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Oral Answers to Questions
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
1. What plans she has to repatriate control over British fishing waters and policy in the event of the UK leaving the EU.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
We have made some progress in reforming the common fisheries policy so that there is a commitment to fish sustainably, a ban on the wasteful practice of discarding fish, and new flexibilities to improve the way quotas work. As my hon. Friend knows, the formal Government position is that the UK should remain a member of the European Union. However, should there be a decision to leave in the forthcoming referendum, there are well-established international conventions that govern territorial scope and the way nation states manage fisheries.
Mr Hollobone
The EU’s common fisheries policy has been a disaster for both the British fishing industry and our marine environment. Overfishing by heavily subsidised Spanish trawlers has seen North sea cod stocks fall by 80% and the number of fishermen halved, and Britain is constantly outvoted on matters affecting our traditional British fishing grounds by EU member states that have no coastlines themselves. Will the Minister draw up plans to repatriate our fishing grounds as soon as possible?
George Eustice
As I said, the formal Government position is that we should remain a member of the EU, but my hon. Friend knows that Ministers have been given the discretion to take an alternative view if they want. We have made progress in reforming the common fisheries policy. This year at the December Council we saw increases in cod and haddock quotas in the North sea. As a result of the work that we have done with other countries, including Norway, Iceland, the Faroes and other EU countries, we have seen a recovery of stocks, in the North sea in particular.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Does the Minister acknowledge, however, that one of the difficulties involved in Brexit is that it is not necessarily easy to erase grandfather fishing rights?
George Eustice
With many countries—EU member states and also countries such as the Faroes, Iceland and Norway—we have mutual access agreements, and we have annual discussions about the allocation of fishing opportunities. This is the norm. Whether countries are in the EU or not, there is always a large degree of international debate on these issues.
Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend confirm that whatever happens on 23 June, there will still need to be quotas, fishermen will still want to export to EU countries two thirds of the fish and 86% of the shellfish that we land in the United Kingdom, and fishermen will still want to retain rights to fish in EU waters?
George Eustice
My hon. Friend is right. Countries outside the European Union do have quota systems. We have considered alternatives, but a quota system of some sort, with the flexibilities that we are trying to introduce, is the best way to conserve fish stocks, we believe. Just as Norway, the Faroes and Iceland have quotas, we would retain those too. When it comes to the market, whichever side of the EU debate people are on—whether they believe we should stay in or leave—we all agree that free trade is to the benefit of everyone.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I commend the Minister, who is obviously walking a very careful line today. He knows, however, that we had foreign trawlers operating in British waters before we were in the UK—[Interruption.]—sorry, before we joined the European Union, and that would remain the case if we were to leave. How many bilateral arrangements would be necessary if we were to leave the European Union? Can the Minister tell the fishermen in my constituency how the crucially important EU-Norway negotiations, which have a tremendous direct impact on us every year, would be conducted?
George Eustice
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. There is a misconception that the December Fisheries Council of the EU decides fishing opportunities in the North sea. As he and others know, fishing opportunities in the North sea are decided at the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission through the coastal states meetings and then EU-Norway. The UK currently does not have a seat at those meetings; we are represented by the EU. Obviously, if we were to leave, the UK would regain its seat on NEAFC.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
There is little doubt that membership of the EU has been damaging to the deep-sea fishing industry, but looking to the future, does my hon. Friend agree that our relationships with non-EU countries such as Iceland are particularly important to the industry?
George Eustice
Yes, my hon. Friend makes an important point. For Grimsby and his constituents, the close relations and the partnership we enjoy with Iceland in particular is extremely important. There is a tradition in this country that we import much of the fish that we consume, notably from Iceland and to a limited extent from Norway, and that we export much of the fish that we catch to the EU, but also to other third countries, such as China and Nigeria.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
2. What steps she is taking to meet the recycling targets in the EU circular economy package.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
There are two separate questions here. The EU circular economy package is still under negotiation, but on recycling rates we are doing well, as the hon. Gentleman knows. We have gone from 12.5% recycling in 2001 to nearly 44% recycling. That is one of the real success stories in the United Kingdom.
Mr Sheerman
The hon. Gentleman will know that the aim of the package is to have a sustainable, low-carbon, resource-efficient, competitive economy. Does he accept that had it not been for European Union regulation, we would be nowhere in terms of dealing with waste? If it had not been for the stimulation from the EU and the EU package, we in this country would still be throwing all our waste in holes in the ground.
Rory Stewart
The hon. Gentleman tempts me into a much bigger political conversation, but it is true that the European Union has played a constructive role in this. It has shown real leadership on recycling, and there are certainly things we can learn from other European countries—particularly from Denmark and the success it has had on landfill.
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
I was litter-picking over the Clean for the Queen weekend outside a local primary school, and I was dismayed to find that most items were recyclable. What could the Government do to encourage the next generation to recycle and not to miss the opportunity to forge a circular economy?
Mr Speaker
I hope other colleagues are as virtuous as the right hon. Lady. She has set a very high and exacting standard.
Rory Stewart
I join you, Mr Speaker, in paying tribute to the virtue of my right hon. Friend. The answer is, of course, that we need to work on educating people—this is the German model—right the way from school upwards on the importance of protecting resources and of recycling. However, we could also do more to harmonise the system so that it is more straightforward, wherever people live in the country, to know exactly what needs to be recycled and where to put recycling.
Mr Speaker
I call Kerry McCarthy. [Interruption.] I had thought the hon. Lady was seeking to come in on Question 2.
Tim Loughton
Is my hon. Friend aware of the problems that some of these EU quotas cause local authorities such as Adur and Worthing in my constituency? The quotas are based on weight, and if the county council, which is the lead authority, collects more through municipal recycling sites, other local authorities have less to collect, so they cannot meet their targets and are penalised.
Rory Stewart
There certainly are issues there, and I am very happy to look at this specific one. However, we should say that most councils still have some way to go, so I pay tribute to South Oxfordshire, for example, which has hit a 67% recycling rate, when the national average is about 44%.
Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
Could the Government look at the problem of the number of wretched plastic-lined paper takeaway coffee cups, the overwhelming majority of which never get recycled because of the difficulties of ripping out the plastic lining? It is a huge problem.
Rory Stewart
I absolutely agree: it is a huge problem—there are tens of millions of these things being produced and thrown away. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, many cannot be recycled because of the way they are disposed of or because of their composition. The Government have tackled plastic bags—I hope everybody in the House would agree that the plastic bag tax has been a success—and coffee cups seem to be a very good thing to look at next.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
3. What recent progress she has made on the national flood resilience review and updating her Department's flood defence plans.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
We are making good progress on the national flood resilience review. The call for evidence closed on 4 March. Yesterday, at the Budget, the Chancellor announced that, as well as the £2.3 billion already committed, an additional £700 million will be made available for flood defences.
Diana Johnson
Has the Secretary of State any qualms about the fact that under the Help to Buy scheme her Government are subsiding first-time buyers to purchase homes in flood risk areas? At the same time, those people are not included in the Flood Re scheme the Government set up to provide flood insurance.
Elizabeth Truss
The reason the Flood Re scheme applies only to homes built before 2009 is that we are very clear that after that period there should be no building in these flood zones. That is a clear part of the national planning policy framework, and it should be adhered to by local authorities.
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)
May I thank the Secretary of State; the floods Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart); the floods envoy, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill); the Secretary of State for the Department for Communities and Local Government; the Prime Minister and indeed the Chancellor for all their hard work to ensure that Calderdale got the much needed flood defence money in yesterday’s Budget? Now that funding is not being inhibited for flood defences, will she assure the good people of Calder Valley that the Environment Agency and other agencies will be held to account over timescales to physically get spades in the ground?
Elizabeth Truss
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he has put in to make the case for Calderdale to receive this funding. I saw for myself the devastation that had been caused by the extreme weather over the Christmas period. We are investing an additional £35 million. At the end of May, there will be a report on the Mytholmroyd defences. Then, in October, we will produce a full plan for Calder Valley outlining the timescales and exactly which schemes are part of this.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Government finally gave in to pressure from Labour Members and will apply to the EU solidarity fund. As the Secretary of State said, yesterday the Government announced additional funding that goes some way towards compensating for huge cuts in flood defence spending in previous years. However, will any of this money be used to replace the 50% cut in DEFRA’s funding of crucial research on flood forecasts, warnings and defences, demonstrating that the Secretary of State understands the importance of up-to-date evidence in developing our flood defence plans?
Elizabeth Truss
Let us be absolutely clear about flood defence spending. Between 2005 and 2010, £1.5 billion was invested. In the previous Parliament the figure was £1.7 billion. In this six-year programme it is £2.3 billion, and we are adding an extra £700 million because of the extreme weather we are seeing. Under the previous Labour Government, nothing like that amount was invested in our flood defences.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
While considering future plans, will my right hon. Friend consider the aftermath of last December’s floods? Farmers in Ramsbottom in my constituency are being denied access to the farming recovery fund because people do not accept that Ramsbottom is in Lancashire, which it clearly is. When it rains and there is flooding, it does not stop at an artificial border, so will she ask the Rural Payments Agency to look at this and apply some common sense?
Elizabeth Truss
I very much believe in common sense, and I am happy to look at the case for my hon. Friend’s farmers. I am pleased to say that we have already allocated £1 million from the farm recovery fund to help them to get their farms back in order.
Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)
4. What assessment she has made of the potential effect on farmers of the UK leaving the EU.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
9. What assessment she has made of the potential effect on farmers of the UK leaving the EU.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
I believe that farmers are better off remaining in a reformed EU. The vast majority of our exports are to the EU—for example, 97% of lamb exports and 92% of beef exports. As part of the single market, we do not face the tariffs and barriers that we face in trying to export to other countries. That is vital for the health of our farming industry.
Chris Law
This week, European Commissioner Hogan announced a new package of measures to support the UK farming sector. Following that, UK farming union presidents have called on DEFRA, devolved Governments and the European Commission to work together on this new support package. Can the Secretary of State assure me that these trilateral talks will go ahead without any impact from the EU referendum campaign?
Elizabeth Truss
Absolutely. I was at the European Council on Monday, making the case for UK farmers. I want to see investment from the European Investment Bank helping our farmers to increase productivity, particularly in areas such as dairy in producing more products like cheese and butter to be able to add value to our industry.
Gavin Newlands
Does the Secretary of State agree that the EU is an invaluable support, both financially and socially, to rural communities across the UK, and that we absolutely need a resounding in vote in the referendum? If so, will she urge her farming Minister, the Minister of State, to listen to her, to the Prime Minister and to farmers themselves to ensure that our farmers do not bear the cost of internal Tory party feuds on 23 June?
Elizabeth Truss
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that rural communities depend on food and farming, which face much more export barriers than other sectors. For example, we have been trying for 20 years to get UK beef into the US, and we are still trying to get poultry exported to China. We have on our doorstep access to a single market of 500 million people for our fantastic UK products. I think we need to build on that, rather than leave the European Union. No single country has full access for agricultural products without being a full member of the EU.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
The Secretary of State is quite right in saying that, after BSE in 1996, British beef went back into France and across Europe in 1999 because of single market rules. Twenty years on, we still cannot get it into America or China, so where are all the great markets going to be if we shut ourselves off from the EU market?
Elizabeth Truss
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. If we look at the UK lamb industry, we will see that 40% of all the lamb produced by British farmers goes to the EU. That supports not just the farmers but our rural landscape and countryside. The fact is that no single country that is not a full member of the EU has tariff-free, hassle-free access to that market. Norway has to pay tariffs and pay into the EU, and Switzerland has to pay tariffs. Canada has quotas and tariffs on agricultural products. We should not take that relationship for granted.
Rishi Sunak (Richmond (Yorks) (Con)
One EU regulation that my sheep farmers complain to me about is the need for carcase splitting, which adds time and hassle, especially as farmers search for incisors poking through gums. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on the Government’s efforts to simplify that cumbersome regulation?
Elizabeth Truss
We are making progress. My hon. Friend the Minister of State, who has responsibility for farming, has recently had a meeting on the issue. We need common standards across Europe to make sure that we can freely trade with those other countries. As I have just said, that is particularly important for the sheep sector, 40% of whose products are exported to the EU.
Calum Kerr (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (SNP)
Even with the EU common agricultural policy payments, farmers are currently struggling because of supply chain issues and low commodity prices, and yesterday’s Budget offered them little help. As the National Farmers Union has pointed out, the
“continued focus on reducing corporation tax does nothing to help the 90% of UK farm businesses who are unincorporated”.
Will the Secretary of State meet the Chancellor to highlight those issues and the need for a fairer tax regime that treats incorporated and unincorporated businesses equally?
Elizabeth Truss
This April, farmers will be able to average their tax over five years, enabling them to deal with the volatile prices they currently face. We have also improved the capital allowances regime for farmers and farm businesses. We are not complacent: we continue to work in areas such as public procurement, with our Great British Food campaign, to make sure that we sell more British food here and overseas.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I share the Secretary of State’s views on the benefits of remaining in the EU for our farmers, the environment and the wider public good. However, why do we so often hear reports of the UK playing a negative role behind the scenes in EU negotiations, including opposing action on neonics and waste targets, and watering down important laws? If we vote to remain—and I hope we do—can we look forward to the UK playing a more positive role in Europe, starting with showing some real leadership on the environment and CAP reform?
Elizabeth Truss
I agree with the hon. Lady that we need to remain in a reformed EU, but I do not agree that the UK has played a negative role. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has recently led on the international wildlife trade, getting agreement across the EU to help to combat terrible trade in those endangered species. The former Environment Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), showed leadership on the common fisheries policy by stopping the throwing of perfectly healthy fish back into the sea. We are leading on CAP reform: only this Monday I presented to the European Council a paper streamlining audit requirements, on which we were supported by 17 other member states. We are constantly making progress. We are working to simplify the CAP, and changes have been made to it. Thirty or 40 years ago, there were wine lakes and butter mountains, but they no longer exist.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
5. How many schools are taking part in the Government’s new tree planting scheme.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
So far, 800 primary schools have participated in the scheme. The hope is that in the next stage we will give 1 million individual schoolchildren the opportunity to select, plant and care for their own tree.
Mr Walker
I congratulate the Minister on this fantastic scheme. I know that schools in Worcester, which are great fans of the forest schools initiative, will want to play their full part. Trees are a fantastic investment in cleaner air, in the quality of life in our cities and in flood defence. Will the Minister come to Worcester and see the tree renaissance that is taking place in our city, where our mayor, Roger Knight, is leading the planting of thousands of new trees?
Rory Stewart
I should be delighted to take up that offer. Worcester is showing real leadership, but we would like many more towns and cities in the United Kingdom to engage in planting more trees. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, it is fantastic for tackling air pollution, fantastic for biodiversity and great for our leisure and health. In particular, I pay tribute to the work in Worcester at Laugherne Brook and Perdiswell.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
In addition to the development of new woodland, the maintenance of existing woodland is equally important. What steps have the Government taken to promote and maintain our existing woodlands?
Rory Stewart
We have a series of schemes on this. The countryside stewardship scheme gives grants to improve woodland. We also have new projects worth millions of pounds working on under-managed woodland to make sure it is managed better, and we have a £1 million scheme to help people to plan and develop new woodland across the north of England in particular.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
6. What steps she is taking to reduce food waste.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
The work on food waste has a number of components. It starts at the farm gate, by making sure that food is not wasted there; it continues to the supermarket shelves, by making sure that products last longer on those shelves; and it ends up in households, by making sure that people understand how to buy sensible portions and that they do not throw away food unnecessarily. The Courtauld 2025 agreement, led by the Waste and Resources Action Programme, has the target of reducing food waste by a further 20% between now and 2025.
Patricia Gibson
The Minister will know that the Scottish Government have pledged to cut food waste by a third and save £500 million by 2025. Scotland is the first part of Europe to set such a food waste reduction target. Will the Minister follow that example and pledge a UK Government target to save money and cut food waste?
Rory Stewart
I pay tribute to Scotland for the work it is doing, but I politely point out that recycling rates in Scotland are, unfortunately, lower than they are in England or Wales. However, we very much endorse the desire of the Government of Scotland to improve that recycling rate, particularly in relation to food waste.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Where food waste occurs, it is important to treat it as a resource and put it to good use rather than send it to landfill. One of the best uses for it is in anaerobic digesters to produce electricity. As household food waste is collected by local authorities, what discussions has the Minister had with colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to encourage councils to raise the proportion of the food waste that they collect and send to anaerobic digestion?
Rory Stewart
There are two elements to that. The first is working with councils in Britain to make sure that they all move towards separate food waste collections. That is absolutely central. The second is making sure that we minimise that food waste, but that when it occurs, it is used either for composting or for the generation of energy. That also involves a long-term plan for infrastructure.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
May I wish you, Mr Speaker, and other right hon. and hon. Members a very happy St Patrick’s day? They say that if the sun shines on St Patrick’s day, it will be a very good summer. Only time will tell whether that will be the case.
I welcome the news that Tesco has said that all its unsold food will be given to charities, and that will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the reduction of food waste. What discussions has the Minister had with other large food chains to ensure that they do similar work?
Rory Stewart
I join the hon. Gentleman in celebrating St Patrick’s day.
Tesco is taking a serious lead on this, but many other retailers have also taken a lead, particularly Morrisons and the Co-op on the procurement of food and making it last. All the major retailers have now signed up to the Courtauld 2025 agreement. Currently, the waste coming from those retailers’ shelves is only about 0.2 million tonnes a year, which is lower than in other sectors. However, those supermarkets can contribute much more to everything down the chain, both at the farm gate and in the household, and we will continue to work with them closely on that.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
If the Minister wants any further advice on anaerobic digester plants, he should go to see David Easom, a farmer based in the villages of Wessington and Brackenfield in the Bolsover constituency. Several years ago, I mentioned the fact that he was going to have an anaerobic digester in this House. It is now up and running. Everybody is going to visit him, and Ministers from the Department should go to see how it works. Everything is in running order, just like everything else in Bolsover.
Mr Speaker
We very much hope that the plant is in Derbyshire, rather than in this House.
Rory Stewart
I feel that that is a great compliment. It is a historic opportunity for me to spend time with the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), whom I have long admired. I very much look forward to visiting the plant with him.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
7. What steps the Government are taking to reduce marine litter and plastics pollution.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
Part 3 of the UK marine strategy, published last December, sets out the actions we are taking to improve the marine environment. It includes measures that contribute to reducing sources of marine litter, including plastics. In England, we have now introduced a 5p charge on single-use plastic bags, following the success of this policy in other parts of the UK. Given the trans-boundary nature of marine litter, we are working with other countries in the Oslo and Paris convention for the protection of the marine environment.
Margaret Greenwood
Marine litter and plastic waste are damaging our wonderful coastlines and marine life, not least, in my constituency, in the Dee estuary, which is internationally important for its bird life, the beaches of West Kirby, Thurstaston and Hoylake, and the Red Rocks site of special scientific interest, which is an important breeding ground for frogs and natterjack toads. Will the Government follow President Obama’s lead and ban microbeads in cosmetics?
George Eustice
This issue was discussed at OSPAR—the Oslo and Paris—convention in 2014. The UK pushed very hard to get a voluntary agreement to which the cosmetics industry would sign up. At the end of last year, Cosmetics Europe, the industry body representing all cosmetic manufacturers in Europe, gave an undertaking to phase out the use of microbeads in particular. We rule out nothing when it comes to considering regulation in the future.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
The hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) is absolutely right to raise this issue. Nothing is more heartbreaking than walking along a coast—or even in Lichfield, right in the middle of the nation, where we have the lakes of Minster Pool and Stowe Pool—and seeing swans and other animals suffering because of bags and other material that have been left there.
George Eustice
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. That is why we took the decision to introduce the 5p charge on single-use plastic bags. The big problem we have with plastics is that they remain in the environment for a very long time, which compounds the problem, and we add to it each year. Once these plastics are in the marine environment, it is incredibly difficult for them to be removed, so it is essential that we do all we can to stop plastics getting into the marine environment.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
At the last Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions, the Environment Secretary assured me that the Government were serious about tackling plastics pollution and marine litter. Yet, on the circular economy all we hear is vague talk of encouraging voluntary action and mumblings about overarching concerns. On the marine side, 10 EU countries have invested in joint EU research into micro-plastics in the sea, the joint programming initiative on oceans. We have world-class marine research facilities in the UK, so why are we not part of that?
George Eustice
I think the hon. Lady will find that we are doing quite a lot of research on marine plastics. Plymouth University has done some work for us on that. I am very clear: we do want action across Europe. That is why we have worked with partners in the OSPAR convention, and why we have pressed to get a voluntary undertaking by the industry to get rid of microbeads. As I said in my initial answer, we have also been very clear that we do not rule out regulatory steps, if necessary.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
8. How many flood defence schemes are planned to (a) begin and (b) complete construction in 2016.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
Some 246 schemes were begun in 2016-17, and 190 are due for completion.
Rebecca Pow
Will the Minister kindly update the House on progress with the legislation that is required to set up the Somerset rivers authority as a separate precepting body, so that we can fund flood protection for the future? Local authority budgets are currently covered by a special caveat, but legislation is required to set up the precept for 2017-18.
Rory Stewart
As my hon. Friend is aware, DEFRA committed £1.7 million to the Somerset rivers authority. That authority has now decided that its preferred solution is a precept, and a shadow precept will come into effect from April this year. We look forward to discussing the long-term financial arrangements directly with the authority.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
York welcomes the investment in our flood defences, but the Foss barrier will be underfunded by this Government for the improvement that it needs, and the capacity of the pumps will be 40 tonnes per second, not the 50 tonnes per second that is needed. Will the Minister commit to considering that issue, to ensure that we have sufficient funds to improve the barrier?
Rory Stewart
We have significant funds for the barrier, and we are committed to considering that issue. I am happy to go and look at the Foss barrier with the hon. Lady. The calculation on the pumps is an engineering calculation, and we would be happy to look at the flood maps with the hon. Lady. We will provide the correct funds for the correct solution for the Foss barrier.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. We are short of time, so single-sentence, short supplementaries are needed.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
13. A small but important role in flood defence is played by farmers who clear ditches and drainage channels. What progress is being made to remove the bureaucracy that sometimes stops them from doing that?
Rory Stewart
Two weeks ago, we took through the House new legislation that will significantly simplify what happens. We will focus the efforts of the Environment Agency on the highest-risk cases, we have reduced red tape by 50%, and we are allowing farmers in non-specialist environmental zones to clear 1,500 metres of drainage ditch without having to get a bespoke permit.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Will the money allocated for flood defences in yesterday’s Budget stay with the Treasury or be transferred directly to the Department? How much of it will be allocated for maintenance of flood defences?
Rory Stewart
We are currently discussing the details of that, but the Treasury was clear that at least £40 million in the first year will go into maintenance, and £200 million of the initial allocation will go to capital spending on flood defences.
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
16. The Lincolnshire wolds are beautiful but suffer from flooding. How many homes will be protected in the market towns of Horncastle and Louth as a result of the flood alleviation schemes that are funded in part by this Government, Lincolnshire County Council, and East Lindsey Council?
Rory Stewart
Some 13,989 properties are due to be protected, including more than 300 in the areas mentioned by my hon. Friend.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
10. What steps she is taking to improve monitoring of levels of air pollution.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
11. What steps she is taking to improve monitoring of levels of air pollution.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
The Department continues to improve its monitoring of levels of air pollution in line with the EU ambient air quality directive, and the computer programme to calculate emissions from road transport, or Copert. We have increased the number of nitrogen dioxide monitoring stations by more than 30% over the past three years.
Ruth Cadbury
Air pollution will cost many more thousands of lives if air quality is not improved significantly. How will the Government achieve legally binding targets for air pollution if the third runway at Heathrow is permitted?
Rory Stewart
The current objective is to focus on nitrogen dioxide thresholds and ensure that we reduce ambient air quality rates below 40 micrograms per cubic metre. Heathrow is a totally separate question that must be assessed independently by the Environment Agency and our air quality monitors, to see whether ambient air quality targets are met.
Rory Stewart
That is a very good question. In those five cities, the ambient air quality level of 40 micrograms per cubic metre is due to be exceeded. Therefore, our objective is to ensure that by 2020, in Birmingham, Leeds, Nottingham, Derby and Southampton, we drop that level below 40 micrograms per cubic metre.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
14. In Deptford, air pollution levels are more than double the European legal limit. London as a whole breached annual air pollution limits just days into 2016. Does the Minister think his Department is doing enough?
Rory Stewart
We have reduced nitrogen dioxide dramatically in Britain—by 44%—but there are still significant problems in London. That is partly to do with the population and design of London, which is why an ultra-low emission zone is being introduced in London to ensure that we exclude the vehicles that are responsible for the majority of that air pollution.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
The Government are committed to ensuring that our country is resilient in the face of more extreme weather. That is why we announced in yesterday’s Budget an additional £700 million for flood defences on top of the £2.3 billion capital budget we already have in place. That means £150 million for new schemes in those areas affected by the winter floods, and further funding to support the outcomes of the national resilience review.
Michael Fabricant
On a different matter—[Laughter.] Well, it is a different matter! Staffordshire farmers are particularly strong in dairy farming. Like dairy farmers all over the United Kingdom, they are suffering from volatile prices and low milk prices. What can my right hon. Friend do to try to get milk consumed more—I am a great lover of it, which is why I have good teeth—and to get Government Departments buying milk?
Elizabeth Truss
I compliment my hon. Friend on his teeth. We have been working hard on Government procurement. One hundred per cent. of the milk that Government Departments buy is British, as well as 98% of the butter and 86% of the cheese. I am pleased to inform the House that, from April this year, all 30 million cartons of milk supplied to Her Majesty’s Prison Service will be British.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Derbyshire authorities found that 60% of takeaway ham and cheese pizzas contained neither ham nor cheese. To protect public health and give confidence in the food we eat, when will the much trumpeted but little seen food crime unit be given the teeth it deserves?
Elizabeth Truss
The food crime unit has been established as per our commitment and is operational. I am sure it will be looking into cases such as that one.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
T3. The shellfish industry is worth £500,000 to the local economy in Portsmouth and has been affected by pollution in the past. What progress are the Government making to create blue belts that balance the legitimate interests of the fishing industry with marine conservation?
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
My hon. Friend makes a good point. As she knows, we recently designated an additional 23 marine conservation zones, taking the total to 50 around the country. In addition, we have a network of sites of special scientific interest, special areas of conservation and special protected areas. She makes an important point that, in those designations, we have to balance the needs of fishing with the needs of the environment. That is what we intend to do.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
T2. The Secretary of State has rightly acknowledged the need for better management of land upstream and water catchment areas in preventing floods. What concerns does she have about the burning of heather to improve grouse moors in upstream areas, where it reduces the ability to retain water?
