looking at harms but simply banning everything in sight under this umbrella body, and it seems to everyone to be unenforceable. We need to take a step back. There has to be an opportunity somewhere along the way to have a review and to look at drugs policy effectively.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I had not intended to speak on this amendment until I heard the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. With all due respect, I must say that he is profoundly wrong and also out of date. I say to the Minister that there is no need to do another independent review. A couple of years ago, EU Sub-Committee F, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, conducted a thorough review of drugs legislation. We discovered in that committee that enforcement has worked exceptionally well for all the main hard drugs we have had in this country. Drug use of heroin, crack cocaine and other such drugs has dropped dramatically. Where we are in the lead, unfortunately, is with the use of the new psychoactive substances.
It would seem from the evidence that we took in committee that children today do not want to smoke the same old stuff their hippie fathers did. If it was good enough for dad, the kids today want something different. We see that in a whole range of things, such as children who go off Facebook because their parents have joined. The fads on drugs seem to have the same trends.
Enforcement has worked exceptionally well in driving down the use of heroin, crack cocaine and other serious drugs. Enforcement can work equally well on psychoactive substances, provided that we can get the legislation watertight. The Government have tried enforcement with psychoactive substances by naming certain drugs, and within hours the chemical composition is tweaked slightly and the law is no longer effective.
Enforcement works, provided we have effectively drafted legislation. I entirely support the views of the noble Lord, Lord Condon. We have an urgent problem at the moment with psychoactive drugs. We do not need to review the whole of the drugs Act in this Bill. Maybe a review in a couple of years might be sensible, after we have seen how the legislation proposed in this Bill works. Finally, it is not a matter of enforcement or harm reduction, which are not mutually exclusive. We have been doing both in this country. It is right to have criminalisation and tough enforcement action against drugs and, at the same time, a harm-reduction policy that tackles drug use among first-time users and young kids, who probably do not know any better. Yes, we need education. Yes, we need harm reduction. But for goodness sake, keep the criminal law, which works.
Lord Patel of Bradford
My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, yes, there may have been a reduction in the use of illegal drugs over the last five years. I know that Ministers have responded by saying, “We do not need to look at this any more, because drug use has plateaued and acquisitive crime has decreased, although drug-related deaths have increased”. Why has that happened? Not because of better enforcement but because, for the last 10 years, the Labour Government piled £800 million per year into drug treatment—and drug treatment that worked. That was a pooled, ring-fenced pot of money. We quadrupled the number of people treated, and it worked. For every £1 invested, within a year you had a £2 return and on a longer-term basis you had an £8 return. Drug treatment works. We do not have the same evidence for education prevention and we do not have the evidence for enforcement, but we do have the evidence that treatment works.
The problem is now that the £800 million a year has gone into Public Health England’s £2.6 billion budget, which goes to the 152 local authorities around the country to spend as they wish. That money is not ring fenced. There is no local authority in the country that has the expertise or the inclination to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on drug treatment. Instead, funds are rapidly being withdrawn and we see the outcome: we see drug services shutting down and we see drug-related deaths going up. I guarantee that within five years we will see acquisitive crime going up and drug use increasing again. This is not to do with enforcement policies; it is clearly to do with how we invested that money properly last time.
Lord Blencathra
Again, I must disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Patel. Of course, harm reduction is good and of course treatment is essential, but unless we have Customs and Excise and the National Crime Agency and all the others interdicting tonnes and tonnes of drugs, we would need a lot more treatment because we would have a lot more drug addicts in this country. Enforcement has worked. Enforcement is driving down the use of those drugs which were rapidly increasing in the 1980s and the 1990s. There is no suggestion that that trend is wearing off, and there is no suggestion that enforcement is now failing with those drugs. Enforcement is failing in the new psychoactive substances for two reasons. First, the kids find it trendy and sexy to use them because they are not using the same old drugs that dad smoked. Secondly, we do not have legislation tight enough to enable the police and the enforcement authorities to use enforcement properly against those psychoactive substances.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I support this amendment and the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Paddick, Lord Howarth and Lord Patel, but I have to say that I cannot support the noble Lord who has just spoken. This country has some of the strongest and toughest rules and legislation relating to drugs, yet we have one of the highest levels of use of the dangerous drugs that we try to ban. The reality is that we are not succeeding. Countries with relatively liberal, harm-reduction, health-focused policies do a great deal better than we do.
I want to use this opportunity to try to get across to the Minister and to your Lordships why I feel so strongly that we need a review of the Misuse of Drugs Act. I worked in secondary mental health for about a quarter of a century on and off, working with severely psychotic patients. I would say that the majority of those patients take cannabis. Why do they take it? They have told me many times, “Because it makes me feel human”. Thankfully, I have never had a psychotic illness, but if you do and you are given antipsychotic medication, the mix of the illness itself and the medication leaves you feeling, if I may put it this way, subhuman. You do not feel that you have any feelings; you feel dead. If you take cannabis, it makes you feel human. That is the word these patients use—“human”. In my view, that is not unreasonable.
If herbal cannabis is illegal, which it is, these patients along with all sorts of young people all over the country—I am slightly less sympathetic about them, but I am very sympathetic about patients—are driven to take skunk, very high THC cannabis, which is bad for their hallucinations and voices and makes them worse. But they still take the cannabis because it is so important to them to feel human. As I say, that is not unreasonable.
While they were within our services, these people were treated as patients because they had severe health problems. However, it always struck me as peculiar that when they left our hospital, day centre or whatever it was, these very sick people could be picked up by the police and charged with a criminal offence. Why? Because of their health problem. When our Convenor, as she was then, said when I came to this House, “Molly, you must put your name down on the ballot for a debate”, I said, “Oh no”, but I did and I won the ballot. I was told to produce a subject within the hour, and it came to my head that it would have to be about drugs. I feel strongly that our laws are illogical, unjust and cruel, and they are doing an enormous amount of damage to very large numbers of children and young people. That is why I cannot say that I am against the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick.
Of course I understand that this Bill is about psychoactive substances, and we will come to discuss them, but the fact is that we have only one market, and it is the market for illegal drugs. It is not a market for psychoactive substances over here and a market for controlled substances under the Misuse of Drugs Act over there. They are one market, and therefore it makes no sense to look at this market without looking at that market. That is why I believe firmly that the Government would find it very helpful to look seriously at how the market is working and to draw conclusions from other countries.
We will come to the experience of Ireland and psychoactive substances, where a ban has been in place for four years. What does the deputy chief of the drugs and organised crime branch say about the ban? It has not worked. Therefore, Ireland is thinking of going back to its misuse of drugs Acts. I think that we will be in the same position, so it is really important that we get the Misuse of Drugs Act right as well as the Psychoactive Substances Bill. If we do not, we will just go round and round in very unfortunate circles from one bad policy to another.
I have something else that I want to say. The Labour Party is worried about a delay in this Bill. It does not need to worry, because bans do not work. They have not worked in Ireland. A little bit of delay will not make any difference. We now know from scientists that, of the deaths which have been caused by psychoactive substances, maybe every single one of them—certainly 90% of them—has been as the result of young people taking banned substances, not legal highs. I want to make that point very strongly. A ban does not stop people taking a substance, and some of them will die from doing so. If low-level psychoactive substances were regulated and labelled, with the consequences of taking them clearly specified, the risks and side-effects explained and the maximum dose made clear—in the case of ecstasy, you must take water, but you must not take more than 1 litre, or whatever it is—they would be much safer. My only concern is the safety and well-being of our young people.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, one rises with some trepidation following that passionate plea by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, whose expertise, commitment and sincerity we all acknowledge and admire.
It seems to me that there are three issues before the Committee this afternoon. The first was gently but firmly underlined by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, and echoed by my noble friend Lord Blencathra from the Privy Council Bench. The Government are seeking in the Bill to deal with a specific problem: dangerous substances are legally available on our high streets and there is no doubt whatever, as the noble Lord indicated, that great harm has been done already. The Government committed themselves at the general election to legislating on the matter—and that they are doing by placing the Bill before your Lordships’ House.
The second issue, of course, arises from the amendment moved very moderately and quietly by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. Again, I do not for a moment question his knowledge as a former senior police officer, nor his commitment and sincerity. But I have to say to him—as he is already an accomplished parliamentarian, he will know that this is right—that the amendment he moved has some of the qualities of a wrecking amendment. It would delay for at least a year the implementation of legislation that is considered by many to be urgent.
This brings me to my third point. The noble Lord referred to the Salisbury/Addison convention that in your Lordships’ House we do not seek to vote down manifesto Bills at Second or Third Reading; nor do we introduce wrecking amendments that would either inordinately delay or negate the purpose of the Bills. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, in his place. In his previous incarnation as Sir Robert Rogers, Clerk of the other place, he had to adjudicate on wrecking amendments—or those that could be so construed—because in another place there is an absolute rule against them: no such amendment can be selected for debate.
I am not suggesting that there is anything improper—far from it—in what the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has sought to do this afternoon. Of course there is not; it is entirely within the rules of your Lordships’ House. But there is another convention that is not binding, as Salisbury/Addison should be, which certainly has governed the general conduct of our business in this place. It is the convention that in Committee it is desirable to have good, clear debate on a subject, but not to vote. There are exceptions—there have been in my time, in the past five years.
Lord Cormack
May I just finish this point? On the whole, the suggestion that in your Lordships’ House it is better to have a thorough debate in Committee, give the Minister a chance to reflect and then come back on Report if necessary has a great deal to commend it. This afternoon, we have on the Bench to reply to this debate my noble friend Lord Bates. He may prove me wrong this afternoon, but I regard him as an exemplary Minister who has proved on many occasions that he truly listens to debate in your Lordships’ House and often comes back with genuine recognition and concession. I very much hope that he will listen to the debate this afternoon in that exemplary fashion and reply accordingly.
I have heard a whisper that there could be an attempt to divide your Lordships’ House this afternoon. I very much hope that that will not happen because this is a profoundly serious matter—literally a matter of life and death for some people. It is crucial that we should have full and thorough debate. It is through that that we have earned our reputation for scrutiny, critical examination and the improvement of legislation. We have a chance to do that in this Bill, which, like every Bill, is far from perfect and is certainly capable of improvement.
I conclude by saying that I believe the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Condon: we are seeking to tackle a specific issue and the Bill is tackling that issue. We should take no steps that would frustrate that, and certainly not frustrate it at this early stage.
Lord Richard
I put the same question that I asked the noble Lord, Lord Condon. I hear what he says about the relationship between the Bill and the general proposition in the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that there should be an independent review of the operation of the Misuse of Drugs Act. Does the noble Lord support that?
Lord Cormack
I would give a very similar answer to that given by the noble Lord, Lord Condon. He said that he acknowledges that there is a very good case for it, and so indeed do I.
Lord Addington
If I may make one small point: any convention about not voting in Committee is very recent, and it is one determined by the procedures in Grand Committee. It is a waste of time for us to go over the same debate twice if we are determined to have a vote or if we feel that the answer cannot be given. If the noble Lord, Lord Bates, says that he is very positively minded towards this amendment—let’s face it, the smell ain’t exactly in the air at the moment—of course, there would be no need to seek a conclusion. If, however, he is not, why go through it again?
Lord Cormack
If that question was addressed to me, I should perhaps have given way earlier. There is every case for the most wide-ranging, critical scrutiny of any Bill. The point that I sought to make—I did not do so aggressively at all—is that in this House we tend not to vote in Committee but rather to reserve our votes for Report. There have been only a handful of such occasions in the past five years. That is all I am saying and I commend it to your Lordships.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Ind Lab)
It seems to me that the noble Lord has changed his mind. I want to be very clear. A convention is a convention and it is almost legally binding in some cases. Now he is saying that a habit has grown up that we do not vote in Committee. But it is only a habit, and in my view it is quite a bad habit. I hope that the House will not be swayed into not allowing voting in Committee to become a convention.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)
It is my fault and my stupidity but I do not understand how this amendment can properly be regarded as a wrecking amendment. Can the noble Lord explain that to me?
Lord Cormack
I said that it had some of the ingredients of a wrecking amendment because it would delay by at least a year the implementation of legislation that many believe to be urgent and necessary.
Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)
My Lords, I am puzzled. Somebody has lost the plot and it is probably me. I do not see why this has to delay the legislation at all. I follow that in this group, Amendment 115—the last one—would indeed delay the legislation. It involves an insertion into Clause 57, which is about commencement. However, I do not think that applies to any of the other amendments. On the face of it, Amendment 5 seems to demand the implementation of the Bill. How would one review its implementation under proposed new subsection (1)(b), except by bringing it into force and letting it go ahead? Unless someone can explain why Amendment 115 within this group necessarily has to be passed, I do not see that any delay at all is involved.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, if I may assist the Committee, clearly these amendments can be taken separately and, if the Committee is minded to say that there needs to be a review and no delay in giving effect to the legislation, that is a matter for the Committee. We are talking about the Misuse of Drugs Act in that amendment rather than the Bill, if that helps the noble Lord.
Baroness Meacher
I wonder if it might help the Committee if the noble Lord withdrew Amendment 115 simply so that we can debate the need for a review of the Misuse of Drugs Act without setting it in the context of a delay to the psychoactive substances ban.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
I acknowledge the strength of feeling of many noble Lords on this issue but I hope we can all accept that, whatever our view, we all have the interests and protection of young people in particular in the forefront of our minds when discussing this group of amendments and the Bill as a whole. That is not the prerogative of one particular point of view. The effect of this group of amendments—certainly its intention—is to put back the commencement of most of the Bill’s provisions for, in reality, probably at least 18 months after the Bill has been passed.
The proposals in the Bill for a blanket ban on new psychoactive substances have been supported by the New Psychoactive Substances Review Expert Panel, whose report was called for by one Liberal Democrat Minister and accepted by another. The ban has also been supported by a similar panel in Scotland, the Health and Social Care Committee of the National Assembly for Wales, the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, the Local Government Association, the police and the two largest political groupings in this House, including the Opposition, at the recent general election. The Liberal Democrats said that they would clamp down on those who produce and sell unregulated chemical highs. That all these organisations, committees and parties reached their conclusion in either the face of all the evidence or the absence of any evidence—as has been implied—is unlikely.
We need to start to tackle the issue of legal highs now. The United Kingdom now has the second largest legal highs market in the world, beaten only by America. We are the top country in Europe for emerging new psychoactive substances. Over the past four years, hundreds of new internet sellers have been established in the UK, along with an estimated hundreds of specialist high street head shops. Beyond this, an unknown number of other stores, including late-night garages and takeaways, have started selling these products. In short, an entire industry became fully established under the previous coalition Government, selling and marketing dangerous drugs largely aimed at young people, many of whom would not otherwise have considered experimenting with drugs.
It also appears quite common in the legal highs market for legal high sellers to send out samples of new psychoactive substances to existing customers and use human beings as guinea pigs with no consideration of the consequences. The evidence also shows how far behind the market we currently are.
Baroness Meacher
I thank the noble Lord for giving way. He says that head shops have no consideration for their customers. In our experience, head shops are the one outlet that do have to have some concern about their customers because, if they kill them or if they finish up in hospital, they will not come back for more and head shops will not make profits, which is what they are there to do. That is the one reason why, unpleasant though head shops are—and they are—if they were properly licensed and controlled, they would be rather better than the alternative: the black market.
Lord Rosser
I think I actually said that it is quite common in the legal highs market for legal high sellers— and there is more than one way of selling it—to send out samples of new psychoactive substances to existing customers and literally use human beings as guinea pigs, with no consideration of the consequences. I do not think that implies that everybody is doing that; it is saying that it is not uncommon for that to be the situation.
The evidence also shows how far behind the market we currently are. Substances were being banned following parliamentary debate earlier this year, when it had been known that sellers were sending out to potential customers samples likely to be toxic three years previously.
I wish to quote the Home Affairs Select Committee report, to which I referred earlier. I realise that some have already challenged this statement but it is set out in the Home Affairs Select Committee report. The report states:
“England and Wales has almost the lowest recorded level of drug use in the adult population since measurement began in 1996. Individuals reporting use of any drug in the last year fell significantly from 11.1% in 1996 to 8.9% in 2011–12. There was also a substantial fall in the use of cannabis from 9.5% in 1996 to 6.9% in 2011–12”.
That does not mean there is not still a problem, but the area where things have been going in the wrong direction, as identified in the report of the expert panel, has been as a result of the emergence of new psychoactive substances. The explosion of new psychoactive substances in the last few years is a unique phenomenon which warrants specific legislation. Some 670,000 young people in the UK were thought to have experimented with new psychoactive substances by 2013, and this is leading to an increase in deaths. To my knowledge, no new psychoactive substance which has been referred to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has been found to be safe.
We are not in agreement with this group of amendments, which will delay the introduction of key parts of this Bill, including the blanket ban, when the need for action to address the growing issue of new psychoactive substances, including through education, prevention and treatment, is now.
Lord Richard
My Lords, for the third time, I ask the same question: if the link between delaying the Bill and the part of the relevant amendment which calls for an independent inquiry is broken, does the Labour Party support an independent inquiry into the operation of the Misuse of Drugs Act?
Lord Rosser
I can only say that I am not aware that it is currently Labour Party policy to press for such a review.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, it is wise to remind ourselves of what has been going on in relation to these substances in the past year or two. The system has been that, once a new substance is discovered, the procedures of the Misuse of Drugs Act have been used to add that substance to the prohibitions under that Act. It seems to me that the trouble with that is that it is very late in the day in relation to the emergence of the new substance. The purpose of this Bill, as I understand it, is to eliminate that particular difficulty and to make the provision operate in a general way so that you do not need to move, as in the past, during the emergence of a new psychoactive substance. So, that is what Parliament has been doing for some time. This seems to me to be a much better way to handle the problem than what has been available in the past.
Baroness Meacher
I would like to point out that the Government introduced what I consider to be a very good instrument, the temporary class drug orders. These could be sped up. You can, or should be able to, put an order in place quickly for a 12-month period while an assessment is undertaken. If the drug is not deemed to be safe, it is placed under the Misuse of Drugs Act. There is an instrument in place.
Lord Howarth of Newport
From all his experience, does the noble and learned Lord anticipate that there may be problems in the criminal justice system over definition and establishing that a substance is indeed psychoactive; and that in the case of individuals it is their intention to supply illegally? Also, does he have any anxieties about the practicalities of enforcement? In the interests of the courts and of wider society, it is important that legislation that lays impossible burdens on the police, HMRC and other enforcement authorities is not enacted. They are going to have a large, complex and difficult additional set of tasks under this legislation, at a time of diminishing resources.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
The impact assessment to some extent deals with that. It is plain that the difficulty has arisen in relation to the emergence of new substances whenever a particular prohibition is enacted. I hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, says about this. The problem is that by the time the enactment takes place, considerable harm may be occurring. The idea of this Bill is to prevent the production of these dangerous substances as a general matter of course.
Baroness Bakewell (Lab)
Perhaps I might add to this conversation about the need for evidence. At Second Reading, on the matter of addressing the damage being done to these young people, Ireland was cited as evidence of the effectiveness of legislation.
I refer my colleagues in the House to a report made by a fellow journalist at the BBC. Following Second Reading he went to Ireland to examine what is happening with the Bill. Young people there are taking a great many of these legal highs. He found that one young man had hanged himself from a tree in the middle of the estate where he lived. The parents were frantic. In County Monaghan and in a number of towns my BBC colleague found that there was an abundance of these drugs, and that young people were turning to them.
After this young man’s suicide the police seized 34 grams. They offered it to the scientists, who analysed its contents. They said that they were not able to prove that it was a psychoactive drug. At that point the police were stymied procedurally, because the scientist to whom they turned could not verify the evidence they needed. My colleague speculated in a conversation with me that the police were turning back to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, because they did not know how to handle this matter.
What ties this issue, Ireland and legal highs to the amendment is that young people are turning to legal highs because they cannot get natural cannabis. That is the crucial link. If we are to stop these young people doing such terrible damage to themselves, we must consider the broader spectrum of motive that turns them towards these legal highs. Young people do not grow up knowing about them. They grow up in a community that perhaps 20 years ago was using cannabis plant. Now, the whole drugs business has accelerated to such an extent that millions of pounds can be made through criminal behaviour, and that has driven the legal drugs industry to invent more substances to market to young people. It is a desperate situation, but we need to examine and unpick the motives that drive young people into this market. That is at the heart of this amendment and the conversation about the Bill.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, first, I welcome the amendment and the way in which it was proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, because it has sparked a genuine debate, one of real high quality and passion on all sides of the argument. I thought that the arguments in the contributions we heard were pretty finely balanced for and against. I want to try to respond to some of those points. The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, relating to Ireland is an example worth looking at. That issue comes up in a later group of amendments and I will be happy to respond in more detail at that point, if I can.
I want to pick up on the comments made by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern. He talked about the difficulties that the Government are facing and about these new versions of psychoactive substances that are coming on to the market. In fact, the European centre that monitors these things is identifying two new versions per week. More than 500 have been identified and banned since 2010. That is the difficulty that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, touched upon when she referred to temporary banning orders. We have tried those so we have some evidence that they do not work, because the minute we clamp down on one substance, up pop another one or two—or three or 10—somewhere else. The challenges that we face are clear.
Another point in the evidence—evidence that people have cited in all their contributions from their different perspectives on this—for the Government to take action on this is that we are seeing a general fall-off in the use of drugs, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, mentioned. The positive signs are there about the current approach to drugs. I will come back to this at some point but there has been an overemphasis on the Misuse of Drugs Act, which was a response to a series of international conventions, such as the UN convention. It recognised that the fight against narcotics and drugs was a global fight. We therefore introduced legislation but if there was just the Misuse of Drugs Act, as it was configured in 1971, there would of course be little support from any part of the House. The fact of the matter is that that is only one part of the legislation.
The noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford, talked about the excellent work being done in treatment and rehabilitation. There is work going on in education and very sophisticated work going on in policing, a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Condon. In fact, having been a commander, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, was at the centre of the challenge of finding new ways to tackle those issues through law enforcement. There is a whole suite of different ways in which we are tackling this but across the majority of drugs and age groups, there has been a long-term downward trend in drug use over the past decade, a point made by my noble friend Lord Blencathra. Among 11 to 15 year-olds, drug use has been falling since its peak in 2003. More people are recovering from their dependency now than in 2009-10, and the average waiting time to access treatment is now down to three days. As a result of such innovation, the work that has been done in that area is providing alternatives and treatment. However, enforcement is part of that.
I come to the point that against the downward trend that we are seeing, in one area we see that the opposite is actually the case: usage is increasing and the number of deaths has almost doubled. There were 120 deaths of young people in 2013, and all the evidence is that that trend is on the rise.
Lord Paddick
Of those 120 deaths, for how many were new psychoactive substances the sole cause and for how many was it a mixture of these with alcohol and other controlled drugs?
Lord Paddick
I can assist the Minister, because in only 23 of those deaths did the post mortem find only psychoactive substances in the bloodstream. It is important that we get the facts straight in these cases.
Lord Bates
The fact that it is present in the death of a young person is an absolute tragedy. The Government cannot stand idly by and have an interesting debate about general drug policy when that is happening on the streets. The Local Government Association—
Baroness Meacher
The scientists who are advising me say that all the deaths have possibly been a result of banned substances which may be psychoactive or controlled. Four or five may possibly have been due to legal substances that had not yet been banned. A ban is not the way forward on that issue.
Lord Bates
These substances are available. For example, a grandmother told me about the death of her grandchild, although it was not directly related to this. She expressed absolute despair that across the road from a school in Canterbury, 100 yards away from it, was a head shop selling “legal highs”. She believes that they are lethal highs. They are allowed to be traded, on the high street, to children way below any age of consent. There are no restrictions, as there are with alcohol and tobacco. Anyone can go in there with cash and come out with a brightly coloured package which actually says “not fit for human consumption” or “plant food”. Are we supposed to stand idly by when the Local Government Association is telling us that and when the police are telling us that they lack the powers to act? The Republic of Ireland has closed these shops down altogether. We need to get a clear and important message to young people that these drugs are not without risk.
Lord Howarth of Newport
No one is suggesting that we should stand idly by. No one is suggesting that these new psychoactive substances do not carry hideous dangers. No one is suggesting that urgent action is not needed. The question at issue is whether the policies in this legislation are well framed and well designed to address what is undoubtedly a very grave and serious problem.
Lord Bates
That is not exactly what the amendment says and we see a risk there to the prospects for the Bill, which carries the support of the Official Opposition and was in their manifesto. It was in the Conservative manifesto that we would bring forward this legislation. Norman Baker, who was the Liberal Democrat Minister in the Home Office, wrote to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in the following terms:
“As our response makes clear, we will explore the feasibility of a UK wide new offence(s) by which the distribution for human consumption of non-controlled NPS is prohibited, based on the approach taken by the Republic of Ireland in 2010. This would give law enforcement greater powers to tackle NPS in general, rather than on a substance by substance basis. The international experience shows that it would have the most impact on the open availability of non-controlled NPS in high street ‘headshops’ and on UK domain websites, placing downward pressure on NPS related harms”.
That was from a Liberal Democrat Minister in the Home Office, not in history but in August 2014. Lynne Featherstone, who was then the Minister at the time, said on 11 March:
“I will be working right up until the dissolution of Parliament to ensure we have done as much as we possibly can to pave the way for a general ban. This will mean the next government can act quickly to clamp down on this reckless trade”.
Those are not the comments of some distant academic but the words of another former Liberal Democrat Minister in Her Majesty’s Government.
Action needs to be taken urgently to tackle new psychoactive substances, but we have not acted in a knee-jerk way, as has been suggested. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs looked at this in 2011 and issued a report saying that we should explore legislation to introduce a ban because it was clear that temporary banning orders were not working on an individual case-by-case basis. We then said that we would set up, in addition to that, an expert panel to take a broader range of views, including from law enforcement. That expert panel came to the view that there should be a ban on new psychoactive substances. That view was supported by the Home Affairs Select Committee and by the other committees in Scotland and Wales that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, referred to. It was also of course endorsed by action by the Government in the Republic of Ireland. This is not a knee-jerk response: it has been gathering pace over a period of some three to four years. We have been steadily building up and testing the case, listening to the police and local government, and finding out what is working and what is not working. This is what they have recommended that they want to see.
This is not the end of the matter. In the wider debate, there is no reason there cannot be ongoing exploration of the effectiveness of the Misuse of Drugs Act. The All-Party Drug Misuse Group frequently produces excellent and thorough reports looking at the effectiveness of that overall policy. The Home Affairs Select Committee has the ability to look at this, and has done so. I think that there have even been specific reviews of the Misuse of Drugs Act; for example, in 2001 under the Labour Government. I am going from memory there rather than the official note, so I have to be very careful, but I think it might have been Dame Ruth Runciman who led a review of that nature. This is about timing, and if we need something further, there are many excellent avenues through which that exploration can take place.
The Government’s response is that we have a piece of legislation—the Misuse of Drugs Act—and we have a cross-government policy, which involves health, education and law enforcement. We listened to that advisory committee, took further evidence from the expert panel and recommended the course of action which we are now taking and which this amendment would delay coming into effect. That is why we do not want this amendment to be agreed and why I urge the noble Lord to withdraw it. We have made our case and built the evidence, and we have a mandate from the electorate on the manifesto to act in such a way—as did the noble Lord’s colleagues who served in the previous Government.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, a few minutes ago in his speech, the Minister distinguished between the issue of new psychoactive substances—the substance, if I can use the word, of the Bill—and the review of the Misuse of Drugs Act. My noble friend will deal with the fact that those are linked but distinct and the fact that we are not seeking to wreck the Bill, as some have suggested.
I wanted to intervene because of the reference to the report of the expert panel. We will come on to some of these issues in later groups of amendments, but one of its recommendations was about exploring,
“the feasibility of an approach to control NPS”,
and referred to,
“taking into account the need for … a robust definition in the legislation”—
an issue we are clearly going to come to. It also referred to,
“monitoring … possible adverse implications and unintended consequences”,
which we will come to as well.
In the next recommendation it also refers to “robust” definitions and needing to build,
“on learning and evidence from countries that have already taken this approach”.
It is not quite as simplistic and narrow as perhaps some noble Lords might be thinking from the debate all round the Committee.
Lord Bates
I certainly agree with the noble Baroness that the wider issue is not narrow, it is very broad, but what we are trying to do here with this Bill is very narrow. It is very focused and based on the evidence. The noble Baroness says that the two amendments are linked but distinct. Now she is a lawyer and I am not, but to me if they are linked then they cannot be distinct. They are linked in the sense that if they are both moved together, then one effect will be to have a review which will delay action being taken on this menace—or mischief, as the noble Lord, Lord Condon, said—which is happening up and down this country and through which people are suffering and dying. We need to take action and we are doing that on the basis of medical evidence, law enforcement evidence and evidence from the Local Government Association.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, the debate this afternoon has been passionate on both sides, and both sides of the argument seem to be equally committed to believing that their side is right. If ever there was an example of why we need an independent, evidence-based review, the debate this afternoon is it because everybody who has spoken in the Chamber this afternoon cannot possibly be right. We might agree to a review of the Misuse of Drugs Act, but people will then ask why we would want to link it to this piece of legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Condon, for whom I have a great deal of respect, raised this as an issue.
The fact is that somebody said that the definition of madness is to carry on doing exactly the same thing while expecting a different result. Some people brought forward evidence in this argument that prohibition and criminalisation of drugs do not work, which the Minister has countered. One of the campaigning organisations called Release, which no doubt has sent information to noble Lords, claims that the UK has the highest lifetime amphetamine and ecstasy use, the second-highest cocaine use and the fourth-highest lifetime cannabis use in Europe. Not everybody can be right on this and my real concern—there is some evidence which we will come to in future amendments when we consider the Irish situation—is that this Bill, or this approach of prohibition and criminalisation, actually makes things worse. It makes people less safe. It makes more people die. It gets more people addicted. What I am concerned about is, if we make even more drugs illegal, it will have completely the reverse effect to the one wanted by everybody in this House, which is to make it safer, to have fewer deaths and fewer people addicted. That is why this amendment is here. That is why this amendment is linked to this Bill and that is why I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Baroness Hamwee
“( ) Section (Control of Cannabis) provides for legal possession and supply of cannabis prescribed by a doctor.”
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, this amendment is also in the name of my noble friend Lord Paddick, and I will speak to our Amendments 50 and 110. Amendment 50 is the substantive amendment and is about the use of cannabis for medical purposes, which was trailed in the previous debate by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher.
I cannot pretend to be an expert on the scientific and medical details of this issue, but politicians are not expected to be experts. We are generalists, here to represent strands of opinion and concern. As I cannot pretend to be an expert, it may therefore be that I will not understand the response from the Minister, except that I will almost certainly understand what will come as a no, judging by his Answer to the Oral Question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, last Wednesday. On that occasion, the Minister said that the steps that she was inquiring about and that I am proposing in this amendment would,
“undermine … efforts to reduce drug harms”.—[Official Report, 17/6/15; col. 1158.]
But our concern is to enable cannabis and cannabis resin to be used for good and to reduce the danger of harm—we have many other amendments aimed at harm reduction. The matter was considered in 1998 by the House’s Select Committee on Science and Technology, which noted that it was rejected by the then Government on the day of publication. There have been other reports since, and very recently a report for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform by Val Curran, professor of pharmacology at University College, London, and Frank Warburton. I am very grateful for such a readable report. It is so readable that I was tempted to read the whole of it out because it is quite short, but I will not. I will spare your Lordships that and attempt to pick out the points that I think are particularly salient.
Professor Curran writes that the problem of,
“a significant number of people”,
who,
“are not authorised to receive medication which they believe will alleviate their condition … are compounded by: An inflexible legal framework … A stranglehold on research into cannabis”,
and, as she puts it:
“A determination when considering medical licensing to equate cannabis, a well known substance in terms of its effects on humans and used medically for around 4000 years … with an entirely new chemical introduced by a pharmaceutical company”.
Therefore, Professor Curran and this amendment propose that these substances should be moved from Schedule 1 to the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001, which deals with substances perceived as having no recognised medicinal use, to Schedule 2, which would allow a doctor to prescribe them. They would be in the same class as heroin or diamorphine. I understand that there is no evidence of significant diversion of heroin from medical supplies to the illicit market—to anticipate one possible argument. They would be subject to strict controls via medical regulation, so the diversion to recreational use would be unlikely—to anticipate another possible argument.
Medicinal herbal cannabis is available in the Netherlands, in 23 states of the USA, in Canada and in Israel. Its most-established uses include the relief of pain and muscle spasms or cramps associated with many diseases and conditions, including multiple sclerosis and spinal cord damage, nausea and other responses during treatment for cancer and AIDS; and to deal with nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy used for that treatment. The particular cannabis substances are being exported from the Netherlands to eight other European states, including Germany and Switzerland.
In the exchanges on the Oral Question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, last week, the Minister referred to the drug Sativex having been licensed here. Indeed it has been, but it is very expensive and NICE recommends that it is not used to treat spasticity in multiple sclerosis sufferers because it is not cost effective. However, specialist prescribers can and do make individual funding requests, which has led to wide variations across England, and in Wales its use is approved.
It is no wonder that, given no access to legal cannabis-based treatment in a practical sense and no access to herbal cannabis legally, an estimated 30,000 people in the UK find their own sources, with the concomitant risks of severe side-effects, greater potential harm, and no benefit because most street cannabis is skunk with a different make-up from Sativex and from the drug that is manufactured and exported from the Netherlands and elsewhere.
In the Netherlands there has been a genetic alteration to maximise the benign substance, CBD. There is no THC in the drug that is produced there. Professor Curran also reports on a “Stranglehold on research”, as she puts it, and that Schedule 2 status for cannabis and cannabis resin would “greatly facilitate research”. In her report, Professor Curran talks about the “costly obstacle course” and the delay taken by licence applications for use in research. She refers to practical problems such as the need to import cannabis, with import licences being granted for 12 weeks and expiring before all the arrangements for the import licence to be implemented can be made. She said at a meeting that I attended a couple of weeks ago that it is,
“a shame not to allow talent to fly”.
I could have suggested a more caveated amendment—for instance, starting with clinical trials—but I wanted at this stage to get to the heart of the matter. This is about facilitating and stimulating research in the UK into the drug and its constituents, above all by allowing the import of a drug that is widely used—and much less expensive—in the Netherlands, to enable patients to access it without breaking the law and without risking the harms of an unlawful drug without medical supervision or quality control. I beg to move.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to this amendment because the noble Baroness has said most of what I was going to say. The aim, of course, is to decriminalise the 30,000 patients in this country who currently take cannabis not because they want some sort of high—they do not—but because cannabis, they say, is the best drug for their particular pain, seizures or discomfort. It seems to me that that is important.
The types of illnesses that can be helped have already been stated: multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Crohn’s disease, epilepsy, chronic pain, glaucoma, and nausea and loss of appetite caused by chemotherapy. That is a lot of illnesses—disturbing and distressing illnesses—the symptoms of which can be alleviated by cannabis, so it does seem strange that there is such a resistance to reschedule cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2. Any substance from Schedule 1 has no recognised medicinal use. I just do not understand this, but maybe the Minister can comment on how any Government—it is not this Government; it is every Government—can continue to maintain that cannabis has no recognised medicinal use when Germany and Italy make sure that people with these illnesses can gain access to it. Germany and Italy and many countries across the world know that this is important for their populations. It would be really helpful if the Minister would consider that point.
I also want to draw the attention of the Minister and your Lordships to the extraordinary case of a little seven year-old boy called Jayden. Jayden suffers with Dravet syndrome—an extremely severe form of epilepsy—where he has at least 500 fits a day. He was on 22 pills a day including benzodiazepines. These medications plus the seizures resulting from the illness were giving him hallucinations and terrors. The poor child would scream for literally eight hours at a stretch until he was exhausted and presumably would fall asleep. His mother left home because she could not take it, so he was being looked after by his father.
When the child was four and a half, the father was told that he probably would not live another week. The father asked whether he should try medicinal cannabis. The doctor said that he should try anything, and so he did. The day after the child was given cannabis that the father had found in a chemist’s—this was in the United States; it could not happen here—the child suffered no fits, and then no fits on the following day. Since then he has had a small number, but nothing like before. He is now being painfully weaned off all the drugs that he had been taking, including the benzodiazepines. Anyone who knows anything about those drugs—I do not, actually—will say that it is excruciating to come off them. The poor boy has been put through all this, but he does now smile, walk and play in the water. But, of course, after all those seizures, I imagine that his brain is very damaged.
I have a five-minute clip, and I would ask the Minister to take five minutes of his precious time to look at it. I know that that is a lot of time in a Minister’s day, but even if one child is spared from going through the hell of that illness, I would suggest that that is well worth five minutes. This is a slightly cheeky request to make of a Minister, but it may be an important piece of work that the Minister could do.
Lord Ribeiro (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has demonstrated why anecdote is no substitute for good research. I heard that word used, so it is important to ensure that any use of cannabis for medicinal purposes, for which I have some sympathy, has to be on the basis of clinical research which has been properly carried out and peer reviewed. NICE is a good organisation and I am sure that it would be prepared to take that on board.
In response to a Question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, last Wednesday, I did make the point that there is evidence from America that troops coming back from Afghanistan suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting in terrible nightmares about their battle experiences have improved using cannabis. However, it is still something which needs to be subject to properly controlled clinical trials.
Something that is often done during a clinical trial is to put the drug out to people on a named-patient basis. Once the clinical trials have been done, one way to institute this is to put in place legislation whereby medication can be given on a named-patient basis. However, I cannot accept it as a blanket way of dealing with these problems.
Baroness Meacher
I should like to make one simple point, which is that I agree absolutely with the noble Lord that what we need are clinical trials on medicinal cannabis. The problem is that researchers do not want to go into this area because the substance is illegal. Getting cannabis in is a tremendous problem because it takes a long time to get the licences. I do not know, but there are problems which the noble Lord may know more about than I. However, if adults and children in particular who are in severe pain and distress could be prescribed medicinal cannabis on a named-patient basis, that would be a good option. But certainly we need to get on with a lot of work on clinical trials.
Lord Rea (Lab)
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Walton, who spoke last week during the supplementaries on the Question for Oral Answer tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on this topic, I served on the Select Committee which looked into the medicinal use of cannabis. One of the central recommendations was exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, has suggested. We need controlled trials. The noble Baroness has just backed up that suggestion as well. But it is very difficult to get these trials going. As she has said, because cannabis is an illegal substance, it is difficult to get people to agree to do the work. One or two trials have been carried out which resulted in the production of Sativex, but only one firm is producing it. As the noble Baroness said, it is terribly expensive and can be prescribed only on a named basis; it is very difficult for doctors to prescribe it to patients who have been shown to benefit from cannabis by getting it illegally.
One of the problems with getting cannabis illegally is that you do not know the ratio of the different cannabinoids in the illegal drug. It has been shown—this was told to us in our committee—that there is a huge range of effects from different cannabinoids. The one that gives the psychoactive effect, tetrahydrocannabinol— THC—is something that people who take cannabis for medicinal purposes do not like. But it is very difficult to find an illegal version of cannabis that contains a good ratio with more cannabidiol—CBD—which is the calming one that reduces spasms. Sometimes people have thought that it does not stimulate psychotic results but prevents them; it is an antipsychotic drug.
So there are real reasons why it should be made legal for researchers to concentrate on doing proper, controlled clinical trials to work out what cannabis can do, and what components or mixtures of cannabis components are most effective. This is crying out to be done, but as things are, it is very difficult to get scientists to agree to do it because of the illegality of the substance.
Lord Blencathra
My Lords, I have no idea whether cannabis is relevant and effective in dealing with nausea or spasms caused by motor neurone disease or other diseases, but I have a wee bit of experience of multiple sclerosis, and I say to the House that I do not want to be used as an excuse to legalise cannabis, because it is not necessary for treating the spasms that come from multiple sclerosis; there is already a fairly large range of drugs on the market that deal with that.
The spasms are difficult to describe and usually happen at night. The main muscles of the body—the torso, the legs and the chest—just spasm, and it is difficult to get a bit of sleep when that happens. In my case, when it started getting bad, my consultant said, “In that case, we must give you a drug that will deal with the spasms”. At the top of the list is baclofen, which is dirt cheap and highly effective. The maximum prescribed dose is 50 milligrams. I take 10 milligrams in the morning and 20 milligrams at night and have had no more body spasms because of it.
Okay, I cannot speak for all multiple sclerosis sufferers. When I was a constituency Member of Parliament, I had constituents come to me who said that they wanted cannabis legalised so that they could deal with their MS. I said that there were clinical trials under way that resulted in the drug Sativex, but they were not so keen to take a pill; they wanted to smoke a joint because it made them feel better in many other ways. Well, it could, but I do not want people who wish to smoke cannabis to get high to use the excuse that it is essential for multiple sclerosis sufferers in order to remove their pain and spasms.
If baclofen does not work—it seems to work for about 95% of people—doctors usually try tizanidine: I will give the Minister the spellings later. Following that, going down the list, is gabapentin. It is not usually prescribed because the other two drugs are usually much more effective. At the bottom of the list is Sativex, which is the cannabis derivative. The problem here, as has been stated already, is that NICE reviewed it and concluded that it was not cost effective. Unfortunately, that is absolutely right, because it costs 10 times as much as baclofen, which I have in my pocket at this precise moment.
I therefore think that the solution is: patients should be prescribed baclofen. If that does not work, they can go on to tizanidine, and if that does not work they can try the next legal drug, gabapentin. If those three do not work, then people can be prescribed Sativex. I suggest that my noble friend the Minister should say to the Department of Health and NICE that in those priority corridors it should be permissible to use it throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. Wales overruled NICE and has allowed Sativex to be prescribed. It is not prescribed, except by private prescription, in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I think that that is wrong. It should be allowed to be used by doctors but not as the first port of call.
There is merit in rejecting the amendment as far as multiple sclerosis is concerned. It may be beneficial for other illnesses when people suffer spasms but it is not necessary to deal with the problems that occur with multiple sclerosis. I wish to put my liberal credentials—or near liberal credentials—on the table. A part of me takes the view that if people want to smoke a cannabis joint and get high, okay, let them but do not expect the taxpayer to pick up the bill for the cancers and other illnesses they may get later. Similarly, a part of me thinks that if people want to eat themselves through gluttony into obesity and sit on their backsides, taking no exercise, let them, provided the NHS does not have to pay for that.
As the taxpayer has to pay for these things and for the dangers which smoking cannabis can cause, the taxpayer and the Government must be in a position to say, “No, I’m sorry. You’re not allowed to smoke that because there are alternatives that can deal with the alleged problem”.
Lord Howarth of Newport
May I say how welcome it is to see the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm of Owlpen, on the Front Bench alongside her colleague from the Home Office? I hope that she will report this debate to her colleagues in the Department of Health. It is excellent that the two departments are represented on the Front Bench for this important debate.
The noble Lords, Lord Rea and Lord Ribeiro, spoke with all the authority of their medical expertise, and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, spoke with the authority that comes from his own unfortunate experience. I follow the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Meacher, in commending to the Committee, and very much to the two departments represented on the Front Bench, the report just recently published under the auspices of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform by Professor Val Curran and Mr Frank Warburton, entitled Regulating Cannabis for Medical Use in the UK. Had they heard the presentation of this report by Professor Curran from University College London, they would have been persuaded that the arguments put forward are eminently reasonable.
She talked about the severe constraints applied to the progress of medical research by the Government of the United Kingdom’s persistence in listing cannabis in Schedule 1. She told us that it costs a minimum of some £5,000 to achieve the licence and to pay for the secure conditions to enable the pursuit of research into the medical properties and potential benefits of cannabis. That is a severe discouragement, particularly in the stringent climate of funding for academic research. She estimated that research on cannabis costs some 10 times as much as research on other drugs. It is a serious constraint, yet a significant body of evidence strongly suggests that cannabis-based medications can be beneficial for a whole series of conditions, many of which have been itemised by previous speakers.
The noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, drew attention to the tentative evidence that may be emerging of benefits in relation to post-traumatic stress disorder. That is certainly a pressing and important issue for us in this country, as well as in America. Professor Curran also told us that there are suggestions that cannabis could be beneficial in the treatment of schizophrenia. It would seem perverse in the extreme to continue to deny ourselves the opportunity effectively to pursue research on the medical benefits of cannabis when patients suffering from such a range of diseases could be assisted.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, as far as I am concerned, the issues that have been raised in this debate are certainly ones that Ministers in the two departments would be well advised to consider. However, I wonder about the procedure that is proposed here for carrying out this amendment.
Amendment 50 states:
“Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State shall make regulations to amend the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001”,
and so on. The procedure for that is already laid down. I doubt whether it is correct for another Act of Parliament, as it were, to overrule the arrangements made in relation to that. That is rather technical but it is perfectly reasonable that the matter should be looked at by the Ministers.
Lord Rosser
As has already been said, one assumes—though life is full of surprises—that the Government’s response will be in line with the Answer that was given in this Chamber on 17 June to an Oral Question from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher.
This Bill deals with a particular issue—psychoactive substances—on which there is surely a need for specific separate legislation. The amendment we are discussing appears to be a considerable extension of the Bill, and an extension of the prescription of cannabis, which can be very harmful. One would not have thought that one would want to go down that road without clinical evidence and trials indicating that it was the right road to take and, if so, in what circumstances, for what drugs, and based on whose advice. No doubt I will be corrected if I am wrong, but I understand that at present the approach suggested in the amendment does not, for example, have the support of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Nevertheless, I await the Government’s response with interest.
Lord Bates
My Lords, first, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for giving us the opportunity to have this debate. In some senses, it is a rehearsal of our discussion following the Oral Question she asked in your Lordships’ House last week.
The Government’s position is that we have no plans to reschedule cannabis. There is clear scientific evidence that cannabis is a harmful drug which can damage people’s mental and physical health, and which can have a pernicious effect on communities.
Let me deal with a couple of the points that were raised in the debate. In responding to these amendments, I remind the Committee that cannabis is a controlled drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, and listed in Schedule 1 to the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001. The 1971 Act will continue to regulate the availability of controlled drugs, and Schedule 1 to the Bill specifically excludes drugs controlled under the 1971 Act.
To move herbal cannabis and cannabis resin to Schedule 2 to the 2001 regulations, and thereby enable their prescribing, would amount to a circumvention of the established evidence-based regulatory process that successive Governments have had in place to ensure that products made available in the UK as medicines are as safe and effective as possible. My noble friend Lord Ribeiro made the point about the importance of rigorous clinical trials.
Lord Howarth of Newport
How, then, does the Minister explain that heroin, which is a far more dangerous drug, is in Schedule 2?
Lord Bates
I shall come to that a little further on. The point made by the noble Lord about diamorphine, which is prescribed in this country, is perfectly fair. Interestingly, in some other countries it is not prescribed. There will be a difference of view. That is one reason why, from a government and policy point of view, it is important that we have the best possible scientific advice and give due regard to it. The advisory council is specifically charged with that under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971; that categorisation is its view. Should there be derivatives—I shall answer my noble friend Lord Blencathra’s point on that in a minute—we have the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, which can offer some advice as well. Beyond that, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence can decide on the deployment.