Elizabeth Truss
We want management of entire catchments to reduce the flow going into our towns and cities, and to ensure that more farmland is protected. That is part of our 25-year environment plan that we are currently developing. The important thing to acknowledge is that the schemes we announced yesterday in the Budget will be looked at on a catchment basis. We are looking not just at Leeds, but at the entire Aire catchment.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
T4. A number of farmers in my constituency have suffered from delays in the basic payment scheme, with all the worry and financial anxiety that that has caused. What guarantee can the Minister give that this will not happen again?
George Eustice
We have worked very hard with 1,000 people on this project to pay farmers as soon as possible. We have done considerably better than other parts of the UK, such as Scotland. We have now paid about 83% of farmers. By the end of this month, almost all of them will have been paid. We believe that from next year—we have done a lot of work on the computer system—it will be much easier for farmers to complete their application, because the data will already be there.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
T5. Violent crime is rising in my urban constituency. It has been proven that access to open spaces and the natural environment can reduce stress and have a calming effect. Will the Minister consider discussing with me the trial of a programme to enable those at risk of serious youth violence to experience the calming effects of the natural environment?
Elizabeth Truss
I completely agree with the hon. Lady about the importance of the natural environment, and about making sure that our children and young people have access to it. Earlier this week I was with Zac Goldsmith looking at his plans to open up urban farms and urban pocket parks to help to get people that access.
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Lady was talking about the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith).
Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
T8. People who love bees, and farmers and consumers of products relying on them, are deeply concerned that there is an attempt by large US and EU chemical companies to downgrade environmental protections from pesticides in backroom lobbying over the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal in Brussels. Is this not an example of how elites run the EU and cause grave concern that their influence is unaccountable?
George Eustice
The authorisations to use all pesticides are decided by both the European Chemicals Agency and the European Food Safety Authority in the European Union. The chemicals regulation directorate in the Health and Safety Executive contributes regularly to them.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
T6. I echo the sentiments of my constituency neighbour the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) in welcoming the announcement yesterday on flood defences. May I probe for a little bit more detail and ask how much of the £150 million pot the Secretary of State anticipates will be available for Calderdale? Given that it is being raised in a tax in this way, when does she anticipate it becoming available?
Elizabeth Truss
I thank the hon. Lady for her thanks. I can tell her that £35 million has been allocated to Calderdale, which is in addition to the £17 million already scheduled to be invested over this Parliament. We will be producing a specific plan for Mytholmroyd, but there will be a plan for the entire Calder valley by October. We are making sure that local representatives of the local community are fully involved in putting together that plan, so that it has broad support.
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)
T9. Last week, I was delighted to join the Secretary of State on a visit to the thriving Roots farm shop in Barkby Thorpe in my constituency, which has both diversified and expanded in recent years. What steps is she taking to break down the barriers that stand in the way of other farm shops that want to expand?
Elizabeth Truss
I was delighted to meet my hon. Friend at the farm shop, and to experience some of the fantastic local produce available and see how the farmer was adding value to products. We want to enable more farmers to do that. Part of our rural productivity plan, which we have launched with the Department for Communities and Local Government, is a review of rural planning to try to remove the red tape for organisations such as farms shops that want to expand. People can contribute to that review at the moment.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
T7. Given that the position of the farming Minister is for the UK to leave the EU, what measures does he believe should be in place and how will he ensure financial assistance for Scottish farmers should there be a Brexit?
George Eustice
As I explained earlier and as the hon. Gentleman knows, the formal Government position is to remain in the European Union, but the Prime Minister himself made it clear this week that were the country to decide to leave the Government would of course continue to support British agriculture.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
Would my hon. Friend broaden the list of special areas of conservation to include the Thames estuary, which has important marine habitat, including marine marshes and marine sands in the area I happen to represent?
George Eustice
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Both Leigh marsh and Leigh sands are wonderfully important habitats for wildlife. They already benefit from the protection of being a site of special scientific interest and are also part of a special protected area under the birds directive, so there is already a lot of protection for these wonderful sites.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
In Morpeth in my constituency, we have a Rolls-Royce flood defence system, but we also have a problem with insurance companies still quoting exceedingly high premiums. They blame the Environment Agency for not updating the data. What can the Minister do to resolve this unacceptable situation?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
There are two issues here which we will be meeting shortly to discuss. First, the introduction of Flood Re will ensure affordable flood insurance underwritten by a national scheme, meaning that lower-rate taxpayers’ premiums and excesses will be £250. Secondly, on businesses, we had a meeting yesterday with the British Insurance Brokers Association, which has now prepared a new package, with more specialised and precise mapping, to ensure that affordable flood insurance is available not just to households but to businesses.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
1. What plans the Church of England has to engage with communities that are most in need; and if she will make a statement.
Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)
5. What plans the Church of England has to engage with communities that are most in need; and if she will make a statement.
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
7. What plans the Church of England has to engage with communities that are most in need; and if she will make a statement.
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
Under the Church’s major renewal and reform programme, the whole basis on which the commissioners will disburse funding to dioceses will be weighted significantly towards resourcing the Church’s mission in the most deprived areas.
Fiona Bruce
As a former Warrington councillor, I am aware that the boiler room learning hub at Sir Thomas Boteler School, supported by Warrington Youth for Christ, provided a supportive place for after-school study for many students over several years. Does my right hon. Friend agree that such partnership working between local churches and community groups is one of the best ways of raising the life chances of children in the communities most in need?
Mrs Spelman
Yes, I could not agree more. This school, in the Chester diocese, near my hon. Friend’s constituency, is an example of best practice. I was struck by its introduction of a leadership programme for 14 to 16-year-olds. It takes them to Lancaster University for four days and helps them to fulfil their potential and play an active role in their community and wider society.
Tom Elliott
Will the right hon. Member tell us whether the Church has any specific programmes dealing with the homeless or those with long-term addictions, such as alcohol or drug abuse?
Mrs Spelman
I cannot speak for the Church of Ireland. Obviously, I am speaking from the experience of the Church of England, whose social action does indeed cover the most vulnerable people in our society. Right here, in the diocese of London, it is possible for Members of Parliament to see the work the Church of England does among the homeless. That is replicated in all the dioceses within the Church of England, and I imagine that the same happens in the hon. Gentleman’s own nation.
Jeremy Quin
May I draw my right hon. Friend’s attention to the work done by Horsham Matters in my constituency? Those local churches are working together to provide a winter homeless shelter and other help for the homeless, a food bank and furniture and white goods for those in crisis. They even provide places for apprenticeships—[Interruption.] I understand, Mr Speaker. They do a lot of good work. Is that not a fine example to share with the House?
Mrs Spelman
That is one of many examples of where the Church’s social action really makes a difference to the most vulnerable. In respect of the earlier question about the role of the local council, it is significant that Horsham council ran a social inclusion working group bringing together churches, charities, the citizens advice bureau and debt advice organisations to support and advise the most vulnerable.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
2. What discussions the Church Commissioners have had with the Church of England on supporting the Government’s See Potential initiative.
Mrs Spelman
The Church of England is fully supportive of the See Potential initiative and all efforts to help employers recognise the potential within people regardless of their background.
Andrew Stephenson
The See Potential initiative focuses in part on helping people with criminal convictions to get an opportunity in the jobs market. Churches are a vital presence within the prison system and are often key to people’s rehabilitation. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Church can play an important role in spreading the message to other employers that there is a benefit to them in exercising the Christian value of forgiveness?
Mrs Spelman
I could not agree more with that example, as it is incumbent on Christians to visit people in prisons. I have been very struck by an initiative from my own parish church, whereby volunteers mentor ex-offenders before they come back into society to help them prepare to go straight and to live a life in which they can sustain themselves. These are excellent examples that can be replicated in all constituencies.
Mr Speaker
I call Mr Alan Mak. Where is the feller? I call Mr Stephen Phillips.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
4. What assessment the Commission has made of the value for money of the National Audit Office.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough)
The Public Accounts Commission, which I have the honour to chair, sets a strategy and budget for the National Audit Office. We assess the NAO’s performance against a range of measures. To highlight just three, the NAO’s work results in large savings for the taxpayer; in 2014, its work led to externally validated savings of £1.15 billion, which is £18 for every pound it costs to fund the NAO. Secondly, it has done this while at the same time reducing its own costs by 27%. Finally, the NAO is itself subject to annual value-for-money studies by its external auditor.
Stephen Phillips
As my hon. Friend says, for every pound we spend on the NAO, the NAO saves the taxpayer £18. The Comptroller and Auditor General has been very pessimistic in his budget estimation for next year in seeking to reduce his budget. Does my hon. Friend agree that, given that we get £18 back for every pound we spend on it, we should spend more on the NAO, not less?
Sir Edward Leigh
I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for that question, but the Comptroller and Auditor General and I are very mindful of the economic situation and of advice given to us by the Treasury, although I should say that as a body the NAO is entirely independent of the Treasury, about financial pressures. Above all, we believe that the NAO should practise what it preaches. I have assured the Comptroller and Auditor General—I say this to my hon. and learned Friend who asks a very serious question—that if extra work comes his way, such as auditing the BBC, I will not stand in his way to getting extra resources to do the job on behalf of this Parliament.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Does the Chairman agree that to provide value for Scotland, NAO spending on devolved matters should result in Barnett consequentials arising from the £6 million or £7 million budget?
Sir Edward Leigh
I do not really want to get involved in Scottish politics or what the Comptroller and Auditor General of Scotland does. Let me say, however, that the Comptroller and Auditor Generals from all over the United Kingdom work very closely together. They set best practice, and I believe that our Comptroller and Auditor Generals throughout the nations of the United Kingdom are world leaders in providing value for money.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
6. What steps the Church Commissioners are taking to increase the sustainable generation of power on the Church estate.
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
The Church Commissioners are committed to the sustainable generation of power on the Church estate. As of January 2016, over 400 churches and clergy homes were generating electricity from solar panels on their roofs, and both Winchester cathedral and Gloucester cathedral are planning to install solar panels this year.
Dr Murrison
Very conveniently, most of our ancient churches are built east-west, which means that there is a southerly elevation that is convenient for photovoltaic generation. What more encouragement will my right hon. Friend give the Church Commissioners to make sure that this important community resource is used to turn our ancient churches from the chilly places they currently are into something more accommodating?
Mrs Spelman
My hon. Friend’s question is timely, because it allows all hon. Members to hear that it is possible to put these renewable energy features on listed buildings. Churches have found all sorts of ways of installing renewable energy generation, and the planning authority within the Church, the Faculty, has become much more flexible when it comes to requests to install these renewable energy features.
Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)
I hope my right hon. Friend will not mind if I get a bit Trollopian. In order to take these sorts of matters forward, we need leadership in the Church. In the diocese of Oxfordshire, we are lacking a bishop. There has been no Bishop of Oxford for such a long time that we are beginning to wonder whether Sir John Chilcot is involved in his appointment. Will my right hon. Friend convey that what we need is leadership in the Church—locally as well as nationally?
Mrs Spelman
I am not sure that this question has a great deal to do with renewable energy; it may have more to do with Trollope. The vacancy in the Oxford diocese is, of course, a matter of concern, but there has already been one attempt to bring a list of candidates before those who can help to make that decision. I believe that a second attempt to produce such a list will be evident in May.
Mr Speaker
I note that the hon. Gentleman acutely exploited the diverse meanings of the word “power” so that he could remain in order.
Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
8. What support the Church Commissioners are giving to the Church of England to increase the representation of women in leadership positions.
Mrs Spelman
I am very pleased to say that No. 10 Downing Street has just announced that the Venerable Jan McFarlane, currently Archdeacon of Norwich, will take up the post of Bishop of Repton. She will be the first female bishop in the east midlands.
Pauline Latham
I welcome that announcement—I am delighted to hear that we are to have a woman bishop at Repton—but will my right hon. Friend also join me in welcoming the Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015, which will enable the Bishops Bench in the other place to better reflect the gender diversity in the Church and in wider society?
Mrs Spelman
Absolutely—and how hard my predecessor worked on that legislation. There are now two female Lords Spiritual, and for the next nine years the 2015 Act will enable any new female diocesan bishop to be introduced before the next available man.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
We are enjoined to do mathematics. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, given that women were held back for so many decades, it should not be a surprise if positions of responsibility and power are over-represented in new appointments, so that the balance of merit reflects the talents of both men and women in the Church of England?
Mrs Spelman
I could not agree more, and that is the justification for the very mild positive discrimination that is being applied in this instance with the aim of introducing more women to the House of Lords. Women now make up 41% of the total number of full-time ordained clergy.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
9. What support the Church Commissioners provide to cathedrals to contribute to the cultural and economic life of the UK.
Mrs Spelman
Cathedrals play a significant part in the local economy. Attendance is increasing, and their contribution to the economy has increased by 27%. No doubt that was partly responsible for inspiring the Chancellor’s generous doubling of the £20 million that was originally provided for the cathedral repair bill as part of the centenary world war one fund.
Grahame M. Morris
Durham cathedral, which is in my area, is a particularly fine example. Let me also give a plug for that great working-class gathering, the Durham miners’ gala, which will take place on Saturday 9 July. Could any of that £20 million be used to renovate some of the churches and church assets in other mining communities? St Mary the Virgin church in Seaham, for example, is one of only 20 Viking churches in the country.
Mrs Spelman
I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman about the magnificence of Durham cathedral. In fact, it is about to launch an Open Treasure project that is designed to produce a sustainable future for the cathedral. However, a sustainable and flourishing cathedral has a knock-on effect on any city and its regional economy. As we have seen in other dioceses, a cathedral can act as a hub, attracting more and more visitors, and also drawing their attention to the magnificent things that can be seen in surrounding churches.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Tonight Lichfield cathedral will switch on the new lights whose installation was made possible by the last £20 million grant from the Chancellor. However, the chapter roof is now leaking, and it holds the medieval library. May I engage my right hon. Friend in helping us to try to get some more money with which to restore and maintain the library?
Mrs Spelman
I am sure that, following the Chancellor’s generosity yesterday in agreeing to provide an additional £20 million to help with the cathedral repair bill, Lichfield will be one of the first contenders to dip into that fund. As is so often the case after a Budget, the Church of England now has an opportunity to say a very big thank you for the additional money.
Mr Speaker
I will call the hon. Gentleman if it is to be one short sentence.
Jim Shannon
Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is my one short sentence. Is there a case for cathedrals to reach out and host events, whether they are classes or simply community events that help to bring the community together while also encouraging more people to visit cathedrals? I hope that that is short enough, Mr Speaker.
Mrs Spelman
It is clear from the increasing attendance figures that Church of England cathedrals do bring more people together. It is also significant that, in the last decade, there has been a 14% increase in the number of educational visits, which demonstrates that cathedrals appeal to all generations.
Business of the House
(8 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the future business, please?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Chris Grayling)
The business for next week is as follows:
Monday 21 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.
Tuesday 22 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.
Wednesday 23 March—Proceedings on the High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments, followed by motion relating to Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993, followed by motion relating to Short money.
Thursday 24 March—Debate on a motion relating to court closures, followed by matters to be raised before the forthcoming Adjournment. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee. I should add that, as you will be told formally, Mr Speaker, owing to the absence of one of the two of us, you will see a duel next week between the Deputy Leader of the House and the shadow Deputy Leader of the House. We look forward to that with interest.
Friday 25 March—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 11 April, when we return from the Easter recess, will include:
Monday 11 April—Second Reading of the Finance Bill.
Tuesday 12 April—Debate on a motion on reform of support arrangements for people with contaminated blood. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee. Following this, the Chairman of Ways and Means is expected to name opposed private business for consideration.
Wednesday 13 April—Opposition day (unallotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
Thursday 14 April—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 15 April—The House will not be sitting.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 24 March will be:
Thursday 24 March—General debate on the NHS in London.
Chris Bryant
The Leader of the House means that I am not going to be here next week, so my eminently capable deputy, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), is going to be taking up the cudgels on our behalf.
What a dreadful two-fingers Budget! Two fingers up to the most vulnerable in the land—people who cannot dress or clean themselves—and two fingers crossed behind the Government’s back in the hope that the £56 billion black hole will all come right by the end of this Parliament. And what a turnaround, isn’t it? Only weeks ago, the Chancellor told us that the future was sunny but now he says that storm clouds are on the horizon. That is a quick-change routine that Dame Edna Everage would be proud of. Every single target has been missed—he is no William Tell either, is he? Growth figures—wrong. Productivity—wrong. Trade—wrong.
The deficit was meant to have been abolished by 2015. Now the Chancellor hopes beyond hope to have a surplus of £10 billion in 2020. Does anyone really believe that? Does even the Leader of the House believe it? The Institute for Fiscal Studies certainly does not. Is this not yet another pledge not worth the vellum that it is not printed on? More leaks than Wales. More spin than a whirling dervish in a washing machine. The Chancellor actually boasted yesterday about extra money for school sports when he is the person who cut it in the first place. That is like a burglar going to the police and begging for a reward for turning himself in. And frankly, burglars can’t be choosers.
Will the Leader of the House explain the commitment to turn every school into an academy? There are 15,632 schools in England that are not yet academies. The cost of converting a school to academy status is £44,837. That comes to a total of £700 million, but the Chancellor allocated only £140 million to academisation, so where will the shortfall of £560 million come from?
Mind you, Mr Speaker, I have to say that there were some things in the Budget to rejoice about. I am particularly glad that the Severn bridge tolls will be halved, thanks to the campaign by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and her colleague sitting next to her, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). As I am sure you will remember, Mr Speaker, I announced last week that the obesity strategy would be out soon, and now we have it—or at least part of it: the sugar tax. I am delighted that the Chancellor has finally realised the dangers of Coke. [Laughter.] It is just a shame that he could not bring himself to use the word and said “cola” instead. Perhaps the Leader of the House can explain why.
Will the Leader of the House explain how the changes to personal independence payments will be introduced? Should they not be in primary legislation? [Interruption.] I think things have just been explained to the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis). Seriously, though, the changes should be brought through primary legislation to enable proper scrutiny in both Houses. Given other recent cuts in disability benefits, will the Government publish a cumulative impact assessment? There is something deeply distasteful about imposing a £3,000 per person cut on the 200,000 most vulnerable people in our country while the richest get a £200 tax handout. I am unsurprised that Graeme Ellis, a lifelong Conservative voter and disability campaigner from Lancaster, has resigned from the Tory party. We will fight the changes. I warned the Leader of the House not to try to pull a fast one on working tax credits by using unamendable secondary legislation and I do so again now.
Incidentally, yesterday saw the Government defeated three times in the House of Lords on the Trade Union Bill and by big majorities, too—nearly two to one in every case. There is more to come. Is it not time for the Government to give up on this vindictive and partisan piece of legislation?
I have been told to be calm about this bit, Mr Speaker. I see that the motion on Short money is tabled for next Wednesday. Our usual channel discussions have been productive, and I thank the Leader of the House for the part that he has played. I hope that the House will be able to welcome the package when it is finally published, but will that be this afternoon or on Monday?
Many Members have had recent difficulties with banks, which have been implementing the laws on money laundering in a disproportionate manner. We all want to tackle money laundering across the EU, but it is crazy that MPs, their family members and even their friends are now being denied bank accounts simply because they are connected to a “politically exposed person”. Will the Government ensure that a proper debate on the matter will be held in Government time so that we can get the balance right and tell the banks where to go?
Holy week starts on Sunday, so I wish all Members, their families and staff a happy Easter. It is also Purim next week, when Jews remember the attempt to kill all the Jews in Persia. That was not, of course, the last attempted annihilation of the Jews. Seventy-four years ago today, the first Polish Jews were gassed at Belzec extermination camp. Sadly, anti-Semitism is still alive today, and I am sure that the Leader of the House will join me in saying that we must do everything in our power to stop religious intolerance and racial hatred infecting our politics and our political parties. That means calling out anti-Semitism wherever we find it, even if that is inconvenient to ourselves, and expelling from our political parties those who peddle such vile arguments. I hope that the Leader of the House will agree that all religious prejudice is equally despicable and will disown the Tories campaign against Labour’s candidate for Mayor of London, which is the most desperate, divisive and racially charged campaign that London has ever seen. They should be ashamed.
Chris Grayling
I echo the words of the shadow Leader of the House about wishing a happy Easter to all those who work in the House.
I will start by briefly addressing Members’ security again. There were a number of incidents at Members’ offices following a recent vote, which is and will always be completely unacceptable. I hope that the police will deal with things in the strongest possible way. I remind Members that the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority security package is now available both to them and, importantly, to their staff. If any Member experiences teething problems with the new package, I ask them to tell either myself or the Chairman of Ways and Means and we will seek to get things sorted.
We have just heard a lot about the Budget. To be frank, we heard more noise from the Opposition Benches today than we heard when the Leader of the Opposition was speaking yesterday. I can always tell when Opposition Members are embarrassed. It is normally easy to catch the shadow Leader of the House’s eye—he is always chatting across the Chamber—but when the Leader of the Opposition was speaking yesterday, I could not catch the shadow Leader of the House’s eye for one moment, because he knew just how bad it was. Next week, we will see a continuation of the Budget debate. I could not make head nor tail yesterday of what the Leader of the Opposition was saying he would do, but at least this week we have another insight into Labour’s economic policy. It turns out that the shadow Chancellor draws his inspiration from Marx, Trotsky and Lenin, an approach that has clearly influenced his current policy, given that Lenin once said:
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
That is precisely what Labour’s current policies would do, not just to the middle classes, but to working people up and down this country. On this morning’s “Today” programme, the shadow Chancellor could not even say that he supported capitalism—that is where Labour has got to as a party.
The shadow Leader of the House raised a question about the changes to personal independence payments. We will publish details of our plans on that front in due course, and of course all measures are produced with an impact assessment. He mentioned the Trade Union Bill in the Lords. I simply remind the House that what we are seeking to do is give trade union members the choice about whether or not they contribute to the Labour party. Donations to my party come from people who choose to donate to our side of the political spectrum. Labour has to depend on people who are obliged by the current system to donate, and that is what has to change.
On the Short money motion, I am also grateful for the collaborative discussions that have taken place. The motion will be published shortly and in good time for next week.
On the money laundering point, I absolutely agree with what the hon. Gentleman said and this concern should be shared by hon. Members in all parts of the House. We cannot have a situation where not only individual Members, but members of their families are affected by a change that, in my view, would be utterly unacceptable. We have discussed this matter with the Treasury and received its assurances that it believes people should not be affected, but clearly they are being affected. I will therefore treat this as a matter of great importance, as we all should, collectively, across the House.
The hon. Gentleman made the point about anti-Semitism. It has featured recently in a number of political activities and events, and that is wholly unacceptable and should always be so. He makes a comment about the election in London at the moment, but I remind him that anti-Semitism was also present a year ago at the general election in London, and not from our side of the political spectrum. I hope he will take the words he has said today and make sure that they are properly put into action in his party. It is not acceptable in any part of our life for there to be anti-Semitism. It must not occur ever. It has occurred and it should not happen.
Finally, this week we had the revelation that the shadow Leader of the House does not want to be the shadow Leader of the House at all. He wants to be Speaker, so much so that he appears even to be preparing a campaign team. Of course there is not actually a vacancy for your job, Mr Speaker, but I did have an idea for him. This week is apprenticeship week and I wondered whether you might consider taking him on as an apprentice Speaker. But of course there is one small problem: if he wants to be the next Speaker, he really does need to remember one thing, which is you do actually need to be popular and respected across the House. I think he has still got some work to do.
Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
May we have a debate on the TUC’s “Dying to Work” campaign, which focuses on strengthening legal protections for terminally ill employees such as my constituent Jacci Woodcock, who has been treated extremely badly by her employer, which tried to force her to resign?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend raised this issue yesterday and it is clearly a matter of great concern to her. She is absolutely right to bring forward a case such as this. I would hope that every employer would treat with respect and care anybody in such a terrible situation, whether in the public sector or the private sector. What we expect from our employers in this country is decency.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
May I, too, thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business? Well, it is the usual day after the Budget’s night before and already the wheels are coming off and the old smattering of fiscal fairy dust is wearing thin, revealing the useless and spent out old banger underneath. All of us who listened to this morning’s “Today” programme enjoyed greatly the evisceration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he was asked by a gently inquiring John Humphrys:
“What’s a bloke got to do in your job to get the sack?”
The Chancellor was defiantly trying to defend his own targets.
We must also commend the Conservative disabled activists who have made their voices heard in the past 24 hours, especially in regard to what happened with the website. Even Conservative Members are recognising the redistribution aspect of this Budget—redistribution from the poorest and the disabled to the wealthiest in our society. That is what characterises this Budget more than anything else.
The Leader of the House often talks about him and I wandering through the same Lobby. Perhaps we will have that opportunity next week when we vote on the tampon tax. I oppose that tax because women are being taxed because of their biology. The Brexiteers oppose it because of what they see as Brussels meddling. I say to the Leader of the House, come on, we can march through that Lobby together to oppose that Chancellor and his EU politicised Budget.
Regulations that deprive overseas pensioners of the uprating adjustment to the state pension have been forced through this House without any debate whatsoever. With 550,000 pensioners being affected by this adjustment—more than half a million—surely we must have some sort of debate, or a statement from the Government, about that intention in this regard. I hope that the Leader of the House will give some satisfaction on this matter.
There was an absolute disgrace in this House last Friday. My constituents got in touch with my office after seeing the spectacle in this place. They were appalled by the behaviour of a small number of politically motivated predominantly Conservative Members filibustering on private Members’ Bills just to stop the consideration of Bills that they do not personally like. We saw that behaviour in all its destructive glory when they filibustered against the NHS Reinstatement Bill. Of course they are entitled to do that under the rules of the House, but boy did they take advantage of those rules. Why do these rules apply only to private Members’ Bills? The rest of the legislation going through this House is properly timetabled and regulated. This behaviour must end, as our constituents are taking an increasing interest in private Members’ Bills. I accept that the Procedure Committee is looking into this matter, but a strongly worded statement from the Leader of the House and this Government to say that such behaviour cannot go on would be really helpful, so that we can change that practice.
Lastly, tucked away in the Budget statement yesterday was a plan to extend to income tax the principle of English votes for English law, but, apparently, legislation is required for that. Will the Leader of the House explain how that will be progressed, what type of legislation will be put in place, and whether it will give us the opportunity properly to scrutinise this dog’s breakfast that is EVEL—an opportunity that we did not get when the measure was rushed through in the first place? I would love to hear his remarks on that.
Chris Grayling
For a start, the hon. Gentleman talked about eviscerations in interviews. I presume that he heard the interview with Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, on “Sunday Politics” last week when she could not explain how her sums added up. She could not explain how it was possible for Scotland to carry on spending the same amount of money without tax increases, or how she would deal with a huge budget deficit without spending cuts. If we are talking about people who have no idea at all about how to manage an economy and how to manage finances, we just have to look to Edinburgh.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the Budget more broadly, and about people on low incomes. I simply remind him that our policies, since 2010, have put literally millions of people back into work, and have lifted more than half a million children out of households where no one worked and put them into an environment where people get up in the morning and go to work and bring a sense of responsibility to their lives. By 2019, the top 20% of our population will pay 50% of all taxes. This is a Government who are proud of their record and who have made a difference to this country. All we hear from the parties opposite is carping about what has been real success.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the Bill last Friday. I find it slightly baffling that he is standing up complaining about the handling in this House of an NHS Bill. The last time I looked, the NHS in Scotland was devolved, so why is it that the Scottish National party is so concerned about debates in this House on the national health service when we know that this House has nothing to do with the NHS in Scotland? Surely this is not just another example of SNP opportunism.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned English votes for English laws. We were very clear in the initial debates that that would also apply to those tax measures that do not apply in Scotland. It does not seem to be entirely sensible and fair that, as we devolve to Scotland more tax-raising powers on which the Scottish Parliament can vote and decide, the SNP should still be able to impose increased taxes on the English if it gangs up with others to do so. That is what we have sought to avoid, and that is what our reforms will make sure cannot happen in the future.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
May I follow up on my right hon. Friend’s response on money laundering? When are we going to have a debate about money laundering? Will the Government commit themselves to voting against the proposals? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the current proposals show, in effect, that we are being contaminated in our public life by the corruption that is in the rest of the European Union?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I am looking into the matter urgently. It is important that we get it right, not just for Members of this House, but for family members. I can give him an assurance that we will discuss this on a cross-party basis and in the House. We want to sort the matter out to make sure that it cannot affect our family members, our parents, our children, our siblings or ourselves.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
The Leader of the House and I are becoming good pen-friends, writing to each other regularly. Following our recent correspondence, I welcome his commitment to ensuring that sufficient Chamber time will be found for the number of days allocated to the Backbench Business Committee. That is provided for in Standing Order 14. However, I note that our views are not entirely aligned on the number of days that remain to be allocated this Session. Standing Order 14(4) is quite clear that only days where Back-Bench business has precedence over Government business should be counted towards the allocation, and I think there is some dispute about the number of days that remain to us. May I suggest that there might be merit in the office of the Leader of the House contacting the Clerks of our Committee to ensure that there is clarity about the amount of Back-Bench time remaining this Session so that the Government do not find themselves in the unfortunate position of having fallen short of the amount of time they were required to provide on the Floor of the House? Lastly, I did not realise I had so much influence. Last week when I spoke, I expressed my exasperation about Newcastle United, and within 24 hours there was a change of management.
Mr Speaker
The office of Chair of the Backbench Business Committee exercises an influence beyond what we previously knew.
Chris Grayling
Let us hope, for the hon. Gentleman’s sake, that the result of that change is that his team marches to survival in the premier league, although I notice that it did not manage to do so last week in its match against Leicester. I suspect, however, that most of us who are supporters of other teams—perhaps not Tottenham supporters, but most of the rest of us—are, for at least the last eight weeks of this season, Leicester City supporters. We wish the team well for the remainder of the season, and I hope the hon. Gentleman manages to turn up at St James’ Park next season to cheer on a premier league team.
On the allocation of time, the difference between us, I think, is simply that there was a period of time at the start of this Session after the general election and before the Backbench Business Committee could be formed. A number of days were therefore set aside for general debates. I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to talk about that, but inevitably, if the Backbench Business Committee exists for only part of a Session, there are pressures on time that we have to cater for. I specifically remember making sure that there was time for general debates in the period before his Committee was formed, but I am happy to talk to him about it. I know that discussions are taking place also between the Committee Clerks and my team.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the erecting of statues in the centre of London? I find it extraordinary that in Westminster Square there is no statue of the first female Prime Minister and, more pertinently, that there is no statue of Her Majesty the Queen, the longest-reigning monarch ever, who is about to celebrate her 90th birthday.
Chris Grayling
We are all looking forward to celebrating the Queen’s 90th birthday. We look forward to activities up and down the country. We should all thank my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), the Mayor of London, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport for deciding that Crossrail should be named the Elizabeth line, which is a fitting tribute to the Queen. On the subject of a statue of Margaret Thatcher, I know that the shadow Leader of the House, as a champion of equalities and of opportunities for women, would join me in thinking it entirely appropriate for Britain’s first female Prime Minister to be celebrated in such a way.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Did not the House reach an historic low in political opportunism yesterday when the Prime Minister defended himself and his lamentable record on air pollution by claiming credit for the Clean Air Act 1956, which was passed by this House 10 years before he was born? The subject is a serious one. I recently had a debate that was pulled because the Government could not make a suitable Minister available. Some 9,000 people die in this city every year because of air pollution, and 70 die in the city that I represent, but there are no plans to make our policies even legal. This is a shame and a scandal that should be addressed.
Chris Grayling
I would simply make two points. First, it is an issue that we are addressing—for example, through the work we have put in to incentivise hybrid and electric cars, and by looking at ways to cut emissions from power stations. I think, therefore, that we have done as much as any previous Government. However, the point the hon. Gentleman misses is that Conservative Members are proud to be part of a party that, over the last 150 to 200 years, has been responsible for most of this country’s great social reforms. That is a track record that we regard as a foundation on which to build for the future.
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)
Across Cannock Chase there are many voluntary groups that support the families and carers of those who suffer with dementia. On Saturday I attended an excellent dementia companions conference organised by St Joseph Roman Catholic church in Rugeley. Will my right hon. Friend join me in commending the work of those involved and of all those who provide such incredibly valuable practical support? May we have a debate in Government time to discuss what further support can be provided to families affected by dementia?
Chris Grayling
As my hon. Friend may know, members of the Cabinet went through the training module to become a dementia friend a couple of years ago, and it was immensely enlightening—I had experienced dementia in my family, but the training taught me things I did not previously know. The work done by groups such as the one in my hon. Friend’s constituency makes a real difference, not only to those who are suffering, but to those who help them. I commend my hon. Friend, her colleagues and, indeed, all those involved in this important area on the work they do.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
While I welcome the Budget news on further small business rate relief, I am concerned about the impact it will have on local authorities such as mine—Kirklees Council. May we have a debate to discuss what measures will be put in place to ease the burden on cash-strapped councils, many of which are already struggling to balance the books?
Chris Grayling
Last week, a number of Opposition Members said that we needed to do something about the impact of the business rate on small businesses, and I am delighted the Chancellor did so in his Budget statement, although I did not notice a welcome for that in the remarks by the shadow Leader of the House. However, the hon. Lady makes an important point, and she will, of course, have the opportunity, in the debates today, next Monday and next Tuesday, to ask Treasury Ministers specifically about what has taken place.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
The front page of the Jewish Chronicle today gives a litany of the anti-Semitism that, sadly, we are beginning to see more and more frequently in the ranks of the Labour party and in other institutions, such as universities, in this country. [Interruption.] May we have a debate on the increasing anti-Semitism in our public bodies and institutions?
Chris Grayling
This is a very important point. I agree with the shadow Leader of the House and my hon. Friend that anti-Semitism has no place in our society. However, when we hear words such as “disgrace” from Labour Members, we should remember that we have seen too many occasions in the past 12 months where they have tolerated anti-Semitism in their ranks and where Labour campaigners have used anti-Semitism in their campaigns. That is unacceptable—it is something they should change.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)
I was shocked to learn that the House is still using Betamax tapes for parliamentary recordings, although it will now have to stop because Sony is going to stop producing them. In the House, technological adaptation is evidently slow on occasion. Will the Leader of the House give us an update on the steps he is taking to modernise the archaic voting system in the House?
Chris Grayling
Hon. Members will be aware that trials have been taking place in the last few weeks on the use of tablets in our Division Lobbies. Those trials are now beginning to show distinct improvements. That is likely to affect the way we record things in the future, because it allows us to publish Division lists very quickly. However, I do not support, I am afraid, the idea of going further on swipe-card voting, electronic voting and similar, because passing through a Division Lobby gives individual Members an opportunity they simply would not otherwise have to talk about mutual issues.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
HMS Shropshire, a County class heavy cruiser, was completed for the Royal Navy in 1929 and served with distinction until 1942. May we have a debate on when the Royal Navy and the Ministry of Defence will once again name a Royal Navy ship after the beautiful county of Shropshire?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend makes his point in his customary way. He is a great champion for his county. I am sure that the Secretary of State for Defence will have noted what he said. We are investing in more capabilities for our Royal Navy, and that will provide plenty of opportunities for him to lobby for the ships coming on stream in the next few years to carry the name of his glorious county.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Can the Leader of the House help hon. Members who are very keen to meet their young constituents who are coming to the excellent new education centre but find getting into it quite a trial? In fact, it is probably easier to get into Fort Knox than to get into the education centre, with the level of security. Will he look into this?
Chris Grayling
As you know, Mr Speaker, this subject is of concern to me as well. I can assure the hon. Lady that the matter is subject to discussion. Of course we have to take appropriate steps for child protection, but we also have to make sure that common sense applies.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Sometimes with a Budget, one has to read the Red Book, as I have, to see what it was really about and what the Chancellor meant. Clearly, there is a lot of back-end loading of public debt reduction. I think I understand what the Chancellor is at. He has realised that on 24 June, when we come out of the EU, he will have £15 billion a year to reduce the public debt. In that regard, we have had a tie produced for him with his initials—G. O. for George Osborne—on it. It does two jobs: it shows that really he wants to come out of the EU, and he can promote himself with it. May we have a written statement on that next week?
Mr Speaker
Far be it from me to comment on the aesthetic virtues or otherwise of the tie, but the use of props in this place is generally deprecated. However, the hon. Gentleman has got away with it.
Chris Grayling
As we know, Mr Speaker, my hon. Friend is always ingenious in a whole variety of different ways. He makes his point in his customarily effective way. I know that he is playing an active part in the campaign to leave the European Union. I suspect that he may have more of a challenge than he thinks in persuading the Chancellor to change his view on this matter. I am afraid that he may have even more of a challenge, though, in persuading him to wear a tie of that somewhat bright colour.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Leader of the House might not know this, but it is estimated that autism costs this country £23 billion a year. On the day after the Budget, it is worth thinking about that sum. You are a great supporter of autism charities, Mr Speaker, and often host charity events in your rooms. It was recently found that the educational element has been taken out of the personal allowance that people on the autism spectrum receive, which means that they cannot get education. That is very serious. May we have a debate on that in the House?
Chris Grayling
I share the hon. Gentleman’s understanding and view about autism. Some fantastic work is done in our society to help young people on the autistic spectrum. I pay tribute to Linden Bridge School in my constituency and its counterparts around the country which do a fantastic job in working with young people on the autistic spectrum. As a Government we have put more into education and—notwithstanding the current debate—we have put more into the support that we provide for people with disabilities. There is also enormously good work being done by the voluntary sector around the country, and long may that continue.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
The Leader of the House may be aware that the newly refurbished Townlands hospital in Henley has now reopened and treated its first patient. Will he agree to have a debate on the future of community and local hospitals so that we can reinforce the message that what has come to be called ambulatory care is in the best interests of patients?
Chris Grayling
I remember that I backed this saga when I was helping in the campaign to get my hon. Friend elected for the first time some years ago, so I am delighted to see that all the work he has done since then has come to fruition and that his town has a great new facility. On Tuesday he will have the opportunity to tell the Secretary of State for Health exactly how much of a difference it is going to make to the constituency of Henley.
Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)
Given that the recess is fast approaching, the uprating regulations that will deprive approximately 550,000 overseas pensioners will be enacted by the time we return to this House. Will the Government bring forward a debate to allow us to consider this properly?
Chris Grayling
This issue has been raised on many occasions over the years. When those pensioners moved, they were aware of the nature and structure of our pensions system. The issue has been considered by Governments of both persuasions, and it would cost many hundreds of millions of pounds to sort it out. I am afraid that the Government have no current plans to do so.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
Further to a previous question, can the Leader of the House ask a Treasury Minister to attend the Chamber to announce what representations the Treasury proposes to make, on behalf of individual bondholders, to the imminent Supreme Court hearing into the decision by Lloyds bank to redeem enhanced capital notes early rather than pay interest until contractual maturity?
Chris Grayling
I know that my hon. Friend has been pursuing this matter with great concern. Of course, we will debate the Budget over the next three days, and financial services will be part of that. I suggest that my hon. Friend takes advantage of that opportunity—the Chief Secretary will be here on Tuesday, for example—to raise the issue.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
I very much welcomed the Prime Minister’s statement about universal superfast broadband by 2020, but it was made a few months ago. May we have a statement from the Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy, or a debate in Government time, so that we can consider the mechanisms? We are all in favour of it. It should be debated and we should know exactly what to do, and I would like to offer the isle of Anglesey for a pilot scheme.
Chris Grayling
I am sure the hon. Gentleman would like to do that. It is a Government priority to proceed with superfast broadband and, indeed, 4G and eventually 5G connectivity to all of our rural areas, and we certainly want Anglesey to be included. We have made good progress so far. We have got as far as any other country in Europe in developing modern communication networks, but there is still work to do.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
In the last Parliament, the Government tasked the Law Commission with drafting a wildlife Bill, which it has now duly done. When is it likely to be introduced?
Chris Grayling
Of course, we cannot give advance billing of what will be in the Queen’s Speech on 18 May, but I have spoken to the Ministers involved and they tell me that they are looking at the issue carefully and hope to respond over the course of this year. Law Commission Bills are usually given a parliamentary slot when time allows, but I am afraid that I cannot commit to an exact timetable.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
Yesterday the Government claimed to be on the side of the workers and the next generation. Could we therefore have some action beyond the rhetoric and have an urgent debate on the sad irony that workers aged under 25 are excluded from the Government’s new national living wage?
Chris Grayling
The evidence that we are on the side of workers and young people is the massive increase in the number of apprenticeships and the substantial drop in the number of unemployed young people. We are making real progress in creating opportunities for young people. When I took over as Employment Minister in 2010, I regarded with some trepidation those sessions I had with sixth formers and college students talking about their future prospects; I would have no such trepidation today. They have real opportunities, low unemployment and business investment. It is a transformed picture compared with six years ago.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
For the past two decades, transport infrastructure spend per capita in London has dwarfed that in the English regions, with a ratio of 10:1 with the north-west. The Government now propose to build Crossrail 2 for £28 billion, but it has so far not received any scrutiny in this House. Could the Government make time for a debate on Crossrail 2 so that we can consider it vis-à-vis other transport priorities?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the need to provide balance across the country in investment in infrastructure. If we look back at the Labour Government years, we will see that projects sat on the shelf. When in opposition, I would go around the country and spend time as shadow Transport Secretary talking about the need for projects, but when I go around the country now, I see that they are being built. I was in Newcastle last week, where the A1 is being improved, and the link road between the M6 and the M56 is being built in Cheshire. There is real improvement and change happening around the country in a way that simply did not happen when the Labour party was in power.
Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
May we have an urgent debate in Government time on personal independence payments and the withdrawal of Motability cars from vulnerable disabled people, which is preventing them from carrying out jobs they have secured? Does it make any sense to put disabled people out of work in that way?
Chris Grayling
There will be debates on the Budget and on any changes that we bring forward to the welfare system. I simply remind the hon. Gentleman that it is important for the Government to ensure that we provide support where and when it is needed, but that we also seek to get the best value for taxpayers’ money in delivering that support.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
Trees are important to us all, and some might say that they are important in transforming much of the hot air that we expel. [Hon. Members: “Withdraw!”] I say that tongue in cheek. Ancient trees, in particular, are so biodiverse, and there are only 2% left in this country. Will the Leader of the House kindly permit us time in the Chamber for a debate about the protection of our precious ancient woodland?
Chris Grayling
It is important to ensure not only that we protect ancient woodland, but that we create woodlands for the future. One of the most exciting developments over the past two or three years has been the Woodland Trust’s plan for new forests in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to commemorate the centenary of the first world war. There is one in my constituency, where farmland is being turned into forest that will be enjoyed by generations to come. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to protect what we have got, but we need to create the ancient woodlands of the future as well.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
I have yet to hear a satisfactory response to questions I have asked on the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign and the Connaught income fund, so it is no surprise that the Government are trying to force through uprating regulations that will have a devastating impact on fully paid-up UK pensioners living overseas. The Government cannot keep ignoring all these groups of people, who have done the right thing. Surely, we must have an urgent debate to allow that matter to be properly discussed.
Chris Grayling
There has just been a debate on the issue of women’s pensions. I think the hon. Lady does not accept that we do not agree with her. My view on the issue of women’s pensions is that it is a difficult one. Putting in place any transition is difficult, because somebody will always be affected by the changes. The reality is that, if we are to have an affordable and fair pension system, we have to put through some of those changes and sometimes not make changes, even though people may want them.
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)
Many of my constituents in Thurmaston are concerned about Post Office plans to move their local branch, despite strong local objections and concerns. Given that many such changes, good and bad, will be made by the Post Office in constituencies across the country in the coming years, can we have a debate on the Post Office’s approach to its branch modernisation programme, and on its approach to consultation and taking into consideration the views of local people?
Chris Grayling
That is something visible to Members across the country. As my hon. Friend has said, there has been a range of changes in the Post Office. At least this is about upgrading post offices; we have been through many years of battles to try to save post offices from closure. There is now a real opportunity for our post offices. Sadly, as we have heard in previous business questions, we have seen the disappearance of many local bank branches. The Post Office offers an alternative to many small businesses. I hope that that will help to secure its future in many of our communities.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
This probably does not need a debate, but this morning, my question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was unceremoniously dumped by the Department. Could the Leader of the House look at the possibility of ensuring that, when such a thing happens, the Department contacts the Table Office, which is assiduous at contacting Members, rather than letting Members know by letter? I received the letter only yesterday.
Chris Grayling
The hon. Lady does, indeed, and I am happy to give her a short one. I am aware of the circumstances, and the question concerned was transferred to another Department, because it was judged to be the best place to answer the question. I am assured that her question will be answered today. I think that the Department concerned has done the right thing in telling her that, but I will pass on the message that perhaps it might consider telling the Table Office as well.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Can we please have a debate on inward investment? That will give the House the opportunity to consider the announcement in the past few days from Avon Products, which intends to move its worldwide headquarters from the United States of America to the UK, and the announcement in the past few days from the South African-owned MotoNovo, which plans to create almost 600 jobs in south Wales.
Chris Grayling
Those two announcements are really good news. The latter is good news for south Wales, which we very much welcome. Given all the pressures on the steel industry, we want as many new investments as possible in Wales. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) says it is because of Labour. Actually, it is because this Government have made the United Kingdom a strong place for international businesses to invest in. We have also had the decision to build a new factory to make Aston Martin cars in south Wales. It is reassuring that, even at a difficult time internationally, the United Kingdom is still seen as a strong place for international investment for the long term.
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
As of today, 78 Members of the House from seven parties, including the party of Government, have signed early-day motion 1235, which seeks to annul a statutory instrument to freeze pensions.
[That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Regulations 2016 (S.I., 2016, No. 246), dated 25 February 2016, a copy of which was laid before this House on 1 March 2016, be annulled.]
Regulations that deprive overseas pensioners of the uprating adjustment to their state pension have been forced through this House without a debate. Will the Government heed the cross-party initiative to annul the regulations, and hold a debate urgently to assess the devastating impact of these charges on UK pensioners living abroad? Perhaps this time the Leader of the House might just answer the question.
Chris Grayling
I have answered the question. I have been a Work and Pensions Minister, and I have previously looked at the issue. The Government have no intention of changing the current situation. The cost of doing so would be enormous, and the situation that pensioners face has been the same for decades.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Haul-It Nationwide Ltd, a recruitment business in Rugby, has developed IT software to match up agency HGV drivers with haulage contractors. Last year, the NHS spent £3.3 billion on agency staff, and Ministers are working hard to reduce that figure. The owner of Haul-It Nationwide believes his system can help by matching available medical staff with hospital trusts. In fact, he has already started talking to the NHS innovation team. May we have a debate to consider how companies in the private sector can share innovative ideas and technologies with the public sector?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend talks about what sounds like a very interesting project and opportunity. One of the tragedies of the argument made, particularly by SNP Members, for removing the private sector altogether from the NHS is that we would lose the opportunity for that kind of innovation to improve healthcare, to improve the effectiveness of the health service and to enable it to treat patients more quickly.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
GPs in my constituency of Halifax are under unprecedented pressure, and we are facing a quite serious hospital reconfiguration. We now understand that pharmacies face a cut of 6%, which the Government expect will lead to anywhere between 1,000 and 3,000 pharmacies closing nationally. May we have a debate in this Chamber to discuss the role that pharmacies play in alleviating the pressures on GP surgeries and our A&E departments, and how those pressures will only get worse if up to 3,000 pharmacies close nationwide?
Chris Grayling
I know that this is an issue of concern. The Government are seeking to ensure that we use the money we have as effectively as possible and that we fund the right mix of pharmacies. We obviously want there to be pharmacies in all communities that require them. I have no doubt that this issue will be brought before the House in due course. I can only say that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Community and Social Care, who is the Minister with responsibility for this issue, is incredibly sensitive to the concerns the hon. Lady raises. I know he will seek to do the right thing in making sure that we have a proper balance in relation to spending money wisely and maintaining the right mix of pharmacy services.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House provide time for a debate on the effects of sodium valproate? This drug is given to treat epilepsy and other neurological conditions, but it has a powerful impact on unborn babies. My constituent Janet Williams has campaigned about this for a great many years, following the birth of her two sons, who had foetal abnormalities because of that drug, which is still being prescribed today.
Chris Grayling
This is obviously a very difficult and sensitive issue. I do not know enough about the circumstances of the drug, but I will make sure that the Health Secretary is aware of the concerns that the hon. Lady raises. I believe that he will be in the Chamber next week, and I ask her to bring up this issue with Health Ministers then.
Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)
I have previously asked the Leader of the House whether we could have an urgent debate on the disproportionate size of the House of the Lords compared with the House of Commons. However, my question was dismissed, so I will try again. May we have an urgent debate on the role of a bicameral Parliament in a representative democracy in the 21st century to consider whether it continues to be appropriate for more than half the Members of the United Kingdom Parliament to be appointed by the Prime Minister, rather than elected by the people?
Chris Grayling
I seem to remember that SNP Members praised the House of Lords last week for one of its votes. I would say to the hon. Gentleman that this country has greater priorities on its desk right now than sorting out, changing or reforming the House of Lords.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The Leader of the House did not quite respond to one of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). There is an amendment to the Budget resolutions on the Order Paper, tabled by the hon. Members for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff), for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) and for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), to remove the tampon tax. Will the Leader of the House support the amendment in solidarity with women across the country?
Chris Grayling
The imposition of VAT on women’s sanitary products is a matter for the European Commission. The Government have made representations, and we are expecting a response shortly. It is my hope that the Commission will agree with virtually every Member of this House that this tax is wholly inappropriate.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
If no one has yet done so, Mr Speaker, may I, with a certain amount of Irish blood in me, wish you and the whole House a very happy St Patrick’s day?
It is absolutely unacceptable that this Government choose to do nothing, not even allow a debate, on the hugely important uprating regulations on state pensions that lead—as my hon. Friends have said—to half a million or more overseas pensioners having their pensions frozen. As the Leader of the House is well aware, that provision will come into force while the House is in recess. Given the clear depth of feeling on the Opposition Benches and across the House, surely that issue is worthy of an urgent debate.
Chris Grayling
That issue has been considered many times over the years and the Government’s position has not changed.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
The First Minister of Scotland is committed not to 95% or any other figure, but to 100% coverage for superfast broadband for Scotland. Given that the UK controls the regulations on mobile signals, may we have a debate on how the UK Government might achieve that coverage for mobile signals across the UK?
Chris Grayling
We are working hard to achieve that for mobile signals across the UK, and we are beginning to look ahead to the introduction of 5G in this country. I wait with interest to see how successful the First Minister of Scotland will be having made that substantial promise, because as far as I can see, some of the promises that she has made in the past have not really come to fruition.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
This House rightly celebrates community champions such as those who won an award during last week’s Renfrewshire Provost community awards. One winner, Jodie Campbell, organised a Christmas lunch for 200 vulnerable people, many of whom confirmed to me that they would otherwise have spent Christmas day on their own. Isolation is said to affect millions of people throughout the UK, so may we debate that serious issue?
Chris Grayling
Isolation is clearly a big challenge for our society, and it can only really be dealt with in local communities and by the kind of work that the hon. Gentleman has just described, which I praise unreservedly. As he will know, I have suggested to the Backbench Business Committee that it might set aside a day—there are a few coming up in the next few weeks—for the whole House to debate the work of voluntary sector groups that can make a big difference to people such as those he describes.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
Given the well-known views of the Leader of the House on matters European, may I urge him to come to the aid of the hundreds of thousands of UK citizens living in the EU who face being deprived of their pension upgrade—a move that will not even be discussed in this House? Will he overcome the European democratic deficit and organise such a debate?
Chris Grayling
Unless I am mistaken, the issue of frozen pensions does not apply in the EU.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
On that same theme, apart from the general unfairness, analysis has shown that the issue of frozen pensions prevents some pensioners from emigrating, and forces others to return to this country. Reversing that twin migration effect would save money on healthcare, welfare and housing, which should appeal to the Leader of the House. I will try again: may we have a debate on this important matter?
Chris Grayling
I am not of the view that Government policy should be about getting our pensioners—whom we should value enormously for the contribution they have made—to move to other countries.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
The Leader of the House wrote to me on 24 February about the pension fund of employees of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and he said that no final decision had been made. In the Adjournment debate on 29 February, the Minister said that the final decision had been made in September. Will the Leader of the House say why he gave such inaccurate information?
Chris Grayling
I would not have made that comment without having been told that that was the case by the Ministry of Defence, and I will ask it to respond to the hon. Gentleman.
Macur Review
(8 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on the publication of the report of the Macur review.
On 5 November 2012, the Prime Minister announced the establishment of an independent review of the scope and conduct of Sir Ronald Waterhouse’s inquiry into allegations of child abuse in care homes in Clwyd and Gwynedd between 1974 and 1990. Let us be clear: we are talking about dark and shameful events that are a stain on our nation. The children were in the care of the state because they were vulnerable, and the state let them down. That is why our first thought will always be with the victims, supporting them and bringing the perpetrators to justice.
The Prime Minister’s announcement of a review of Waterhouse followed significant public concern that its terms of reference were too narrow, and that allegations of child abuse were not properly investigated by Waterhouse, particularly where those allegations concerned prominent individuals. The Waterhouse inquiry was established in 1996 by the then Secretary of State for Wales, now Lord Hague of Richmond, following allegations of endemic child abuse at care homes in Clwyd and Gwynedd. Waterhouse’s final report, “Lost in Care”, published in 2000, concluded:
“Widespread sexual abuse of boys occurred in children’s residential establishments in Clwyd between 1974 and 1990”,
and that there was a paedophile ring operating in the north Wales and Chester areas, but no reference was made to any abuse being carried out by nationally prominent individuals.