That is not a case of policymakers passing the buck but of their basing policy on the evidence that comes before them. The Government’s position, based on the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, is that cannabis in its raw form is a harmful drug and its use should not be encouraged. The advisory council has reported that there is clear evidence that cannabis has a number of acute and chronic health effects, and that prolonged use can induce dependence. Even occasional use of the drug can pose significant dangers for people with mental health problems.
Baroness Meacher
The Minister refers to cannabis causing severe problems for people with mental health problems. I hope he agrees that Professor Curran is the top expert on cannabis in this country. She has done a lot of research on cannabis with a balance between CBD and THC, and on CBD with little or virtually no THC. She found that that form of cannabis is an anti-psychotic. She believes that it is likely to be able to be used as an alternative to some of the anti-psychotics currently used, which we know have really unpleasant side-effects. There is the prospect of an effective anti-psychotic based on the CBD element in cannabis, but we want that research to be encouraged, supporting the point that we need clinical trials. Professor Curran is very keen for this research to go ahead, particularly in the field of psychiatry. It is she who wants the rescheduling of cannabis from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 in order to facilitate the research. That is the issue we want to crack today if possible.
Lord Bates
The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience has not taken a position. As we found out last week, medical opinions, as with legal opinions, fly effortlessly across the Chamber.
I want to make sure for the record that I have got something absolutely correct, as it is an important issue. I spoke about diamorphine in response to an intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. Diamorphine heroin has internationally recognised medical uses in UN drug conventions and has UK marketing authority. I was therefore not too far off the mark in what I said, in the sense that it underscored the point that there is a process which we go through and there are conventions to help us.
Lord Bates
There was a video, which I would be keen to see. Perhaps the noble Baroness could send me the link or I will happily sit down and watch it with her. During the Bill’s passage, we have tried to have meetings with all interested Peers. We have a meeting on health and education on I think 7 July. Notices will be put out to all parties, but that would be a good opportunity for people to come forward. I am thinking particularly of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, who gave us his personal experience of living with multiple sclerosis and its effects. The point about the alternatives might usefully be made at that meeting if he can attend, as I hope he will. As I say, details will be on their way.
The advisory council has reported that there is clear evidence that cannabis has a number of acute and chronic health effects, which prolonged use can bring about. That is why the trials are important and why Sativex went through that process. The position is that it can be prescribed by a doctor, after the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency issued a marketing authorisation.
I do not know whether I have failed the test but the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, set a pretty low hurdle as to whether the Government’s position had changed since last Wednesday. Policy used to change pretty quickly under the previous coalition Government, but now it is a little more set out. Our position is our position but generally, as matter of policy, we have to remain alert and open to the medical evidence being brought forward. The correct channel for that is though the advisory council, which obviously draws on a broad body of research and evidence. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity to explore that issue again and, with that additional assurance of a meeting specifically on health matters to give Members of the House an opportunity to talk to those making the decisions, I ask her to consider withdrawing her amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I cannot be disappointed because my expectations were not high. The Minister has been very generous, particularly on the Modern Slavery Bill, in holding meetings that included people from outside the House. I wonder whether we could bring into that meeting some who can speak much more coherently on these issues than I can. I do not ask the Minister to commit himself to that now, but perhaps I could put it in his mind.
I am grateful for the support for the underlying issue from the noble and learned Lord. I have often been asked about the high points of my career in this House and I have said that perhaps the highest of them—this shows what a rotten politician I am—was when, on a Bill on family law reform, the noble and learned Lord said from the Dispatch Box of one of my amendments to his Bill, “The noble Baroness’s drafting is better than mine”. That really was the pinnacle of my achievements in your Lordships’ House.
I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has found a drug which suits him but, as I think he recognised, these are personal matters. I am quite puzzled as to the apparent differences between the physiologies of Britons—we are by no means a homogenous race—and those of people living in other parts of Europe. Clinical research is of course important and that is very much at the heart of this proposal, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said. I may have used this phrase already but Professor Curran said that research involving Schedule 1 drugs is “a massive uphill struggle”, for the reasons of time, cost and practicality mentioned in her report. Yes, Sativex is recognised but its expense, not its effectiveness, is the issue. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, mentioned Bediol, which I think is about 10% of the cost of Sativex. Perhaps this goes against my street credibility but it is important to say that I have in mind boring pills, not getting high from a joint. I want to make that quite clear.
The issue comes down to what is harmful. Skunk is harmful and I do not want to see people continuing to be driven to it, or having to find ways of getting the drug that helps them from outside this country. As I said, my expectations were not high but I am very grateful to noble Lords for contributing as usefully as they have, and at greater length than we did previously. I certainly look forward to discussing the matter with the Minister and his colleagues from the Department of Health pretty soon because whatever happens with an amendment to the Bill, the issue has to go forward. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Meacher
“Republic of Ireland: impact assessment
(1) The Secretary of State must conduct an impact assessment of the Republic of Ireland’s Criminal Justice (Psychoactive Substances) Act 2010.
(2) The Secretary of State must publish a report setting out whether or not the impact assessment under subsection (1) justifies the commencement of this Act in its current form.”
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 109 and 114, which propose that the Bill should be implemented only if an impact assessment of a very similar ban introduced into the Irish Republic in 2011 is undertaken, and a report is issued setting out whether the assessment justifies the commencement of this Bill. The objective against which the Irish Act should be assessed must surely be a reduction in the use of dangerous psychoactive substances and the harms caused by them to the Irish population. I am sure that the Government’s aims in introducing this Bill are along those lines, or something similar, but perhaps the Minister could confirm that point. I hope that will not be a problem.
I certainly believe that the Government’s motives in proposing the Bill are entirely honourable. I have no doubt about that. Ministers want to see a reduction in deaths and injuries to young people resulting from the use of psychoactive substances. I am absolutely on the Government’s side in terms of these aims. I would support the Bill wholeheartedly if the evidence showed that the ban would work as intended. I therefore hope that this proposed new clause will be regarded as entirely uncontroversial, and I propose it as a helpful contribution and not as some wrecking amendment. We are very fortunate to have what must be regarded as a pilot for the Bill right next door in Ireland, where an Act has been in place and operational for four years. They have had four years of experience since their Act became operational. I therefore propose this clause as a helpful contribution.
The BBC has produced firm evidence that the Irish ban is not working. The EMCDDA also has concerns about the situation in Ireland. It talks about the levels of use of legal highs among young people. The average across the EU for 15 to 24 year-olds increased from 5% to 8% from 2011 to 2014, but the figures for Ireland are 16% in 2011 and 22% in 2014—the highest rate in Europe, despite the blanket ban introduced in 2011. I understand that there is a degree of uncertainty about the precision of those figures, but it would be sensible to be absolutely clear what has happened to use of and damage from these psychoactive substances in Ireland before we move ahead.
The other point is what has happened to the levels or numbers of deaths and serious injuries in Ireland following the introduction of that Act. Whatever the figures, we need to take very seriously the comments of the deputy head of the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau in Ireland who, as I understand it, has said that the ban has failed and that they have not been able to operationalise it because of definitional problems. They have not got off the starting blocks, let alone explored whether the ban might work in other respects. As I mentioned at Second Reading, the experience in Poland of a blanket ban on psychoactive substances has coincided with an increase, rather than a decrease, in the harm to young people. A concern in Ireland, identified by the BBC, has been about whether they can determine if a particular substance is psychoactive or not. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned this earlier. As a result of that problem, it seems that Ireland is considering moving back to its Misuse of Drugs Act. I find that profoundly distressing because of my absolute lack of respect for our Misuse of Drugs Act, particularly in relation to consumption by children and young people and their criminalisation.
The Bill also seems to have definitional problems which could undermine it catastrophically. For example, Clause 2(1) defines a psychoactive substance as one that is “not an exempted substance”. For the latter, we turn to Clause 3 and Schedule 1. We see that alcohol, nicotine products and caffeine are exempted, but only if they do not contain a psychoactive substance. However, these are psychoactive substances; how can they not contain a psychoactive substance? Maybe the Bill intends to say that substances such as alcohol should not have any other psychoactive substance within them. If so, the Bill needs to make that clear. How on earth can we justify exempting a substance such as alcohol, which is profoundly psychoactive and dangerous, just because it might have some relatively marginal other psychoactive substance within it?
This confusion perhaps illustrates the utter nonsense—a word which I use very carefully, having thought about it for a long time first—which runs through our drug laws generally, of exempting dangerous psychoactive substances while banning much safer ones. Some noble Lords have referred to cannabis as a dangerous substance. I would completely agree that skunk, high THC cannabis, is dangerous but there are other forms which are absolutely not. Professor Curran is clear about that and certain forms of cannabis can, indeed, be good for you.
Another definitional problem relates to food. Apparently, a food is a substance which is, “ordinarily consumed as food” and would be exempt. However, what about a food containing a psychoactive substance which is only consumed by rich people or an ethnic minority and not ordinarily consumed as food? Rudi Fortson QC raised this and many other issues with me and questioned how a court could decide on whether a food was a food or not, depending on who ate it. There is a genuine problem there. From paragraph 10 of Schedule 1, it seems that a food is exempt if it contains a psychoactive substance which occurs naturally in the product and which is authorised by an EU instrument. Have the Government thought through all the foods in which a psychoactive substance—using the Government’s sweeping definition—naturally subsists but which might not be covered by an EU instrument? There may well be eastern, or other different, foods which would not be covered. For example, do flavourings and spices, which are obtained by a process of extraction and widely used in food, satisfy the expression “naturally occurring” in the substance?
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I find it baffling that the Government, presented with the evidence from the two laboratory experiments that have taken place in recent years, in Ireland and in Poland, have none the less persisted in their approach of introducing a blanket ban on the supply of new psychoactive substances. As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has just told the Committee, in the four years since the ban was introduced in Ireland, following an initial dip in the use of psychoactive substances and a rapid disappearance of head shops, consumption of new psychoactive substances actually rose to higher levels than before. The Irish, it is reported, are the largest consumers of new psychoactive substances in Europe. That has followed the implementation of a ban essentially the same as the Government are now proposing to introduce in this country.
Similarly in Poland, three years after the ban was introduced, the number of what the Poles call “poisonings” has risen to above the level before the ban. The evidence is that, in the face of a ban and of the closing down of the sources of supply that users were previously availing themselves of, users have resorted to more obscure and more dangerous suppliers online. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction has confirmed that. It also seems highly likely that, with the greater difficulty of obtaining new psychoactive substances, more people taking drugs will have resorted to taking controlled substances and, indeed, may have become poly-drug users.
There seems to be some very significant evidence available from the experiences of bans in these two countries to indicate that the Government’s approach is fundamentally misconceived. The Minister has insisted that the approach of the Home Office is always to base its policy on good science, good evidence and expert advice. How come then that, in the face of this evidence, it is persisting with the policy that it is presenting to the House in this Bill?
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I very much support what has been said on this amendment and, indeed, the amendment itself, in particular because we want to avoid driving those human beings who will go on using drugs underground. One small point I want to mention, before I forget about it, is that the impact in Northern Ireland should be looked at, because I wonder what has been happening across the border. The report by Mark Easton yesterday, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, referred, revealed the difficulty that the police have in proving that a substance has a psychoactive effect. That seems to me to be very much at the heart of this, with only four successful prosecutions in five years.
The expert panel talked about “robust” definitions and the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House reported, I think yesterday, on the need for certainty. The Joint Committee on Human Rights probably does not have its full membership yet, but no doubt it would have taken points on the importance of certainty in legislation—it did so for other legislation, particularly the recent anti-social behaviour Bill. The Constitution Committee said:
“The Bill inevitably exists in tension (at least to some extent) with the principle of legal certainty since its raison d’être is the regulation of activities in respect of substances that may not currently exist and whose nature and composition cannot readily be prescribed in advance with any accuracy”.
I thought that was very honest of it. However, it then went on to comment about not making,
“unacceptably broad inroads into the principle of legal certainty”.
We may come on to some of the detail of that on later amendments, but it seems to me to be very relevant to the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has made with this amendment.
A proper, independent assessment would mean that we had advice that was not from those defending their own scheme, which can sometimes happen. I hope that we can hear sympathetically from the Minister on this, because I have absolutely no doubt that the noble Baroness will pursue this matter throughout the passage of the Bill and she will certainly have support from these Benches when—not if—she does that.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, somebody has to give the Government some support on this. Amendment 3 talks in the first proposed subsection about an impact assessment and it being used to justify the commencement of the Act. I do not understand Amendment 109, but Amendment 114 is clearly about delaying the commencement of some provisions of the Act until the report of that assessment has been considered. Amendments 3 and 114 between them would delay the commencement of the Act.
Although the balance was a little uncomfortable, we had a very good Second Reading, in which it was clear that the central debate was about whether you believed banning produces a benign effect or not. That was the essence of the debate, as it has been of the debates we have had today. The position of the Government is that effective bans are benign in their effect; the position of Her Majesty’s Opposition is that effective bans will have a benign effect; and the position of the Liberal Democrats was—at least until the election, we thought—that effective bans had a benign effect.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I wonder whether I can quickly try to squash this. A clamp-down on new psychoactive substances, which was in our manifesto, is not the same as a complete ban.
Lord Tunnicliffe
I thank the noble Baroness for that clarification. As I say, we are divided between those who believe that banning has a benign effect and those who do not.
This is a simple, fairly narrow Bill to close a loophole in the 1971 Act which is growing exponentially. We believe that it is appropriate that this loophole should be closed urgently and that there is sufficient evidence to proceed to close it with this Bill, which we believe should be introduced as soon as reasonably possible. We believe new psychoactive substances are not safe and we want them to be illegal as soon as reasonably possible.
Lord Bates
I thank the noble Baroness for introducing this amendment. I am conscious that if I had had the opportunity it would have been impolite to have sought the advice of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay on the amendment because, of course, it has the heading “Republic of Ireland: impact assessment”, and goes on to tie us to a piece of legislation. The problem with that is thinking back through the history lessons and what the Anglo-Irish treaty and the creation of the Irish Free State in 1921 might have made of that strong connection. It is probably more uncomfortable for the Irish than for us, but it is an interesting tool to link their legislation with ours because we are two sovereign countries and two different systems. We approach a common problem but understandably, as we do on many different things, may choose to do so in different ways—not so, of course, when it came to this piece of legislation.
I will set out the legislation in the Republic of Ireland a little because in the headline of this debate we are invited to say what assessment Her Majesty’s Government have made of the effect of introducing a ban in the Republic of Ireland. That assessment was set out in the expert panel’s review last year since the ban in Ireland came into force in 2011 following the 2010 Act. The expert panel went away and evaluated that. I have a long section in my speaking notes which I will try to avoid reading out and I will just cite it. Page 38 of the expert panel’s report sets out the basis by which it concluded that there was evidence that this was the model which should be followed. In addition to that on page 38 there was also the Scottish Government’s—
Baroness Meacher
It may be relevant to note on the record that when the BBC journalist began interviewing a very senior official, that official said, “Oh yes, the ban has been going well”, and it was only through rather expert probing by the BBC journalist that gradually the truth came out that the ban was not working at all as anticipated. So in terms of an expert panel from Britain going over, I think we need to be aware that the Government need to do more work on Ireland.
Lord Bates
I will come to that in just a minute because it is a specific point which the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, raised in the earlier debate on the issue of the “Newsnight” report, of which I have read a transcript although I did not actually catch it last night. I want to address some of the points in there. What I am going through is the methodology by which we arrived where we were. Taking the amendment at its word, we are effectively deciding whether we should delay the progress of the UK introducing the new psychoactive substances legislation and the blanket ban in order to undertake an assessment of how effective the 2010 Act has been in the Republic of Ireland. Our view on that is no, because that assessment has already taken place in the expert panel review and—
Lord Howarth of Newport
The Minister invited us to look at page 38 of the expert panel’s report, where it recognised that there were some risks. It said that:
“A precautionary principle would now be used rather than one of acting proportionately in response to evidence of harm”,
and went on to suggest that very significant difficulties would attach to this approach. It was by no means unambiguous in its recommendation of the blanket ban.
Lord Bates
Let me try to avoid the ambiguity in it. The expert panel recommended that there should be a blanket ban. A blanket ban in the Republic of Ireland had been operating for three years, so it had had an opportunity to look at that. It looked at New Zealand and what had been happening there as another example. I can also point to the report in March from the Health and Social Care Committee of the National Assembly for Wales, in which recommendation 13 of its inquiry said:
“The Committee welcomes the Home Office’s expert panel’s recommendation of a ban on the supply of NPS in the UK, similar to the approach introduced in Ireland”.
I also have a quote from paragraph 4.23 of the report from the similar expert group set up by the Scottish Government:
“The Group agreed that there are a number of benefits to the Irish model, which could strengthen the tools that are currently available and being used by agencies to tackle NPS supply in Scotland”.
What I am doing here is piecing together the information to show that we did not whistle this out of thin air. Some serious people—whether you agree or disagree with them—looked at what was happening in Ireland, and this was their conclusion on which they based their recommendation.
To the next point, I am very much with the noble Baroness. I happen to think that one of the things with which we got close to this, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was the Modern Slavery Act. It is without doubt the piece of legislation in either place with which I am most proud to be associated. One reason why was because of the process in which it actually engaged. It listened to the people who were on the ground, it talked to people, it talked to the experts, it framed legislation, it had pre-legislative scrutiny and there was an ongoing system of monitoring. Also, the Government committed themselves to proper post-legislative scrutiny; we will need to look at that. Should your Lordships and Parliament determine that the Bill gets on to the statute book, in our plans, although there is no set time for it, in a period of three to five years and certainly within the lifetime of this Parliament there will be some post-legislative scrutiny.
The other point which I make in passing here is that, if our friends in the Republic of Ireland were to undertake an impact assessment of our politicking to tackle this, it might not look so sharp. They would say, “Well, what has the UK been doing popping around with temporary banning orders, and every time they tweak one molecule the perpetrators and the traffickers simply change the packaging and change the molecule? What a ridiculous system that is”. In a sense it can go both ways and we must be conscious of that critique of us.
Lord Tunnicliffe
Can the Minister go back to his point on post-legislative scrutiny? I think the House at a subsequent stage may feel much more comfortable with this Bill if he were able to make some time commitment about when that would take place. Clearly he cannot now but I would be grateful if he would consult colleagues and see if he can be a little more specific at a future stage.
Lord Bates
I am very happy to do that. We are in Committee and this is where the Government listen to the arguments—
Lord Howarth of Newport
Should the Irish Government take post-legislative scrutiny of their legislation, will the Minister take that into account?
Lord Bates
Of course we will take it into account, but should we necessarily stop taking our own advice and implement what has been recommended to us until that time happens? Of course this is a fast-moving world in which there are very devious forces—“ingenious forces” is the correct term—using their dark methods to perpetrate these drugs, which are blighting the lives of communities. That was a key message that came out of the “Newsnight” documentary. Here was a community that was absolutely blighted. Unless I actually misread the transcript that I saw, the people there certainly were not saying, “Hey, listen, let us just have a free-for-all”. They were saying, “Where are the Gardai? Where are the police? We want them to come down, because these drugs are running rife in our community”.
Of course, there will always be chancers—we will come up with one answer to this, then people will come up with something in response, whether it is on the dark web or elsewhere. One of the wonderful things about this House is that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who is an acknowledged expert in drug policy, mentioned the dark web, while behind her sits the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, who can offer her a tutorial on the dark web if required. The point is that we are all moving in the same direction.
I am conscious of the figures that have been put out in the Eurobarometer poll, which talked about the level of usage. This figure should be viewed with caution, because: the sample for each member state is relatively low, at 500 respondents; the questions used have changed over the years, making comparisons over time less reliable; and the Eurobarometer survey tends to overestimate usage when compared to more robust surveys.
As I touched upon earlier, we can say categorically that prior to the introduction of the Irish legislation in 2010, 102 head shops were operating in Ireland. After the legislation came into force, the trade virtually disappeared, and the Garda drugs unit told the BBC just last week that the head-shop trade has gone. Furthermore, no Irish-domain web pages selling NPS are still in operation. Those are examples of concrete progress. They may not address all the points, but I hope that they might demonstrate to the noble Baroness that the Government have considered this.
Baroness Meacher
One has to think about whether the demolition of the head shops is a positive or a negative when you consider that the young people will have moved from the head shops, which do not sell very dangerous substances, into the dark web and the back streets, where they will buy very dangerous substances that are completely unknown to them, which probably do not have any kind of labelling at all.
Lord Bates
We can debate what benefit labelling that says “Plant food” or “Not for human consumption” is. The fact is that the head shops are absolutely at the heart of this problem. I, for one, will be very happy if they are removed from our high streets, as will the Local Government Association and countless parents who are worried about the availability of drugs—earlier I gave an example from Canterbury. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will consider withdrawing her amendment.
Baroness Meacher
I thank the Minister for his reply. Obviously, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, my expectations are not massively high at this stage of proceedings, but I look forward to discussions with the Minister between now and Report on some of these issues. I have a great regard for the Minister with regard to his willingness to listen and certainly to learn from professionals who, with any luck, will be able to come to a meeting with us. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Meacher
“Monitoring
Following the commencement of this Act, the Secretary of State must publish a report annually setting out the impact of this Act, including on deaths and other harms caused by all controlled and banned substances.”
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, Amendments 4 and 6 seek to ensure that following commencement of the Act, the Government will undertake an annual impact assessment of the Act—as the Minister has indicated he might be willing to do anyway—including an assessment of,
“deaths and other harms caused by all controlled or banned substances”.
The important points in that sentence are “all controlled”, under the Misuse of Drugs Act, and “banned substances” under the Bill. Of course there is always an interrelationship between those two groups of substances, as I mentioned in an earlier debate. In addition, the Government would have to,
“publish a report annually setting out the impact of this Act”—
again, including information about the impact on the number of deaths and other harms caused by all these controlled and banned substances.
The point behind these amendments is that, as I mentioned earlier, we do not have two separate markets: one for substances controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and another quite separate one for psychoactive substances that will be controlled under this legislation. The reality is that once substances are illegal, they join a single market and are purchased from the same illegal drug barons or from the web. This is an absolutely crucial point, which runs through a number of these amendments. Social media are also absolutely vital in this. It is through social media that young people immediately communicate about a banned psychoactive substance or something new arriving from somewhere, or that a traditional drug such as ecstasy has suddenly become more pure, and the young people will all rush into that area of the market rather than moving from one market to another.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, I just wonder whether it would be for the Secretary of State to monitor this. I would have thought that the importance of this topic, particularly in the light of the concerns that the noble Baroness has expressed, would merit post-legislative scrutiny by a committee—usually a Joint Committee of both Houses—rather than by the Secretary of State. There is room for that sort of consideration to be kept in mind. I think that the Minister has given at least some encouragement to that and I certainly think that that would be a good thing to do, rather than have the Secretary of State in a sense being his own monitor in this area. It is better that it should be independent, in the sense of being done by Parliament.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I suggest that post-legislative scrutiny would be assisted if the Home Secretary, on behalf of the Government as a whole, were to make an annual report to Parliament along the lines that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has suggested. I propose that an annual report from the Government as a whole should cover the three principal strands in the drug strategy introduced by the coalition Government in 2010: reducing demand, restricting supply and building recovery.
I hope that the annual report would begin with a presentation of the facts, in so far as they had been ascertained by the Government, and that it would cover developments in the usage of drugs of all sorts: controlled drugs, psychoactive substances under the terms of the Bill, exempted substances under the terms of the Bill, and prescription drugs of which there is abuse. I would also want to see a breakdown by age groups and by regions. We need to know about consumption patterns—whether the consumption of one drug is being displaced by consumption of another; what new drugs are available to consumers in this country; what the most popular ones are, and the ones about which there is the greatest cause for anxiety. We need to know about developments in purity, potency and toxicity.
I hope that the Government would advise Parliament on the development of markets in drugs and tell us what us has happened to the head shops, year by year. Maybe they will all close down quickly, as in Ireland. If so, I hope that the Government would then tell us where people are finding their drugs—perhaps from online sources such as the surface web, but perhaps from the grey net or the dark net. All this is usefully discussed in a preliminary way in the latest annual report from the European monitoring centre. But 18 months ago, the European monitoring centre reported that there were 651 websites selling drugs to Europeans. We need to know what the evolution of this online market is and about the shifting locations. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, told us just now that, following the legislation in Ireland, Irish web-based domains were closed down. But we know that at the same time the consumption of new psychoactive substances has risen in Ireland. Where, then, are Irish consumers obtaining their drugs? We would need to have that equivalent information here. We need to know about patterns of social media use relevant to the drugs trade and what is happening in terms of street markets and gangs.
I hope also that the Home Office would report to Parliament on the drugs situation in prisons, which is an extremely disturbing situation, one understands. Which drugs are most in use in prisons? How have they been obtained? The Home Office should report on any issues there may be about corruption in the National Offender Management Service; on the effectiveness, as it believes it to be, of the means it is using to try to reduce drug consumption in prisons; and on the effectiveness of rehabilitation. Very importantly, the Home Office needs to report on the question of continuity. What happens to prisoners when they leave prison? Do they continue to have the benefit of rehabilitation services? What is the relapse rate? The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, told this House, perhaps a couple of years ago, that the Chief Inspector of Prisons had reported that in Her Majesty’s Prison Oakwood it was easier to obtain drugs than soap. We need to know what progress the Home Office and the Government as a whole are making with regard to prisons.
We should be advised on the Government’s dealings with the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs—what advice they have sought from the council, what advice they have received from the council, what advice they have accepted from the council and what advice they have rejected from the council. In the case of rejection of the council’s advice, I hope that the Government would offer a reasoned explanation as to why they have declined to accept the advice that the ACMD has given—as has occurred on a number of occasions in recent years.
We should be told what drugs have been newly controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act regime and about how, in practice, the relationship between the various relevant regimes—the MDA regime and the regime created under this legislation in respect of psychoactive substances and exempted substances—relate to each other, and whether it is effective co-ordination or the Government see problems in having at least three different systems of regulation operating concurrently. I hope that we would hear about the dealings of the Government with other consultees and partners: people with academic expertise, the voluntary sector, non-governmental organisations and other expert organisations.
We should be provided with information about the state of forensic services, about which the Home Secretary has recently expressed her own personal anxiety. We will come a little later in our proceedings to talk about the possibility of a network of testing centres. Do the Government think that that is desirable? If so, what progress is there in making testing facilities widely available around the country? We will need a report on progress in education and training, but, again, we will have an opportunity to discuss those issues more extensively a little later.
I hope that we would hear about the impact of drug usage of all kinds—controlled drugs, psychoactive substances and the exempted substances—on health, society and the economy. The European monitoring centre has particularly asked the Government to monitor acute drug-related harms. Again, I would expect to see their response to the EMC reflected in the report. Of course we would want to know about the progress of treatment and engagement strategies with different groups of consumers or people at risk.
We should hear a report on enforcement and the strategies of the NCA, the police and Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. If the online trade is thriving, and if that is becoming the principal source of supply, we should be advised what percentage of postal packages, for example, the system is able to check for drugs. We should also know what percentage of shipping containers the Government are able to inspect.
Surveillance will be another important component of the report. What powers are the Government using to ascertain what is going on in the drugs trade, particularly the online trade? We need to know the statistics on the usage of data-search powers and have an assessment of their effectiveness. Perhaps a little later, the Minister will give us some preliminary thoughts on how the enforcement regime that the Government are proposing to create through this legislation will relate to the new surveillance regime, which we understand the Home Office will introduce later in the year. Undoubtedly, these things will need to be understood in conjunction.
The Bill creates powers of prohibition notices and prohibition orders, and we would want to hear about the incidence and effectiveness of the use of those powers. We would want to know the number of seizures and successes, but also about the challenges that the Government identify. The new stop-and-search powers created in the Bill are another appropriate subject for report and we will debate those towards the end of Committee.
We would need to hear about the Government’s progress in dealing with the problems of money laundering and the extent to which the proceeds of the drugs trade are thought to be funding terrorism. We will need to know about the costs of enforcing this regime—not just to the NCA, the police and HMRC but to the Financial Conduct Authority, which I think has lead responsibility for dealing with money laundering; the criminal justice system, which, for example, will incur costs in hearings in the attempt to establish definitions of psychoactive substances; and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. At Second Reading, the Minister was kind enough to say that he would follow up the point I made previously, that when mephedrone was banned, the Government did seek to come to an understanding with the Chinese authorities so that they would facilitate the effective interdiction of supply. However, it appears that that did not work very well because production shifted to India. We will want to know what part the Foreign Office is playing in assisting the Home Office to make a success of its strategy.
The local government dimension is hugely important. The Minister has explained that the Government are acting in response to pleas from the Local Government Association, and we all understand how very unpleasant and difficult it is for people if they have head shops in their neighbourhoods and the anti-social behaviour that may be associated with that. But there will be costs for local government in training and maintaining in the field the numbers of trading standards officers that are going to be needed and, I dare say, in prevention, more youth workers. Again, it would be useful to know what is going on there. The Department of Health will have a whole complex story to tell.
I think that the Government would owe it to Parliament to provide in the annual report a cost-benefit analysis of the overall strategy: have they found, with experience, that the policy is working as they hoped? How does it need modification? What do they see as the way forward?
I acknowledge that all this may make for quite a long report, but I think that it would be very interesting and worthwhile and a very useful form of accountability of government to Parliament.
Lord Blencathra
My Lords, I am sympathetic to the noble Baroness’s amendment. Of course, we need some monitoring information and we need information around effectiveness, but I am just not sure that the Home Office or a government department is the right body to produce such independent information. It may be, but I have my doubts.
My main concern about the noble Baroness’s amendment is the timescale. Having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, I am now very concerned about the timescale if the Government, or anyone else, attempted to report on the wide range of things he has suggested. I am not being facetious, but it struck me that compiling a report of the length that the noble Lord wants would probably end up taking longer than the new sexual abuse review by the distinguished New Zealand judge. I do not mean that as a facetious comment or to diminish the work she is doing.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and many others in this Chamber have some experience in government. I think we know that if a government department were to produce a report within 12 months, it would have to be approved by the Cabinet at month 11. This is a territorial Bill and would need to go round all the territorial Governments in months 9 to 11 to be checked by them. It would need to go round the UK government departments in Whitehall, probably in month 8 or 9, to be amended by them, which means that the Minister in the Home Office, or wherever, would need the first draft in about month 6, which would mean that civil servants would start writing it in month 3.
I say to the Minister: if the Government have to produce a report, preparing one within 12 months of the Act would not be sensible. It would be impossible—no, it would not be impossible, but it would include only a fraction of the information that one would want. There may be merit in the Government producing a report, but not of the length that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has suggested and certainly not within the 12-month timescale.
Lord Rosser
We have an amendment in this group and it is not about post-legislative scrutiny. It calls for the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on new psychoactive substances and sets out some of the information that must be included in the report.
There is currently a real lack of data collected and published on new psychoactive substances and their impact. For example, the first indication of a new drug tends to come from a hospital admission. If this happens in the United Kingdom, the National Poisons Information Service is informed and it then advises the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drugs Addiction. The EMCDDA tells the National Poisons Information Service of drugs detected elsewhere in Europe. However, the Home Office keeps its own lists, the main one being the forensic early warning system, and, to date, successive Ministers have been unable to explain the relationship between the EMCDDA list and the Home Office list, which suggests that data are not being collected and published in a consistent or helpful way. Similar problems arise with monitoring drug-related deaths and overdoses. No proper data are collected on drug deaths as the data we have rely on examining countless records, which is why they are often incomplete and take years to publish.
There is a significant problem, too, with hospital admissions. The National Poisons Information Service collects new drugs but does not collect data on all drug- related overdoes. We do not know how many hospital admissions result from taking these new substances. Nor do we know in how many cases new psychoactive substances were a factor for those needing to access mental health services. Anecdotal evidence suggests that legal highs are a major factor, especially for adolescent mental health services.
In their response to the expert panel, the Government accepted the importance of information on new psychoactive substances and that it should be shared systematically at both a local and national level in a timely manner. However, the Government did not appear to accept the current inadequacies in the information, including those to which I have referred.
The expert panel said that, with the rise in the availability of NPSs, coupled with possibilities for NPS market development via the internet, the UK drug scene had become increasingly complex and fractured, and that a number of information issues arose from this. These included,
“the difficulty for any one agency to keep to keep abreast of all the new developments … the acknowledgement that the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 needs to be supplemented by other legislation has meant that more professional networks require information including trading standards … the current time lags involved between data collection and publication of data obtained by current networks mean these systems cannot be employed in the service of providing more timely early-warning-type information; and … the need to collect, analyse and distribute information in a more systematic and timely fashion to help inform policy and practice at both a national and local level”.
Frankly, the Government’s response did not address all these issues since there seems to be a view that the forensic early warning system’s annual report can fit the bill. In its recommendations, the expert panel says:
“There is a need to establish prevalence, evidence and harms associated with NPS”.
It suggests that we should:
“Develop detection and data collection tools across criminal justice and health services, and other relevant settings, for example, schools and universities”.
A recommendation refers to developing,
“internet tools to monitor internet activity around NPS”,
and to the need to:
“Record health and social harms related to NPS by utilising professional networks and other early warning systems … understand local markets, including through headshops, retail outlets, prisons and local police assessment”.
On enhancing the share of information on NPSs, the panel said:
“Sharing information at both local and national levels is essential in helping to achieve a reduction in the demand and supply of drugs and in promoting comprehensive and effective interventions”.
It is fairly clear from the report of the expert panel that it does not think enough is currently being done in the area of the provision of information. The purpose of this amendment, as I said at the beginning, is to provide for the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on new psychoactive substances. The amendment sets out, in not quite so extensive a list as that of my noble friend Lord Howarth of Newport, some of the information that should be included in that report.
I hope the Minister will reflect further on this issue—the importance of information on NPSs—and the adequacy of the current information and the systems and methods by which it is provided. Our amendment gives the Minister the opportunity to do just that and I hope it is an opportunity she will take.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I waited until this moment to speak because it seemed unfair to comment on the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, without his having spoken to it first. I have some sympathy with what the Labour Party is proposing, but I prefer Amendments 4 and 6 proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for the very reason that she articulated. The market for new psychoactive substances and that for other substances covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act cannot be treated as separate. The whole reason for the existence of new psychoactive substances is the controlling of other drugs. There would be no need for people to develop so-called legal highs if they could get the high legally from controlled drugs. It is essential that the annual report includes exactly what the noble Baroness proposes: an assessment of the impact on health and the social harms brought about by the Misuse of Drugs Act and this Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, gave a long list of things that could be included in the report. If everything he suggested was included, it might not only put the Government off producing the report but put me off reading it or trying to wade through it. I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, that post-legislative scrutiny of a Bill such as this by a Joint Committee of both Houses would be appropriate, but it should not mean that there should not also be an annual report, because things are changing so quickly. We have heard from other noble Lords about how different drugs come into mode and out again. We therefore need an annual assessment of whether the legislation is still fit for purpose.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Howarth, for setting out the case for their respective new clauses. In one way or another, these all require an annual report on the impact of the Bill, and we have covered a huge amount of ground. Let me say at the outset that good lawmaking absolutely dictates that all new legislation should be reviewed post implementation to consider its effectiveness, and this is no exception. We are committed to post-legislative review of all new primary legislation. I can therefore assure the noble Lords and the noble Baroness that the Government fully intend to carry out a review or reviews of this legislation, once implemented.
Of course, data are hugely important, and it is important that we take in all aspects of the Act. It is right that the evidence required to produce an adequate review of the Act is fully and carefully considered. However, it is really important to remember that, given the time lag of some of the key data sources, it is unlikely that any useful data will be available within the first year of the implementation of the Act. Such a review normally takes place three to five years after Royal Assent to allow for a rich source of data to be collected, particularly if we are going to collect the amount of data that I feel is important, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, suggested. Indeed, as my noble friend Lord Blencathra said, it takes time to collect the data. It is important for the departments to conduct a particular review to make sure that they have everything in place. Certainly, in this case, we would not want to wait three years to review this legislation.
Understanding the evidence for and against the different legislative options to tackle the growth of psychoactive substances was central to the terms of reference of the Home Office’s New Psychoactive Substances Review Expert Panel, set up by the Liberal Democrat Minister Norman Baker. Alongside the expert panel’s report, the Home Office also published an evidence review last autumn. This set out the available evidence at the time on psychoactive substances. The review examined the identification of new psychoactive substances, along with the characteristics of users and their motivations for using these substances. It also examined the market and the evidence of harms. The evidence review provides us with a good basis for understanding the extent of the market, the uses and the problems associated with new psychoactive substances, and for measuring any changes over time.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, also mentioned that it was necessary for a wide range of data to be collected on the prevalence of traditional illicit drug use and its related harms. While the evidence on psychoactive substances is less established, there are data on a number of previously unseen substances identified in the UK, as well as on the prevalence of the use of some types of psychoactive substances, related deaths and treatment demand. Of course, the monitoring of data, along with the way they are collected so that they can be strengthened to provide a more complete picture of the use and harms of psychoactive substances, will continue over the period until a full review is done.
Lord Rosser
Before the noble Baroness tells us what she wishes to do with her amendment, I want to say that I do not think that the issues raised in Amendment 105 will need three years. They are about the collection of basic data, where we appear to have a distinct weakness, which was identified by the expert panel and was the subject of recommendations by that panel. Why do we need to wait so long to address an issue of concern to the expert panel; that is, the lack of data?
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
The noble Lord is right: I was rather remiss in not saying that I was sympathetic to his views on this issue, and I apologise. We will certainly consider it between now and Report.
Baroness Meacher
I just want to explore the point in Amendments 4 and 6 that, because there is only a single market that incorporates all the controlled drugs under the 1971 Act and psychoactive substances, post-legislative scrutiny will not make any sense unless it looks at the overall impact of this Bill. For example, what we can expect to happen is that if you ban synthetic cannabis, people will move straight over to the cannabis controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act. If you ban a substitute for cocaine, people will move straight back to the natural cocaine, if you like, that is controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act. In order to assess the impact of the Bill, it will be essential to look at the overall consumption of illegal, banned drugs and the deaths from those drugs. The deaths may move across from one type of drug to another, as would the harms and so forth. It is essential that the Government begin to look at this as a single, illicit market for banned substances. Does the noble Baroness agree that, therefore, post-legislative scrutiny has to look right across the piece?
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
I thank the noble Baroness for her points, and I agree with her. However, it is important that we do not tie the hands of the committee. It is up to it to review, going forward, and we have to let it decide what it feels is right.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I am not sure whether it is fair to ask the Minister this, but perhaps her noble friend sitting beside her will find an opportunity to comment. While I readily accept that it is unrealistic to expect the Home Office within 12 months to produce a report remotely of the range that I suggested, none the less over time the compass of the report should grow so that it does address itself on behalf of the Government as a whole to that range of issues and concerns.
I wonder whether some of the difficulty that the Government may find in producing an annual report on their policies in relation to drugs and how they are proceeding may be because there have been such extensive reductions in staffing in Whitehall that it is very difficult for departments to get this work done. It would be helpful to have some comment on that and on the structure within government whereby the Home Office works in co-ordination with other government departments in the broader strategy to deal with the problem of drugs, to which I understand that Government are committed.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
I thank the noble Lord. I have a lot of sympathy for what he said, and I think that it is right for us to go away and reflect on this and come back at Report. Of course, the Home Office has every intention of reviewing the Bill once it is implemented. We just do not feel we should put such a commitment in primary legislation. It is in our interests to consider the impact of this Bill and how the psychoactive substance market is changing to ensure that both our legislative and non-legislative responses are as effective as possible. Having said that, of course we will go away and think further on this.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who contributed to this debate, particularly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, for his helpful proposal that there should be post-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee. I hope that that can come about. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that that sort of scrutiny does not detract from the need for the Government’s post-legislative scrutiny, so I think that we are all going in roughly the same direction.
I was very pleased with the noble Baroness’s response about the recognition of the single market for these illegal drugs, because it would be an enormous step forward if we stop seeing these things as separate and start examining what is going on across the piece. That has all been extremely helpful. The timeframe is an issue: three to five years seems an awfully long time particularly as some of us do not really expect this legislation to work, especially bearing in mind the Irish experience. It is a great pity—Ireland is now four years on and still wondering what to do.
Given all of that, this is Committee and we have had a useful debate on this issue. I look forward to meeting Ministers between now and Report. On that basis, I am more than happy to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Meacher
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, in moving this amendment, I will also speak to Amendment 8. I apologise that these have all come one after another and I was not anticipating that, but I will speak extremely briefly, noble Lords will be pleased to hear.
These amendments seek to limit the scope of the Bill to those substances that are synthetic—produced by chemical synthesis rather than grown naturally. The Government’s manifesto commitment, if I understand it, was to ban new psychoactive substances. All such substances identified by the EMCDDA have been of a synthetic nature. To broaden the scope of the ban beyond the limits of substances that are synthetic will create far more unintended consequences than I believe the Government really had in mind.
The point behind this amendment is that the Bill as it stands is disproportionate and will engender an intolerable degree of legal uncertainty for an awful lot of people—researchers, medical people or whoever—who have no interest in consuming these substances but may be involved in handling them. Actually, one should extend that to people who are in the commercial sector trading, producing and so forth who may need to use these substances and really do not want to be questioned by the police.
It would be helpful to know why the Government have extended the scope of the Bill to include natural psychoactive substances. Are the Government aware that there are many natural substances, included in perfumes and other products, for example, which could be caught unintentionally by the Bill as it stands? We had a debate earlier about the whole business of definition and in a sense that comes up here again. Things might be a bit simpler if the Bill were limited to synthetic substances. Will the Minister explain to the House what investigations have taken place to establish the unintended consequences of the extension of this definition to include natural substances? I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, my noble friend and I have Amendments 9 and 10 in this group. Amendment 9 presents me with a dilemma, given the comments that we have been making about what has been happening in Ireland. Amendment 9 would import into the Bill the Irish definition in terms. Given where we are and given that the definition in the Government’s Bill is more telegraphic than the Irish one, I would nevertheless like to hear what the Government have to say about the differences.
I and other members of the Committee will have received from the Minister a response to points made at Second Reading, for which I am grateful. In response to one point that I made, the Minister wrote that,
“we have retained core elements of the Irish definition but sought to refine it so as to make it more concise”—
given the length of most of our legislation, that is not the most persuasive argument that I have heard—
“by removing reference to different substances and behaviour changes, and remove the element of subjectivity inherent in … the word ‘significant’”.
I understand that the Government do not want this to be read subjectively, but can I add a thought? Different people react differently and they react differently to different drugs. We have heard that. There is something in the connection between that and subjectivity and maybe neither of us is quite right, but there is an issue there. The Minister talked about removing reference to behaviour changes. The point about the Irish definition is the impact on behaviour changes.
The second limb of Amendment 9, which is not an addition to the first because it does not qualify the first, refers to the substance having the capacity, as in the Irish definition, to,
“cause a state of dependence, including physical or psychological addiction”.
We are told that that has been removed because the Government have,
“concluded that this was captured as part of affecting a person’s mental functioning or emotional state and was unnecessary duplication”.
That surprises me. The Irish looked on it as an alternative in their definition. Perhaps the way I can best put it is to ask how the scientists look at this. I would have thought it was completely separate from affecting mental functioning or emotional state and is therefore not an unnecessary duplication.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, the definition of a psychoactive substance in the Bill does indeed seem to me rather vague. We should be grateful to both noble Baronesses who have so far spoken in this debate for pressing the Government to tighten the definition and to give us some clarification. It would be helpful if the Minister would explain to the House the basis upon which he was able to give us an assurance—I thought he gave it rather tentatively and with less than full confidence—at Second Reading, that if he were to send a bouquet of flowers for the gratification of Lady Bates, he would not be in breach of the law. I see that it is suggested that incense might be caught under the law. How can he be sure that all kinds of substances and activities that, on a common-sense view, people would regard as innocent may not in fact be caught?
I would also like clarification—if this is not leaping ahead too far—as to what is, in Schedule 1, a traditional herbal remedy. The term is terribly loose. I fancy that it is going to be quite difficult for police officers or courts to be very clear what the term “traditional” in a legally binding context means. How in practice does he foresee psychoactive substances are going to be identified? Will there have to be tests in court? That would seem to be expensive and disproportionate. Will there have to be a large number of placebo-based comparative scientific trials? Again, that would seem expensive, disproportionate and impractical. I think he owes it to us to clarify a little further than the drafting of the Bill does what he means by psychoactive substance.
Lord Blencathra
My Lords, I would be interested in hearing the Minister’s response to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. She seems to have a fairly good point—to me as an amateur anyway.
I wish to make my remarks mainly about Amendment 9. This may be heretical to noble and learned Lords and parliamentary draftsmen, but why can we not have the Government’s definition and the definition in Amendment 9? Definitions are going to be the big problem with this Bill—everybody recognises that—and I see no merit in brevity of definition if it makes for confusion. On the other hand, we do not want it to be tautological and we do not want too big a definition which is contradictory. I am sure that noble and learned Lords and parliamentary draftsmen will ensure that that does not happen. I ask the Minister to keep an open mind on this and be relaxed about extending the definition or picking up bits of Amendment 9 if it helps to bring more clarity, irrespective of the length of the definition.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, I shall comment briefly on this group. I hear the debate on Amendments 7 and 8 and will be interested in the Minister’s response. On Amendment 10, similarly, we will be interested in the Minister’s response.
On Amendment 9, I see this Bill—and I will be grateful if the Minister can flesh out whether he sees it in the same way—as a very narrow Bill. Broadly speaking, everything is illegal except the things that are defined as legal. Bringing in the word “significant” seems to me to be getting into significant bad and not significant good, and therefore we are into the area of legal challenges et cetera. The idea of the Bill, I think, is to be free from legal challenge and that is why it is formed in that way. The Minister will no doubt enlighten me.
The point of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on the process—of how the judgment will be made that a substance is psychoactive—is a good one. I would be grateful if either now, or perhaps in writing, the Minister could spell out how the Government envisage determining whether a substance is indeed a psychoactive substance.
Lord Bates
My Lords, these amendments seek to reframe the definition of a psychoactive substance for the purposes of the Bill. This Bill is designed to capture substances supplied for human consumption that have psychoactive effects. Its aim is to capture substances that are not currently controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, but, as with all drugs when misused, carry health risks.
Subsection (2) provides that,
“a substance produces a psychoactive effect in a person if, by stimulating or depressing the person’s central nervous system, it affects the person’s mental functioning or emotional state”.
We accept that this definition has been drawn purposefully wide. The nature of this market and of experience to date shows that producers of the substances are constantly and actively looking for loopholes to exploit, thereby fuelling this reckless trade. This learning has been central to how we have designed this Bill and in particular our definition.
By using a definition based on a substance’s effects rather than the chemical composition of substances, this legislation will avoid the issues that we have continued to face with the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Many new psychoactive substances are still legal due to the speed at which they are produced, with manufacturers inventing new substances by tweaking chemical formulas in order to avoid the existing controls. The need to capture such a wide range of substances, and any that might be invented in the future, necessitated a broad definition. The definition is in two parts: the trigger and the effects. The main effect of psychoactive substances is on a person’s brain, the major part of the central nervous system. By speeding up or slowing down activity here, psychoactive substances cause an alteration in an individual’s state of consciousness.