On 8 November 2012, the then Secretary of State for Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), and my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones), announced that the review would be headed by Mrs Justice Macur DBE, a High Court judge of the family division. Her terms of reference were to review the scope of Waterhouse; determine whether any specific allegations of child abuse falling within the Waterhouse’s terms of reference were not investigated; and to make recommendations to the Secretaries of State for Justice and for Wales.
Lady Justice Macur submitted her report to the Secretary of State for Justice and me on 10 December 2015. I pay tribute to her and her team for their work and for their thoroughness and diligence in carrying it out, particularly in the light of the huge amount of material that needed to be considered. She and her team have examined the 1 million-plus pages of documents relating to Waterhouse provided to her from many sources. She has conducted interviews with individuals closely involved with the work of Waterhouse; with those who provided written submissions to Waterhouse; with those involved in police investigations; and with those who worked on the prosecution files of those accused of abuse of children in care in north Wales. She published an issues paper, in English and in Welsh, with suggestions of broad areas of interest, to prompt written submissions from those affected. She also arranged a public meeting in Wrexham specifically to engage those in the local area.
Having completed that work, Lady Justice Macur’s main finding is as follows:
“I have found no reason to undermine the conclusions of”
Waterhouse
“in respect of the nature and the scale of abuse.”
Lady Justice Macur looked carefully at the specific issue of nationally prominent figures and concluded that there was no
“evidence of the involvement of nationally prominent individuals in the abuse of children in care in North Wales between 1974 and 1996”.
While the Government welcome that finding, the context in which it is made must never be forgotten.
In addressing concerns about the time taken by the former Welsh Office to set up the Waterhouse inquiry in the mid-1990s, Lady Justice Macur does recognise that there was some reluctance in that Department to undertake a public inquiry. However, she concludes that any reluctance to undertake a public inquiry was
“not with a view to protect politicians or other establishment figures”
and that
“the government was right to consider the different options since a public inquiry...was correctly understood to be a major undertaking”.
Lady Justice Macur is also clear that waiting until Crown Prosecution Service investigations had been completed was the correct decision, as
“the government would be justifiably subject to criticism in creating any situation that compromised ongoing criminal investigation or prospective trials of accused abusers”.
Lady Justice Macur makes it clear that she is satisfied that Waterhouse’s terms of reference were not framed to conceal the identity of any establishment figure, nor have they been interpreted by the tribunal with a design to do so. She has also found that, despite the Welsh Office being both the commissioning Department and a party to Waterhouse, there was ample independence of Waterhouse from the Welsh Office.
Freemasonry has been a persistent theme of concern in relation to the events in north Wales and is referenced extensively in Waterhouse. I am grateful to Lady Justice Macur for her thorough explorations of this issue, but she is satisfied that
"the impact of freemasonry on the issues concerning the Tribunal was soundly researched and appropriately presented and pursued”
and that
“there is nothing to call into question the adequacy of the Tribunal’s investigations into the issue of freemasonry at any stage of the process”.
As I mentioned earlier, Lady Justice Macur states:
“I make clear that I have seen NO evidence of child abuse by politicians or national establishment figures in the documents which were available to the Tribunal, save that which could be classed as unreliable speculation.”
On the direct evidence before them, she also found that it was
“not unreasonable for the Tribunal to conclude that there was no evidence of a further paedophile ring in existence"
outside of that described by Waterhouse.
In addition to her main finding that she has no reason to undermine Waterhouse’s conclusions, Lady Justice Macur makes a total of six recommendations. Her first relates to ensuring that any public inquiry, investigation or review can be objectively viewed as beyond reproach. The Government agree. We have already been clear that, during the establishment of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in 2014, we did not get it right in initially appointing two chairs who had failed to win the trust of survivors. This is a principle that should be rigorously observed in the establishment of inquiries, investigations or reviews.
Lady Justice Macur’s second recommendation is that the preservation and correct archiving of material of an important public inquiry or review is essential. This links to her third recommendation that all Government Departments should possess an accurate database of the documents and materials held by them. Again, we agree with both those recommendations.
When the Welsh Office, which established Waterhouse, was disbanded in 1999, the files it held on newly devolved issues such as social care and children’s services were transferred to the National Assembly for Wales. This included the Waterhouse computer database. When Lady Justice Macur requested this, it was found that in 2008 Welsh Government IT contractors had declared that its contents were “corrupted and unreadable” and they had therefore been destroyed. She finds that it was an
“innocent mistake, rather than a calculated ploy”.
Files relating to Waterhouse will not be returned to the Wales Office; given their historical importance, they have been transferred to the Welsh Government for onward transmission to the National Archives.
The Government accept the criticisms made by Lady Justice Macur of the way documents were stored. Similar criticisms were made of the Home Office in the first Wanless and Whittam inquiry in 2014. Following the recommendations made by Wanless and Whittam on the management of files containing records of child sexual abuse, the Cabinet Secretary asked all permanent secretaries to consider how their Departments can learn lessons from the review and put in place appropriate safeguards. Likewise, following the establishment of the Goddard inquiry, the Cabinet Office announced a moratorium on the destruction of information, and put in place processes for the storage of such material. The failure of the new Wales Office in 1999, under a previous Government, to adequately archive the material is simply inexcusable, but a much more rigorous approach to records management is now in place in the Department, abiding by National Archives policy on records management.
Lady Justice Macur’s fourth recommendation is that due criminal process is better suited to the disposal of any unresolved complaints and allegations that were not investigated during the course of Waterhouse, rather than a public or a private inquiry. The Government agree, and welcome particularly the work of Operation Pallial in this area.
Lady Justice Macur’s fifth recommendation relates to consideration of criminal charges relating to events referenced in paragraphs 6.45 to 6.75. For the sake of clarity, let me say that this does not relate to the actions of the Welsh Office or any other Government Department. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service are aware of the specifics of this matter and it is for them to consider further.
The final recommendation relates to the process of establishing a review of previous tribunals or boards of inquiry. Lady Justice Macur notes that
“the conclusions of any such body will not meet with universal approval, and that those with an interest, personal or otherwise, will seek justification for their views and be unlikely to accept the contrary”.
The Government note this and understand that it is inevitable that some people will remain dissatisfied, despite the comprehensive work undertaken by the Waterhouse inquiry and now by Lady Justice Macur.
Hon. Members who have long campaigned on this issue have said that the report should have been published without delay. I absolutely share the same instinct for openness and full transparency. However, Lady Justice Macur has acknowledged that her final report contains information, including the names of some individuals, that it would not be possible to publish. In particular, she notes that certain parts of her report ought to be redacted, pending the outcome of ongoing legal proceedings or police investigations. We have worked closely with the Director of Public Prosecutions and the police—specifically representatives of Operations Pallial, Hydrant and Orarian—to ensure that no investigations or trials will be prejudiced by the release of this report. The names of those found guilty of crimes of child sexual abuse in a court of law have of course not been removed.
The names of contributors to the review and Waterhouse have not generally been redacted, but Lady Justice Macur also cautioned that, under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992, victims of alleged sexual offences are entitled to lifelong anonymity. As such, these names, along with names of individual members of the Crown Prosecution Service and police informants, have been considered carefully by Sue Gray, director general of propriety and ethics in the Cabinet Office. We have accepted her advice in full, and a small number of redactions have been made in those categories. The full details of the process by which redactions in these areas were made is set out in a letter from Sue Gray that I am today publishing alongside the redacted report.
Lady Justice Macur urged caution in relation to releasing the names of individuals accused of abuse, or speculated to be involved in abuse, who have not been subject to a police investigation, have not been convicted of a criminal offence, and/or whose names are not in the public domain in the context of child abuse, whether establishment figures or not. She argued that to do so would be
“unfair in two respects and unwise in a third:…first, the nature of the information against them sometimes derives from multiple hearsay;…second, these individuals will have no proper opportunity to address the unattributed and, sometimes, unspecified allegations of disreputable conduct made against them;…and third, police investigations may be compromised”.
We have followed that advice and removed those names from the report published today. It is a fundamental tenet of the law in this country that those accused of a crime are able to face their accusers in court, with a jury of their peers to consider the evidence, and not tried in the court of public opinion as a result of “multiple hearsay”. It would be irresponsible for the Government to behave differently. To provide total clarity on the process by which this group of names was redacted, I am also today publishing a letter from Jonathan Jones, Treasury solicitor and head of the Government Legal Department, setting this out.
I should also like to stress that a full and unredacted version of the report has been provided to the wider independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, chaired by Justice Lowell Goddard, to aid its investigations. It has also been seen by the Director of Public Prosecutions, the CPS and representatives of Operations Pallial, Orarian and Hydrant.
As a Government, we are determined to see those guilty of crimes against children in north Wales brought to justice, and this is happening through the excellent work of Operation Pallial. In November 2012, the chief constable of North Wales police asked Keith Bristow, director general of the National Crime Agency, to lead Operation Pallial, which would look into specific recent allegations of historical abuse in the care system in north Wales. A total of seven men have been convicted of one or more offences following investigations by Operation Pallial, and a further eight have been acquitted after a jury trial. That includes John Allen, who ran Bryn Alyn Community, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2014 after a jury found him guilty of 33 charges of serious sexual abuse. Five members of a predatory paedophile group received a total of 43 years in jail in September 2015, having been found guilty of a total of 34 offences of abuse.
Operation Pallial has now been contacted by 334 people, who have had the trust and confidence to come forward to report abuse. A total of 102 complaints are actively being investigated at this very moment. A total of 51 men and women have been arrested or interviewed under caution, and work to locate further suspects is continuing. A total of 16 people have been charged or summonsed to court as a result of Operation Pallial so far. Charging advice is awaited in relation to a further 26 suspects.
A total of 32 suspects are believed to be dead, and work is ongoing to confirm this. An independent review of evidence against 25 of these deceased suspects has indicated that there would have been sufficient evidence to make a case to the CPS for them to be charged with various offences. Those who made complaints in such cases have been updated personally by the Pallial team. A further two trials have been set for 2016, with further trials expected.
In closing, I would once again like to thank Lady Justice Macur and her team for their diligent and exhaustive work in providing this report. I would like to pay tribute to the courage of those victims for coming forward and reliving the horrible detail of their experiences to ensure that the truth can be established once and for all. I would like to pay tribute to the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Director of Public Prosecutions for their collective work to ensure that those who were involved in the abuse of children in north Wales, who perhaps thought that the mists of time had hidden their crimes for ever, are now being made to pay for what they did. I commend this statement to the House.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for advance sight of it.
The horrific abuse that was carried out at care homes in north Wales has shocked us all and our thoughts today must be with the survivors. Not only did they endure violence from those who were meant to protect them, but they have had to wait years—decades—to be heard.
I would like to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) who has campaigned tirelessly for the survivors ever since these allegations came to light. As she has highlighted before, some of those who were abused at Bryn Estyn and other homes have since taken their own lives. It is therefore right that we think of their families today and of everyone affected by this scandal.
The extent of the abuse revealed by the Waterhouse inquiry was staggering. It found evidence of “widespread and persistent” physical and sexual abuse, including multiple rapes carried out against young boys and girls. This abuse was allowed to take place over many years, sometimes decades, in the very homes where vulnerable children should have felt safe. The scale of the abuse is shocking, but what is also shocking is that many of the inquiries into this abuse have encountered a reluctance to co-operate with them, and a refusal to publish their conclusions—in short, cover-ups and missed opportunities.
As the Secretary of State has indicated, the Macur review was
“set up to examine whether any specific allegations of child abuse falling within the terms of reference of the Waterhouse Inquiry were not investigated.”
On behalf of the Opposition, I would like to extend our thanks to Lady Justice Macur and her review team for the work that they have undertaken. In the light of what has happened to previous reports and the overwhelming need for transparency, I welcome the fact that the Macur review has now been published.
There may be cases where redactions are needed, not least to ensure that no ongoing police investigation is compromised, but these redactions must be as few as possible and they must be justified to the survivors. Can the Secretary of State confirm that this review, along with the many other reports on and inquiries into abuse in north Wales, will be made available in full to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, and that this inquiry will be able to see full, unredacted copies of these reports?
The Waterhouse inquiry found that most children did not feel able to come forward to report what had happened to them. The few who did were discouraged from taking matters further. In fact, were it not for the bravery of whistleblower Alison Taylor, many cases of abuse would not have been uncovered. Although we recognise that processes for safeguarding children have changed radically since many of these cases took place, we must always be ready to learn lessons to ensure that we can protect children better in the future.
Having studied the report, what changes in policy or practice do the Government feel are necessary? What steps will they take to ensure a co-ordinated response to any future cases, wherever they occur—in the public, private or third sector? Does the Secretary of State believe that there is sufficient protection for whistleblowers such as Alison Taylor?
We know that physical and sexual abuse has a lasting impact on the lives of those affected. In recent years, many survivors have felt able to come forward and report the abuse that they experienced. Indeed, we know that a number of people contacted the Children’s Commissioner for Wales following the announcement of the review, and it is possible that others will come forward as a result of the report’s publication. No matter how long ago the abuse took place, survivors need support to rebuild their lives. What support is being given to the survivors of abuse who have come forward, and what conversations has the Secretary of State had with agencies, including the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, to ensure that survivors of abuse know where to turn?
The scale of the abuse that has become apparent in recent years has shocked the whole of society. It is now clear that many thousands of children were targeted by predatory abusers in places where they should have felt safe. Far too many of those children were let down for a second time when they reached out for help, but nothing was done. Our duty is to make sure that survivors of abuse are heard and listened to, that those who report abuse are given sufficient protection, and that anyone who is responsible for acts of violence against children is brought to justice. Above all, we must ensure that this appalling abuse can never be allowed to happen again.
Stephen Crabb
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her response to the statement, and for the spirit and tone in which she made it. I join her in paying tribute to the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) for her long-standing work in trying to achieve justice not only for her constituents who suffered abuse, but for the wider number of care home residents at the time.
When we discussed this issue during a recent session of Wales Office questions, the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley asked me about the redactions. I gave her a commitment that everything possible would be done to ensure that they were kept to a minimum, and that we would be able to explain the reasons for them fully. As I said in my statement, I believe that the letters that we have published along with the report set out those reasons very clearly, but I suggest that Members read Lady Justice Macur’s remarks in the report urging caution in relation to the publication of the names of individuals in the various categories that she describes. I hope that those explanations will provide ample justification for the redactions.
The hon. Lady asked whether we would make a full, unredacted version of the report available to the independent Goddard inquiry. The answer is yes, absolutely. We have also made a full, unredacted copy available to the Crown Prosecution Service, the Director of Public Prosecutions and Operations Pallial, Hydrant and Orarian.
The hon. Lady asked about changes in policy and practice, and about looking to the future. As I said in my statement, Lady Justice Macur has made a number of specific asks of the Government. She has asked for changes to be made, and made recommendations about, in particular, the way in which material is stored and archived. That is one of the weaknesses that she found in establishing her inquiry after 2012, when it was set up. She referred to the “disarray” that many of the files were in. There are important lessons to be learned by Government as a whole—devolved Administrations and the United Kingdom Government—about the way in which sensitive material is archived and protected for the future. Those lessons have been and are being learnt.
As for the wider issue of how we support the survivors and victims of abuse, I think that there has been an enormous cultural change in the last 30 years in Wales and throughout the United Kingdom. That is one of the reasons why more survivors now feel empowered to come forward as part of Operation Pallial, to relive those horrific events, and to make specific allegations, which are being pursued rigorously by the National Crime Agency.
The really positive developments that have taken place since the 1990s, including the establishment of the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, show that as a society we have made a lot of progress. Of course we do not get everything right, and there is much more that we need to learn to do, but we have made a lot of progress over the past 30 years on the way in which we support victims of sexual abuse and address this issue. I do not wish to sound complacent in any way, however, and indeed there is no sense of complacency in Lady Justice Macur’s report that we are publishing today. I hope that that addresses the hon. Lady’s specific question.
The hon. Lady also asked what support was being provided through the independent Goddard inquiry. The inquiry will shortly open an office in Cardiff to reach out to survivors in Wales, and it will work through the mediums of English and Welsh.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I also pay tribute to the work done by Lady Justice Macur. I know that it has been a monumental undertaking for her. The events she was investigating have cast a dark cloud over north Wales and the Chester area for many years. I am hopeful that the report published today will ease those concerns, but I have to say to my right hon. Friend that I continue to have my own concerns in two respects. The first relates to the absence of documentation. I fully accept what he has said about its storage, which has frankly been little more than a catalogue of disaster, but will he assure the House that not only his Department and Her Majesty’s Government but the Welsh Assembly Government, who had custody of the documents but lost them, have learned the lessons from this?
My second concern relates to the redactions, which I believe will cause the most concern in north Wales. I fully understand the reasons that my right hon. Friend and Lady Justice Macur have given for this, but can he confirm that Justice Lowell Goddard will have the right to pursue in her own inquiry the identities of those whose names have been redacted in today’s report?
Stephen Crabb
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his questions. He was one of the joint commissioning Secretaries of State for the foundation of the Macur review. He asked two specific questions. The first was about the absence of the relevant documentation. The conclusion that Lady Justice Macur comes to is that she is confident she has seen enough documentation from the Waterhouse tribunal to make some strong conclusions about the overall findings that Waterhouse reached, and that she supports the overall findings of Waterhouse based on her exhaustive trawl through 1 million-plus pages of documentation. Where there are gaps, she has concluded that they are not sufficient to cast into doubt her overall findings.
My right hon. Friend’s second point related to redactions. Again I make the point that a full unredacted copy has gone to the Goddard inquiry. He asked whether Goddard would be able to pursue those names in the unredacted report. Let us bear it in mind that one of the specific recommendations of the Macur review is that the police and the judicial process will be best placed to go after those people against whom specific allegations have been made, and that public or private inquiries are not the best forum in which to do that.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Page 300 of the Waterhouse report lists the names of 13 young men who could not give evidence to the new review because they had lost their lives. Most of them took their own lives following the case, when they appeared before those who had been accused. They were all used to give evidence in court, some of them because of their police backgrounds. The victims were mercilessly torn to shreds and several of them took their own lives as a direct consequence of the abuse being continued by our court system. That is still continuing today. What this report covers would not have been revealed were it not for the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) and Bruce Kennedy and Paddy French, journalists at HTV. It is difficult to judge the report before giving it full consideration, but this is a heart-breaking story of abuse. Those who were responsible were laughing as they went away from court, and the lives of innocents were ended prematurely. We still need to look further into the matter and to consider carefully why some names are still redacted. Is this historical abuse continuing?
Stephen Crabb
The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. We are talking about heinous, horrific acts of abuse. We are talking about children who were in the care of the state and got anything but the care of the state. It is a long and tragic sequence of events. Of course, today’s report will not bring full closure to absolutely everybody who lived through those experiences, but Lady Justice Macur has been thorough and diligent in her task of trawling through all the paperwork of the Waterhouse inquiry to try to make sense of whether victims got a fair shout and whether questions about nationally prominent individuals, further paedophile rings, and the role of freemasonry were addressed appropriately. I encourage all hon. Members with an interest in the matter to read the report in full and to reflect on its conclusions.
As for continuing the investigation of those who are guilty, let me be clear that there are people walking around in north Wales and elsewhere in the United Kingdom right now who were there at the time, who participated in and witnessed these acts, and who have gone for years thinking that they are untouchable. I hope that the summary of the achievements of Operation Pallial that I read out earlier demonstrated that such people should be looking over their shoulders.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. These are extremely sensitive matters, so I say this with care, but it would be appreciated if colleagues could be economical in their questions and answers, simply because the Budget debate is heavily subscribed. We will now have an exemplary lesson from Mr Mark Pritchard.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
What happened in north Wales is nothing short of a national scandal for Wales, but will the Secretary of State put on the record his thanks to all those who work day in, day out in childcare, orphanages and other facilities, both in Wales and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and do so professionally and with care?
I am glad that the Government, the police and the National Crime Agency are taking action. What recent discussions has the Secretary of State had with the NCA about Operation Pallial to ensure that we get more people in court and prosecuted for these heinous crimes?
Stephen Crabb
We absolutely put on the record today our thanks for and appreciation of the hard work of those who work in the care sector, supporting vulnerable children wherever they are in the United Kingdom
The National Crime Agency has kept me regularly updated with the progress of Operation Pallial. Just yesterday, I had further discussions with the agency’s deputy director. I am absolutely confident that the NCA is vigorously pursuing all lines of investigation.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Abuse survivors will be dismayed at this morning’s litany of name-concealing and the destruction of evidence. They may rightly feel that their evidence is transient, disposable and not worth safeguarding. How will the Secretary of State work with the Children’s Commissioner for Wales and the Welsh Government to ensure that lessons are learned and that this never happens again?
Stephen Crabb
The hon. Lady is right that people will still be feeling like that. All I would say is that they should take the time to go through the report and look at how Lady Justice Macur has handled to the very best of her ability all the sensitive, difficult questions that have plagued survivors for years and years. A lot of lessons have already been learned from the events we are talking about. As I said in answer to a question a few moments ago, that is not to say we are complacent, as there is always more we can learn as a society. But in terms of where we are in Wales right now, we have the Children’s Commissioner and the work that the Welsh Government are doing. There is good collaboration between UK Departments and the Welsh Government on these issues to do with social services, childcare and vulnerable people. The work is positive and will carry on.
Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
The people of Wrexham, where many of these horrible events took place, will be astonished by the contents of today’s statement. As a solicitor who practised in the courts around Wrexham in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I am astonished by its contents. I note that the Secretary of State referred only fleetingly to some reluctance in the old Welsh Office to undertake a public inquiry in the 1990s, and I will read the report closely in that respect. Will he please tell me why the prosecutions that are now taking place as a result of Operation Pallial did not take place in 2000, following the Waterhouse inquiry? He did not address that at all in his statement.
Stephen Crabb
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He expresses astonishment. What I say in response to that is that if he has specific information about specific individuals, he knows where to go with it—to the police. His question as to why the arrests are being made now and were not being made 30 years ago is a specific question that I have put to the NCA. Its response was that, first, this is because of the publicity of recent years and, secondly, it is because of the culture change, with a lot more witnesses feeling empowered to come forward. That is part of the reason why much greater convictions are being secured; the police are receiving greater, specific evidence from survivors and victims who feel willing to come forward.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Has the Macur review had unfettered access to those who can explain why the original Waterhouse inquiry did not name the persons of public prominence in its report?
Stephen Crabb
Some of the individuals who worked on the Waterhouse tribunal are no longer living, but Lady Justice Macur has pursued, to the very best of her ability, direct conversations with people who worked on the tribunal at the time. As I explained earlier, she has also reached out to survivors. She held that public event in Wrexham to explore this as fully as she possibly could. This was not just her trawling through boxes of documents to explore all these questions. She explains why names should not just be bandied about and she explains clearly why a redaction process is necessary, and I encourage the hon. Gentleman to look through that, along with the letters I am publishing alongside it today, in order to understand this.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
The Secretary of State was right to acknowledge the anguish and suffering that these events have caused and the fact that the police need to continue inquiries in respect of any of the perpetrators. Does he agree that it is vital that victims get support with mental health services and therapy? Will he be making representations to make sure that some of the money the Government are rightly investing in mental health goes to help victims of these types of terrible crimes?
Stephen Crabb
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the way we support survivors and victims of abuse, no matter how far back the events occurred. I assure him that for those people who have come forward it is not just a question of our listening and receiving evidence; consideration is given to what further support can be given. Some victims do not feel that they can come forward. Some have moved on and now have families of their own, and for them these are episodes in their past that they are keeping deeply buried. This is obviously a matter of choice for individual survivors.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
Many of my constituents who have been abused have felt let down because of the long, long delays in this and other reports being produced. They feel that because their abusers have died they will not now get the justice that they deserve. Does the report cover records held by the local authorities in north Wales? I have encountered constituents who have found it difficult to obtain records, particularly those held by Gwynedd authority.
Stephen Crabb
Lady Justice Macur’s specific recommendations relate to records that have been kept by national Government. Parts of her report does go, in detail, into how information was handled by local authorities. We are talking about the former local authorities of Clwyd and Gwynedd, which were disbanded and turned into new local authorities. At this point in time, I would just encourage him to read through the report. If he has further questions, he will have an opportunity to explore this further next week in a Westminster Hall debate secured by the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts).
Ways and Means
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
(8 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
It has now been the best part of 24 hours since the Chancellor delivered his Budget. There are some things in it that I would like to welcome. On the sugar tax, we look forward to seeing more detail about how it will be put into practice. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) who said yesterday that we needed a comprehensive strategy to tackle the growing problem of obesity. I regret, therefore, that £200 million has been cut from public health budgets this year—those are the budgets that were to be used to develop that strategy.
We are also pleased that the Chancellor is looking at addressing savings overall, though we wonder whether the new lifetime individual savings accounts will do much to address the scandal of low retirement savings for the less well-off. On the rise in tax thresholds, we welcome anything that puts more money in the pockets of middle and low earners, but we wonder how that aim can sit alongside the Conservatives’ plans to cut universal credit.
It is about time that we had some straight talking about what this Budget means. It is an admission of abject failure by the Chancellor. For the record, in the six years that he has been in charge of the nation’s finances, he has missed every major target he has set himself. He said that he would balance the books by 2015, but the deficit this year is set to be more than £72 billion. He said that Britain would pay its way in the world, but he has overseen the biggest current account deficit since modern records began.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I want to help the Labour party in every way that I can. I want it to be credible at the next election, but the shadow Chancellor took to the airwaves this morning and talked about borrowing more money. Will he give us an absolute commitment that, if he were to become Chancellor, he would not borrow more money than the present Chancellor? He can just say yes.
John McDonnell
The present Chancellor has borrowed £200 billion more than what he promised. Let us be absolutely clear that like any company, UK plc under us will invest—it will invest in plant and machinery to create the growth that we need if we are to afford our public services.
Let me go back. The Chancellor promised us a “march of the makers”, but manufacturing still lags behind its 2008 levels. He said he would build his way out of our housing crisis, but we have seen new house building fall to its lowest level since the 1920s. He said that he had moved the economy away from reliance on household debt, but, yesterday, the Office for Budget Responsibility said that his entire plan relied on household debt rising “to unprecedented levels.” He said that he would aim for £1 trillion of exports by 2020. Yesterday’s figures suggest that he will miss that target by the small matter of £357 billion.
When it comes to the Chancellor’s failures, he is barely off the starting blocks. The fiscal rule he brought before Parliament last year had three tests. We already knew that he was likely to fail one of them, with the welfare cap forecast to be breached. Yesterday, it emerged that he will fail the second of his tests. Having already raised the debt burden to 83.3% of GDP, it is set to rise now to 83.7% this year. Therefore, since the new fiscal rule was introduced, it is nought out of two for the Chancellor’s targets.
Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman started by saying that we needed some straight talking. In order to be fiscally credible, one needs to have concrete figures. The Chancellor has said in his Budget that he will borrow £1 in every £14 in 2016-17. Will the shadow Chancellor tell us what his borrowing figure will be?
John McDonnell
Unlike the current Chancellor, we will not set ourselves targets that can never be realised, and we will create an economy based on consultation with the wealth creators themselves—the businesses, the entrepreneurs and the workers. In that way, we will have a credible fiscal responsibility rule.
Yesterday, the OBR revised down its forecast for growth for this year, and for every year in this Parliament—in some cases by significant margins. That is reflected in lower forecasts for earnings growth. The Resolution Foundation says that typical wages will not recover to their pre-crash levels before the end of this decade. It is not just forecasts for economic growth and wages that are down. Those are driven by productivity, which has also been revised down for every year of this Parliament. Any productivity improvements last year have disappeared. As the OBR said, it was, “Another false dawn”. Perhaps that is not surprising. After all, productivity is linked to business investment, which should be driving the recovery, but which plunged sharply last quarter.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
I have noticed that the hon. Gentleman does not like answering the question on how much he would be willing to borrow were he Chancellor. Is there any limit to the amount that he would be willing to borrow and to the debt that he would be willing to pass on to future generations?
John McDonnell
I find it extraordinary that this Government want to talk about debt. Under this Government, the debt that our children will inherit will be £1.7 trillion. Under their watch, the debt has risen significantly—it has almost doubled. When we go forward, we will ensure that our borrowing will be based on sound economic advice from the wealth creators. Unlike this Government, we will create economic growth. This Chancellor is borrowing to fund cuts in public services, not to invest in growth or productivity.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Members may think that this noise is not loud, but it is very loud when you are in the Chair trying to listen to the shadow Chancellor. The problem is that it does not do this Chamber any good in the eyes of the public when they cannot hear either.
John McDonnell
Let me assure Members that I will give way, but let me proceed a bit further.
As I have said, perhaps the fall in productivity is unsurprising, because productivity is linked to business investment, which should be driving the recovery, but which plunged in the last quarter.
John McDonnell
I will give way in a moment. I can tell the House what happened to business investment forecasts—they were revised down again in this Parliament. None of this should be a surprise for the Chancellor, but it seems that it is. At the autumn statement, he said that he wanted a plan
“that actually produces better results than were forecast.” ”.—[Official Report, 25 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1385.]
John McDonnell
I will come back to the hon. Gentleman. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said this last week about the autumn statement:
“If you can’t forecast more than two months, how in heaven’s name can you forecast the next four or five years.”
That is what we all want to know.
Jeremy Quin
Productivity, to which the shadow Chancellor is referring, is also linked to employment. Does he welcome the extra 2.3 million people in work since 2010?
John McDonnell
Of course we welcome that employment growth, but we are concerned about the insecurity of that employment. The number of zero-hours contracts has gone up by another 100,000 over the past month, and the insecurity of that employment, unfortunately, is affecting people’s long-term investment plans as well.
Yesterday the Chancellor pointed repeatedly to global economic headwinds as an explanation for his failure. His problem is that we have known about them for a while. Many of us were warning him last summer about the challenges facing the global economy. I spoke about them in this place, as did others on the Labour Benches, but rather than adapting his proposals to deal with the global reality, the Chancellor has charged headlong into another failure of his own making. He has failed to heed our warnings and the warnings of others, he has failed to invest in the key infrastructure that our economy needs, and as a result he has failed to boost Britain’s productivity figures.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
Is it not the case that our Chancellor is being very adaptable, as we heard yesterday? Is it not the case that the Opposition have an economic credibility strategy which essentially reverts to exactly what they did before—more borrowing, more spending, and higher taxes? It did not work then, so why would it work now?
John McDonnell
The hon. Lady might describe the Chancellor as adaptable. Most of the media and most independent analysts described him today as failing—failing on virtually every target he set himself under his own fiscal rule.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Is it not the case that this Budget has failed on growth, productivity and fairness? Is this not a failed Budget that has been sugar-coated?
John McDonnell
Regrettably I do not think it has been sugar-coated for many of those who will be suffering the cuts included in this Budget.
On productivity, it is the Chancellor’s failure to boost Britain’s productivity that is at issue. The Office for Budget Responsibility is very clear on this point. British productivity, not global factors, is the reason the Chancellor is in trouble. Robert Chote, the head of the OBR, confirmed in an interview last night that “most of the downward growth revisions were not driven by global uncertainty, but by weaker than thought domestic productivity.” As a result of that, we now see drastically reduced economic forecasts and disappointing tax revenues.
The Chancellor has been in the job six years now. It is about time he took some responsibility for what has happened on his watch. It is not just on basic economic competence that the Chancellor has let this country down. Unfairness is at the very core of this Budget and of his whole approach.
John McDonnell
I will press on, if the hon. and learned Lady does not mind.
The Chancellor said in 2010 that this country would not make the mistakes of the past in making the poor carry the burden of fiscal consolidation. The facts prove that that is just not accurate. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the long-run effect of all tax and benefit changes in last year’s autumn statement would mean percentage losses around 25 times larger for those in the bottom decile than for those in the top decile.
Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman and the Opposition are suffering from some form of collective amnesia. Does he not remember that the British economy was on life support in 2010 when the Chancellor took over? The body of the economy was barely twitching. Why does he not acknowledge the fact that since 2010 growth is up, wages are up, employment is up and the deficit is down? He should be praising the Chancellor, not saying the economy is going down.
John McDonnell
Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the objective statements of the past 48 hours have demonstrated that all the factors that he mentions are falling back, and that we now face a serious problem that should be addressed by a responsible Government when they see their own fiscal rule and economic policies failing?
Let me repeat what the IFS said so that everyone is clear: the percentage losses were about 25 times larger for those at the bottom than for those at the top. So much for the Government’s statement about the broadest shoulders taking the strain. Furthermore, time and again, it is women who have borne the brunt of the Chancellor’s cuts. Recent analysis by the Women’s Budget Group showed that 81% of tax and welfare changes since 2010 have fallen on women.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not just women who have borne the brunt, but disabled people? Half a million disabled people are losing between them £1 billion. Surely not even Conservative Members can stand this anymore.
John McDonnell
I fully concur with my hon. Friend. I will come back to that point.
The distributional analysis by the Women’s Budget Group shows that by 2020 female lone parents and single female pensioners will experience the greatest drop in living standards—by 20% on average. In the case of older ladies, the single female pensioners, the cuts in care are falling upon their shoulders. I find that scandalous in this society.
It is disappointing, too, that the Budget offered no progress on scrapping the tampon tax. The Chancellor is hoping for a deal from the EU on the tax. If there is no deal, we will continue to fight for it to be scrapped.
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Gentleman mentioned that productivity was down for domestic reasons, not for international reasons. Can he therefore explain to me why the Congressional Budget Office in the US has reduced its forecast for potential productivity growth by 8.9 percentage points, which is lower than that for this country?
John McDonnell
That relates to the US economy. The figures that I quoted were not mine. They were from the Office for Budget Responsibility, which referred to domestic productivity falls.
Young people have also paid a heavy price during the Chancellor’s tenure. It is not just the education maintenance cuts in the last Parliament, or the enormous hikes in tuition fees; it is the dream of home ownership receding into the distance for young people on average incomes. The new Lifetime ISA will not resolve that. With pay falling so sharply for the young, there can be very few who can afford to save £4,000 a year.
We know that so far on the Chancellor’s watch, people with severe disabilities have been hit 19 times harder than those without disabilities. If that were not enough, the Government are now taking over £100 a week out of the pockets of disabled people. Even for a Chancellor who has repeatedly cut public spending on the backs of those least likely or least able to fight back, this represents a new low. I believe it is morally reprehensible.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
The shadow Chancellor is being very generous with his time. With respect to owning one’s own home, will he not take into account that the Help to Buy scheme has helped thousands of first-time buyers, 82% of whom would not have been able to buy their home without that scheme?
John McDonnell
The problem, as the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge, is housing supply. Because of the failure to build homes under this Budget, I fear that the interventions that the Government may make, which I often welcome, may force up prices, rather than allowing access to homes. The hon. Gentleman shares with me the desire that young people should be able to afford a home, and with me he should campaign now for more housing construction. That means investment, and sometimes you have to borrow to invest.
John McDonnell
I will come back to the hon. Gentleman.
On disability, I am appealing to the Chancellor to think again. We will support him in reversing the cuts in personal independence payments for disabled people. If he can fund capital gains tax giveaways for the richest 5%, he can find the money to reverse this cruel and unnecessary cut.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that if the Chancellor is not going to listen to the Opposition on the draconian cuts to these benefits, he will perhaps listen to Graeme Ellis, the chair of the Conservative Disability Group, who, as a result of these pernicious cuts, is cutting all links with the Conservative party?
John McDonnell
I just say this across the House: this is a very important issue—we will not make party politics of this. As someone who has campaigned on disability issues in the House for 18 years, I sincerely urge all Members to press the Chancellor to think again. This cut is cruel, and it is, unfortunately, dangerous for the wellbeing of disabled people.
Several hon. Members rose—
John McDonnell
With the greatest respect, I have just been reminded that I have spoken for more than 20 minutes, and I know there is a crowded schedule. I have given way extensively, and I would like to press on.
If corporation tax—already the lowest in the G7—can be reduced yet further, money can be found so the Government can think again about making yet more cuts to people with disabilities.
Finally, I want to talk about the future. Yesterday’s Budget does not meet the needs and aspirations of our society. It fails to equip us for the challenges ahead. It fails to lay the foundations for a stronger economy that could deliver prosperity shared by all.
The Chancellor has repeatedly told us we are the builders, and yesterday we heard more of it. On infrastructure, we are back to press-release politics: projects announced with no certainty of funding to complete them—projects that should have started six years ago. It is always tarmac tomorrow. If stories about garden suburbs sound familiar, it might be because we have heard them before. Announcements about garden suburbs have become a hardy perennial of the Chancellor’s announcements.
However, despite all the rhetoric, all the re-announcements and all the photo opportunities in high-vis jackets, one statistic is in black and white in the OBR’s documents: public sector investment as a share of GDP is scheduled to fall from 1.9% last year to 1.5% by the end of this Parliament—a lack of investment in our infrastructure that will hold back the growth of our economy.
On education, it seems that we are back to the politics of spin and stunts. Forcing schools to become academies will do nothing to address the shortage of teachers, the shortage of school places and increasing class sizes. Forcing schools to compete for the extra-hour funding places more bureaucratic burdens on headteachers, with only a one-in-four chance of gaining that additional funding.
We have learned this morning that there is a half-a-billion-pound black hole in the funding needed for the Chancellor’s plans for schools. I would welcome the Secretary of State for Education confirming whether she will find the money to ensure that, if academisation is funded, schools are fully funded for that process.
As for long-term financial planning, it is increasingly clear that the Chancellor is determined to flog off anything that is not nailed down, in a desperate attempt to meet his self-imposed targets.
Several hon. Members rose—
John McDonnell
I have spoken for more than 25 minutes. You have made it clear, Mr Deputy Speaker, that there are many Members who want to speak. I have been extremely generous in giving way—more than any other shadow spokesman before.
Last year, we noted that the Chancellor could meet the conditions of his fiscal rule only by selling off profitable state assets, even at a loss to the taxpayer. Official figures yesterday suggested that taxpayers will face a loss of more than £20 billion pounds as a result of the Chancellor’s decisions on RBS share sales.
Yesterday, again, we learned that the Government are considering the privatisation of the Land Registry. That is despite their deciding against it as recently as 2014. That is despite the Land Registry returning millions of pounds in profits to taxpayers. That is despite a 98% customer satisfaction rate. It makes no difference to this Chancellor: everything must go, everything is up for sale. When will he learn that you cannot keep paying the rent by selling the furniture?
The Chancellor has consistently put his political career ahead of the interests of this country. Yesterday he tried to do the same, and he failed. His disastrous economic failures are the result of putting personal ambition ahead of sound economics.
The Chancellor is clinging to the tattered remains of his fiscal charter, using it to justify brutal cuts to vulnerable people. In contrast to his rule—widely savaged by economists, and now on the point of being torn up by Government statisticians—Labour has a real alternative. Labour will build a society based on a fair tax system, where the wealthy and powerful pay their fair share. In line with recommendations from the OECD, the IMF, the G20, the CBI and the TUC, Labour will invest to grow opportunity and output. Labour will eliminate the deficit by growing our economy. Labour will invest in skills for a high-wage, high-tech economy.
In contrast to the Chancellor’s broken promises, we will balance Government spending, using a fiscal credibility rule developed, and recommended to us, by the world’s leading economists—our economic advisory council. We will balance Government spending, but not, like the Chancellor, by bullying those who will not fight back. We will invest to deliver shared prosperity, with people able to fulfil their potential, and a country meeting its potential.
Let me make this clear: Labour does not want to see the Chancellor drive the economy over a cliff, blinded by his adherence to a fiscal rule that everyone now knows cannot work. In the interests of this country, we are making him an offer: let us work together to design a fiscal framework that balances the books without destroying the economy. However, let me also make this clear: if he refuses our offer of co-operation, Labour will fight every inch of the way against the counter- productive, vindictive and needless measures the Chancellor has set out in this Budget. Britain deserves better than this.
The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)
It is a pleasure to respond to the shadow Chancellor on behalf of the Government. Let me welcome him to his place on the Front Bench for his first Budget debate contribution in that role.
The shadow Chancellor recently unveiled Labour’s fiscal credibility rule, which we are told is part of its economic credibility strategy. Well, let me suggest that what Labour is missing is a political credibility rule, which would go something like this: the British people expect the same rule to apply to politicians as applies to them; they expect Governments to live within their means, and that is what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has been doing for the past six years.
The shadow Chancellor proved today that he is incapable of answering any of the questions put to him by my colleagues on the Government Benches. However, he is able to tell us a few things. He has told us he wants to transform capitalism. He has told us his heroes are Lenin and Trotsky. He has told us that he wants to borrow more—in fact, had we carried on with the Labour party’s plans from when it was in government in 2010, we would have borrowed £930 billion more in the past six years.
Listening to the Labour party speak on economics is a bit like listening to the arsonist returning to the scene of his crime. It is a constant criticism from Labour Members that the firemen are not putting out the fire swiftly enough to correct the mistakes they made.
The Budget presented to the House yesterday by the Chancellor puts education at its core and invests in the future of young people right across Britain. I noticed that the shadow Chancellor got on to education only right at the end of his speech. This Budget will ensure that we give young people the best possible education, no matter where they are born, who their parents are, or what their background is.
Nicky Morgan
Let me make a bit more progress and then I will give way.
Having listened intently to the shadow Chancellor, I have to ask this: why has he found it impossible to welcome in its entirety a Budget that puts the next generation first? He talks about productivity, but I did not detect any mention at all of investment in skills and the future education of the young people of this country.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
Did it strike my right hon. Friend, as it struck me, that the hon. Gentleman made no mention at all of the Government’s commitment to fairer funding for our schools, which will even help schools in Labour Members’ constituencies—in Doncaster and in Barnsley? This is not about party politics; it is about helping the next generation.
Nicky Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; he makes a very good point. We are tackling, as in so many other areas, the issues that Labour Members failed to tackle for 13 years when they were in government. In fact, the shadow Schools Minister, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), has himself campaigned for fairer funding across the country for our schools.
Several hon. Members rose—
Nicky Morgan
I will take one more intervention and then make some progress.
Alex Cunningham
The Chancellor announced a grand plan to academise all our remaining schools. The cost of doing that will be in excess of £700 million. He has allocated £140 million. How is the Secretary of State going to plug the gap?
Nicky Morgan
Let me nail this point once and for all. It shows that many Labour Members could also benefit from staying on to do more maths education. What Labour Members—including the shadow Education Secretary, the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), who I note is not here today—have missed is the money allocated by the Chancellor in the spending review in November to make sure that we can academise all schools: those that are failing or coasting, and those that are good and outstanding.
Based on the shadow Chancellor’s previous exchange at the Dispatch Box with the Chancellor, I had assumed that he would be an advocate of our “great leap forward” in education reform. I thought that he would welcome the Chancellor’s £1.6 billion of new spending to make our education system fit for the 21st century.
Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
Before I came to this place, when I was the chairman of FASNA—Freedom and Autonomy for Schools National Association—which led the self-governing schools, I discussed with Labour Members on many occasions the unfair funding system that they had, and they agreed that it was unfair, but did nothing about it. Will my right hon. Friend finish the job and deliver a fair and transparent funding formula by 2020, given the money that she has been given by the Chancellor?
Nicky Morgan
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. As in so many areas of Government policy, we will of course finish the job that was not even started by the previous Labour Government.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on the bold steps on academisation. I will relate to her my own personal experience in Solihull, where the majority of secondary schools are academies and we have some of the finest schools in the country. We have found the academisation process to be transformative, and I now want to see it spreading out across the United Kingdom.
Nicky Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. Not long ago, I had the pleasure of visiting a school in Solihull with him and my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman). He is absolutely right to talk about transformative education, which is what Conservative Members want to see. It is a basic right for every young person in this country to have an excellent education. We now have 1.4 million more children in schools rated “good” or “outstanding”.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State realise that many people outside this Chamber will think it extremely odd that, a week after the head of Ofsted described very serious weaknesses in the main academy chains, her answer to that criticism is to force every single school in this country to become an academy?
Nicky Morgan
No. I think that what people in the country will want, particularly parents, who often are not spoken about nearly enough in this debate—
Nicky Morgan
Absolutely. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman read the White Paper and then he will see exactly how parents are going to be involved in this. What parents want is for their children to be in a good school.
Nicky Morgan
Let me just answer the intervention by the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson). The head of Ofsted, who did the right thing in identifying weaknesses that we have said we will tackle, said in his report:
“I also want to be clear that there are some excellent”
multi-academy trusts
“that have made remarkable progress in some of the toughest areas of the country.”
Nicky Morgan
I am going to make some progress.
What the next generation really needs is better schools, the skills they need to succeed in life, affordable housing, and secure pensions. The Budget that the Chancellor outlined yesterday is designed to give them all those things. It is designed to achieve that while making sure that we are managing the economy properly, protecting the next generation from the burden of debt and affording them the bright future that they deserve. It is a Budget in which we have chosen to act now so that the next generation does not pay later.
I know that the shadow Chancellor will understand me when I say that in 2010 we had to embark on a “long march” to reform our schools because we inherited an education system that was more concerned with league tables than with times tables, where an “all must have prizes” culture prevented the pursuit of excellence, and where the centralised structure and bureaucratic control of schooling stifled the sort of leadership and classroom innovation necessary to drive improvement.
Nicky Morgan
I am going to make some progress and then I will give way again.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Mr MacNeil
Fairly sure, Mr Deputy Speaker. This debate is about schools in this country. Clearly, “this country” is not the UK—it is England. This debate does not apply to Scotland. That is not made clear, and in the days of English votes for English laws, it should be clear.
Nicky Morgan
We owed it to our young people to tackle the soft bigotry of low expectations and to give them the education they deserve: an education that will help them to fulfil every ounce of their potential; an education with knowledge at its core, even if that does include the shadow Chancellor’s greatest influences—self-confessed—of Lenin and Trotsky. This Budget will provide the resources to translate into reality the vision for the future of our education system in the schools White Paper that I will outline later today.
Stephen Timms
The Secretary of State will know that the Sutton Trust, in its comment on the Government’s proposals on academies, said that it is
“the quality of teaching that has the most substantial impact on pupil outcomes, especially for the disadvantaged, regardless of school type or setting”.
Is not the Sutton Trust absolutely right about that?
Nicky Morgan
The Sutton Trust also recognised that the quality of teaching in academies is extremely good. If the right hon. Gentleman reads the education White Paper, he will see how we are going to invest even further in what is already a great profession.
We want an education system that is regarded as the gold standard internationally—one that is based on high expectations and an intolerance of failure, treats teachers as the professionals they are, and unlocks real social justice in allowing every young person to reach their potential. Those who are saying that we are not addressing the critical issues could not be further off the mark, because our White Paper published today is a vision for raising standards in teaching, and raising them higher than any Government have before. Teachers will be better qualified and accredited, they will have access to the best development opportunities, and they will command more respect than any generation of teachers before them, taking their rightful place among the great professions.
Rebecca Pow
Did we not go through years and years under Labour when our standards fell so low that we did our children absolutely no favours? I applaud this White Paper. I would like to tell the Secretary of State that a school in my constituency, Court Fields, which was turned into an academy, has seen its maths GCSE results improve by 20% in the past year.
Nicky Morgan
My hon. Friend sets out very well the transformative effect that academies and great teaching have on the lives of young people. It is really quite extraordinary that Labour Members, who started the academies programme, have now moved so far away from their original intent.
Mr Gareth Thomas
On the point about the forced academisation of all remaining schools, may I ask the Secretary of State specifically about the 800 Co-operative schools? A few of those are run by the Co-operative Academies Trust, but the vast majority are Co-operative trust schools. Will she comment on the implications for those schools? Is she willing to commit either herself or her Schools Minister to meet representatives of those schools to discuss the implications for them?
Nicky Morgan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that very sensible, measured question. The Schools Minister or I would be delighted to meet him and those representatives. When I go around the country, schools say to me that they understand that the direction of travel is for academisation. We want to work with schools. I suggest that the relevant schools speak to their regional schools commissioner, but also of course to the Department, to make sure that we are able to help them to academise in a way that continues with excellent education and continues to transform the lives of young people, because that is what we all want to see.
Let me turn to the longer school day. We know the difference that positive character traits can make to the life chances of young people, including the resilience to bounce back from life’s setbacks, the determination to apply themselves to challenges, and confidence in their own ability to improve themselves. Such traits also include persistence and grit—the sorts of characteristics that some Labour Back Benchers might need to demonstrate as they face years in the wilderness under their current leadership. With those traits, we know that young people are more likely to achieve their potential and make a positive contribution to British society.
Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
I thank the Education Secretary for giving way and rewarding character and grit. Although most of us agree that the extension of the school day is welcome, there are schoolchildren who are hungry and therefore find it most difficult to benefit from any reforms. One welcomes the Chancellor’s sugar tax, which will give more children the ability to start school with food in their bellies, but will the Education Secretary break convention and lead a cross-party group to meet the Chancellor, who is sitting next to her, so that we can lobby for some of that sugar tax to feed the poorest children during the school holiday?
Nicky Morgan
I and the Chancellor would be very happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman to discuss that. One of yesterday’s announcements that has not received attention—I will come on to it—is the significant additional funding for breakfast clubs. Of course, the Government have also committed to continuing the pupil premium, which is another way in which schools are able to support those most disadvantaged children. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the need for holiday funding and feeding, and I am certainly prepared to look at that.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
A recent Public Accounts Committee report looked at the pupil premium and highlighted that, due to the vagaries of the existing funding system, funding per pupil in depravation can vary massively. Does the Education Secretary agree that fairer funding will help to tackle that and mean that schools such as those in Torbay will not have to explain why a child there is worth hundreds of pounds less than a child elsewhere?
Nicky Morgan
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One of the reasons we are having a two-stage consultation is to make sure that we get the factors in the new formula right. One of those factors will be to reflect those children who are disadvantaged and in need. One of the figures we uncovered during the course of preparing the consultation was that a child with characteristics of need could receive about £2,000 in Birmingham and £36 in Darlington. That cannot be right if we want to have a proper national funding formula across the country.
The new investment in education means that £559 million is going towards a longer school day to support more schools in offering vital enrichment activities. I welcome the support of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) and others. There is evidence, including from the Sutton Trust, that a longer school day is likely to be particularly beneficial for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. Participation in physical activity and sport in particular is associated with better cognitive functioning, better mental health and improved concentration and behaviour in the classroom.
It is an investment that will particularly raise the life chances of the most disadvantaged young people, who may otherwise struggle to access enriching activities. The new funding will allow 25% of secondary schools to extend their school day by up to five hours per week per child. There are added benefits, as we continue to lighten the burden of childcare costs to parents who can work longer, knowing that their children are engaged in worthwhile extracurricular activities such as sport, debate and music, and are receiving additional support for their academic studies. We are doing that because we are determined to spread opportunities. As a one nation Government, we want to make sure that as many young people as possible have access to those opportunities.
The £413 million promised for education in yesterday’s Budget will double the primary sports premium, because we know that getting young people engaged in sport and fitness early is vital to tackling the growing levels of obesity in children. This significant investment in school sport will have a game-changing impact on the health of young people.
Stephen Timms
The Education Secretary will know that there were very impressive school sports trusts in place up to 2010, with a big focus on secondary and feeder primary schools working together. Unfortunately, they were lost in earlier budget cuts. Will the funding that has now been announced be used for that purpose again?
Nicky Morgan
The funding that has been announced will be used even more effectively, because we are not going to tell schools how to spend it, apart from the fact that we want them to be doing more sport and more physical exercise. The belief that runs right through my party’s education policies is that the people who are best placed to make decisions in schools are the heads, the teachers and the governors—those who know the needs of their pupils best.
What is more, that will be paid for by the new levy on producers of excessively sugary drinks. I thank the Labour party for putting on record its support for that policy. I hope that in the longer term the levy will serve as an incentive for the industry to offer products that are lower in sugar and therefore healthier for young people.
Nicky Morgan
The hon. Gentleman is leaping up and down, so I must give way to him.
Nicky Morgan
The academies policy was started under the Labour party. We have adopted it and taken it forward, and it is providing a transformative education for young people in this country.
On breakfast clubs, £26 million will go towards developing and running breakfast clubs in up to 1,600 schools over three years, so that children can receive a healthy breakfast and start school ready to learn. The money promised for the longer school day, sport and breakfast clubs underlines this Government’s commitment to happy, healthy students who will be well placed to become the active citizens of tomorrow, contributing more to our economy and relying less on the welfare system.
We want to be absolutely certain that the investment in education promised by the Chancellor yesterday is felt up and down the country. Our new “achieving excellence areas”, supporting, among other regions, the northern powerhouse, will do exactly that. The Budget has given £70 million of new funding for the education powerhouse to add to the Department’s existing commitment to prioritise its programmes in the areas that most need support, and to deliver a comprehensive package to target an initial series of education cold spots where educational performance is chronically poor, including in coastal and rural areas. The investment will help to transform educational outcomes and boost aspiration in areas that have lagged behind for too long.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
On the northern powerhouse, a recent written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) shows that 100% of the Treasury’s senior civil servants are based in Whitehall and that 60% of them are men. Apparently, the Chancellor really does think that the man on Whitehall knows best—he had a lot of men on Whitehall making decisions for this Budget. Is that why they have failed to come up with a solution to the tampon tax?