Amendments 7 and 8 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, seek to restrict the definition of a psychoactive substance so that it captures only synthetic substances. The nature of this market and of experience to date shows that producers of new psychoactive substances are constantly looking for loopholes to exploit, thereby fuelling their reckless trade. There are any number of natural products—such as fly agaric mushrooms and salvia divinorum—that are openly on sale in head shops and elsewhere which are far from safe though they are not banned under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The Bill should give us a proportionate way of dealing with these substances as well.
Amendment 9 seeks to import the definition of a psychoactive substance—
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I would like to understand—maybe if I had heard some of the other amendments I would have understood, but I am not sure I would have done given the comments that have been made—how, if the police, for example, have seized a product which may or may not be a psychoactive substance, they assess whether it is going to have these effects on somebody’s brain. Do they feed it to a tame police officer, or to a young person whose brain may be less developed? How is this going to happen? Is that something that then has to be replicated in a court room? What is the process going to be for saying, “This is definitely a psychoactive substance”? How will they tell?
Lord Bates
That is a good point. There are a number of ways. Perhaps I may make the point that I have been trying to set out the terms so that a future reader of the Official Report may actually be able to deduce—I will be careful here—what the Government intended when they set out the definition in this particular way. The noble Lord’s intervention is entirely appropriate and I do have an answer which I will give to him, but I want to make sure that we do not lose the flow of what underlies this, which is the rationale behind the definition.
There are a number of ways, and these include data based on a human user’s experience, argument by analogy and in vitro neurochemical profiling. Working with the Centre for Applied Science and Technology at the Home Office, we will identify and build the capability in the UK to meet the demand for this new forensic requirement, as well as working with the Office of the Forensic Science Regulator to ensure that the high standard of quality that forensic evidence meets is maintained.
The Home Secretary has written to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs seeking its views on how we can strengthen the UK’s forensic capacity and capability to support the implementation of the legislation. We remain ready to consider carefully any recommendations the council may have about other aspects of the Bill. We will continue with the forensic early warning system, which has enabled forensic providers more easily to identify new psychoactive substances coming on to the UK market through the provision of reference standards and establishing a new psychoactive substances community. I am sure that that has entirely answered the noble Lord’s point.
Lord Rosser
It seems to me that this is a fairly crucial part of the Bill because the argument, quite rightly under the present procedure, is the length of time it takes to ban a psychoactive substance. I have listened with interest to what the Minister has said, and I suspect he has listened with interest to what he has been reading out—I am not trying to be rude; I mean that. But what is really needed is an indication of how long it is going to take to ban one of these substances as compared with the current procedure. What the Minister has said does not help me form a view on how long it will take to ban such a substance in the future, compared with the current situation, and that surely is the key aim of the Bill: being able to ban these substances with a degree of rapidity.
Lord Bates
That is so, and many a true word is often spoken in jest—such as when the noble Lord talked about my going through the answer which has been provided. I accept that the key point here, which the noble Lord, Lord Harris, was getting at, is to look at how a police officer would actually start the process of gauging whether a person was being disorderly, search them in the belief that they are in the possession of a new psychoactive substance, and then, if they find something, how it will be determined whether that substance is banned. I am going through the process whereby the substance will have to be sent to the lab, where it will be tested for certain chemical compounds which might be on a list or subject to a temporary banning order.
What we are saying is that a different approach will be taken in the future. We are setting up a very broad definition in order to avoid the constant race to hybrids and changes which officers are facing on the street. We arrive at a definition which is set on one day, but the substance has miraculously morphed into something else the next day and gets through the loophole. What we are dealing with here is a definition of the effect which a substance has or is intended to have on the person who is in receipt of it.
If I make a little more progress on my brief, the position might become clearer. The nature of this point is our experience of the loophole, which I have covered. There are any number of natural products, which takes me to Amendment 9. The amendment seeks to import the definition of a psychoactive substance used by the Republic of Ireland in its Criminal Justice (Psychoactive Substances) Act 2010. Indeed, we used the same definition as a starting point. As the Committee might imagine, during the drafting of the Bill we discussed the definition with counterparts in Ireland, and in Australia and New Zealand, and with scientific and law enforcement experts. Following this advice, we have retained the core elements of the Irish definition, but have sought to refine it to make it more concise.
Lord Howarth of Newport
The noble Baroness explained that she was a chocolate addict. However, chocolate is exempted in Schedule 1 and she need not have worried. I am worried that Lady Bates is not going to have the pleasure of floral tributes from her husband.
Lord Bates
I will send her chocolates.
I can assure noble Lords that we are dealing here with the trade in new psychoactive substances. In looking at the workings of the Bill it is necessary to consider the definition of a psychoactive substance alongside the elements of the offences in Clauses 4 to 8, which we will come to shortly. It is not correct to equate the effect of a scent wafting through the air with the direct inhalation of fumes, such as from a solvent, and the offences apply only where a substance is likely to be consumed for its psychoactive effect. We may all appreciate the sight and smell of a fine bouquet of flowers, but we are not consuming the flowers or their scent for their psychoactive effect.
The noble Baroness asked whether the reference to “allows” in Clause 2(3) goes further than the recklessness test in the offence clauses. The noble Baroness is, I fear, seeking to compare apples and pears. In Clause 2 we are not dealing with the mental elements of criminal offences. The phraseology in Clause 2 is designed for a wholly separate purpose compared with that used to determine the mens rea of the various offences, so the question whether “allows” is a higher or lower test than recklessness does not arise.
I shall respond to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. The ban will come into effect as soon as the Bill is brought into force. What we are debating here is the quality of evidence required to pursue a successful prosecution. As I have said, we have asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to provide advice on how we can strengthen our forensic capacity to this end. It goes without saying, therefore—given that we are consulting widely on this— that the opinions and views of your Lordships’ House will also be helpful at arriving at that definition of minimal harm.
Lord Harris of Haringey
For the avoidance of doubt, I think that something should be done in this area and I am concerned that the Government’s proposals may not work.
I understood what the Minister read to us, in terms of the guidance on how you would test. It seems to me that the case rests on this: you have a substance that you think is psychoactive and you need to test it, because you need to establish whether it raises or depresses someone’s mental state. Does this mean that it has to be tested on a human being? If so, what are the arrangements for doing it? What are the safety provisions, given that some of these substances are extremely dangerous? Is there, therefore, a process that we can use when we think something is a psychoactive substance but the only way to find out is by finding a human being and testing it on them?
If that is not the case and the intention is to look at whether a substance is chemically similar to something else, you are back in the same routine of demonstrating that this is a small variant on something seen before. That is what I am trying to establish—the practicalities. Here is something. We have found it. We think it is psychoactive. Can we do something about it? Most Members of this House—there are a number of exceptions —think that something should be done. How do we know that something is psychoactive?
Lord Bates
That is a fair point, in that it is asking how this will be tested. We will come to those points because we are going to deal, to some degree, with medical testing and how it is possible to license some of these drugs so that they can continue to be tested. We were talking earlier about how universities and research institutions can continue testing on drugs such as cannabis. That is a key point: that testing will go on. I will make sure about that before Report.
Lord Tunnicliffe
May I take that as a commitment to write to noble Lords before Report? This has raised a very big question mark. Trying to hammer it out in words is too difficult; hammering it out on a piece of paper may give us much more confidence.
Lord Bates
I am happy to do that—let us set the matter out in writing. However, I want to state two basic principles that I hope that the noble Baroness in particular may just accept and will enable her to withdraw her amendment. First—going back to the first point—is that what is being sold in our streets and in head shops has never been tested on anything or anyone, yet is consumed by people in this country. That is the basis on which we are taking action. Secondly, we are mindful that the skilled perpetrators, manufacturers and distributors of this drug are in the sights of this legislation because we want to target them rather than the individual user. When they see a written definition they then go and find a potential loophole, something else appears on the market and the Bill becomes ineffective. We want to avoid that. Those are the two principles in play.
In the context of those two principles I am very happy to write with more detail on the mechanics of how that might be done, and perhaps a little more—looking at the Bill team—about the process we went through in consulting, to arrive at this definition. I hope that that will be helpful to the House and I undertake to do it before Report.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, when we talk about “banning”, we mean the substance being used to commit an offence under the Bill. There are two ways of reaching that conclusion. If you see someone taking a tablet or a substance and suddenly his mental state has been altered, cause and effect is likely to be demonstrated. The second way is that if you know the nature and qualities of substances, when you analyse the substance you may be able to do it that way too.
The important thing, however, is that it is not a question of the substance not being banned until you discover it: the definition applies right from the beginning. As the Minister said, when the Bill becomes law, substances with that character become the possible ways of committing the offence. The question of whether a particular substance is of that character can, I think, be approached in these two different ways, according to what is convenient in the circumstances of the individual case.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, before the noble Baroness responds, may I ask a question? It will display the depths of my ignorance, which will gratify the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who can never resist teasing me. If one has a herbal product and it is genetically modified, does that make the outcome synthetic, or does it remain herbal?
Lord Bates
I am not sure at whom that question is directed. I could, of course, easily answer but I am sure that the author of the amendment would want to deal with it personally.
Baroness Meacher
I thank the Minister. I also thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I spoke extremely briefly but it has proved a very illuminating debate. We have drawn out a number of issues, and I am grateful to the Minister for his reply and for agreeing to write to us about these matters. I hope that in that letter he may be able to answer the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about herbal remedies that are genetically modified, because I would not presume to take the place of a Minister in these matters.
Could the Minister also clarify whether, in tweaking the Irish definition of psychoactive substance, the Government have gone back to the Irish and to their experts to seek their opinion on whether this adjustment to the definition will overcome the apparently insuperable problems that the Irish have encountered? It is incredibly important that we accept and acknowledge that the ban in Ireland has failed and that we make sure, before this Bill is through, that it is adjusted as necessary to become a useful tool in the armoury of government drug policy. With that I am content to withdraw the amendment.
Welsh Assembly Elections 2016
(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Randerson
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they plan to take to ensure that the 2016 Welsh Assembly elections provide an opportunity to reflect recent and planned changes to the Welsh devolution settlement.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I start by saying how pleased I am that the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, is the Minister replying to the debate today. I was delighted when I heard of his appointment to the Wales Office. I believe that we worked well together during the previous Government and I know that his understanding of Welsh devolution is unparalleled. Indeed, as he is a former member of the Silk commission I look upon him as the fount of all wisdom on such issues.
My purpose in tabling this debate today is twofold. First, I wish to press the new Government on progress and preparations for the new Wales Bill. I welcomed the inclusion of the Bill in the gracious Speech and I am mindful of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s promise, made when he was campaigning in Wales, that a new Bill would be brought forward within 100 days. So I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to update us on progress. My second reason for wanting this debate is unashamedly to press the Government to think more widely and to be bolder than I fear is currently their thinking.
There are very good reasons why we need this Bill as soon as possible. Assembly elections will be held in May next year and it is important that electors know the extent of the Assembly and Welsh Government powers when they go to vote. More than that, the political parties need to know about that when they write their manifestos. I would argue that we need to move on from a Welsh politics which is defined by an endless refrain demanding more powers; we need instead a political campaign which debates what should be done with those powers.
The St David’s Day agreement gave us some clues as to what is likely to be in the Bill. For example, it said that the Assembly should have control over its size, the system and timing of elections, and ways of working. Now this will be a pretty fundamental change if and when it happens. The forthcoming Assembly elections should be an opportunity to debate, for example, how many Assembly Members are needed and how they are to be elected, rather than focusing on whether those powers will actually be devolved. The St David’s Day agreement also confirmed the intention to move to a reserved powers model of devolution. This is very welcome and I realise that it is a complex issue, but since the Supreme Court judgment on agricultural wages it is also an urgent issue, so I would like to ask the Minister to update us on progress there, too.
In response to the debate tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, last week the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, said:
“The Government intend to discuss an early draft of the reserved powers model we are preparing with the Welsh Government in the coming months”—
so far, so good. He goes on to say,
“before publishing a draft Wales Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny in the autumn”.—[Official Report, 18/6/15; col. GC 67.]
Do I understand from this that we are no longer looking at a Wales Bill itself this Session, and instead only at a draft Bill?
The St David’s Day agreement also committed the Government to the introduction of a Barnett floor. The Prime Minister has said that this is in the “expectation” that the Welsh Government will call a referendum on income tax powers. Is it still the Government’s view that these two should be explicitly linked?
Like the Minister, I am keen for the Assembly to have greater fiscal responsibility, but I doubt the enthusiasm of the Labour Party for this. I fear that the Labour Welsh Government will not be keen to call a referendum. The need for a referendum was enshrined in the Wales Act 2014, and based on a Silk recommendation. It has been controversial from the start, not least in the Minister’s own party. We all know that the Silk reports have been overtaken by events in a number of respects. The Minister knows above all of us that there were elements of compromise in the Silk reports. What seemed bold in 2012 does not necessarily seem bold now. So I will be interested to hear whether the Government still feel that a referendum is needed.
Returning now to the commitment made by the coalition Government to introduce a Barnett floor, do the Government intend to entrench and define this in the Bill? If not, how will it be incorporated into the funding structure in a way that gives us confidence that it cannot be dismantled simply at the behest of new occupants in the Treasury? We need detail on this and we need certainty. The noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, said last week that there was no need to update Holtham as Wales is not currently underfunded. I accept that Wales is not currently underfunded. Government funding is at a rate of £116 in Wales for every £100 in England, which is clearly within the region that Holtham identified as fair. However, there was a past history of underfunding under the Labour Government. Labour failed to admit to this, or to address the issue, of course, until it was no longer in power in 2010.
These two factors mean that the presumption of underfunding is still out there, even among politicians. The First Minister, for example, continues to refer to unfair funding. I believe that the Government need to provide absolute clarity on funding, even if Holtham’s calculations still have validity today. The issue of funding has had a corrosive effect on Welsh politics. The perception of unfairness in funding for Wales strikes a much stronger political chord with electors than the issue of more Assembly powers, for example. If the Government are sensible, they will address this issue head on by entrenching it in the Bill.
I want to encourage the Government to broaden the scope of the Bill. I was pleased to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, that the Government are considering other non-fiscal elements of the Smith agreement. There are, of course, other powers already and long since devolved to Scotland and recommended in Silk, but not included in the St David’s Day agreement, such as, for example, policing. The Government appear to have set their face resolutely against devolution of policing, despite there being very good arguments for devolving it. In this financial year, the Welsh Government are providing just short of 40% of total police funding. They therefore have a big financial stake in it.
This Government have proudly boasted of their decentralising credentials that local decisions are best made locally. We agree with them, and I would suggest to the noble Lord that policing is just the sort of service which varies most according to the problems in each locality. The police work closely with many partner organisations that are devolved—for example, health services and local government services such as education and social services. Therefore, it is highly logical that it should be devolved. Policing is already devolved not just in Scotland but in Northern Ireland. If it can work successfully in a sensitive situation such as Northern Ireland, which has the added complication of a land border with a separate state, then I am sure it can be made to work in Wales.
There are other powers that the Liberal Democrats would like to see devolved—for example, an investigation into a separate legal jurisdiction and the devolution of youth justice. These seem such modest steps beside the giant leap that Scotland is taking. Although we welcome additional energy powers, we believe that more can be done.
The establishment of the Silk commission in 2010 seemed a great leap forward. It was a great step forward, as was the referendum on full lawmaking powers for the Assembly. The Silk recommendations on fiscal responsibility were another really big step, enshrined in the Wales Act 2014. However, there is a long way to go before we can have any hope that the political debate in Wales will settle down to a discussion of what we do with those powers instead of what powers they should be.
May I remind the Minister that, despite the coalition Government’s excellent and progressive record on devolution, time and again their plans were overtaken by enthusiasm for reclaiming power, both in Scotland and in Wales? The St David’s Day agreement has already been overtaken by the success of the SNP in the general election. The baton has already passed over the Government’s head. What suits Scotland does not necessarily suit Wales. The history and geography of the two nations is very different and it means that their paths will diverge. There has been no rise of nationalism in Wales as there has been in Scotland, with only 3% support for independence. However, I would say to the Minister that Scottish devolution has not developed in a vacuum. People in Wales look north and they will draw lessons from what happens there.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to follow the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. It was the other way round last week—we seem to be a rotating show. I thank her for facilitating this debate and keeping a focus on matters that are important to all of us from Wales across party boundaries.
I will come back to some of noble Baroness’s comments but I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, to his position on the Government Front Bench. He is there at an interesting time. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, perhaps has been the keeper who has turned back to be poacher—and I am delighted to see her in that role—the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, is a poacher who has turned keeper. I remember well the way he campaigned in the National Assembly. It is good that he brings experience to the Front Bench and he knows the way in which a compromise was reached on the Silk commission with a lot of give and take by all parties.
If one has all parties buying into a process—as has been emphasised in the context of Smith in Scotland—then there is a reasonable expectation that the recommendations of such a commission should be enacted in full. All the parties in this Chamber and the other place were represented on the Silk commission. That was their opportunity, if they were unhappy with some of the compromises made, to draw a line. The ultimate report of the Silk commission was a unanimous one, as the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, well knows. Therefore, it is not unreasonable that, having made the compromises in reaching that report, there should be an expectation that all parties here fulfil those recommendations. To have come to a compromise in drawing up that report and then to have got to a position where it is second-guessed by the parties running into a general election frankly brings a degree of cynicism that undermines the integrity of the system. It is bound to lead to questions, if there are future such commissions, as to whether parties should be buying in as sincerely and genuinely as they did to the Silk report. I would be very grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, perhaps pondered a little on that as the Government consider how and when to bring forward the new powers. However, I am delighted that he is on the Front Bench and no doubt we will have many occasions to argue these matters.
I am also delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, back in his place after a bout of ill health. He looks fighting fit now. There is slightly less of him now than there was a few weeks ago but no doubt the quality makes up for the loss in quantity. We look forward to his contribution not only to this debate but whenever the interests of Wales arise.
Last Thursday, in introducing the debate on similar matters, I concentrated on the UK dimension—the need to ensure that there is some compatibility and an understanding of a balanced type of devolution taking place. Otherwise, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said a moment ago, people will start asking why things are happening in Scotland. Is it merely because of a knee-jerk reaction to the vote for the SNP? That will feed an agenda that could help my party but I am not sure if that is the incoherent way in which things should happen to get a better government for Wales. There needs to a balanced settlement but I will not repeat the arguments, except to say that I hope that that is an element in the thinking of the Wales Office as it addresses these issues.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said in introducing this debate, the political parties and candidates in the coming election need to know exactly where they stand. In Wales, perhaps even more than in Scotland, we have had a shuffling type of devolution going on all down the 15 years since the Assembly was set up. There has been change upon change upon change. There now need to be adequate powers and finances and the job needs to be got on with, particularly when one thinks of the challenges in the health service and education facing the next Government in Wales. We need the powers to be cleared up, so they know what to do and get on with doing it.
Picking up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on the police service, there needs to be a rounding off of the devolution process by bringing the police into the purview of the National Assembly. Many of the associated services, such as the local government parts—not only funding, but social services’ co-operation with the police, and the transport responsibilities that come under the National Assembly—interface with the police and should logically and coherently be devolved. Having the police devolved to the National Assembly would bring a balance with the powers of Northern Ireland and Scotland. I accept what was said: that what happens in Scotland does not always necessarily reflect the priority in Wales. Of course not— but I am sure that Members on the Liberal Benches tonight will be only too aware of their commitment to a federal approach. The principle of a federal approach was that there would be balanced devolution, not least so that the people in the centre at the federal level know exactly what powers they are dealing with at other levels. I hope that will be given further thought.
With the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill currently going through Parliament, we have the odd situation whereby it is quite likely that powers relating to the police commissioners will be devolved to mayors in England—but what happens in Wales? We were told from the Government Front Bench last week that that Bill has nothing whatever to do with Wales, so Wales could be the only area with the existing commissioners. The National Assembly, which I am sure would like to do something about this, will not have the powers to do so. That really needs to be sorted and some clear thinking brought in.
On finances, whatever may be said about how Holtham might be reinterpreted in today’s circumstances, the reality is that the resources are not there to provide the services that Wales needs. Of course, the resources can be spent better. There is always a way of spending money better, but we really are cutting to the bone and next year we are going to see services eroded. There may well be places in England with equal problems that need more resources as well, but I am not willing to accept that because there has been a cutting back of public expenditure and a reversal in the Barnett squeeze effect, that justifies not trying to bridge the gap. Wales has been underfunded probably to the order of £6 billion or £7 billion since 1999 and it is time for that to be made up. Given the formula that Scotland gets, I cannot for the life of me understand why Wales has to get that much less. Is it a bonus paid to Scotland because it threatens to go independent at any point? Surely we do not have government policy based on that sort of thesis? I hope that we have a more logical approach to funding.
Reference was made last week to the referendum on tax powers. If we do not have a greater funding commitment to Wales, I wonder whether we are going to get any enthusiasm for that referendum. I am not convinced that a referendum is needed at all. We see all these other powers, including new taxation powers, going to Scotland, and yet we do not get them for Wales without a referendum. The time has come for Governments to make decisions and stand by them. If the commitment is that we need to get answerability through income tax powers, then let us get on with it rather than hiding behind a referendum. If we cannot get the capital that is needed for projects—we heard about the discussion concerning the M4 relief road at Newport only this morning—how on earth will we be able to meet our requirements without new sources of taxation?
I should like to make many other points but I know that time is squeezed. I will be grateful to hear the Minister’s response.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate, although I feel a little bit of an intruder because three of the six speakers were all leading Members of the Assembly in Cardiff. It is a delight to see our noble friend Lord Elystan-Morgan back in his place.
I would like to consider dangers to democracy and the democratic decisions of the Assembly and of Parliament itself. We celebrate the Magna Carta, yet the ordinary man and woman at that time had no voice at all in determining the laws that they were called to obey. It was only very slowly that people obtained a voice in their own destinies. Democracy has struggled to be born.
In Wales we saw the great advances of the middle and latter part of the 19th century. Those who had no vote objected to paying tithes. Why should non-conformist farmers and smallholders finance what was often an oppressive established church? So we saw the protests and evictions of the tithe wars. We saw the massive expansion of education from primary level to the establishment of the University of Wales, and the struggle for the disestablishment of the Church of England to shake off the shackles of the established church in Wales.
At the same time, throughout Great Britain there arose the demand for the right to vote. At last, people were gaining influence over the laws and decisions that shaped their lives. It was a slow progress from the Great Reform Act of 1832 to the universal franchise that we enjoy today, but it can never be static. Democracy can never be static; otherwise, it stagnates. Democracy, to be valid, must evolve, as we see in the campaign to enable 16 year-olds to be enrolled on the voting register.
Looking at the past, in the general elections of the 19th century, the Whigs challenged the Tories—two parties—and then the Liberals challenged the Conservatives. They were straight fights, with first past the post. In a time of just two parties, there was in each constituency a clear winner, although the nationwide picture was not quite so fair. For instance, in 1885 in Wales, the Liberals polled 58% and won 29 constituencies, whereas the Conservatives polled 39% and won just four constituencies. It was unfair, yes, but in every constituency the candidate with most votes won. Even in 1997, 30 of Wales’s 40 MPs were elected with more than 50% of the vote in their constituencies. Overall, Labour won 55% of the vote and had 34 MPs, whereas the Conservatives won 20% yet had no MPs at all.