Nicky Morgan
I had the pleasure of working in the Treasury with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in the last Parliament, and hon. Members could not find anybody who is more supportive of promoting women and of women’s causes. On the tampon tax, we hope very much that we will make progress with the EU on the VAT rate. I know that the hon. Lady is new to Parliament—she joined last year—but the last Labour Government, including female Ministers at the Treasury, had 13 years to tackle the issue. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has put aside money and there is a fantastic list in the back of the Red Book of the charities and organisations that will benefit from it. We can all agree that it would be better not to have VAT levied on sanitary products, but we support those organisations.
I have talked about support for the northern powerhouse. The review of northern schools will be carried out by Sir Nick Weller, executive principal of the eight Dixons Academies in Bradford.
Nicky Morgan
I invite the hon. Gentleman, who is a Bradford Member, to make an intervention.
Imran Hussain
I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. To be fair, we welcome the £20 million for the northern powerhouse school strategy. Nevertheless, does she not think that that would operate a lot better without the forced academisation agenda?
Nicky Morgan
No, I do not. Nick Weller is the executive principal of the eight Dixons Academies in Bradford and they are transforming young people’s life chances. Academies are bringing in strong sponsors and strong multi-academy trusts. I cannot think of anyone better to conduct the review. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and other Bradford Members will work with him to make sure that we identify exactly how we can continue to transform education in Bradford and elsewhere.
We have already discussed the national funding formula in interventions, but I just want to put on the record that we believe that the same child with the same characteristics deserves to attract the same amount of money, wherever they live in the country. A national funding formula will mean that areas with the highest need attract the most funding, so pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds will continue to receive significant additional support to overcome the entrenched barriers to their success. We are going beyond our manifesto pledge to protect per pupil funding for the core schools budget by investing an extra £500 million in the schools budget. That means that, as part of our consultation on these reforms, we can aim to deliver a fair funding formula allocation to 90% of schools that should be gaining by 2020. That further demonstrates that we deliver on our promises.
Jeff Smith
The Chancellor yesterday announced a plan to teach maths until age 18. That may be a laudable aim, but how can it possibly be delivered when there is a chronic shortage of maths teachers—a teacher shortage that she is presiding over and failing to tackle?
Nicky Morgan
We are looking at that for precisely this reason. One of the reasons why recruitment is difficult is the recovering economy. I welcome that, in many ways, but as Education Secretary I recognise that it means that there are more opportunities for graduates to go into careers other than teaching. The number of students taking A-level maths, which enabled them to study it further and perhaps to become teachers, fell under the last Labour Government. There are fewer such people around, so we are having to look very hard, but that is the purpose of the review. As I have said, the review also needs to look at the shadow Chancellor’s calculations about how we can afford the full academisation policy. The numbers set out are from the spending review.
Helen Whately
Quality of teaching is the most important factor in education. I welcome the focus on quality of teaching, teacher training and recruitment in the White Paper that has been published today. May I welcome the Government’s grip on that factor in education? That is such a contrast to the previous Labour Government, who spent so much money on buildings rather than on teachers.
Nicky Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend, who makes an excellent point. I thank her for looking at the White Paper, and I hope that other hon. Members from all parts of the House will do likewise. The Government absolutely agree that the quality of teachers is the single most important factor in great education for our young people. If we were to follow the example of the Opposition, we would constantly be saying, “We cannot teach that, because of issues around finding the right teachers.” It is a totally defeatist way of looking at the matter. We have identified the important subjects that we want our young people to study, and we will make sure that teaching is a rewarding and exciting profession that the best people want to go into.
I have already talked about full academisation. We firmly believe that the policy continues to put power into the hands of school leaders and teachers so that they can decide how best to teach and nurture young people, as the great leaders in our best academies already are. We want schools to have the freedom to innovate and demonstrate what really works, but they will be able to do so within the scaffolding of support needed to realise the full benefits of autonomy. Crucially, this funding will support the reform and growth of multi-academy trusts with the people and the systems they need to enable them to drive real, sustainable improvement in schools’ performance.
For Opposition Members who say that the structure of the school system is not important, let me quote a Labour leader who knew how to win elections:
“We had come to power saying it was standards not structures that mattered…This was fine as a piece of rhetoric…it was bunkum as a piece of policy. The whole point is that structures beget standards. How a service is configured affects outcomes.”
What an acknowledgement from the former Prime Minister who started the academies programme of the fact that this policy has the power to transform our school system. That is another demonstration of the current Labour party’s lack of ambition for England’s schools, and of the way in which it has retreated into the fringes and kowtowed to unions rather than putting the interests of children and parents first.
There now 1.4 million more children in good or outstanding schools than there were in 2010.
Nicky Morgan
I am going to make some progress, because I know that the Budget debate is oversubscribed. I have been very generous with interventions, and I will try to take a few more towards the end if I can.
We stand by our record of getting young people into study and training. We have the lowest number of people not in education, employment or training on record, but we are not going to rest on our laurels, because we believe that any young person who is NEET is wasting their potential. The Prime Minister has announced a mentoring scheme, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced yesterday that a further £14 million would go towards mentoring, so that we can recruit a new generation of mentors from the world of business and beyond, who can help to engage young people who are at risk of underachieving. By 2020, we want those new high-calibre mentors, businesspeople and professionals to reach 25,000 young people who are just about to start their GCSEs.
We have talked about reviewing our maths curriculum. If we are successful in keeping all young people in education for as long as we can, we have to be sure that we are offering them the education that they need to get a job and to get on in life. Among OECD countries, we have among the lowest level of uptake of maths among young people post 16. That is of great concern, but, more importantly, it is of concern to universities and employers, who need young people with sound maths skills. The review will be led by Professor Adrian Smith, vice-chancellor of the University of London. He will review how to improve the study of maths from 16 to 18 to ensure that the next generation are confident and comfortable using maths. That will include looking at the case for, and the feasibility of, more or all students continuing to study maths until the age of 18.
It is national apprenticeships week, so let me bang the drum for apprenticeships for a moment. The Government have championed apprenticeships consistently since taking office. We have delivered more than double the number of apprenticeships delivered by Labour in their last term of office, and we have committed to 3 million more by 2020.
Liz McInnes
Will the Secretary of State tell me how she envisages the future of the national curriculum, given that academies do not have to follow it? The forced academisation of schools will create a free-for-all when it comes to what schools teach our children.
Nicky Morgan
The hon. Lady’s question demonstrates an absolute lack of trust and belief in the professionals who run our schools. The national curriculum will be a benchmark. If the hon. Lady goes and talks to those who are running our schools, she will find that many academies are teaching above and beyond the national curriculum.
Nicky Morgan
I have already given way to the right hon. Gentleman several times, and I really need to finish now.
The Budget has been all about setting the next generation up for the future. The shadow Chancellor, unlike the Leader of the Opposition yesterday, finally got around to recognising and congratulating the Government on the enormous progress that has been made on the employment figures. The creation of jobs is a true success. The female employment rate is at a record high, with 1 million more women in work since 2010. The OBR is forecasting 1 million more jobs across the economy throughout this Parliament.
It is essential that we have a well-rounded, well-educated and highly skilled generation of tomorrow, and they need the security that only the Conservative party can deliver. The next generation also need the ability to secure their own future, with incentives to save, both to buy their own home and to make provision for their retirement. In the past, people have had to make a choice between the two, but the measures announced yesterday leave them in no doubt that we are on their side. The ISA allowance has been increased to £20,000, and in the new lifetime ISA the Government will give people £1 for every £4 they save.
This is a Budget in which the Government have had to take the difficult decisions that will continue to deliver the economic security that has been the hallmark of this Government’s time in office. The decisions have been made because we want to balance the books fairly across all generations. Let me point out that while we have been making the right decisions, gender inequality in the labour market is down in our society. We have the smallest gender pay gap ever, but we are not complacent, which is why we are taking action to make sure that it is reduced even further.
We know from Labour’s great recession that those who suffer most when the Government run unsustainable deficits are people who are already at a disadvantage. When Government spend recklessly, the next generation are burdened with debt. At a time of public sector spending restraint, education has not been spared difficult decisions, but the Government have chosen to invest in the next generation. The choices that we have made represent a huge boost to funding for children and young people. As I have outlined, we have put in place plans to use it effectively and ensure that it is targeted where it is needed most. Later today, I will set out more about our vision for the entire school system and how we truly deliver educational excellence everywhere.
Nicky Morgan
No, I am going to draw to a close. Labour’s plans to spend, borrow and tax more are exactly what got us into a mess before, and they led to a rise of almost 45% in youth unemployment. We cannot risk the kind of youth unemployment seen today in places such as Spain and Greece.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you can give me some guidance. I understood that when a Minister had a major announcement to make on policy, as I think the Secretary of State just said she had about education policy, they are supposed to come to the Chamber and make it first before it is reported elsewhere. Why has she not done that as part of her speech?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Of course, all statements of policy come through this Chamber.
Nicky Morgan
Let me just remind the hon. Gentleman that I am standing here and giving the House information about the White Paper. It is kind of him to allow me the opportunity to talk again about the White Paper that we are publishing today, setting out our vision of the school system. He can also read the written statement that I have laid before the House.
Stephen Timms
I am extremely grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. She has talked about the policy of converting all schools into academies. Will she assure us that that will not be done by expanding underperforming multi-academy trusts?
Nicky Morgan
We have been very clear that we want good and outstanding schools to expand and we do not want to hold them back. As the right hon. Gentleman has asked that question, I hope he will offer support to new free schools that are set up in his constituency and elsewhere to challenge the expansion of places in schools that require improvement or are in special measures.
As I was saying, we cannot risk the kind of youth unemployment seen today in places such as Spain and Greece. We should not forget that the shadow Chancellor has recently asked for and taken on board the advice of Yanis Varoufakis, that successful Greek economy Minister. In Spain and Greece, there have been thousands of school closures and there have been cuts to teachers’ pay, because they have failed to balance the books. We know that the previous Labour Government left 287,000 more young people unemployed than when they came into office. That cannot be allowed to happen again.
As we promised in our manifesto last year, this is a Government with a plan for every stage of life. From the start of a young person’s life, their schooling and the decisions they make about their career to the choices they make on housing and pensions, which will determine their future happiness, this Budget will deliver the most confident and secure generation ever.
This is a Government who deliver on their promises. From fair funding to further support for families and giving every child the best start in life, we have shown the British people that this Government are on their side. It is clear that Labour Members have not learned from their mistakes. They spent and borrowed too much last time they were in power, and the shadow Chancellor’s speech last week revealed that they are happy to do so again. It should have been entitled a speech on fiscal implausibility, because the Labour party has no credibility when it comes to the economy. They would repeat the same mistakes again and expect a different result—the very definition of madness.
Nicky Morgan
No, of course I will not give way.
The truth is that not only would Labour Members fail to deliver, but their economic policies would risk our nation’s security, our economy’s security and the security of families up and down Britain. The Conservatives will continue to deliver fairness, stability, security and opportunity for everyone. We, the Conservative Government, will continue to put the next generation first.
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
Yesterday, the Chancellor highlighted the huge uncertainties and risks facing the global economy, and he painted a fairly bleak picture of what might lie just around the corner. These have been very tough years for a lot of people, characterised by financial insecurity and drops in living standards, which have started to recover only in very recent times.
One response, as advocated by the IMF and the OECD, would be to boost public investment as a means of pushing up productivity and growth. Instead, yesterday’s Budget confirmed a decade of austerity—austerity of choice, not of necessity; austerity that is falling on the shoulders of those least able to carry the burden; and austerity that is harming our public services. There are £3.5 billion of new cuts in this Budget. Even if we exclude cuts to capital spending and social security, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that funding for day-to-day public services is forecast to fall by the equivalent of £1,000 per head over the course of this Parliament.
Yet all this pain has failed to deliver the economic benefits that we were promised. As the shadow Chancellor said earlier, the Government have failed to meet their own targets on debt, borrowing and bringing down the deficit. They have missed every key economic target they have set themselves. Another target that the Chancellor quickly glossed over yesterday was the fact that the Government are once again set to miss their own self-imposed limit on welfare spending. In fact, the OBR predicts that the Government will breach their welfare cap by £4.6 billion in the coming financial year, and will miss their own target in the next four years as well.
The quagmire that is the implementation of the new universal credit is right at the heart of the Chancellor’s problems. The difficulties with universal credit are not new. However, the OBR has said that universal credit is
“one of the largest sources of uncertainty”
in forecasting spending on social security, and that it has identified
“new sources of significant concern”
in trying to assess the impact of universal credit on spending. I think we all appreciate that predicting spend on universal credit presents some inherent challenges and that certain aspects of universal credit spend will be driven less by policy than by the economic cycle and the state of the labour market, but given the OECD and others’ sobering account of the turbulent global economic outlook, the problems with universal credit are likely to become much more acute.
In that context, I am not convinced that the Government’s arbitrary welfare cap is helpful. The reality is that the austerity cuts of recent years have fallen heavily on budgets for social protection. The £12 billion of cuts already identified in the autumn statement will largely come out of the pockets of low-income households with children and of those who need support to cope with illness or disability. The cuts to work allowances and other changes to the tax credit system, which are due to come into effect from April, will significantly reduce the support to parents working in low-paid jobs, some of whom are going to be thousands of pounds worse off, even when we take into account the increase to the minimum wage, the increase to the personal allowance and other changes confirmed or announced yesterday.
The research published in recent days by the Women’s Budget Group has shown how austerity cuts have fallen disproportionately on women—that point was well made earlier—and points out that women face “triple jeopardy” because they are more likely to be in low-paid work, more likely to work in the public sector and more likely to be in receipt of tax credits or other benefits subject to cuts or freezes. Its research suggests that as many as one in four women are earning less than the living wage.
I want to pick up that point about wage levels and say a wee bit about terminology. It is very important that we distinguish between the minimum wage, which is now being rebranded as the national living wage, and the real living wage, which is calculated on the basis of the actual cost of living and is significantly higher. I of course welcome the increase in the minimum wage to £7.20 an hour for those over 25, but let us not pretend that it is a living wage. Let us also not forget that those under 25 are not so fortunate. For the life of me, I can see no rationale for such a significant differential in pay as the one experienced by younger workers.
The real living wage is currently £8.25 an hour, although we should bear in mind that that calculation was based on the assumption that low-paid workers would be claiming their full entitlement to tax credits at the present rate, not the new reduced rates. In Scotland, we have a higher proportion of workers paid the real living wage than in any other part of the UK, and there are ambitious plans to increase further the number of accredited living wage employers. However, I think we all recognise that there is a long way to go if we are to tackle low pay.
One of the questions I want to ask Ministers today on the subject of the minimum wage is whether and when they plan to raise the carer’s allowance earnings threshold. They seem to be ficherin’ about with their papers, so I do not know whether they have even heard that question. There is no automatic link between the level of the national minimum wage and the carer’s allowance earnings limit. In the past, the limit has just been raised on a very ad hoc basis as something of an afterthought. The limit has huge implications for carers who might be working part time and receiving tax credits, so I hope Ministers will confirm that they plan to increase the carer’s allowance earnings limit in line with the increase in the minimum wage and to do so at the same time. I put it to Ministers that it might make more sense for this to be included in the annual benefits uprating order in future.
I want to return to the guddle of the Government’s social security spending and their cack-handed attempts to save money. The Chancellor confirmed yesterday that the Government intend to take a further £1.2 billion from sick and disabled people through changes to the assessment points awarded to sick and disabled claimants for personal independence payments on the basis of the aids and appliances that they need to carry out daily living activities. PIP is in the process of replacing disability living allowance. This is yet another transition process in the Department for Work and Pensions that has been fraught with problems and lengthy delays.
Jonathan Portes, principal research fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, has pointed out that
“delivery and implementation failures related to welfare changes, particularly related to disability benefits, continue to push up OBR forecasts of welfare spend”.
In his view, the £1.2 billion cut in support for aids and appliances within PIP is being done partly to offset such failures. Personal independence payments are, however, really important. They are the means through which those with very substantial disabilities and long-term health conditions receive extra support to help them to meet the extra costs they incur because of their disability. For many, DLA or PIP is what enables them to work and live independently, and what allows them to participate in their community.
These further cuts come hard on the heels of a raft of measures that have reduced the incomes of sick and disabled people since the start of the Government’s austerity drive. The Welfare Reform Act 2012 has already cut the budget for PIP by £1.5 billion and raised the bar on eligibility for the new benefit. The Government’s forecasting has consistently underestimated the cost of the policy, which is why—once again—disabled people are in the front line.
The transition from DLA to PIP has been blown far off course. By making it more difficult to qualify for PIP, the Government thought that they could save money, and they expected 20% fewer claimants to be eligible for the new benefit. However, they grossly underestimated how many, and how badly disabled, those claimants were. Making disability benefits harder to claim does not change the health or support needs of claimants. In practice, cuts in support have meant that many sick and disabled people have been pushed further into poverty, and some into destitution or worse.
Around 370,000 people in the UK are likely to be affected by this new cut, including around 40,000 in Scotland. That comes on the back of a string of austerity measures that adversely affect disabled people, from the bedroom tax—eight out of 10 households affected in Scotland were the home of a disabled adult—to cuts to the independent living fund, the loss of eligibility for Motability vehicles, and the most recent changes to ESA that we debated the other week, which will reduce support to some disabled people by £30 a week.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
I have heard what the hon. Lady is saying, but does she recognise and accept that disability spending is going up, and that there will be more than £1 billion of spending on disability? Is it not appropriate for welfare spending to go to those in most need?
Dr Whiteford
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue because those figures deserve much greater scrutiny. The rise in the overall budget for disability spending to 2020 is easily explained by the fact that as the baby-boomer generation start to lose their health, and as life expectancy increases but healthy life expectancy does not increase at the same rate, there is more demand for disability support.
I accept that those with the most extreme disabilities need more support—that is definitely the case—but those who are losing out from PIP are probably those who are closest to the labour market, and their PIP, or DLA, enables them to participate in that market and support themselves. Those people have ongoing additional extra costs, whether for aids and adaptations, transport, or because they do not have sight and need support to get to and from their place of work. Such people need and deserve support, so why should they be put on the frontline when many other able-bodied people are not being asked to bear the same level and proportion of that burden? I hope I have addressed the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I am grateful for the opportunity to unpack those top-line figures that sound so generous to disabled people, but mask systematic cuts to the support that individuals who need help can expect to receive.
In response to the Budget yesterday, Citizens Advice Scotland said that
“the confirmation of changes to the Personal Independence Payment will mean that disabled people are set to lose entitlement of up to £3,000 per year to support them to live an independent life.”
Liz Sayce of Disability Rights UK said that the cuts to aids and appliances
“will impact on people’s ability to work, enjoy family life and take part in the communities they live in.”
Before I conclude, let me address the Chancellor’s announcements on savings. In the weeks leading up to the Budget, it was widely reported that he was planning to reform pension tax relief, to rebalance the pension system and make it fairer for basic rate taxpayers and other modest earners. That opportunity was missed yesterday, and instead we got measures that will further widen the gulf between the haves and have-nots, and which lay bare the stark priority that this Government seem to attach to maintaining, and even celebrating, the gross income inequalities that characterise modern British society.
There were some great wheezes for very high earners, not least the increase to the personal allowance. Although everyone can potentially benefit from that, those set to benefit the most are higher rate taxpayers like ourselves. The Resolution Foundation estimates that a third of the benefit of that change will accrue to the top 20% of earners. Meanwhile, a lot of low-paid and part-time workers—most of them women—will not even earn enough this year to take them over the threshold.
Similarly, raising the ISA limit to £20,000 will benefit only those who happen to have a spare twenty grand lying around. To take full advantage of that tax break, someone would need to save more than £1,666 pounds a month, which is a lot more than many people’s take-home pay. The same applies to the new lifetime ISA, because a young person would need to save £333 pounds a month to take full advantage of it. For a 20-year-old working full time on the minimum wage, that represents 38% of their gross salary. It is not realistic. Even among better paid young people, many of those eligible for the scheme are likely to struggle to pay grossly inflated rents in the private sector, and many will be servicing substantial student debts and be unable to take full advantage of the scheme.
Mr Kevan Jones
The hon. Lady raises an interesting point, because the assumption is that people have spare money sloshing around to put into a lifetime ISA. Does she agree that even if someone saved the maximum amount every year over the period allowed, they would not be allowed to buy a pension at the end of that, and in many cases—especially in London—they would not even be able to buy a house?
Dr Whiteford
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point and highlights the fact that young people’s housing problems are caused by undersupply of affordable housing. With the best will in the world, people on normal wages will never be able to buy a house in an urban area such as London, or in places such as Aberdeen and Edinburgh where the housing market is inflated.
Dr Whiteford
I will make some progress.
The lifetime ISA is a nice little bung for trustafarians and others with munificent parents or grandparents. An 18-year-old whose wealthy parents put £4,000 into a lifetime ISA every year until he or she is 40 will get a tidy wee £22,000 handout from the Government. That stands in sharp contrast to the Help to Save scheme under which people on breadline incomes—if, by some miracle, they manage to save £600 pounds a year—will get £300 from the Government. In other words, they receive less than a third of the annual benefit available to those who are already wealthy and privileged.
Dr Whiteford
I will not give way at the moment. No wonder that the Chancellor did not have much to say about the Help to Save scheme yesterday. It is a sham opportunity that is being dangled in front of people who can never hope to insulate themselves properly against financial shocks, whose financial security is increasingly precarious, and who are most exposed to the risks of global economic instability. Some people have already started calling the lifetime ISA the LISA, but out of deference to my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Lisa Cameron) I will resist that temptation. Instead, we might consider calling it the PIERS— for People Inherently Entitled to Rich Savings.
However, this is a serious point because we all recognise the need to encourage people to save more for later life, and for almost all of us the best way to do that will be through a workplace pension to which an employer can contribute. At best, the lifetime ISA is a fairly gimmicky sideshow, and at worst there is a danger that it could undermine auto-enrolment, which is the key vehicle for incentivising savings and promoting fairer universal pensions. We must shore-up confidence in auto-enrolment and not distract focus from it. The pensions industry and sector has suffered a real crisis of confidence over recent decades because people have not seen adequate rewards from the process and do not believe that that is the best way to protect themselves for the future.
This morning the Resolution Foundation published a graph that shows how the Government’s income tax cuts will benefit people across the income distribution. It shows that the lowest 20% of incomes will gain a miserly £10 on average, while the wealthiest 20% will gain an average of £225 each. For me, that encapsulates in a nutshell this Government’s warped priorities and the unfairness at the heart of this Budget. There is an alternative to austerity, and I am sorry that the Government have chosen not to take it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. There are 29 Members who wish to speak. I will start with a time limit of eight minutes, although that will inevitably drop down if people make too many interventions.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
Perhaps the most important thing about the Budget is also the most understated, which is that it is occurring against a veritable job creation miracle in this country. Since world war two, jobs have never been created at the rate that they are being created now, and that is the starkest difference between the economic management of this Government, and that of Labour when it was in power in recent years.
There is much in the Budget to boost that job creation further: the increase in tax thresholds, which is a further incentive to work; the doubling of small business rate relief, which will help to generate more wealth and jobs; the lifetime ISA, which is an encouragement to saving; and the cut in corporation tax, although that will not happen for a number of years.
There was a great welcome in the west country for the measures specifically outlined by the Chancellor. It is great to see the west country getting that long-overdue recognition from the Treasury.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
My right hon. Friend rightly emphasises that the Chancellor has provided funds for the west country. Rail, road, housing and broadband are all needed there.
Dr Fox
That advertisement for the west country’s economic potential was nicely put, and does not really require any response from me.
I share the disappointment that the Chancellor expressed about the fact that the growth figures were downgraded and that debt was rising as a proportion of GDP. The figures make it more difficult to see how we can achieve the substantial and sustainable surplus that is needed to make a meaningful reduction on the level of debt. However, I must say to some Conservative Members and many of the commentators who call for faster fiscal consolidation that they cannot get it by wishful thinking. Their objection to every tax rise and every spending cut proposed by the Chancellor makes it all the more difficult to achieve what we all want.
The Chancellor yesterday set out his view on the European Union element and the impact on our economy. It will not surprise anyone to learn that I do not take the same view as he does, but I want to tackle one or two of the myths and the claims that are made. The first claim, which comes from the Governor of the Bank of England onwards—I almost said “downwards”, but I am sure that is not correct—is that being in the European Union is key to our economic wellbeing. Of the OECD countries, 16 of the 20 with the highest unemployment are in the European Union. Of the 10 OECD countries with the highest unemployment, only one is not in in the European Union. Unemployment averages 6.5% in the OECD; 5.5% in the G7; 8.9% in the EU; and 10.3% in the eurozone—if we extract Germany, it is something like 14% or 15%. I should therefore like to know in the response to the debate the answer to this question: if the EU is so good and so key for economic wellbeing, why is it failing almost every other country in the EU?
The second claim is that inward investment in the United Kingdom comes because of our membership of the European Union. That does not strike me as being logical. If the UK gets the lion’s share of inward investment in Europe, it cannot by definition be simply because we are a member of the EU—we would otherwise get a proportionate share of inward investment. There must be other reasons that are nothing to do with our EU membership that enable that inward investment.
Stephen Timms
Chinese companies looking to move into the Asian business park in my constituency want to come to the UK because it is the best place in Europe for them to be located, it is English speaking and so on. Is it not the case that they want to address the European market, and that if we have left the European market, they will not come?
Dr Fox
I simply do not believe that that——the idea that, if we are not in the EU, we will no longer trade—is credible. Countries do not trade with countries; companies sell to consumers. They will sell to consumers when they have products of the appropriate quality at the appropriate price. The worst case scenario is having World Trade Organisation tariffs, but sterling’s depreciation since November was a far bigger change in the financial costs to business than anything tariffs could produce.
Dr Fox
I will not.
I believe we will get investment into this country because we have a skilled workforce, a good tax structure, and fiscal and political stability. I also believe that money will go to where money can be made and moved. Our commercial law is one of the main reasons why money will continue to flood into this country. Those who invest in this country know that they can take their profits out, unlike other countries where they might consider investing.
Rather than providing the great opportunity, the EU provides two major risks to our economic stability, the first of which comes from the euro. The decision not to join the euro was one of the most beneficial in recent British politics. The euro is a vanity project. It is a political project dressed up as an economic one. The wrong countries were allowed to join, and when they joined, they were allowed to follow fiscal policies that caused them to diverge from the original premise. As a consequence, millions of young Europeans face structural, high and long-term unemployment, sacrificed on the altar of the single currency.