The same distortion continues throughout the UK. At the last election, a Tory majority Government were elected with 37% support from those who voted but only the votes of 24% of the total electorate. There are other examples of which we are all aware—for instance, the result in Scotland, with the SNP winning 56 of the 59 seats on half the votes cast. I agree with nothing that UKIP proposes, but it gained only one seat after polling millions of votes. I suggest that something is seriously wrong.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer said last week at the Mansion House that people had voted for £12 billion-worth of cuts, when 63% who voted voted against them. Only 37% supported the Conservative candidates. Legislation will be rushed through backed by only a minority. We are in a very serious situation indeed. Can it be justified? Is it democratic for 37% to overrule 63%? Is it fair that 37% of the electorate hold the whip-hand over 63%? Does the fact that 37% dictates to 63% represent the opinion of the people? Is our electoral system fit for purpose? If such results were obtained in the Division Lobbies of the House of Lords, we would have a riot on our hands.
The constitutional convention proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, includes Wales. When the Assembly was elected, it saw the shortcomings of relying solely on a first-past-the-post system. There are 40 constituency Members and an additional 20 Members to make good the lack of representation of the parties which are not forming a Government there. Twenty additional Members ensure that each of the five regions have fairer representation. Why did the Tory and Labour Parties support this top-up scheme in Wales? It was unfair, yet they are unwilling to look at the situation that we are in now where the unfairness is absolutely obvious.
At the last Assembly elections, the additional vote system gave the Labour Party half the seats for 37% of the votes. Other parties were more fairly treated because of the top-up system. The Conservatives won 23% of the seats for 22% of the votes—you cannot complain about that—Plaid won 18% of the seats for 18% of the votes, and my poor Lib Dems won 8% of the seats for 8% of the votes. But at least there is a fairness there, which is not to be seen in the Westminster elections. Only Labour is overrepresented. I am not starting a campaign yet to look again at the electoral system in Wales which distorts the results in this way. In spite of some attempts to try to change this to 40 constituencies each with two Members—that would destroy proportionality, although an Assembly of 80 Members would of course enable our AMs to be far more effective—any suggestion that you would have 40 constituencies electing two Members each on a first-past-the-post system would be totally out of proportion.
In addition, should we delay boundary changes in Wales at council and parliamentary level until we have an electoral system that is more representative than the one we have at present? We must not abandon the better representation of the Cynulliad or Assembly system for the much less fair system we have in Westminster elections. There is a far clearer mandate in Wales than there is here in Westminster. Is there a single Member of this House who would say that the present system is fair—that the 37% figure should provide a Government with a majority of 12? So our electoral system clearly needs total reform. I do not think anybody here would say that that is not the case. We are not sure what the reform will be but we certainly need a convention to discuss these matters. The opinions of a majority—this time 63% of those who voted—are ignored. We cannot accept that sort of system. There is no genuine mandate. It is not a matter of party advantage but of the very value of each person in Wales and in the United Kingdom.
Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)
My Lords, I express my gratitude to all the noble Lords who referred so kindly to me. It is a great delight to be back here once again. The House is very much in the debt of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, as far as this Question is concerned. My few remarks will be confined to the issue of reserved powers, a matter about which one will hear a great deal over the next few months and years.
Over the years, particularly during the period from when devolution developed in Wales, from 1964, and the formation of the Welsh Office, there has been the belief that devolution really fitted into one of two mutually exclusive categories: either a reserved powers system, whereby there was a presumption that all other powers had been devolved, saving in so far as they were specifically reserved and excluded, or, on the other hand, a conferred or incremental system, whereby matters were devolved bit by bit, almost like confetti, and the devolution was valid only if they were specifically referred to—if there was an absence of reference to them, there was no devolution.
That was regarded as being the system up to July of last year, when, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has mentioned, there was the decision by the Supreme Court in relation to the Agricultural Sector (Wales) Act 2014 of the Welsh Assembly. The effect of that was that the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, had to face this issue head on. The case for the Cardiff Assembly was that there had been, under Section 108 of, and Schedule 7 to, the Government of Wales Act 2006, a transfer of,
“Agriculture. Horticulture. Forestry. Fisheries and fishing”,
and that therefore one should not interpret “agriculture” in a narrow way at all; it should be something much more than the mere pursuit of husbandry. It should include agricultural wages as well. That was the Welsh case. The case put forward by the Attorney-General on behalf of Westminster was, “What you say is true, but it is very limited. Agriculture is one thing; agricultural wages are another. Agricultural wages belong to the realm of employment and employment has not been devolved; ergo, it is outside your powers”. The Supreme Court was faced with the choice of either a narrow interpretation of “agriculture” or a wider, more liberal understanding of the whole situation. To its eternal credit, the Supreme Court took the latter course.
The consequence is utterly historic as far as Welsh devolution is concerned. It means that even though there is no specific reference in the 20 categories of devolution that we have under the 2006 Act, if there is a general intention to transfer authority to Wales, matters that are consistent with and closely attached to that—which might be referred to as the silent matters—will also be transferred. What does that mean? In Wales it means that we are in a situation not very different from that French gentleman of fiction who in middle age realised that he had been talking prose all his life. We have had powers that we never appreciated were within our grasp.
The situation causes possibilities and problems. I have some sympathy with the Secretary of State for Wales. In a speech in March at Aberystwyth, a place well known to the Minister and me, he said this:
“the UK Government’s defeat over Agricultural Wages last July, blew wide open the true nature of the Welsh devolution settlement … vague, silent on many key subject areas, unstable, not built to last—a payday for lawyers”.
Maybe it was a pay day for lawyers, but it was probably a legislative precipice at the same time.
Where do we go from here? We go in one direction only: that devolution, whatever is defined by the Government, should never be less than what exists at the present moment. It would be ironic if we ended up with a reform of the system that greatly reduced the totality of the powers, legislated under the Executive, that have been transferred to Wales already. I appreciate that the Government face problems. What is their attitude towards these? They have set them out in the White Paper published in February this year. They say that we will certainly have a system of reserved powers, which they had flirted with for a long time. They are accepting Silk 2, to which the Minister has made a distinguished contribution.
However, I find the way in which they go about it extremely upsetting. This is what they say: they set out in Annex B to the White Paper a list of subjects that they regard as proper to reserve and accept. How many are there? I make the number to be 103. However, it does not end there, as they have this sentence in relation to Annex B.
“The list is not exhaustive, and reservations would also be needed in other areas”.
It reminded one of that line in Macbeth, speaking of Banquo’s issue—of the shades of many more.
I appreciate that these decisions are not of necessity in any way the Minister’s. He is a man of great wisdom, legal expertise and statesmanship. However, I ask respectfully of him: when is a reserved powers model not a reserved powers model? I suggest that the answer is that when the matters that have been reserved are so massive and all encroaching they make the concept of a general devolution a nonsense. My advice to the Government is, therefore, in the words of Corporal Jones, “Don’t panic”. Some people flirt with the idea that devolution should prove itself. One or two remarks made by the current Secretary of State might suggest that. I do not accept that for a moment. That would be to turn the issue of devolution on its head. The entire lifeblood of devolution is that it is for the other side to prove the case against it, if it possibly can. Devolution is the birthright of this nation.
Baroness Morgan of Ely (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, welcome the Minister to his post. I do not think that anybody in Wales—certainly not in the Conservative Party—understands the journey of devolution better than he does. There were those heady days when we both worked together on the advisory group, setting up the standing orders of the Welsh Assembly. It has been very interesting to watch the development of the Minister to where he sits today. I should perhaps introduce my remarks to this debate by declaring an interest, because today I have announced my intentions to the Labour Party: I shall be seeking selection and election as an Assembly Member in next year’s election. I know that I can rely on many Members of this House to give me some great tips on what to expect in that chamber, if I am lucky enough to be selected and then elected. Your Lordships can rest assured now that any changes to the Assembly’s powers and responsibilities will be watched by me like a hawk—as if I was not doing that before.
This debate follows a similar debate that we held in the Lords last week, where I acknowledged that there was an increasingly positive attitude towards devolution in Wales but that we were far from having the kind of appetite for devolution demonstrated by the Smith commission. So on devolution, for Wales do not read Scotland. Wales has to establish its own path to devolution and the gradualist approach to it is one with which the Labour Party wholeheartedly agrees. This is not a never- ending process; there are limits to how far we are prepared to go in the devolution of power, as a party absolutely committed to the future of the union.
Many aspects of the first Wales Bill, which reflected to a large extent the views of the Silk commission, on which the Minister served, will be implemented in time for the Welsh Assembly elections next year. While there are experts in universities and political institutions—and, dare I say it, this House—who are fascinated by issues of constitutional settlement, it is worth remembering that the vast majority of the public who will cast their votes in next year’s elections will be determining their choice on the basis of who best stands up for Welsh public services and who can best deliver jobs and growth. It is of course the Labour Party. I do not know whether I am allowed to say that in the Lords, but there we have it. The constitutional debates remind me of some sailors I see when I visit the lovely harbours around Wales. There are always people fixing or painting their boats, or repairing their sails. At some point, it would be nice to see them actually sail somewhere; well, the Welsh Government are going somewhere. They have, through intervening and not letting the markets determine everything, created 17,000 job opportunities through the Jobs Growth Wales fund and 500 police support officers to mitigate against police cuts. They have funded free breakfasts for schools, making sure that children from the poorest homes are able to concentrate in their classes. But as this House excels in constitutional debates, I shall return to that theme now.
Following the passing of the Act, for the first time the Welsh Government will have the power to raise their own taxes. The consultation on the collection and management of stamp duty and landfill tax is well under way. In addition, an immense amount of work has already been undertaken to establish a Welsh revenue authority. Funding is of course an issue that still needs to be addressed. I do not buy into this idea that we are at the right place on funding at the moment. However, today I want to focus my comments on other aspects of devolution and to look at Silk 2, which made 61 recommendations. Many of these have been taken up by the St David’s Day agreement that was the precursor to the Wales Bill. Perhaps the Minister could let us know what we can expect on the timing, as he has suggested. Is it a full Bill or a draft Bill and what is the timetable, so that I might know whether I will be here or not?
One of the key issues that was recommended, and which thankfully has been taken up by the St David’s Day agreement, was the proposal to move towards the reserve power of government. The pros and cons of this system have been well rehearsed in this Chamber but I return to the theme that I alluded to in the debate last week since we now have the right Minister in place, who might understand the issues better. It is about whether in the process of drawing up the reserved powers list, the Minister can give a categorical assurance that there will be no grab for power by Whitehall of powers that have already been devolved.
I gave the example last week of the fact that in Annex B of the St David’s Day agreement, civil law and procedure is a subject listed as a reserved matter but the Human Transplantation (Wales) Act is legislation which has amended civil law. Will civil law be reserved or devolved? If it is reserved, as suggested in Annex B, will there be an attempt to pull back powers such as those in the Human Transplantation (Wales) Act? It would be good to hear what the thinking is here. I will give another example. Aspects of equality legislation have already been devolved but others have not. Will we therefore see all aspects of equality law being devolved or will they all be reserved? I have to warn that any attempt to haul back powers to the centre will be fiercely resisted.
A further concern is the implication of the Supreme Court’s decision against the introduction of an asbestos Bill for Wales and how that reflects judicial attitudes towards devolution. I am aware that I could get into some hot water, with my learned friend on the Cross Benches, the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, being such an expert. I am so pleased to see him back in his place. However, it is worth considering the implications of the judgment for the devolved settlement in Wales and the constitution of the UK as a whole. The asbestos Bill was an attempt by the Welsh Government to recover medical costs from past employers, and their insurers, whose staff or members had contracted asbestosis in order to compensate the NHS in Wales for treatment. This was knocked down by the Supreme Court, by a judgment of three to two. The court decided that the Bill was outside the subject matter competence of the Government of Wales Act.
On the issue of competence, the question was whether the Bill related to organisation and funding of the National Health Service, which is one of the subjects in Schedule 7G. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, and the majority of the Supreme Court interpreted the meaning of the subject under consideration by reference to the other subjects under the same heading. If the same approach were adopted in respect of other headings, it could result in a substantial clawing back of the Assembly’s competence. It is worth contrasting this view with the minority view expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. In his view, the Bill had two objectives. The first was to,
“withdraw the requirement that the Welsh NHS continue the delivery of the benefit to employers and their insurers of not having to meet the cost of medical treatment and care of an employee where the employers are responsible for causing asbestos diseases as tortfeasors”.
I am sure my learned friend could tell us what that means, but I looked it up and it means:
“A civil wrong that unfairly causes someone else to suffer loss or harm resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act”.
Secondly, it created a mechanism to collect the costs.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, argued that these were clearly within the subject matter competence. The more worrying aspect for the Assembly of the judgment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, is that it appears to suggest that it is legitimate for the court to investigate the extent to which Assembly legislation is in the public interest, and also to investigate the sufficiency of the consideration given to legislation by the Assembly before it is passed. This approach does not hold true for England. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, powerfully suggested that each democratically elected body must be entitled to form its own judgment about public interest and social justice under the structure of devolution, and there is no logical justification for treating the views of one such body differently from others.
The asbestos case had implications of a commercial nature—who knows whether this might have had a bearing on the judgment? Will the Minister respond to that judgment and tell the House whether it will be a consideration when formulating the Wales Bill that we can expect in this place?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, I stand here as a poacher turned gamekeeper, as has been said. This has been an excellent debate and I will try to do justice to the contributions that have been made forcefully and with great grace. First, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for securing this evening’s debate, and pay testament to the considerable work she has done in the Wales Office. Her great and continuing commitment to public life in Wales is appreciated much more widely than in her own party. It is a tonic to see the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, back in his place. Like many others, I have missed his smiling presence and wisdom. I am sure he will be giving us both of those for many years yet.
I will say a little bit about the Wales Bill. Without wishing to pre-empt the will either of Parliament or the National Assembly for Wales, next year’s Assembly elections may well be the last in their current form. The Government will publish a draft Wales Bill in the autumn for pre-legislative scrutiny and will introduce a Bill in the Commons—the correct place for Bills of a constitutional nature that are as far-reaching as this one—early next year, to implement the legislative commitments made in the St David’s Day agreement to make the Welsh devolution settlement clearer, stronger and fairer. This work was begun before I entered the Wales Office and was pushed forward by the Secretary of State and the noble Baroness so effectively.
The Bill will provide for a clearer settlement, founded on a reserved powers model, to clarify the division of powers between Parliament and the Assembly. I will try to answer the points made in different subject areas if I can. The first of these is reserved powers, a point made forcibly by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. We are moving to a reserved powers model. I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, that it is important to get this right and not panic. We will not. There will be no attempt at a power grab but, as has been demonstrated during the debate, it is not a straightforward issue and we want to get it right. The debate has been interesting in that, much as we all want to move on to look at health, education, the economy and transport, they barely surfaced this evening. They were touched on cursorily here and there but we are still, perhaps understandably, looking at the constitutional settlement. It is important that we get that right and we will.
We need a stronger settlement with important new powers devolved to the Assembly—as they will be—over energy, transport and elections. I will come back to elections separately. Understandably, some mention was made of policing. It is quite true that this was a recommendation for devolution from the Silk commission which was not taken up in the St David’s Day agreement. However, let us not become too pessimistic about this. We have come a long way in devolution, under the previous Government and this one. There have been previous commissions which have not seen the light of day, although they should have. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, who I see in his place, will perhaps understand my point. The Silk commission has been substantially taken forward in a way that we can see in the forthcoming Wales Bill.
I understand the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and some of his frustration, but he himself went on to suggest that we drop the referendum on tax-raising powers, something that was in the Silk commission. Let us remember that we are driving this forward considerably in the Wales Bill and there will be a chance for scrutiny and discussion of that as it proceeds through both Houses. Legal jurisdiction was not something that was recommended to be subject to devolution under Silk. It is right that we should look at Scotland but, as all noble Lords have said, we should not be hidebound by what happens there. Scotland is very different from Wales, not least on the funding basis, to which I will come back in a while.
I will say at this juncture that I would happily run the noble Baroness’s campaign to get into the Welsh Assembly—we go back a long way. This will probably not do her too much good, but I hope they have the sense to pick her, and I am sure that they will. I had better say no more in case it does the noble Baroness more damage than is sensible.
A central issue raised by noble Lords was tax and funding. This is important and we want to get it right. The Finance Minister in the Assembly, Jane Hutt, and the First Minister, Carwyn Jones, are very much aware of the Government’s view that the funding floor needs to go hand in hand with some commitment to a referendum. A referendum has been accepted as central to Silk, for reasons we can understand. I agree that there has been historic underfunding of Wales, certainly under the Labour Party, which has continued for some time. We need to get that right. The noble Baroness talked about putting this on a statutory basis in order for it to be lasting. The Barnett formula, goodness knows, has lasted well for many years without being on a statutory basis, so I am not convinced that is the case, but we have certainly not closed our minds to that. If we have some agreement going forward, it may be something that could be looked at, but I am not sure that it is absolutely necessary.
In terms of elections, the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, spoke very passionately about the democratic processes and pressures that exist. Although I can understand the frustration that is felt by the Liberal Democrats and other parties about the electoral system, I gently remind him that we did of course have a referendum in the previous Parliament on electoral reform and that the fairly clear result was to retain the present system, certainly against the choice that was offered. I reassure the noble Lord that all these powers over the electoral system, the elections and the number of Members will be devolved to the National Assembly, as is appropriate. I think that will be subject to a supermajority again, as has been the case in Scotland, but they will no longer be a concern for us. Instead, they will be a concern, quite rightly, for the National Assembly for Wales.
I hope I have addressed the significant points raised in the debate. As I say, it was a very good debate and will certainly inform our thinking on the Wales Bill and the way forward. We anticipate the publication of a draft Bill which will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. This is an important piece of legislation and we want to see it on the statute book next year. Then I hope that we can move in a way that we all want so that we can consider the issues that truly matter to people in Wales. As we well know from the recent general election—and as we will see, I am sure, in the Assembly election in the same way—nobody on the doorsteps talks about reserved powers or the Barnett formula. They certainly talk about funding for Wales, but the issues that they really talk about and that really matter to them, as they matter to us, are education, health, the economy, transport, agriculture, tourism and so on.
Lastly, I come back to the final theme that emerged, which is Scotland. We certainly have to be aware of what is happening in Scotland—we do not exist in isolation—but at the same time, we have to recognise that Wales is very different from Scotland, not just in the way it votes, which clearly was the case and which is a relevant consideration, but in many other respects. For example, our legal history is very different and we have a much more porous border. Very few people live near the Scottish-English border, while a heck of a lot of people live near the English-Welsh border, on both sides of it. That makes a difference to many of the things that we want to do. We must ensure that what we do is for the good of the people of Wales within the United Kingdom. That is what this Government are determined to do.
I thank your Lordships once again for an excellent debate. We will take away all these comments and study them very closely to inform progress on the Bill.
Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL]
(9 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Howarth of Newport
“Guidance
The Secretary of State must issue guidance, before this Act comes into force and regularly updated thereafter, as to how users, enforcement authorities and others can identify individual psychoactive substances, the degree of the psychoactivity, their safe uses and their relative harms.”
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the new clause proposed in Amendment 11 follows very closely on the debate which we held just before the dinner break. In their proposals in this Bill the Government are setting a very complex and difficult task for police officers, customs officers and others. The definition of a psychoactive substance is quite deliberately broad and, some would say, vague. Powders and pills look much alike and the question is, how is an officer to know, first, if a substance is indeed a psychoactive one and, secondly, what is in the mind of the person in possession of that substance? How are they to determine the intention? That is essential in the establishment of whether or not a criminal offence is being committed. I would also be grateful if the Minister told us whether he envisages that there will be a de minimis level of psychoactivity and below that level, enforcement officers will not be worrying and will not seek to enforce the regime that the Bill creates. Or, are the Government saying that any substance which is at any level psychoactive is to be controlled, in the sense that this particular legislation will control it?
As we have also acknowledged in earlier debates, there is a shortage of forensic facilities in this country. That is why the Home Secretary belatedly, just before the Bill was tabled in Parliament, wrote to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to ask,
“how best we can establish a comprehensive scientific approach for determining psychoactivity for evidential purposes”.
That suggests that the Home Secretary is rushing into enacting legislation before she has any clear idea as to how it would work. What we know is that significant additional burdens will be laid upon police whose numbers and resources have been diminishing and may well continue to do so. These measures, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has already put to the House, may further inhibit research in important respects and create multiple new possibilities for the criminalisation of people who are in some way involved with new psychoactive substances.
I propose that the Government owe it to consumers, businesses, research institutions and those responsible for enforcement to explain exactly what they intend, and to advise them all on how this legislation would work. The Minister kindly undertook to write to us, the Peers who have been involved in consideration of this Bill, between Committee and Report. I suggest that in due course the Government should write to a much wider range of readers—people who will have responsibilities created under this legislation, who will need to understand the definition of and the practicalities of identifying a psychoactive substance, and what is in the minds of people they apprehend who may be contemplating purposes that the Government wish to discourage and would make a criminal offence. That is the burden of the new clause proposed in Amendment 11. The Secretary of State must issue guidance before this Bill comes into force and keep it regularly updated thereafter as to how users, enforcement authorities and others can identify individual psychoactive substances, the degree of their psychoactivity, their safe uses and their relative harms.
I now move to the new clause proposed in Amendment 12, in the same group. If people are to look after themselves and others—their children, friends and people whose interests they care about—they are going to need full and reliable information about psychoactive substances. We have heard much about how the internet can be a force for bad, but it can also be a force for good in its ability to disseminate information that may be extremely valuable and helpful in enabling people’s safety to be preserved. It is the Government’s responsibility to use the means at their disposal to provide the fullest information they can. The previous Government, I think, relaunched the FRANK website, the earlier version of which was considerably criticised, but I praise them for doing this because it is a genuine effort to provide fairly full and certainly honest information about psychoactive substances.
The difficulty about the Talk to FRANK website is that its official provenance and rather starchy tone mean that it will not be the go-to website for young people who want to find out about drugs. While it is important that the Government maintain a website of this kind and amplify the information that it provides, they should recognise that the work they do in preparing and maintaining such a website is complementary to other, unofficial sites that are created and maintained by experienced people, whose motive is good, because they want to share information about the realities of psychoactive substances and protect people from coming to harm by their use of such substances. I have in mind websites created by organisations such as DrugScope, Bluelight, Urban75, SafeOrScam and PillReports, which are examples of some of the websites to which people can go to learn about psychoactive substances. Those websites are maintained with very good intentions with regard to the public good—public safety and health—and I therefore hope that the Government see their work as complementary.
At all events, we need to capture as much evidence as we can about the substances, so that we better understand the harms we are trying to prevent, the ills we need to cure and the effectiveness of the measures taken to prevent people coming to harm, and to remedy— so far as is possible—the harms that people experience. We should learn as much as we can from collaboration with other countries; the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction is an excellent model of international information sharing and co-operation. However, we cannot expect the people of this country habitually to turn to the website of the EMCDDA; they need to have something that is designed for them, and more appropriate and accessible for them.
My second proposal, in subsection (b) of the proposed new clause in Amendment 12, is that the Secretary of State should provide,
“a network of testing centres, readily accessible at no charge to users and others, at which they can be informed about the identity, composition, toxicity and potential harms to human health of any substances brought in by them which there is reason to think may be psychoactive”.
As I understand it, that service is available in the Netherlands. It appears that they have a fuller range of forensic resources and facilities for the identification and testing of substances, and that access to those facilities is freely available to the public at large as well as to officials and enforcement authorities. We should seek to construct such a model in this country, not least because an early alert to a bad consignment of drugs, which is very dangerous, could save lives. I beg to move.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on both those amendments. We talked a lot about legislation earlier on today, but we know, both internationally and from the Home Affairs Select Committee and others, that legislation does not make very much difference at all to the key issues relating to drugs, whether traditional drugs or new psychoactive substances. The important job the Government have concerns information. I have said it before and will say it again: young people do not want to kill themselves, believe it or not, and they do not even want to harm themselves and finish up in hospital. Why do they kill themselves and finish up in hospital? Because they do not have the information they need to keep themselves safe. Why do they not have the information? Because far too many substances are banned in a rather simplistic way. Countries such as the Netherlands, which have coffee shops where people can get cannabis, have very little problem with heroin, for example. There are other ways of keeping people safe. But the most important way, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, says, is information. I agree with his ideas about how this should be done—it cannot be typical government information. It really is important. If we stopped focusing on legislation quite so much and focused on some of these other issues, we might actually make some progress.