That will have a huge cost, and it has an economic cost to the UK because of the budgetary mechanism by which we support the EU. In other words, the more our economy continues to grow in relation to the EU, the higher our contributions will be, because they are a factor of our GDP. We in this country and our taxpayers will be penalised for our economic success and for remaining outside the project that we said from the very outset was doomed to failure. The one thing that we did not hear yesterday in the Budget was how we could otherwise spend the £350 million a week we currently send to Brussels.
The second instability that affects our economy is free movement. According to the Government’s figures, 1.162 million have settled from the European Union in the past decade. That puts pressure, including economic pressure, on the number of school places and the number of houses we require before we see any benefit to the UK population. It also puts pressure on health services. It might well be that those who fund the remain campaign, such as Morgan Stanley and the big oil companies, are not particularly worried about the lack of school places in this country—they will probably not use those places—but free movement has a huge impact in large parts of this country and applies financial pressure on the Government if they are to provide those things. That is even before we take into account the mass migration coming across Europe, which is leading to political and social instability, which will have an economic cost in the longer term.
I want briefly to deal with a completely separate issue that the Chancellor raised yesterday. In his Budget statement, he said:
“We have also agreed a new West of England mayoral authority”.—[Official Report, 17 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 960.]
That is not true. We have not reached such an agreement. A draft agreement will be put to some of our councils in the coming weeks, but we have not agreed to the authority. Let me make it clear that the Members of Parliament—the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Ben Howlett) and I—fundamentally and totally oppose the concept of a mayor being applied to the west of England.
We had the experience of Avon, when the outlying areas became nothing much more than an automated teller machine for Bristol’s spending plans. We have no wish to see it re-imposed on us by stealth. I am completely opposed to it and urge my colleagues in North Somerset to reject the proposal when it is put in front of them. If we want devolution, let us devolve down to existing democratic local government structures. We do not need another layer imposed on top of us—a metro mayor. That it works in the north of England is not a reason for it to be applied to the south of England. I have always believed it is a great Conservative policy to have whatever works in place, and not to apply a one-size-fits-all policy from Whitehall.
As I have said, the Budget comes against an extraordinarily good economic backdrop. Britain is outperforming almost all other EU countries, and almost all other developed countries. We have sound finance, free markets, low taxes, deregulation and political stability. The Government have presided over a veritable job creation miracle in this country while the European Union stagnates. We have a chance in the referendum on 23 June not only to reboot Britain, but to deliver much needed electric shock therapy to a sclerotic, failing and stagnating EU. I hope we take the economic opportunities available to us.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I am told by the House of Commons Library that I have been in the House for 41 Budget debates. I have not spoken in all of them, but I have a lot of experience of Budgets and Budget debates. They are always such high octane occasions: the Budget comes out and then there is usually a fundamental disagreement across the Benches. I have always believed, however, that we never really know what a Budget contains, or how it has been received, until we at least get to the Sunday papers. Let us wait for the Sundays to see how it is going down, and wait even longer to see how it will affect the people we represent.
In the run-up to the Budget, one of the most interesting speeches I heard was from someone who is a very classy journalist, Andrew Neil. Many people think, well he is humorous and he has “The Politics Show” and so on, but he used to be the editor of The Sunday Times. He has a sharp intellect. I heard him speak to the Engineering Employers’ Federation only two or three weeks ago. His analysis was chilling: the world economy, as the Chancellor himself said, is in a febrile and delicate state. If we look at what is happening with Putin in Russia, what has happened in the middle east and the lack of leadership in the United States, with the possibility of a President Trump, it is an unstable and worrying world. He said that if people think the UK leaving the EU would be just a little local ripple, they should think again. It could well lead to a breakdown in the world economy. I believe that that analysis is correct.
I get on quite well with the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) on a personal level. I do not know what people do in North Somerset, but I represent a university town. We in this country receive more research income from Europe than any other country per capita. The other day we could not find anyone in the higher education world to speak in favour of Brexit. Not only do we have all that research money and research partnerships, we have, because of the English language, the tremendous stimulus of many European students coming to this country. I do not want to detain the House on this point, but I believe we are successful, will be successful and have to be successful in Europe. We have been successful in Europe. We have been weathering the storm, but that is largely because of our own efforts within Europe.
I would like to say, very briefly, something about what was not in the Budget. I know that that is permissible under the rules. The missing element is health. Dr Mark Porter, chair of the British Medical Association Council, said earlier this week that George Osborne should use Wednesday’s Budget to stop the NHS heading to “financial ruin”. He said there is a
“complete mismatch between the Government’s promise of extra funding and the reality on the ground…If the Chancellor squanders this chance the NHS will continue to slide further into financial ruin.”
We are told that the NHS is ring-fenced. The truth is that one third of hospital trusts across the country are in deadly distress and trouble. My local hospital serves the big university town of Huddersfield and one of the biggest urban areas in the country, Kirklees. Unless we win the fight, we are likely, very shortly, to not only lose accident and emergency for the whole of Kirklees—Dewsbury, Huddersfield, Holmfirth; it is a very big area—but not have a major, proper hospital.
Mr Kevan Jones
My hon. Friend says there was nothing in the Budget about health, but there was a stealth tax on the NHS. It was the announcement that employers’ contributions to pensions, including in the NHS, will increase. That will be another burden on the budgets of his local health trusts and mine.
Mr Sheerman
My hon. Friend makes a very good point and I absolutely agree with him. I spoke to the chief executive of my local trust the other day—I would like the right hon. Member for North Somerset to listen to this—and he said that if it was not for the Spanish nurses we have been able to recruit from Spain, we could not provide a service in the hospital.
Mr Sheerman
Moving on—the House would expect me, after 10 years as Chair of the Education Committee, to say something about education today. I am very concerned about the proposal for the academisation of all our schools. I spent a lot of time with the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, talking about academies. The previous Labour Government created academies because none of us in this House should put up with the underachievement of young people. If we know that there are towns, cities and coastal communities where kids are not getting the opportunity to find that spark to realise their potential and get good qualifications, and, through those qualifications, gain entry into a good life, we should all be ashamed of ourselves—on all Benches in this House. That is the fact of the matter.
Too often, however, Governments look for a holy grail or silver bullet to produce good standards across the country in a hurry. I do not believe that such a holy grail or silver bullet exists. My experience as an amateur historian looking at the history of education policy leads me to believe something quite revolutionary: we do better on education policy when we co-operate across these Benches, rather than when we are ideological and fight over education policy. Forced academisation and the finishing of local education authorities as a real power in the land are deeply damaging to the future of education, deeply damaging to local government and deeply damaging to our local democracy.
The Government say they are in favour of giving power to the people. If we keep taking resources and functions away from local government, what will be the point of local government? Local government must have local roots. The right hon. Member for North Somerset said the same thing just now, in relation to his opposition to the big elected mayors. I have an open mind on that, but if we take away functions from local authorities, we have no trust in them. Good local authorities have been brilliant at education. They have produced some of the greatest educators and experts on education that this country has ever known. If we get rid of that wonderful core of people and cease to have them coming into the system, we will do great damage to the future of education. Many of those people have been very fine chief inspectors, including two of the recent ones. We need to fight for a real, accountable education system. There was even a high degree of co-operation and agreement across the House on the need for comprehensive education. Indeed, Mrs Thatcher, as Secretary of State for Education, made more schools comprehensive than any other Secretary of State.
The way things are going under this Government, we will have a top-down, tiny Education Department in London with 20,000 schools and just the inspectorate. Time and time again, we will have crises in our schools, as we had in Birmingham. We will then have to have a firefighting exercise. We will have to find a former chief inspector of schools to sort it out. I believe the Budget should not have been about education. That is the job of the Secretary of State for Education. It is not up to the Chancellor to make these decisions; these decisions should have been made independently. If we make a highly ideological divide between those people in favour of academies and those against them, it will damage not only our education system but our young people who deserve the very finest education for their lives.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Compared with the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), I am a mere callow youth in the House, having sat through only 35 Budgets, I think, and spoken in most of them. I sometimes feel I am constantly repeating the same theme, but generally in this place, unless one stays with a personal theme and keeps repeating it, one will probably not get anywhere.
Over those 35 Budgets, I have argued constantly for tax simplification. For instance, the cut in corporation tax is no doubt greatly welcomed by our larger companies, which have been the biggest cheerleaders for our remaining in the UK, but whatever they save from these modest cuts in corporation tax has been clawed back in other parts of the Budget. Unless we can achieve tax simplification and move gradually towards a flatter tax system, instead of having one of the longest tax codes in the developed world—as long as India’s—we will never make progress on tax avoidance.
The Minister for Security (Mr John Hayes)
My hon. Friend’s consistency and sagacity are well established in the House, and I take his point about tax simplification, but would he not agree that the best form of simplification is to take people out of the higher tax band and out of tax altogether? Is that not the ultimate simplification and precisely what the Chancellor has done—once again—in this Budget?
Sir Edward Leigh
Yes, of course I acknowledge that, and I congratulate the Chancellor, the Government and my right hon. Friend the Minister on creating an economy in which more people are in work than ever before and more people are being taken out of tax than ever before. We are returning to the historical position of actually making work pay for people at the bottom of the heap. Helping people at the bottom of the heap and taking them out of tax is what the Government should be doing. So everything he says is absolutely right.
If I make a few suggestions or criticisms in the few minutes allowed to me, I do not want it to take away from the Government’s achievement in their macroeconomic management of the economy, and nor do I want to resile from my criticism of Labour Members, who must learn from history and become a credible Opposition. It is not good enough for the shadow Chancellor to come to the House today and refuse to answer any questions about his borrowing plans. There is no point just repeating a generalised mantra about borrowing to invest. It is fair enough to say that—it is the old golden rule of Gordon Brown, and we know how that was broken—but one must be prepared to provide concrete facts and figures. Would the shadow Chancellor borrow more than the present Government?
I repeat, however, that I am in favour of a much-simplified, flatter tax system, and in that context, I recognise that the Chancellor is at last—I have been campaigning for this for years—indexing the higher 40p tax band.
Mr Kevan Jones
I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman in terms of the position he describes in respect of the Opposition. That did not stop his party in opposition agreeing to all the tax and spending proposals and all the Budgets right up to 2008 but then, as soon as it was in government, condemning the Labour Government for overspending—we heard that again today from the Front Bench.
Sir Edward Leigh
All I can say is: not in my name.
I agree with tax simplification. The sugar tax is a fairly benign proposal and is not coming in for two years, but, generally speaking, as a Conservative, I believe we should cut people’s taxes and then let them make their own choices. We all know there is as much sugar in Heinz tomato soup, which I love and is not going to be taxed, or in some of these baguettes one can buy from one of the increasing number of coffee shops in the Westminster village, as there is in Pepsi or Coca-Cola. These companies, of course, will find a way around it—they will probably just ensure that a Diet Coke costs the same as a normal bottle of Pepsi.
I should mention, however, that the Chancellor is repeating a mistake perhaps made in the 18th century. The 1765 Sugar Act, which imposed a tax on sugar, led to boycotts of British-made goods in Boston and sporadic outbreaks of violence on the Rhode Island colony. It was one of the Acts, along with the more famous Stamp Act, that provided ample inspiration for the American revolution. I say to the Chancellor, if he is listening, that we should be aware of that lesson from history.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) mentioned the proposal for a mayor. I was quietly sitting over there, gently dozing, as the Chancellor was going through his complicated plans for business rates, when suddenly I sat up with a start, because he said we were going to have a mayor of Lincolnshire. I was not consulted, although when I talked to a colleague last night—I will not say who—he said, “Well, of course we didn’t consult you, because we knew you’d be against it.”
It is true that some of the greatest achievements in local government have been made by the mayors of great cities—I am thinking of the likes of Joe Chamberlain—and I have nothing against cities such as Bradford, Manchester, Birmingham and London having mayors, but mayors are for towns. Are they for huge rural areas such as Lincolnshire? It takes an hour and a half to drive up the southern part of Lincolnshire to Stamford, where the Minister’s constituency lies, and another hour and a half to get up to Grimsby. Does it make sense to have a mayor? None of my local councillors wants a mayor, but they have been bribed into accepting one, although it is only a draft proposal, and they can still vote it down in their councils.
If councils want a mayor, I will not stand in their way, but they should consider it very carefully. The fact is they would have preferred a devolution of power from the centre, which is fair enough. They are being offered another £15 million a year. They would like a co-operative body, comprising the existing district and county councils, with a rotating chair, to disburse the extra £15 million, but they have been told by the Chancellor that, unless they accept a mayor, they will not get the £15 million. That is quite wrong. It is not true devolution; true devolution is passing powers down.
We have experience of this, in the imposition of the police and crime commissioner. It was not done with public consent, there was a derisory turnout, an independent was elected in Lincolnshire, and the first thing he did was to fall out with the chief constable, and we have barely made progress since then. I say to the Chancellor and the Government: we are Conservatives and we believe in true devolution. They should not attempt these top-down solutions. An elected mayor might work fine in the big cities, but it is not necessarily the right thing for a large rural county such as Lincolnshire. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset, who talked about money being sucked into Bristol, I worry about money being sucked from rural areas up into Grimsby, Scunthorpe and Lincoln.
The Conservative-controlled county council is doing an excellent job. It is not fair that a large part of its budget will be sucked out through the academisation of schools, leaving it with a share of the extra £15 million. I am a strong supporter of academies, but I believe in true independence and devolution. We have a mixed system in north Lincolnshire: we have grammar schools and some very good comprehensive schools. We should not insist, in an area such as Lincolnshire, which has some excellent schools, that the county council give up control of all its schools. In rural areas, we have some very small schools, with just 50, 60 or 100 children, and a top-down, imposed solution is not necessarily right for the education of the kids.
In conclusion, there are many good things in the Budget and in what the Government are doing, but I urge them to pause and listen to local opinion on the imposition of mayors in rural areas.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
In common with all right hon. and hon. Members, I listened very carefully to the Budget that the Chancellor delivered yesterday. It was his eighth Budget—an opportunity to show that, after six hard years nearly, his plan has worked. Although I welcome the introduction of the sugar tax and his clear commitment to a Britain that will be stronger, safer and better off inside a reformed European Union, the reality is that, yesterday, his record of failure became clear: fiscal rules broken; cuts targeted at the most vulnerable in society; no compelling vision for our country; an ideological Budget for the better-off that seeks to reshape the state on the back of our country’s poorest. This was from a Chancellor who frankly focuses too much on the politics and not enough on the economics.
I want to speak today about the Chancellor’s fiscal record, his Budget rhetoric and his short-sighted approach to the future of our economy. First, on the fiscal record, the Chancellor stood here in 2010 and said he was going to get a grip on our country’s finances. In his Budget shortly after the general election, he said:
“This emergency Budget deals decisively with our country’s record debts.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 166.]
Despite that bold claim, six years later, public debt is still rising and household debts are growing. The Chancellor also said he would eliminate the deficit, but we learnt yesterday that this year the deficit will be over £70 billion. It has been just a few months since the Chancellor came to Parliament and presented his “long-term economic plan”—what was supposed to be the plan for the next five years. Yet already those plans are being revised, with deeper spending cuts, growth revised down and borrowing and debt as a percentage of GDP revised up. I have had goldfish that have lasted longer than some of the Chancellor’s fiscal rules.
Secondly, let us look at the Chancellor’s Budget rhetoric. Each year, he stands up and delivers a great line, but if we look at it more closely, we find it is just rhetoric, a mirage. In yesterday’s Budget, the Chancellor said that this was a Budget “for the next generation.” The reality? The Children’s Society says that the Budget “fails the next generation”, and the Child Poverty Action Group says that the next generation are to be the poorest generation for decades. The Chancellor has now been found out for what he is—someone who when he says “long-term economic plan”, really means “short-term political gain”.
The Chancellor says that he wants to talk about the future and that he wants to build a northern powerhouse, but he is not willing to fund it. He is spending three times more on transport in London than in Yorkshire and the Humber, and we now know that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which is responsible for the northern powerhouse, is closing its Sheffield office, moving to London and taking the 200 jobs along with it. You could not make it up. I do not think that the people of South Yorkshire will think that this is what a northern powerhouse should look like.
Infrastructure is crucial to our country’s future. Although I welcomed yesterday’s announcement of money to scope the trans-Pennine tunnel, a project that has been championed by my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), the reality is that investment is too low. Where it is happening, things are moving too slowly. Figures show that just 114 out of 565 infrastructure projects are in construction. If our economy is going to compete in the “global race” the Prime Minister has talked about, R&D spending will be key to our future success. Despite that, Britain is spending less than France, less than Germany, and less than half of what South Korea spends on R&D.
Speaking of our future, where were the measures to build more homes? Where were the measures to help the NHS? Where were the policies to boost the earnings of those living on low pay? These are crucial issues that will define our future, yet we got nothing from the Chancellor yesterday.
On the one issue relating to our future where the Chancellor was decisive, he was completely wrong—our children’s education. Forcing every school to become an academy is an ideologically motivated policy, and there is simply no evidence that standards will be improved. There are already concerns about the rapid expansion of a number of academy chains. This policy is likely further to antagonise the biggest asset in our education system—the teachers.
Who is going to pay for the Chancellor’s fiscal failure? It is my constituents in Barnsley and people across the country. As the Resolution Foundation said this morning, it is those in the bottom half of the income distribution who will lose £375 a year by the end of this Parliament. It is the disabled people who will be denied personal independence payments, the single biggest spending cut announced in the Budget, and one made on the same day that taxes are cut for big business. As the charity Sense said yesterday, it was “a bleak day” for disabled people. Parents who use the children’s centres in my constituency of Barnsley Central—centres that are rated outstanding and good by Ofsted—have seen their nursery provision stopped as a result of Government cuts. Women, too, have suffered from the Chancellor’s tax and benefit changes, with 81% of savings coming out of the pockets of women.
That is the cost of this Chancellor—a Chancellor who puts his own interest before the national interest; a Chancellor who talks about fixing the roof while the sun is shining, but who should be fixing the foundations; and a Chancellor whose economic record is now being exposed as a mirage.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, I am going to reduce the time limit to six minutes.
Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)
My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) described himself as a “callow youth” when it comes to the number of Budgets he has attended. By that calculation, I am probably an infant when it comes to Budget debates.
The hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) referred to the emergency Budget of 2010. I and many other Members were in their places to hear it. Let me take us back to what the economy was like in 2010. It is all very well for Labour Members to criticise what has happened over the last six years, but let us just examine what the economy was like. Actually, it was not growing. In 2009, growth was going down. There was a 4% drop in growth. Wages were going down and unemployment was high—all the things we do not want to see again in our economy. The markets had given their chilling verdict on Labour’s management of the economy.
Mr Kevan Jones
Let me remind the hon. Gentleman that, when his party was in opposition, it actually agreed with our spending targets and the measures we took to rescue this country from the world crash. Moreover, what the emergency Budget did—I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman is wrong because economic growth was moving in the right direction and unemployment was coming down—was suck out demand from the economy, which perpetuated the decline.
Alok Sharma
I have to disagree. If the hon. Gentleman looks at what Tony Blair said in his autobiography—he won three elections, but it does not look like any of this lot are going to—he will see that Tony Blair realised that Labour was spending more in the good years and that is why we got into the position we did. At the time, Bill Gross, the founder of global investment management firm PIMCO, said this about the UK economy. He described it as a “must avoid” and said that UK gilts were
“resting on a bed of nitroglycerin”.
Those were incredibly strong words from the market. We were looking over an economic precipice. Thank goodness we had a change of Government. That is why we are in a much better position now, with growth and wages up and the deficit down.
I of course welcome this Budget. It is a Budget for business and for individuals. It is a Budget for young people and a Budget for investment in infrastructure. When it comes to schools, I welcome what the Secretary of State said. In my constituency, I have helped to found two free schools and academies, and they are doing incredibly well. One that has been going for a few years was rated as outstanding in its first year.
Michael Tomlinson
Was my hon. Friend, like me, surprised that the Labour party did not welcome, or even mention the subject of fairer funding, which will have such positive effects on our schools?
Alok Sharma
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As the Secretary of State said, Labour had 13 years to fix this and it did not. This Government are now getting that right.
I spoke this morning at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, which is much more interesting and exciting than it sounds. It greatly welcomed the business measures in the Budget, particularly the drop in corporation tax. I have to say to the shadow Chancellor, who is now back in his place, that if we drop corporation tax rates, investment will come into the country, which will allow us to raise more money. That is something that he needs to understand if he ever hopes to become Chancellor himself.
The changes to business rates are incredibly welcome to many small businesses, for which business rates constitute a large component of their fixed costs. I welcome, too, the abolition of class 2 national insurance. I hope that we are seeing a move towards a merger of national insurance and income tax. I know that this is potentially very complicated, but the dividends it will pay in terms of tax simplification will be huge, as will be the benefits for businesses.
Investment in infrastructure—many billions have been invested since 2010, and there is more to come during this Parliament—has been a hallmark of this Chancellor’s Budgets. My own constituency has benefited from significant rail investment: nearly £1 billion has been invested in Reading station, and Crossrail is coming, as is rail electrification. There has been investment in local stations as well. However, may I issue a plea to those who are looking at the Hendy report consultation? Two stations in my constituency, Theale and Green Park, are fully funded, but their development has been delayed. I hope that, as a result of the consultation, we can actually get moving so that my constituents can benefit. I welcome the work that the National Infrastructure Commission is doing in driving forward investment and infrastructure in the United Kingdom.
A few weeks ago, I was appointed the Prime Minister’s infrastructure envoy to India. I think that the experience that will be gained by us in this country, and by our companies, will be fantastic. It will not only allow us to help countries such as India with growing economies to raise finance in the London market, but enable our world-leading businesses that are involved in infrastructure to go out and assist those economies.
Finally, let me say something about Europe. I am very much in favour of a stronger, safer, better-off, reformed European Union, and I will be campaigning for us to stay in the EU. I know that we have a limited amount of time today, and I do not want to initiate a huge debate on the subject, but I will say this: if, on 24 June, we wake up and find that the British people have chosen to leave the European Union, there will be a period of uncertainty. That is the one thing with which no one can disagree. There will be uncertainty because we will not know how long it will take us to renegotiate some kind of relationship with Europe, what the cost will be, or how investors will react. I have heard Conservative Members say that investment will continue to flow in, but I do not agree. Given what is being said by foreign countries and foreign companies, I think that they will think twice, and will wait to see what our relationship with Europe looks like before investing in the United Kingdom.
Uncertainty has two impacts. Businesses hate it, which means that they stop investing, and consumers hate it, which means that they stop spending money. The effect of all that will be very bad news for our economy. Both the Office for Budget Responsibility’s book and the Red Book contain all sorts of predictions about how our GDP could be hit if we left the European Union, but, by any measure, it will go down. All the net savings that my colleagues who want us to leave the European Union say we will gain will, I think, disappear as a result of the losses that will follow a fall in GDP and a consequent hit on tax revenues. I therefore hope that all of us, not just in the House but throughout the country, will think very carefully before voting in the referendum on 23 June.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend remember the same concerns being expressed when this country was considering whether it would be wise to join the eurozone?
Alok Sharma
I have never been keen on our joining the euro. All I can say is that I think there will be a huge amount of uncertainty if we decide to leave the European Union. That is what I want to guard against, so I ask everyone to vote to remain in the EU.
I commend the Budget to the House.
Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)
We heard a lot from the Chancellor yesterday about creating stability, ensuring fairness, and choosing to put the next generation first. I must say that his promises sound particularly hollow today, as we debate the important issues of education, women and equalities.
I want to join other Labour Members in raising concerns about the impact on women of the Chancellor’s economic failures. I agree with the assessment of the Fawcett Society that women are facing the greatest threat to their financial security and livelihoods for a generation. Changes in the welfare system and Government cuts in local authority funding and social care budgets have hit women hardest, and many women and young families in my constituency have been driven into abject poverty as a result. According to the Trussell Trust, the London borough of Enfield now has the fifth highest food bank usage in London. That is not a record of which the Government can be proud, and in the light of it I have little confidence that they will be able to deliver on the Chancellor’s promise to do
“the right thing for the next generation”.—[Official Report, 16 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 963.]
I do support the proposal for a sugar levy on the soft drinks industry. The rise in childhood obesity is alarming. However, although the funds raised from the levy are due to go towards the money that is available for primary school sport, we now learn that there is a £560 million black hole at the heart of the Government’s academisation plans for schools. That forced academisation programme will therefore not be fully funded. It seems that the Chancellor could do with some extra maths lessons of his own.
I have serious reservations about the drive to turn all schools into academies. In some parts of the country where standards remain a concern, all schools are already academies, and the Government seem to have no other school improvement strategy for those areas. What will it be like when all the schools in the country are academies? Academies were introduced with the aim of lifting failing schools and helping to improve standards, but the model is now being stretched to fit all schools. This is an ideological approach on the part of the Government, and it constitutes an attack on local education authorities, which will become surplus to requirements. It is disheartening to note the virtual silence from the Government on the important role that LEAs play, both in supporting schools and in helping them to build positive working relationships with each other.
The Chancellor may claim that the academy process offers a “devolution revolution”, but in fact it will centralise power in the hands of the Department for Education. Local parents will no longer be able to hold elected councils, as well as the Government, to account for education standards and provision. Indeed, they will have no say whatsoever. That is a very backward step in democratic accountability.
I know from speaking to parents in Enfield that the structure of the education system is not the first thing that springs to their minds when they are discussing their children’s schooling. They want to know that their children are happy and settled, are doing well at school, and can achieve their full potential. Where are the Government’s grand plans to tackle the teacher recruitment and retention crisis? How do their structural reforms resolve that pressing issue? This matter is of great concern to parents and headteachers in my constituency, and the situation is getting worse, not better.
The Chancellor said yesterday that the performance of the London school system had been one of the great education success stories of recent years. I agree, and I would like to keep it that way. However, the inability of schools to recruit and retain the staff they need is liable to have a lasting impact on the standard of education on offer to children in Enfield and throughout the capital. It will prove very difficult for schools in my constituency to maintain their strong track record of raising standards if their funds are substantially cut, but that is what the new national funding formula threatens to do.
Most London boroughs have per pupil funding rates that are above the national average to reflect the higher costs of education in the capital, but headteachers now face the prospect of money being taken away. That does not seem very “fair”, despite the Chancellor’s claim. We need to be levelling up, not down. I know that the consultation on the funding formula is under way, but I think that schools in my constituency would appreciate reassurances from the Secretary of State today that the Government will continue to invest fairly in the London school system. Such reassurances are vital. I recently conducted a survey involving headteachers in my local primary schools, secondary schools and colleges, which established that real-terms budget cuts were their No.1 concern. Several said that they would be running significant budget deficits within the next three years.
Despite the evidence from schools of increasing levels of poverty and social deprivation, there has been a significant drop in the number of pupils who are eligible for free school meals. According to the Enfield schools forum, that has
“resulted in a drastic and untimely reduction of funding provided to schools.”
The Government need to give further consideration to reviewing the indicators that they use to measure deprivation for funding purposes. Rather than putting the next generation first, this Budget—particularly in relation to school reforms—could do great damage to the provision of high-quality education for all pupils. That is not fair on children, schools or families.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and warmly to welcome the Budget. There is much in it for my constituents and for small businesses in my constituency to welcome, including the tax-free personal allowance, the fact that fuel duty has been frozen yet again and the introduction of the lifetime ISA. I also welcome the measures to tackle homelessness. Poole has an issue with homelessness, and I am delighted to have been elected as an officer on the newly formed all-party parliamentary group for homelessness. The measures announced yesterday will help to raise awareness; they represent a small step in the right direction.
Today, however, the focus is on education and I want to focus on three areas: a fairer funding formula, academies and the sugar levy. I disagree with the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) that Budgets should not be about education, because education and money go hand in hand. The Budget has to be right and the funding formula has to be right for our education to flourish. The manifesto pledge that I stood on was to deliver a fairer funding formula, and I congratulate the Secretary of State for Education and the Chancellor on delivering it. I have campaigned with F40 and I am a parliamentary patron of it. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Worcester (Mr Walker) and for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) for their steadfast campaigning on this issue.
Poole and Dorset fall within the bottom two and the bottom 11 respectively in terms of funding per pupil—[Interruption.] I hear Labour Members chuntering. I am surprised and disappointed that there is no support for fairer funding from the Opposition. When Labour was last in power, the then Secretary of State—I believe it was Ed Balls—admitted that the formula was unfair, and it is time that Labour Members recognised that fact.
Mr Kevan Jones
No one is opposed to fairer funding, but some Labour Members believe that this Government should be done under the Trade Descriptions Act for their track record on dealing with so-called fairer funding, especially in local government. They clearly take out the element of need, which leaves us in the ridiculous situation in which poor parts of the north-east are getting their local government budgets cut, while areas such as the hon. Gentleman’s, which have less demand as a result of poverty, are getting their budgets increased. That cannot be fair.
Michael Tomlinson
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman, and I can give him three examples. Local authorities in Doncaster, Barnsley and Leeds will all benefit under a fairer funding scheme. There is no rhyme or reason to the current scheme. I understand what the hon. Gentleman is trying to say, but the present funding formula is in place due to an historical anomaly. The right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) mentioned levels of deprivation, but it must be understood that that is not the basis for the funding formula. For example, funding can differ by up to 50% in two areas that share exactly the same characteristics. That is neither right nor fair. Indeed, the top 10 schools receive £2,000 more per pupil than the bottom 10 schools. If the formula were based on areas of deprivation, I could understand that and I could explain to my constituents why their funding was in the bottom two and in the bottom 11, but that is not the case. I therefore welcome the changes.
I also welcome the fact that there is to be a consultation and I invite Opposition Members, who are still chuntering, to join in the two stages of that consultation and to make their case. I also welcome the announcement on timing, and the fact that 90% of schools can expect to have this funding by the end of this Parliament. I shall be inviting all schools in my area to contribute to the consultation, and I urge all hon. Members to do the same.
Turning to the subject of academies, I am a parent governor at my local primary school and I know that there will be concerns about academisation. I pay tribute to the teachers in Poole and Dorset, who work so hard.
Bill Esterson
Has the hon. Gentleman had a chance to read the White Paper? Paragraph 3.30 states that there will no longer be parent governors. Does he realise that he would have to stand down as a parent governor as a result of that?
Michael Tomlinson
Doubtless there are many on the governing body who would be relieved if I had to stand down, but I am sure that there would be opportunities for others to step forward. I have not yet had the opportunity to read that paragraph, but I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman to drawing it to my attention. I shall look at it in due course.
I was about to pay tribute to the hard work of our teachers in Poole and Dorset, and indeed across the country. They work tirelessly. The school of which I am a governor recently went through an Ofsted inspection and I saw the hours that the headteacher and everyone else in the school put in. It is right to pay tribute to our hard-working teachers. There is a risk that the rhetoric from the Opposition Benches will come across as talking down the teaching profession, and that must not happen. It will certainly not happen here, because every time I stand up to speak on this subject I pledge to pay tribute to the hard work of our teachers.
However, academisation will be unsettling to our teachers. I urge the Secretary of State to reassure the teaching profession about the structuring and the process involved and to offer support. I know that she will do this. Dare I say that communication will be absolutely vital in this regard, as will setting out the positives—including the financial positives—that can result from academisation. It will be critical for our schools to be supported.
I want to touch briefly on the sugar tax. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) went into great detail about a previous sugar levy, but I do not share his pessimism that we risk such disastrous consequences this time round. Instinctively, I too am a low-tax Conservative and therefore cautious about this measure, but I warmly welcome the direction that this money will go in. I am passionate about sport and I believe that the additional funding for sport in primary and secondary schools will be warmly welcomed. I will invite secondary schools in my area to bid for funding so that they can be among the quarter of secondary schools to benefit from these measures.
Sport is vital in our schools. I hugely benefited from playing sport on Wednesday afternoons and on Saturdays, and I miss those days. I miss the opportunity to play sport at the weekends. Perhaps, Madam Deputy Speaker, there should be time on Wednesdays for parliamentarians to play sport and to show the way. I put in that mini-bid to you today in case it is within your gift to make that happen. Perhaps time could be found in our busy lives to play sport. There is a serious point here: sport benefits our children and it can benefit everyone.
I support this Budget. In particular, I support the measures on education, especially those relating to a fairer funding formula for our schools, which will be vital for Poole and for Dorset.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
I refer the House to my declaration of interest as a serving member of Oldham Council. I have found quite a lot of this debate rather patronising. The way in which the Secretary of State for Education addressed Opposition Members and gave us lessons in maths and other issues was quite condescending. I hope that we can raise the tone a little.
When we give people an education, we ought to do it in a way that is easy to digest and to remember when they leave. I tend to think that if I cannot explain something to my seven-year-old son, I am probably over-complicating it. That is the way I am going to pitch my speech to my friends across the House today. It is no more complicated than this: Georgie Porgie spun a lie. He kicked the poor and made them cry. When the rich came out to play, Georgie delivered a tax giveaway. It is really no more complicated than that: he is taking money from the poorest and giving it to the richest. And I can tell you that teachers in schools across the country will repeat that rhyme to the children when they realise the true implications of academisation for the future of their schools.
We accept that we have a complex and diverse education system. Councils must adapt, as must communities and schools. Indeed, many have done so, but if the question is “How do we address the disconnect between democracy, local accountability and leadership?”, how on earth can more fragmentation be the answer? Taking schools away from local control and dismissing the community in the mix makes no sense at all. Looking at my local area, I see Oldham getting a grip. Oldham recognised that it needed a different approach, which is why, with the support of Baroness Estelle Morris, the Oldham Education and Skills Commission was established. That was quickly followed by a political commitment to a self-improving education system owned by every school in the borough, parents, business and the wider community, all of whom had a part to play in ensuring that schools performed to the best of their abilities and that our young people were set up for the best possible future, to which they are of course entitled.
Mr Steve Reed
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s decision to centralise the control of 24,000 schools in the Department for Education in Whitehall shows the hollowness of their rhetoric on devolution?
Jim McMahon
Most people accept that we have a diverse education system and most of us have reached the conclusion that we should allow for local determination and that councils should not be fighting schools that might want to consider a different model. Equally, councils should ensure that the right considerations have been taken into account and parents should be central to the decision-making process. For the Secretary of State to impose the change on local communities, whether they like it or not and whether they have a good track record or not, makes no sense whatsoever. It beggars belief that the Secretary of State has taken that approach. When the Oldham Education and Skills Commission report was finalised, the three borough MPs wrote to the Secretary of State to seek her support because we wanted the support of central Government and of the regional schools commissioner. Two months on, we have not even had the courtesy of a response. No Conservative MP can convince me that the Secretary of State has one jot of interest in education in Oldham.
Not all councils are the same in the same way that not all schools are the same. It therefore follows that not all academies are the same. We recognise that there is good practice across the board, that some excellent progress has been made, and that schools have been turned around, but what is true for state schools and community schools is true for academies. This polarised debate about having one or the other makes absolutely no sense and does nothing for the people we represent. If anything, it could send us backwards. The evidence suggests that where local partnerships work and where councils step up and take a wider leadership role, good results can be delivered for local communities.
The Chancellor made several references to the change being devolution in action. How can that be when the Government are saying, “You’re getting it whether you like it or not”? But that is a hallmark of this Chancellor. For example, people get a mayor whether they like it or not, and it is the same with schools. There will be no devolution at the grassroots level either. E-ACT, a sponsor with a school in Oldham and a range of academies across the country, decided to sack every single one of its community governors. I was so concerned by that, as were my constituents, that I again wrote to the Secretary of State to ask for her support in stopping it. Her response was that she was actually quite relaxed about it, because it was a decision for the academy, so we now have a school in Oldham with no community representation whatsoever.
Where are the safeguards to ensure that academy sponsors go out to tender for the support services provided to schools? Academies are required to seek such services at cost value if they do not go out to contract, but academies and trading companies will include an overhead, which will contain director and non-executive director salaries, gold-plated pensions, to which public sector workers are not entitled, and company cars. Where are the safeguards to ensure that that cannot happen?
Where are the safeguards to ensure that salaries are published in the same way as in local authorities? Everybody in Oldham knows exactly how much senior officers are paid, because the information is published every year. It is not the same for academies or their sponsors. The chief executive of one academy is paid £370,000 a year for looking after 37 schools. Were that to be replicated in Oldham, with its 100 community schools, the director of education would be paid £1 million a year, which is nonsense. How many people know that that is happening? It happens behind the scenes and is an exercise in smoke and mirrors.
Let us get a level playing field and ensure that academies and their sponsors publish every decision that they make in the same way as councils. Let us ensure that academies cannot give contracts to their parent companies through trading companies and that they are forced to go out to contract like councils. Let us ensure that they publish a pay policy statement and senior salaries just like councils do. Let us ensure that academies publish freedom of information requests in the way that councils do. It is ridiculous that the local education authority, which has been there since 1902, is being unpicked for short-term political gain without any safeguards being put in place. The Government cannot say that they are doing it for democracy, because that does not stack up. They cannot say that it is being done for the communities that we represent. We can no longer say that it is being done in the interests of the taxpayers, because the safeguards are just not in place.
Mark my words: this is heading towards disaster. The structures are not sound enough, the safeguards are not in place, and providers are not mature enough to step up and take on all schools. There are some real questions about who the Tories represent. Is it the pupils? Is it the teaching profession? Is it the wider community interest? Or is it the narrow sponsor interest? It would be an interesting piece of work to find out just how many Conservative party donors are involved in free schools and academies.
Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)
The Chancellor coined this Budget as one for the “next generation”. What struck me was the focus not only on today or next year, but on the years to come after that. “Long-term economic plan” has been said in this Chamber about as many times as “Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker” but the Budget has highlighted that the phrase is not rhetoric or jargon, but a tangible plan to create a saving, home-owning, business-friendly and education-focused nation. Education is the bedrock of opportunity and key to helping the next generation, so it is necessary that a Budget with such a label focuses on education and is bold—and bold it is.
The acceleration of fairer funding to help 90% of affected schools by 2020 will ensure that some older children in Chippenham will also have the chance to benefit from just and equal funding. It will mean an end to the ludicrous existing funding system and will ensure that Wiltshire’s schools get the money they deserve and can continue to offer the fantastic education for which they have become known. Pupil funding in Wiltshire is over £2,000 per pupil less than the national average, so teachers, parents and pupils will be thrilled by this week’s announcement, because they will recognise that their cry has been heard.
I am also delighted that the Government are backing academisation. To be clear, I do not for one moment think that it is the panacea to solve all our problems, but it offers independence, choice, economies of scales and high standards. Abbeyfield School in Chippenham is going through the process and is desperate to become an academy because of the huge benefits and freedoms on offer.
Michael Tomlinson
Does my hon. Friend recognise that some schools will have genuine concerns about the change and will need support and guidance about restructuring and the rest of the process?
Michelle Donelan
I completely accept my hon. Friend’s point. One of the reasons for the announcement was to encourage schools to take ownership and the process will be school-led. We want schools to choose which multi-academy trusts they join, so it is very much a bottom-up reform.
Moving on, I must also stress my support for the sugar tax on soft drinks, which is another bold move. It sends a message that will educate and encourage consumers, parents, children and the drinks industry. With the two tiers, it will also encourage manufacturers to try to reduce sugar in order to move to the second tier. My grandmother died of diabetes when my father was very young. She had a complete addiction to soft drinks. Although it was a different era and we cannot be 100% sure that soft drinks were the cause of the diabetes, it is extremely likely. The household had a modest income, and I often think what a difference might have been made if we had had the tax back then. So I ask anybody who doubts this policy what they mean when they say it will not have any effect. Do they mean it will save only one or two people? Do they mean it will save only someone else’s grandmother or mother? This tax is not just about that, however; it is also about cutting the obesity rate, which means that we will have more money for the NHS to pay for dealing with ailments such as cancer.
This policy will not deter everyone, and nobody is suggesting it will. You can only lead a horse to water, you cannot make it drink. We can, however, send a strong message about the threat that these drinks pose. I believe that this policy is very Conservative; it is a responsible action by a responsible Government. It is a forward-thinking action, one that does not ban but which encourages personal responsibility. It encourages people to take ownership when they have the right facts and the right message from the Government. A recent study by Public Health England found that the average teenager consumes more than three times the recommended amount of sugar. The report also showed that if they cut down to the 5% target within five years, 77,000 lives would be saved and the saving to the NHS would be £14 billion. That makes the case on its own.
Using the money generated to double the primary school PE and sport premium from £160 million to £320 million per year is a great step forward in encouraging sport and fitness, and tackling childhood obesity. The £285 million a year to allow 25% of schools to extend their school day by an hour will assist parents and reduce their childcare bill. That, too, is a forward-thinking move, one supported by the Sutton Trust. The use of the hour will be key, and I look forward to reading more information about that.
This Budget was business-friendly and it was aimed at combating our productivity crisis. It will help businesses in my constituency and around the country, and it will encourage start-ups. However, we also need to encourage and enable the next generation of business owners, managers, directors and employees, and they will need to be proficient in maths. We need to use this opportunity to bring maths to life—to teach practical and applicable maths. We need to teach maths for real life, to ensure that students are work-ready and life-ready. We need, thus, to be able to give them help with their mortgages, tax returns and balance sheets. We need to give them maths for technical applied roles and basic business mathematics—the list goes on. This is particularly important, given that we have a growing number of self-employed in the economy. There will be 40,000 self- employed people in Wiltshire alone in the next five years.
I must stress that we must not allow this to be the start of a journey towards compulsory A-level maths or a broad-based maths course pegged at this level. I hope that Sir Adrian Smith’s report will reflect the need to enliven and enrich students’ mathematical basis for the real world. We need to ensure that our system creates numerate and mathematically proficient young people, but we must also remember that not everyone needs to be a mathematician—as I well know. We will need to ensure that they have the element that is necessary for the workplace. I repeat that this report and this reform offer us a massive opportunity, but only if we go about this correctly. I also welcome the additional support to encourage lifelong learning, and the recognition it shows that the economy and labour market are moving at a fast pace in our international world.
There are many things I would have liked to have said, but the time limit has severely handicapped me. I just sum up by saying that this is a bold Budget. It is an opportunities-based Budget. It is a Budget designed not only to improve our education system in the long term, but to offer opportunities in the short term and the long term for all.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Yesterday, the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box proclaiming that this is a Budget for the “next generation”. Beyond the headlines what we heard was that debt is higher than it has ever been; that growth forecasts have been cut; and that he is missing his own targets for reducing the deficit. What we heard is the Chancellor admit that he is failing. He may have tried to add some fizz to his speech, but we know it was just sputterings of more cuts, more cuts and more cuts. These are cuts to the police, cuts to youth services, cuts to support for disabled people and cuts to the fire service. He has been Chancellor of the Exchequer for six years and no matter how much he wants to, he simply cannot blame Labour any more.
The Chancellor was quick to proclaim his Budget for the “next generation” but there is one glaring omission with that: he has forgotten this generation. To be honest, he has even forgotten the next generation, too. Research by the World Health Organisation puts us way down a list of 42 countries, with only the children of Poland and Macedonia being less satisfied with life than the British. The report says that our teenagers are suffering high levels of stress and have big worries about their health. They feel pressured by school work, and school-related stress is on the rise. What is the Government’s answer? It is: turning every school into an academy; removing democratic control; extending the school day; removing collective bargaining for teachers; and getting rid of governors. In short, the Government are restructuring a whole system, adding to teachers’ concerns and stress. We know that the Government do not have a good track record in top-down reorganisations. Have they learnt nothing? Clearly they have not learned, as this is another top down reorganisation that nobody voted for; they have no mandate. These proposed changes will turn our education system into the wild west, with everyone doing their own thing and with the Department for Education running it all—it is ridiculous. Will academies be able to run selections? Will we see a mass return of the 11-plus? This reform will increase the cost of education, make our country more unequal and embed unfairness throughout our education system. This reform takes us backwards, not forwards. Let it go on the record now that I will fight this every step of the way.
It is not just in education where we find problems, as the Government’s failures are letting young people down all over the place, with one example being on housing benefit. The Government have said they will cut housing benefit for 18 to 21-years-olds, without any consideration being given to the needs of any of those young people, what they might be escaping and what their situation is. What are the Government doing? This benefit is an essential safety net. Removing it just increases the risk of homelessness and damages these people’s prospects of finding work in the future.
We are also seeing the death of youth services, which provide—or should I say provided— a vital safety net. Unison has reported that at least £60 million was cut from youth service budgets between 2012 and 2014, which meant that more than 2,000 youth workers have disappeared since 2010. But that is not all, because on top of this more than 350 youth centres have closed. What is going on? If we look at what happened from 2013 to 2014 alone, we see figures from the Department for Education showing a cut of more than £103 million from youth services. Children’s social care—cut; family support services—cut; adoption services—cut; youth justice teams—cut; Sure Start centres—cut; child protection services—cut; and looked-after children services—cut. The list goes on and on. More and more young people are falling through the gaps left by a lack of services. The choices that this Government are making are damaging young people’s life chances, worsening their mental health, and increasing the possibility of them getting into trouble, as they are open to abuse and potentially at risk of becoming involved in serious youth violence.
Quite simply, the impact of the Government cutting council budgets is putting children’s lives at risk. Children are dying on our streets because councils can no longer afford to fund crucial services. That makes me angry, but what makes me really angry is the fact that, in the eyes of many young people, all MPs are the same, and that cannot be further from the truth. This is a shocking Budget, as it harms the country’s young, but it does not have to be like that. Young people do have the power to change things at the ballot box. More young people need to register to vote and to use that vote. Labour will invest in our young people, and we will do so not because we want headlines, but because we know that they are the future.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I followed the remarks of the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) with a great deal of interest. Clearly, I do not agree with many of them, but I do commend her for the passion with which she prosecuted them.
This is a good Budget, and it is a good Budget for the next generation. I am the father of five children, so the next generation is important to me. I also represent a number of schools that have benefited from the pupil premium and other such changes, and a large number of service families who have been particular beneficiaries of them. I most certainly welcome the acceleration of the move towards fairer funding for schools.
However, I am ever so slightly cautious about the maths thing. I noticed that we will be consulting on whether we should have maths to the age of 18. Maths can be great, particularly vocational or lifestyle maths—the sort of maths that my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) had in mind—but it can also be demotivating and a somewhat depressing experience for children for whom maths is not their bent. I would be a little bit of cautious about making the introduction of that particular discipline compulsory to the age of 18.
I am a strong supporter of the sugar tax. The Opposition has suggested that this may be a pun-rich artifice to draw attention away from the three fiscal tests. That is grossly unfair, because the sugar tax will come to be seen as an historic tax. It is an indication that the Government are prepared to act on important public health measures when it becomes clear that voluntary measures have not succeeded.
I am very conscious of Robert Chote’s clarification of the position of the Office for Budget Responsibility on Brexit and the importance of not misrepresenting organisations such as his. However, as we have already had talk of the European Union as part of this Budget debate, I would like to weigh in with my own observation about the tampon tax. I commend the Chancellor for his imagination in finding £12 million from this tax to spend on relevant women’s charities, but it is a great pity when a country such as ours has to tiptoe around a requirement instituted by the European Union. Where on earth is the sovereignty in a state that cannot determine even the tax paid by its citizens on tampons?
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury will be undertaking a drive for efficiency and value for money. In so doing, I hope that he pays attention to Lord Carter’s review of efficiency in hospitals, which was published last month. It is a marvellous piece of work that draws attention to the unwarranted variation across our national health service that is costing somewhere in the region of £5 billion a year. The concept of a model hospital and metrics such as the adjusted treatment cost and the weighted activity unit are absolutely necessary if we are to make what is an efficient service even more efficient, and bring our healthcare outcomes up to the level of the very best in Europe, and not, as is so often the case, around about the level of the worst.
Simon Stevens’ £22 billion funding gap seems unbridgeable without measures of the sort that has been presented by Lord Carter of Coles. Part of the answer is right-sizing the national health service estate, and we will increasingly have to get to grips with the need to regionalise our acute sector and secondary care hospitals. That will involve some difficult political decisions, but we must not baulk at them if we are to drive up healthcare outcomes.
Yesterday, I was called a health fascist by a colleague for my views on the sugar tax and on taxing tobacco. I make absolutely no apologies if indeed that is the case. I am particularly exercised about tobacco. Smoking is the captain of the men of death in this country. It kills 100,000 people a year, far more than obesity, alcohol and illicit drugs put together. It causes death before normal retirement age in 50% of those it kills. It causes 20 times as many smokers as die to have smoking-attributable diseases and disability. If we are serious about public health, we have to be serious about smoking, and although rates have fallen in recent years, they appear to have reached a plateau, and we need to drive them down much more and much more rapidly.
There is no safe threshold for smoking. Unlike many substances which we might like to control—I am thinking particularly of alcohol—there is no safe threshold. It is surprising, maybe, that this product is available for sale at all. Half of all health inequality between social classes 1 and 5 is thanks to cigarettes. Poorer people consume more, draw on their cigarettes harder, use higher tar products and leave shorter stubs. Their smoking is worse not only in quantitative terms, but in qualitative terms.
Bravo to the Chancellor for listening to Action on Smoking and Health. Well done for raising the duty by 2%. I would like to see it higher. Well done for the innovative minimum excise duty tax to head off trading down. In all, it is a good Budget—a good Budget for the next generation.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison). I have great respect for him and his views on health and I would never call him a health fascist. He is measured in the way that he presents health issues, particularly in relation to public health.
I will repeat some of what was said from the Front Bench by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). This is the eighth Budget of this Chancellor in six years—eight Budgets of big promises to eliminate the deficit by 2015. He has broken his own budgetary rules on debt and on welfare, and he is heading towards breaking his rules again on the budget surplus in this Parliament. Why? Because of the actions of this Chancellor. Yes, there are global issues that will impact on any country’s economy. That was the case when the Labour party was in government, it was the case when the previous Conservative Government were in office, and now this Chancellor is admitting that they will impact on his plans.
Early Budgets choked off growth. The initial emergency Budget in 2010 contained cuts and an increase in value added tax.
Mr Kevan Jones
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is remarkable that the Chancellor now refers to global headwinds that may knock him off course, but in 2010 when he choked off demand—and we have heard it again today—he claimed that the recession in 2008 was nothing to do with the global situation, but was all down to a Labour Government? Is it not ironic that he chooses to use the global situation as an excuse for what he blamed the Labour Government for in 2010?
Albert Owen
My hon. Friend is right. He and I and the Chancellor came into Parliament together and we know he has form on these issues, which have been laid bare in this Budget.
The early Budgets choked off growth. I mentioned value added tax because it is forgotten that initially this Government raised value added tax by 2·5p in the pound. That took money out of the economy at a time when there should have been a fiscal stimulus, as there was in many other countries, to ensure that we got out of the recession and out of austerity as quickly as possible. So it is the Chancellor, in his eighth Budget over six years, who is responsible for not being able to balance the books, which he promised he would do.
The poorest, the vulnerable are paying the price of extended austerity, and less so those on higher incomes, who have seen their income tax cut. Now we hear in this Budget that capital gains tax will be cut at a time when the personal independence payment is being taken away from some disabled people. That is the priority of this Chancellor, and that is why we are in the present situation.
I talk about value added tax being raised because the Chancellor is always talking about how thresholds are going up and how that is helping. However, that is eliminated by the additional value added tax that people have to pay on goods. The big announcement yesterday about a freeze in petrol duty and a freeze on beer duty is wiped out when people have to pay 2·5p on each pound when they buy petrol, drink beer or go out for a meal. This Chancellor is putting taxes up, not down, and families are suffering across the country. Ordinary people are paying the price.
I refer to the insurance premium tax. Yes, we all want to see investment in our flood defences, but again, it is ordinary families who will pay for that through a stealth tax. Rather than being the work of a tax-cutting Chancellor, the Osborne taxes are hurting ordinary families in this country.
The biggest losers are women and the disabled. The Chancellor really missed an opportunity to use the Budget to help the many women born in the 1950s through transitional pensions. He missed the opportunity to use some imagination to come up with a formula to try to smooth out the issue of those whose pension age is going up but who were not given sufficient warning to plan for that.
The Chancellor talked about an ISA for young people under 40. He needs to get out and about. I have two daughters under 40, and they are burdened with student debts—they are struggling to pay the bills. People like them do not have £4,000 in their back pockets to invest for the future. They need help and support—not to be told that they can get an extra £1 for every £4 they save. The Chancellor is out of touch.
I do agree with the sugar tax, but it is not a silver bullet. To deal with child obesity, there needs to be long-term, careful planning, and there needs to be a change in lifestyles as well. I welcome the proposals on sports provision in English schools—I do not think it has been cut in Welsh schools—but it was the Chancellor who cut the funding for it, which he is now reintroducing.
When the Chancellor talked about infrastructure for the future and the next generation, there was one area he missed out: digital infrastructure. The Prime Minister has promised universal superfast broadband coverage across the United Kingdom. Again, the Chancellor had an opportunity to stand up and say how we will fund that in a way that will allow us to compete with the South Koreas of the world and to have modern infrastructure.
Mobile coverage is poor across most of the United Kingdom. There is a small plan in the Budget for 5G in 2017. Many areas that I represent in north-west Wales do not even have 3G, and they certainly do not have the luxury of 4G. Poor broadband, alongside poor mobile coverage, makes businesses in that area difficult to operate. We talk about education, but what about those who are not in conventional education but doing Open University courses? They cannot complete their studies, because they do not have the basic infrastructure in the 21st century.
The Budget is therefore a missed opportunity, although I welcome many of the things the Chancellor talked