I want also to support the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, in relation to the testing centres. Testing centres would be a very important adjunct if we were to have a more proportionate system where low-harm substances would be regulated, labelled and so on, as recommended by the European Commission and approved by the European Parliament. If we had a proportionate system like that, and had testing centres, a young person could go into a testing centre and ask whether a substance was low harm and okay to take. With a combination of a proportionate legal system, testing centres and really good information, we would begin to have a really good drugs policy. Would that not be wonderful? We could lead the world with such a policy.
Many Latin American countries talk about these things. They know just how bad the war on drugs can be. They know just how important it is for the demand end of the drugs market to be managed effectively in order to save them from tens of thousands of deaths a year, corruption, government failure and all the rest of it. It is absolutely disastrous across the Atlantic. In my view, we have a responsibility to ourselves and our young people but also to Latin America and central American countries.
I very strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, said. I really hope that Ministers will take it very seriously and somehow link it with a proportionate, rational system of drug control.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I support these amendments. However, I have some concerns. The first is, as has been previously mentioned, the limited forensic capacity that the Government and police have. Already the police service has to make rationing decisions as to which cases it refers to forensic laboratories. This Bill could create a massive increase in the amount of work that forensic laboratories would have to do.
Before we had new psychoactive substances and this Bill, the idea of websites that advised what was a safe dose of an illegal drug seemed somewhat contradictory, and there would have been some fairly stiff arguments against providing testing stations for drugs that are illegal to possess. However, as noble Lords will know, this Bill does not criminalise possession, and therefore does not make it illegal to take these substances. Therefore, the case for public information about safe dosage and having testing centres appears absolutely necessary if the Government are to continue to pursue this idea that simple possession for personal consumption of new psychoactive substances should remain legal.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and to reinforce the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, looking particularly at information—in this instance, under Amendment 11, information directed at users. That struck me as the key point in the amendment because the Bill is concerned primarily—necessarily so—with those who produce the substances. The danger is leaving out those who might then consume them. They are not doing anything illegal, but we should not leave them out of the discussion about them being better informed about the effects of the substances.
We will come on to education in Amendment 13. That might be useful in deterring people who want to take substances in the first place. It might be a bit optimistic, but I think that is eminently sensible. But what about those who are users and making sure they are at least informed as a consequence of what we are talking about? I am a little concerned if we focus solely on production and what we do about that, without thinking about those who are still prone to consume these substances. I am not particularly wedded to the particular amendments the noble Lord proposes, but I am very much at one with him in the intent and in what he is calling attention to: making sure we do not lose sight of that dimension. I will be very keen to hear the Minister’s response. If we are not deterring them—my hope would be that we would—I cannot see what the difficulty would be in having some regime for providing that sort of information.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, there are effectively three amendments here. One is Amendment 11, whose essence is guidance. All three may have some merit and we would be very interested in the Minister’s reply. The first one on guidance would seem to be very important for potential users. Also, of course, it would meet a concern which we were lobbied about regarding the retail sector, which clearly is going to have problems given this Bill. It is going to need some guidance and it may have to try and generate its own if the Government do not help. I would be very interested about what the Government have to say on that.
Proposed new paragraph (a) in Amendment 12 and the availability of information on the internet also seems sensible to me. It does not mean we are softening our general position on the Bill. Good information provided by government has to be a good thing. I would be very interested in the Government’s response to the proposal relating to testing centres. At first sight, it looks rather over the top, but on the other hand the Government are committed I believe—and it is very important how carefully this response comes across—to a much more comprehensive approach to testing, to support the Bill. That will give us some tangible evidence that the Bill will work. I hope the Government will take these three areas seriously and, depending on their response, we may take this further with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on Report.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, for his explanation on these amendments. Before I start, I was very rude earlier when I did not thank him for the kind words he said at the beginning of this debate and I feel very honoured to be taking part. I agree that a joined-up approach in departments is a very useful point. Also, I feel extremely privileged to be able to learn from my noble friend Lord Bates about how these things are conducted. The noble Lord has asked that, before this Act comes into force, the Home Secretary must issue guidance on how users, enforcement authorities and others can identify individual psychoactive substances, the degree of the psychoactivity, their safe uses and their relative harms.
I can certainly understand the sentiment underpinning at least part of Amendment 11. I acknowledge the importance of the effective implementation of the provisions in the Bill by enforcement agencies and the crucial role played by the Home Secretary in ensuring that this takes place.
I emphasise that we are working closely with enforcement agencies—the police, the Border Force, the National Crime Agency and the Local Government Association—to ensure the successful implementation of the Bill. All the agencies, supported by the Home Office, will produce guidance for their own officers that will address issues such as those raised by the noble Lord. For example, it seems sensible that the College of Policing, with the national policing lead on drugs policy, is best placed to produce the guidance for police officers, along with our input, as I have said. Similarly, the Local Government Association is well placed to produce tailored guidance for local authorities.
We are also working with other bodies, including the British Retail Consortium and the Association of Convenience Stores, to produce targeted guidance for their members. It is also important to discuss with the Welsh and Scottish Governments and with Northern Ireland’s Department of Justice what guidance is needed to address their national needs. Any guidance for prosecutors in England and Wales is a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions.
However, I have grave concerns about issuing guidance to users of psychoactive substances on how they might identify such substances, along with their degree of psychoactivity, their safe uses and their relative harms. I have the same concerns about Amendment 12, which states that the Government must establish a network of centres where drug users can get their illegal drugs tested. Although this is doubtless well intentioned, I fear that such approaches could have the opposite effect to that intended. Such initiatives could actually serve to promote the availability of psychoactive substances and encourage their use, which is clearly contrary to the purpose of the Bill. A better approach is to highlight the harms of such substances, alongside wider efforts at prevention.
Baroness Meacher
The Minister referred to testing centres possibly having the opposite effect to that intended. In the Netherlands, where such centres have been in operation for some time, they are actually rather successful. For example, there have been, I believe, no deaths resulting from psychoactive substances. Rather than worry about whether they might have the opposite effect to that intended, I suggest that the Government check with the Netherlands how those centres are working, because they would find that they were working well.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
I will certainly take that forward. However, with regard to testing centres, the Dutch model sits within a more tolerant drugs policy that the Netherlands has. Our key message is that there is no safe dose of these drugs, and they should not be taken. Any move towards such a scheme would undermine that message and could encourage drug use, contrary to government policy. This proposal would also cover drugs controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act, not just those covered by this Bill. That would undermine our intentional obligations as a signatory to the UN conventions, and no clear public protection case has yet emerged for such a testing centre.
There is a well-established system for issuing a national alert. Any intelligence that Public Health England receives alerting it to identifiable problems, such as a batch of drugs likely to cause significant risk in England, is acted on.
Lord Tunnicliffe
There is more common ground than the Minister allows. I can see her aversion to saying that there are safe levels and safe doses, and I am quite sympathetic to this. But there can always be the inverse—there can be “dangerous”, “very dangerous” and “fatal”, which is the reciprocal way of putting it. I ask the Government to look into whether there is some common ground in this area because the provision of information and alerting people to the dangers of these substances—we share the Government’s enthusiasm for banning them—by these various amendments must have a generally benign effect.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
I thank the noble Lord for that, but there is a well-established system for issuing a national alert. Any intelligence that Public Health England receives alerting it to the identifiable problem of a batch of drugs likely to cause a significant risk in England is acted on. There was an example earlier this year. There was a warning from Madrid that Superman pills sold as ecstasy containing PMMA were found in Spain. This followed the tragic deaths in England over the Christmas period caused by similar Superman pills. PHE took immediate action and issued a warning that these highly dangerous drugs may still be in circulation. Public Health England is working with partners to accelerate the review already under way on how drug alert systems in the UK can be improved, including how they join up with intelligence from Europe.
Lord Norton of Louth
I agree with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe—you start from the basis that it is harmful and ascend in order of degree of harm. I take what my noble friend said about there being a mechanism for identifying them already and for disseminating that, but could she say a little more about the dissemination? How far does it go? The concern is whether it actually reaches the users or stops at an earlier point in trying to prevent the dissemination of the drugs. How much is there a greater awareness of and sensitivity to those who are in danger of consuming these substances?
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
I thank my noble friend Lord Norton for that. That is probably covered by FRANK, which is an element of our broad approach to prevention. We are investing in a range of programmes that have a positive impact on young people and adults, giving them the confidence, resilience and risk-management skills to resist drug use. It has been a valuable resource for young people, parents and teachers, especially when used for wider resilience-building and behaviour change. It continues to be updated to reflect new and emerging patterns of drug use and to evolve to remain in line with young people’s media habits and to strengthen advice and support. Since its launch it has been visited by more than 35 million people, and millions have called the helpline to speak to specially trained advisers.
I hope that explanation has gone at least some way to satisfying the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and that on that basis he will be content to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, the noble Lords, Lord Paddick and Lord Norton, and particularly my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe on the Front Bench. He saw some merit in what I said. This illustrates the virtue of the Committee process. The dialectic helps us all to learn. My noble friend Lady Meacher was right to say that information is at the very least as important as legislation, because we have all this evidence that prohibition has not worked. In that case, it is much better that people should be helped to understand what they do.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, was concerned that my recommendation of a network of testing centres would lay impossible demands on the existing resources of laboratories and forensic facilities. Of course, he is right: with our existing resources we could not possibly construct such a network that would be accessible in all regions of the country. My proposition is that we should aim to achieve that. We know that this legislation will in any case require an expansion of forensic facilities. It seems to me that you can achieve both purposes simultaneously: to enable those whose responsibility it is to enforce the law to have speedy access to the information they need, but to also assist vulnerable consumers. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for his endorsement of the value and importance of providing reliable, trustworthy and up-to-date information to all concerned.
Baroness Hamwee
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord when he is in full flow, but I think he might be coming to the end. If he is considering bringing this back, I wonder if I could raise one thing that has been troubling me during this debate, concerning the advice as to harm or danger. If it is advice as to whether something is or is or not harmful, perhaps before the next stage, he might think about duties of care and liability and all those things. If it is advice as to whether a substance is dangerous, very dangerous or fatal, does he share my concern? I am not seeking to pick holes; I genuinely want to explore the subject. My concern is that if there are those categories, the lowest category would be interpreted as meaning “not harmful”; in other words, it would be reduced to people thinking, “Well, it’s not fatal and it’s not very dangerous, so it must be okay”. I do not know if there is a way through all this.
Lord Howarth of Newport
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, makes a very important point, and I think that it was strongly suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, as well. We have to convey that there is no such thing as a safe dose. We are dealing with relative harms. We are helping individuals who are possibly ignorant, gullible and vulnerable—they may be very knowledgeable—to navigate their way through what is very treacherous territory indeed. The Government, in partnership with other well-intended agencies, NGOs and the voluntary sector, should be quite systematic about trying to ensure that the best information is available to people who are going to take risks and may come to appalling harm. In this policy-making process, we are looking for the least bad solution. We are not dealing with an ideal world—there is not going to be a drugs-free world; some would contend that that is not even an ideal. At any rate, the practical reality is that people will always use drugs, so our responsibility as good citizens and the responsibility of the Front Bench opposite on behalf of the Government is to minimise harm and danger.
Finally, the Minister talked about the value of the European early warning system, which is an important component of the array of policies to try to protect people from harm. But as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, inquired, we need to know how the Government intend to make sure that those early warnings are widely circulated and reach the people who are perhaps most in need of them. Earlier this year there was a spate of stories about people being killed by taking new psychoactive substances, which seem to have arrived somewhere in East Anglia and were spreading quite rapidly across the country. Whether or not there had been an early warning from an official European system, the fact is that people did not get the advice they needed in time. We have to think of all the best practical ways we can in order to help spare people that kind of fate. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport
“Education
(1) The Secretary of State shall require that all children of secondary school age receive education designed to teach them about the realities of psychoactive substances (whether controlled or otherwise) and develop them as persons who are informed, risk-aware, resilient and responsible in relation to psychoactive substances.
(2) Ofsted and equivalent agencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland shall, in the course of their normal inspections of secondary schools of all kinds, inspect the performance of individual schools in drug education and include their findings on this in the reports which they issue on those schools.
(3) Ofsted and equivalent agencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland shall publish an annual report on the state of drug education in schools in each nation of the UK, together with recommendations.
(4) The Secretary of State shall monitor the programmes and resources available to schools to support their teaching about psychoactive substances of all sorts (including both controlled and exempted substances).”
Lord Howarth of Newport
I apologise that the Committee has to put up with an inordinate amount of talk from me, but I will be as brief as I can on what is a subject of major importance: how we strengthen education in relation to drugs. In introducing this proposed new clause, I congratulate my noble friends on the Front Bench on their excellent new clause set out in Amendment 104, which is grouped with this one.
The coalition’s strategy as enunciated in 2010 included reducing demand, and in that, education is or should be key. I would like to see the Secretaries of State for the Home Office, for Education, for BIS and for Health jointly reporting as proposed in the new clause set out in Amendment 104. My noble friends have called for an annual report on the subject of education, but it should be one that emanates from the Government as a whole, and particularly those departments.
The situation as it stands is that schools are required to provide drug education programmes and information about drugs in the science national curriculum. But not all schools, indeed a diminishing number, are required to deliver the national curriculum, and even in those that are, the evidence is that this fairly minimal requirement does not prove to be particularly effective in educating people about the realities of drugs. After much anguished debate, the last Government decided that PSHE should be a non-statutory subject in the national curriculum. It is fair to say that the last Government provided funding for early intervention to support children at risk, and I assume that the troubled families programme has something to offer in this connection.
I have read that the Government are spending some £7 million annually on drug education as a whole. On the other hand, the Minister of State at the Home Office, Mike Penning, told the House of Commons in a Written Answer on 2 June that the total spend on education and prevention campaigns in relation to new psychoactive substances from 2013 to 2015 had been only £180,556. That seems extraordinarily little. It would be helpful if the Minister provided the House with correct figures so that we know what the Government are spending on various aspects of drug education. Whatever it is, however, I would contend that it is inadequate.
The Home Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons, in its 2012 report Breaking the Cycle, was scathing about the efforts being made at that time by the Government to promote education about drugs. It quoted the charity Mentor, which complained angrily:
“We are spending the vast majority of the money we do spend on drug education on programmes that don’t work”.
The committee found that most schools provide drug education once a year or less. I have no doubt that there are schools that do very well, but the Home Affairs Select Committee was talking about the generality of schools. It reported that the Department for Education, with, one might say, a shrug of its institutional shoulders, had said that it does not monitor the programmes and resources that schools use to support their teaching. That is why, in subsection (4) of new Clause 13, I have proposed that the Secretary of State,
“shall monitor the programmes and resources available to schools to support their teaching”.
It seems to me a dreadful dereliction of responsibility if that is not happening.
Education strategy in the fight against drugs must be transformed. When the public health campaign about tobacco got serious, it worked. The Secretary of State must insist that all secondary schools take seriously their responsibility to educate children about drugs. It may well be argued—and it may well be right—that education should start before children reach the secondary level; certainly it should apply in every secondary school.
Effective techniques exist to teach young people resilience and the capacity to make their own considered decisions. As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, we must act on the demand at that point—legislation is not going to do it on its own. We must bring about a society in which fewer people want to use these substances. The way to make a very good start on that is to get serious about education.
I have made specific proposals about the role of Ofsted and the equivalent agencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. School inspections should routinely examine what is happening with drug education in schools, and Ofsted’s findings should go into its reports on each school. Ofsted should also publish an annual report on the state of drug education in schools in each nation of the United Kingdom and make recommendations about necessary improvements. That way, not only would the message get out to all schools but all schools would be invigilated and monitored on the way they acquit themselves of this responsibility.
More broadly, it is not just specific drug education that matters: it is the quality of education overall. The propensity to use drugs correlates with poor educational standards and is found more widely in communities where, as things stand, the standard of education offered in local schools is not what we would wish. Deficient education is among the pathologies that incubate drug abuse. It is a broader question.
The same vigour needs to be brought to the approach in further and higher education. The funding councils should make it a condition of publicly provided support for the universities that they demonstrate that they have programmes to help people understand the realities of drugs and that they report on what they are doing every year. Universities UK ought to promote best practice, not only in relation to new psychoactive substances but to prescription drugs that are being widely misused by students in universities, as I have mentioned before.
Drug users of all ages need help to become properly informed, properly risk aware and properly capable of taking their own sensible, responsible decisions. I hope that the Minister, in responding, will also tell us how his department, which has lead responsibility in government, plans to work with other government departments, particularly with the Department for Education, and to ensure that we have a coherent strategy that tackles this problem at the roots and does not simply try to patch things up when they have gone wrong. I beg to move.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
I am not deliberately trying to oppose every amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, has proposed in Committee tonight. Indeed, if his amendment had simply said that all head teachers shall once per annum bring in an appropriate person to talk about the dangers of drugs, I would have supported it. Indeed, I wish I had thought of it myself.
The point that I am seeking to make is: who is an appropriate person? I discovered in the 1990s in the Home Office that there is not a single Member of your Lordships’ House, not a single Member of the other place, not a single policeman—no matter how young or old—and not a single teacher who would be regarded by young people and children as a legitimate person to preach about the dangers of drugs. I discovered rather late on in my term of office at the Home Office—I wish I had had more time or thought of it earlier, before the 1997 election—that the things that seemed to work were when a school got another teenager who would come in and say, “I am a drug addict, or I used to be a drug addict and look at me now. I can’t pick up boys or girls; half my nose has rotted off. I’m as skinny as a rat. I’ve been thrown out of my house by my parents and I have all these problems”. It was only with other teenagers who looked and sounded like them and came from the same area, rather than men or women in suits, that they believed in the dangers of drugs.
I worry that the noble Lord’s amendment is too state-oriented. It is maybe too bureaucratic. I am certain that if it were carried we would be spending more than £7 million on drug education. I am afraid that it would be snapped up by the Ofsteds, quangos and education bureaucrats who have wonderful programmes that sound good. They would be like the adverts that I thought we had prepared at the Home Office, with men in suits lecturing about the evils of drugs. Like those adverts, they will be completely ineffective. I say to the noble Lord and to my noble friend the Minister that I am very sympathetic to education in schools but it has to be kept simple and appropriate. If kids were cynical at my time in the Home Office in 1994 to 1996 they are a dashed sight more cynical now about being lectured by anyone who is older or outside their own cultural circle. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that if he cannot accept the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I support very strongly the idea behind the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the importance of education. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that the type of education is absolutely all-important. He said that teenagers do not want someone coming in preaching about drugs. Absolutely—we know from all the research, most of which has been carried out in the US, that lecturing and didactic teaching does not work in the sphere of drugs. We know that. I was going to suggest that we need the words “evidence-based” in the amendment. We know from the evidence that peer involvement—certainly group work with youngsters who have already had or are now having terrible problems with drugs—is the method of education that works. Whether one wants to call it education or whatever, it ideally needs to go on in schools. It does not seem inappropriate therefore to use the word “education”. We all have to be clear what we mean by education but, as for the term “evidence-based”, the evidence points exactly in that direction.
Before you get to that sort of education and imparting —or whatever you call it—of information, there is work already being done in a number of schools up and down the country to improve the resilience of youngsters who are particularly vulnerable to drug addiction. An example is children who are not functioning well at school or have very difficult home lives. There are all sorts of reasons why those children lack resilience. There are very good programmes of resilience-building in schools and for me they are utterly central to the whole business of prevention of drug addiction. This sort of work is far more important even than all the stuff we were talking about earlier about legislation, passionate though I feel about having the right framework in which all these things occur. I would support at least some variant of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, because it is fundamentally important, but let us see if we can come up with something really good for Report. Even better, the Minister could take this away and bring back a well-framed amendment to cover this vital issue.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, I have added my name to the amendment because I think the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is spot on in terms of the principle of the amendment, which is about education, because it completely shifts the focus. This Bill is essentially reactive. It is getting at what it wants to ban. The great thing about the amendment is that it is proactive. It explains to people why they should not take drugs in the first place. The route is education because we want to ensure that people are aware of the risks so they do not wish to take them in the first place. Otherwise, what we are doing is downstream once they have started taking the substances.
How then do you deliver the education? I take the point that my noble friend Lord Blencathra made about those who should be informing others, because young people listen to other young people and those who have had the experiences. It is absolutely right. They would be the most appropriate people. If somehow one could link a reduction in drug use to school league tables I can assure you that head teachers would be bringing in those appropriate people like a shot to affect outcomes. However, the crucial point here is that what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is getting at with this amendment is worth while in its own right and would be worth pursuing anyway even if the rest of the Bill were not there.
I think we are all agreed that it does not actually have to be precisely in the form in which the noble Lord has brought it forward but there is a general welcome for the principle involved. I regard it as extraordinarily important because if we can stop people wanting to take synthetic substances in the first place then a lot of what we are discussing becomes unnecessary. We really ought to be thinking in those terms and the noble Lord has done a fantastic service by bringing forward this amendment. I hope it will engage my noble friend’s attention to thinking how we educate people about this in the first place. It might be difficult. We might not achieve it, but it is inherently a desirable goal. It is, if you like, a public good.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
Can I make a short intervention to support Amendment 13 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport? I agree absolutely with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that you need reformed addicts and the like to be effective in these circumstances. I have some experience working with the Wise Group in Glasgow, where Routes out of Prison takes reformed prisoners—people who have been on the inside—and meets prisoners coming out. There is no doubt that the vital connection between those who have been in that bad place and traded themselves out of it, and the totality of both phases, is very compelling and captivates young people of secondary school age in particular in a way that nothing else can, so education of that kind is essential in my view. However, there are not enough people with sufficient experience to do it. The voluntary sector is very good in some parts of the country but in others it is patchy. Further, if this is a good idea and there are workable ways of delivering it without men in suits being involved, we need a quantum of money to make it work sensibly. It is astonishing that the last Government fessed up to spending only £180,000 in this area. I think that figure applies only to England. I must check with my Scottish contacts to find out whether they spent a tenth of that, or whatever it was. That really is a de minimis amount of money. Indeed, I think that even £7 million is a de minimis amount of money.
The noble Lord, Lord Norton, is absolutely right to say that this proposed new clause stands on its own but if the Government are really taking a blanket-ban approach—I agree with my noble friends on the Front Bench that that is not the appropriate way to go—I would be consoled if there was an important, big, well-funded and properly constructed education package that went with this approach, because I think it would have an impact. However, you cannot do it for £180,000 a year. As we all know and expect, the impact assessment talks about effects on business, and all these things are important. However, if we are going to make this a reality and make it work, we need to be thinking over the period of the rest of the Parliament of seriously increasing the resources devoted to the measures proposed in this amendment.
My final point concerns the troubled families programme—it is a horrible name—about which I know a little and which was mentioned in passing by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport. It is also another way into this issue because a lot of the trouble in troubled families comes from youngsters who are out of control. These families contain a lot of single mothers in difficult circumstances and low-income households. These people struggle to access help. They will be the first to identify the problem with their teenage children and will be the first to seek help. Therefore, I think the troubled families programme would be another avenue through which to release resources effectively to confront some of these dangerous substances. If we are thinking about introducing a provision something like what is proposed in the new clause in Amendment 13 at later stages of the Bill, we need to think seriously about how to resource it adequately without being stupid about it. I am not daft; there is obviously an austerity constraint on everyone but we should all think about what constitutes a meaningful annual spend before the later stages of the Bill are completed.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe and I have tabled the second amendment in this group. The first amendment, which we have been discussing, relates to education in secondary schools. Our amendment provides for the Secretary of State to,
“establish a scheme to promote public awareness of new psychoactive substances, including the dangers these substances may pose”,
and to provide an annual report to Parliament. The amendment lists some of the issues that must be included in the report.
The expert panel report included recommendations on education and awareness. What is needed is a targeted public awareness campaign for young people and one specifically for parents, an evaluation of current education programmes, investment more generally in drugs education in schools and new psychoactive substances training for front-line staff. A comprehensive prevention campaign should include Public Health England, which should run a targeted campaign to alert people to the dangers of these drugs and to counter the myth that “legal” means “safe”. That campaign needs also to include the targeting of young people through social media.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I agree with so much of what has been said and will endeavour not to repeat it, other than just a little.
The point made about the appropriateness and therefore the credibility of the person undertaking the education, as I shall call it for want of a better word, is something about which I feel very strongly. When I was about to leave school—they left it until after our A-levels to give us anything that might now come under the heading of PHSE—there was a short, embarrassed and embarrassing discussion, which was not a discussion because we were talked at, by the member of staff least likely to be identified with by any of the 18 year-old girls present. The talk was about the white slave trade, and none of us could identify with her or with it because it was so unrelated to real life. Therefore, the term in subsection (1) of the amendment referring to “the realities” struck a chord with me. This work has to be trusted and be undertaken by somebody who is saying things that seem sensible to the people listening to them. That may include variations in harm and degrees of harm. If some substances are not harmful, one needs to say so. In subsection (1), I also liked the words,
“informed, risk-aware, resilient and responsible”,
which cover an awful lot of important ground.
I would want to see this work done in a wider context. Alcohol, tobacco, coffee and chocolate are I suppose referred to here. I wonder whether one can divorce this kind of education from sex education, for instance, because it is all about recklessness and about kids getting themselves into situations that are difficult and hard to get out of. What is in here is hugely important but it is part of a wider picture and needs to be presented as such.
With regard to Amendment 104, my noble friend and I refer to similar measures as part of our amendment about decriminalisation for possession—in other words, what can be done if someone is found to be in possession but it is not an offence. We have linked drug treatment and awareness. In that context, I should confess to the House, because there are all sorts of awareness courses, that I once had to go on a speed awareness course. Your Lordships can interpret that how you like.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)
I was getting nervous at that point for the noble Baroness, but was it speed as velocity?
Baroness Hamwee
It was, and the police were a bit too fast to prosecute, in my view.
Lord Bates
My Lords, I am grateful as these are important amendments and I pay tribute to the noble Lord for introducing them. When we had our meeting of all interested Peers, he said that it was vital that we spaced our time in Committee to allow in-depth debates on the key themes which run through drug policy. To me one of the key themes, along with enforcement, must be the value and importance of education. The noble Lord has afforded us that opportunity, along with the Official Opposition, and I am grateful for that.
I want to address some specific concerns, but a number of the points that I will raise were touched upon by my noble friend Lady Chisholm. She was good enough to say something about me but, behind the scenes, the great joy which your Lordships cannot see is that when we are having our briefings, because of her distinguished background in nursing and her volunteering within a drug rehabilitation unit, she brings great sensitivity and understanding to this issue. I have drawn on that many times myself and I am grateful for it.
I want to start with the big picture on education. The more that I have looked into it, the more I think that the most difficult thing in winning the battle in education has been the term “legal highs”. The fact that we have seen this sort of heading everywhere—it is pervasive, even on the high streets—saying there is somehow a high which is not age restricted, and which you can walk into a shop to get without being prosecuted for it, has been one of the most dangerous things for the policy of education. One of the groups which came to see me and officials at the Home Office in support of the Bill said that, above all, they wished that we could get the message out to young people that these are often not legal highs but lethal highs. Because of the point that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made at Second Reading about the pharmacology of these drugs, the term used was that people are often playing Russian roulette as to which part of the batch they receive. Added to the fact of their being able to get these substances on the high street through a store, without producing any ID or proof of age whatever, it does immense damage to the education cause to which we are all committed.
As in other parts of the legislation, we have sought to draw upon expert opinion where we can. A number of recommendations were made in the report by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Prevention of Drug and Alcohol Dependence. It highlighted the importance of embedding universal drug prevention actions in wider strategies to support healthy development and well-being in general. It also recognised that targeted, drug-specific prevention interventions remain a valid approach to those individuals considered to be at risk of harm. That came on board along with the expert panel’s report. When the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, spoke at Second Reading, he really tried to put me on the spot by saying that there was a substantial section in the expert panel’s report about education. While that was published under the coalition Government, he wanted to know whether it would remain government policy. I made the point that that was absolutely the case and that we remain committed to it.
I am pretty sure—and I will write on this if I am wrong—that the relatively small amount of £180,000, which was quoted in the Written Answer, will be part of a breakdown of the £7 million. The majority of that is a health lead and we were talking about what the Home Office spends, not on overall drug prevention, but specifically on new psychoactive substances. That is a key element.
I know this may sound strange but the legislative programme has a place in provoking awareness. I know this from my own Twitter account, where I now have a large number of new followers who do not necessarily agree with the policies of HMG in respect of new psychoactive substances. I am also realising that saying that might also get me trending on social media. I welcome this, because it is part of people engaging with the debate and the legislative process. People are asking, “Should they be banned?”, “Should there be a universal ban?”, “Should we be having partial bans or temporary banning orders?” and “Should we be widening the debate?”. The more young people who engage with the type of debate we have in this House the better.
In a similar vein, my noble friend Lord Blencathra talked about people in suits not being taken seriously when they talk in schools about drug prevention. I must be careful what I say here, given her presence in the Chamber, but the Lord Speaker’s schools outreach programme is very effective and I had the privilege to take part in it. People engage with it and talk about legislation and about the fact that legislating is not easy.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, when the Minister takes part in the Lord Speaker’s outreach programme, does he wear a suit?
Lord Bates
That is mandatory, is it not, at least for the male Members? I would certainly not dream of turning up in our ceremonial gowns. They would probably think it was Christmas and misunderstand what was coming.
Education is not just for teachers and it is for all of us, including the media, to ensure positive role models. As a parent and grandparent, I think children often respond best to very clear messages. Ambiguous messages which say, “This might be okay or it might not—take it along to a testing station”, or “This might be against the law or it could be legal”, spread confusion which is unhelpful to pupils and teachers.
Drug education is part of the national curriculum for science at key stages 2 and 3. My noble friend Lord Norton of Louth said that if we made this a key performance indicator then schools would start taking in seriously. It is already, in a way, because to be judged outstanding by Ofsted you must be able to demonstrate with great clarity that pupils are safe and feel safe at all times and that they understand how to keep themselves and others safe in different situations and settings. We need to explore further whether inspectors follow that in every school but the bones of what is necessary are there.
We have had some excellent contributions and discussions. As I flagged up earlier, we have a further meeting on 7 July. We have invited Public Health England to be represented at that, as well as the Department for Education. That will be a useful opportunity to explore these issues.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
The Minister is very solicitous of the questions thrown at him. I understand that there is a difficult Budget coming, and that Ministers are in purdah before that, but what expectation would he have of getting a realistic increase, in the course of the next spending review, in the money available for this important educational work in this public policy field?
Lord Bates
The noble Lord is a very experienced parliamentarian, and tempts me to speak about matters of finance, which is a big challenge. I do not want to dodge the question, but will just put it this way: some clear commitments have been made about what we are doing in the Bill and what we want to achieve through it, and we see education as being a key part of that. Therefore, resources will have to be allocated to ensure that those things happen, and that will be reviewed. That is probably about as far as I can go at present on education, but I am sure we will return to it at later stages of the Bill as it goes through your Lordships’ House and following the meeting I referred to. I certainly undertake to communicate the content of this debate to my colleagues in the Department for Education and the Department of Health.
Lord Rosser
In that response, is the Minister ruling out any reference in the Bill to education, training and prevention and a report on what is actually happening in that field in relation to new psychoactive substances? The Minister has accepted—or rather, I am sure it has always been his view—that legislation alone is not enough and that education, training and prevention are vital too. It would seem quite appropriate to have some reference to that in the Bill.
Lord Bates
I understand where the noble Lord is coming from, and we will look at this. The Bill is primarily a law enforcement measure, setting out definitions et cetera, although it is part of a wider context that includes education. As to whether we should have references to education or treatment programmes in the Bill, I personally favour things that are very clear and focused about what they want to do. What we hope to achieve through education is a very important part of the context. I undertake to reflect on that between now and Report.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, the debate produced a very beautiful meeting of minds between the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, which once again demonstrates the supreme value of Committee proceedings in your Lordships’ House. I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, all of whom have emphasised the fundamental importance of education and the critical need to get it right.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that children do not take kindly to being preached at. I was suggesting not that they should be preached at but that they should be taught, with real professional skill. I would certainly envisage that appropriate role models—the kind of people who can talk to young people in their own language and whom young people will be able to identify imaginatively with—are of course the sorts of people who will be able to play a very valuable part, if schools have the imagination and skill to find them and bring them into the schools programme.
However, there have to be more systematic pressures on schools. I very much agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, when he said that having performance in respect of drug education forming part of the data that go to establish league tables will give a salutary shock to quite a number of schools. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, suggested that that is almost the case, and I drew some encouragement from the quotation that he gave us about the requirements of Ofsted. Yet I have a sense that the prevailing culture in our schools is such that they are not taking that point from Ofsted sufficiently seriously, and if they fail to perform in this regard they may not be able to qualify to be rated “outstanding”. I am not sure that enough of them know about it or that enough of them are being seen to act on it.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made the point with which I so much agree: that the funding so far provided for the system is—I do not think this was his word—derisory. That is sending a signal from government that this is a second or third-order issue. I know that the Minister does not think it is at all but I hope he will reflect on how he can, tactfully as always, bring more effective pressure to bear on his ministerial colleagues in the Department for Education. He undertook that he would talk to them. I also understand that it is very difficult for them to persuade the system as a whole that it has got to take on yet another task in a new way. There are endless pressures on schools. New Ministers and officials are for ever coming up with new policies and asking the people on the front line to implement their bright ideas. I understand all those difficulties, but having acknowledged that, we have all recognised and are all fully persuaded that we have got to do better on education and that that is going to be fundamental to the success of the overall strategy.
I am glad that my noble friend Lord Rosser drew attention to a significant section in the report of the expert panel which should give strength to the Minister’s elbow. I was grateful for the remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who survived her education, which is something that everybody has to do. I was grateful to the Minister for a series of thoughtful and helpful points. Of course he is right that the term “legal highs” has been profoundly unhelpful, and I have every sympathy with the Government in their creation of an aggravated offence of supplying psychoactive substances in proximity to schools. I think there is an amendment which adds other institutions where children may be present.
If the Minister would be kind enough to write to us clarifying the figures—what is being spent on what, on public account in this field—that would be very helpful. I was also much encouraged by what he said about wanting young people themselves to be involved in the debate, as it were owning the issue and the problem and to help us all to find better ways to deal with it. I look forward to returning to this broad issue at Report and in the mean time beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
“( ) add any substance;”
Baroness Hamwee
My noble friend and I also have in this group Amendments 19 and 22. This takes us to the exemptions from the substances which may be the subject of the commission of an offence, and the other provisions in the Bill.
Our first amendment would allow the Secretary of State, by regulation, to add other substances to the list in Schedule 1. I wondered whether that point was covered by,
“add … any description of substance”,
but I do not think that normal language would mean that, and the Constitution Committee—I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, is going to mention this—did not think so either. If it is not going to be possible in the Bill as drafted for other substances to be added, then why not? That seems to fly in the face of the respect that we all pay to the scientific process.
Dealing with certainty of provision and ministerial authority in respect of exempted substances, the Constitution Committee commented—I will mention just this one paragraph—on the powers of the Secretary of State being,
“unconstrained by any explicit statement of the purpose or purposes for which that power may be exercised”,
and suggested that:
“The House may wish to consider whether it is appropriate to confer upon the Secretary of State a power … unconstrained by any textual indication as to the purpose”.
That is part of the theme of certainty, which we touched on earlier. Amendment 19 would require the Secretary of State to exercise that power to add any substance—my addition—or to add or vary any description, or remove any substance, on the basis of recommendations of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency; in other words, to implement its recommendations. The Secretary of State must also use the power to include a substance where that body or the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs,
“determines that the substance poses a low overall risk”.
As regards the bodies which would make recommendations or a determination under this amendment, more than respect has been paid to both those bodies during this debate. The ACMD should be at the front and centre of this debate; it seems to have been somewhat sidelined in some of the consideration of the Bill. Our amendment in the next group, which we will look at next week, addresses that point.
In proposed new subsection (2B) in Amendment 19, we refer to the determination of a substance which poses a low overall risk. I can see that phrase might be thought to be rather woolly and insufficiently tough on drugs. However, it comes straight from Section 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, which sets out the role and responsibilities of the ACMD, whose duty is to keep under review drugs, the misuse of which,
“is having or appears to them”—
the ACMD—
“capable of having harmful effects sufficient to constitute a social problem”.
It goes on to talk about,
“preventing the misuse of … drugs or dealing with social problems connected with their misuse”.
I take that to be very wide indeed, and to include health. We think that that phrase would properly link assessments as to what should be exempted with terminology which must now be understood in this field. I beg to move.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 16 I will also support Amendments 14, 17, 18 and 19. Amendment 19, on low-harm substances, links very closely with Amendment 16, and I will concentrate on Amendment 16 because of that particular focus.
Amendment 16 seeks to exempt from the scope of the Bill substances deemed to pose low health, social and safety risks. One of the objectives is to take a small step towards harmonising the Bill with the EU regulation. The Government have every right to opt out of the EU regulation, and of course they did so. However, there are very good reasons for attempting to move towards a degree of harmonisation. Paragraph 1.1 of the EU regulation says that,
“national restriction measures, which may differ depending on the Member State and on the substance, can hamper trade in the internal market and hinder the development of future industrial or commercial uses”.
So there are free market issues where the UK may cause problems for our own industries, and indeed trade, if the Bill goes ahead unamended. Amendment 16 goes some way towards reducing those obstacles to trade. Does the Minister know how significant the commercial and trade implications of the Bill will be for the UK if it is not amended in the way that Amendment 16 suggests and, if not, will he have these barriers assessed before introducing the Bill?
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, I want to speak to Amendments 17 and 18, which I have tabled rather impertinently as amendments to Amendment 16 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. Here I think that the substantial measure of agreement and meeting of minds that we had in the previous debate on education will rapidly dissipate.
I remind the Committee that it is my belief that prohibition has broadly failed and that it is because of that failure that we have the problem of new psychoactive substances. I believe that our objectives should be to protect people, particularly young people but people of all ages, from the dangers of drugs and to minimise the harms that they may cause. In nothing I say do I mean to imply that I would encourage the consumption of drugs—we are looking for the least bad solution to a very intractable and very important problem. My proposal is therefore pragmatic, but I believe that the least bad way to go is selectively and cautiously to legalise certain drugs and very strictly to regulate their availability.
The purveyors of psychoactive substances, after all, seek to create and distribute substances that mimic the effect of controlled drugs, and they do so quite unscrupulously. They do not mind how corrupt, how adulterated, how toxic and how dangerous those substances are, and that is the problem that we are up against. It seems to me therefore that it would be more prudent and more responsible, rather than to have a blanket prohibition or ban, to make legally available one substance in each of the three principal classes of drugs. The first would be a stimulant—it might be MDMA, better known as ecstasy. The second would be a depressant, which might be cannabis—the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, spoke of the significance of the ratio of THC to CBD within any individual variety of cannabis. If you have no THC, you have no “high”, as I understand it, so I guess that there would have to be some element of THC if people were to use the drug. We would seek to provide a version of cannabis that was the safest kind—that does the trick in the sense of making people feel that this is the substance that gives them the experience that they are looking for. Thirdly, there should be a hallucinogen: perhaps magic mushrooms or mescaline. In all those cases, I propose that we legalise and regulate drugs that are of relatively low risk, of which society has long experience, and which in many societies have become socialised and in their use normalised.
The Minister was quite quickly dismissive of the experiment that has been initiated in New Zealand. It is perfectly true that the expert committee, having carefully considered the policy adopted in New Zealand, decided it could not recommend it, and that the policy has run into a number of practical difficulties there. But essentially the New Zealand approach was to find a way, very carefully and selectively, to legalise the use of drugs that have been demonstrated to be of low risk, and I do not actually think that the story of the New Zealand experiment has yet reached an end.
At all events, I emphasise that there would have to be strict regulation and quality control and that these drugs should be introduced only in circumstances of the best security that we can provide to their users. There should be regulation of their composition and their strength; there should be control over how they are transported; manufacturing should be licensed and strictly regulated, as should retailing; there should be no sales to children; I believe that no advertising should be permitted; marketing would certainly have to be very strictly regulated; and so forth. That is the type of regime that we already operate in our society. That is how we deal with alcohol and tobacco—two drugs, as the noble Baroness said, which are, by any reasonable standard of judgment, more dangerous than cannabis—and with medicines. So there are already models. There is already a basis of selective legalisation and regulation on which we can build—and, no doubt, which needs to be improved.
The availability of these drugs should be accompanied by advice as to their safe use, exactly as happens when you collect a prescription for medicine; there should be full information. Of course, as we have already argued, this all needs to be set in a context of education, to help people to make mature and wise decisions.
The Lord Bishop of Bristol
I just wanted some clarification. One thing that worries me is whether, in the end, the direction of Amendment 18 will not prove to be a bit confusing. I think it was John Maxwell who said that when people say, “Yes, but”, nobody ever hears the “Yes”. If you say, “No, but”, does anybody hear the “No”?
Lord Howarth of Newport
I hope that I can offer some reassurance to the right reverend Prelate, if he will follow me in the argument that I want briefly to unfold. Let me continue by noting that there would be the advantage, as with alcohol and tobacco, that the Government could tax these substances and use the lever of taxation to influence the preferences of consumers and their behaviour. Of course, the Exchequer would benefit, and I know the great importance that the Minister and, indeed, all of us attach to the reduction of the deficit. A new source of taxation would be not unwelcome, I think, to the Exchequer. What I am recommending is, in effect, a market solution, a kind of reverse Gresham’s law. I believe that relatively good drugs would drive out bad drugs. It works in the Netherlands, where safer varieties of cannabis are made available in licensed shops and there is no demand in that country for the synthetic cannabinoids that are so fashionable and so popular in this country—and so very dangerous to their users.
Of course, there will always be people who are inveterate and irremediable risk-takers, and young people will always be tempted to challenge authority. But I suspect that most consumers would be very happy if they knew that they could obtain legally a psychoactive substance that they could be assured was relatively safe. After all, that has been the attraction—albeit the illusory and deceptive attraction—of so-called legal highs. Why would people go to dodgy dealers to buy white powders about which they knew nothing if they had a safer and legal alternative available to them? There may be a fear that the legal availability of certain drugs would lead to an increase in consumption; but I mentioned in an earlier debate the report by Dr Deborah Hasin of the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University in New York, in which she found that there is no correlation between the availability of medicinal cannabis and increased consumption by teenagers. Public opinion has allowed the state governments of Colorado, Washington, Oregon and the District of Columbia to legalise and regulate cannabis. The same process has happened although with a very different model in Uruguay. This is a less dangerous approach than the prohibitionist approach, which we have had nearly 50 years of experience to demonstrate does not work. What I am putting forward is by no means perfect, but I believe it would be safer and better than the kind of anarchy that, paradoxically, prohibition creates. I would be grateful if the Minister would, if he does not agree with me, explain why he does not agree with me.
Lord Bates
At the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, I will tell him why we disagree with him. He is right to say that in the previous groups we explored certain elements of common ground and were willing to look at them. But here, in essence, we go to the heart of the difference—a philosophical difference—between the two sides. On the one hand, does one go down the line of leaving the door open—in the right reverend Prelate’s helpful phrase, the “yes, but” approach? Or, do you say, “No. We have tried that. It is a blanket ban. We have been very clear about that”. Do you go down that route?
The expert panel wrestled with this. It was not an easy call. It set out opportunities for creating a regulatory model and looked at the New Zealand model very carefully indeed. The panel saw that there were some opportunities and good standards could be achieved—all of the points the noble Lord mentioned. But the panel said that the problem with creating a regulatory model is that it does nothing about the availability of new psychoactive substances, and use of “approved” NPS may increase, with “low risk” considered “safe” by the public. There could be the possibility that approved NPS may act as a gateway to illicit drugs. There may be a risk that unregulated drugs could be passed off as being regulated. The model could be costly and timely to implement, including establishing a regulatory body. It would not be a simple system to enforce, including the need for substance testing and test purchases. It could be difficult to prove the long-term safety of a product before it is authorised. It would be a challenge to define “low risk” and it could be a legal risk if “low-risk” products actually caused long-term harms.
Having weighed up all those points, the panel came down on the side of a blanket ban, saying that a regulatory model would not provide a proportionate response, as the infrastructure required to support the approach following primary legislation would take 12 to 18 months to develop, based on New Zealand estimates, and a mechanism for controlling NPS that were not “low risk” would still be needed, which could lead to confusing messages about NPS overall.
The regulatory power in Clause 3 has been designed to provide clarity so that there is no doubt as to our position on new psychoactive substances—they are banned—and to future-proof the list of exempted substances and ensure that substances such as medicinal products are not inadvertently caught by a blanket ban provided for in the Bill.
Schedule 1 contains broad categories of established substances and products that we want to exclude from this regime—mostly because they are already regulated by other legislation, not because the Government consider them harm free, as is the case with smoking and alcohol. Certainly the Government do not go around with a cavalier attitude. They spend a great deal of time and employ various taxation and duty regimes to dissuade people from consuming either in excess. The Home Office expert panel considered the merits of a regulatory regime as part of their examination of how best to enhance our legislative response to new psychoactive substances. In looking at the opportunities and risks presented by such an approach, the panel considered the regulatory regime adopted in New Zealand. I will not deny that the expert panel identified some opportunities inherent in such an approach. I have touched on some of those.
Effectively, these amendments challenge what I would call an essential principle of the Bill before us and undermine the essence of the Government’s approach, which has been to listen to the views of the expert panel, consider the evidence and come forward with legislation. That is what we have done. These amendments would challenge the very heart of that principle. For that reason, I am afraid, the Government cannot support them. I ask the noble Lord to consider withdrawing them.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I do not know whether I missed it, but the response seemed to be almost entirely to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth. I clearly need to go back and read what the answer was to the first of the amendments and my other amendments in the group. Given the time—
Baroness Meacher
I feel awful intervening at this time of night. We all need to go home. I just want to raise the point that the expert panel was established, as I understood it, rather than referring to the ACMD for its advice on some of these issues. I do not want the Minister to reply right now—perhaps he can do so when we next meet—on the question of how the expert panel was selected. It seems extraordinary to me that any set of experts would advise against having a calibrated system of low, medium and high risk and risk-associated penalties and responses to drugs. At this late hour I do not wish to say more, but I would be grateful if the Minister thought about this before we meet.
Lord Bates
I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. She drew attention to Clause 3(3) which states:
“Before making any regulations under this section the Secretary of State must consult such persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate”,
and asked for further clarification. We have not specified in the Bill who such persons should be, as the appropriate consultees would need to be tailored to the substance under consideration. That said, and reflecting the terms of Amendments 16 and 19, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the British Pharmacological Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences could well be part of the consultation process. I will leave to one side the matters relating to the role of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs because they will be raised in subsequent amendments. Again, I apologise to the noble Baroness for not covering that, but I got a little carried away in responding to the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth.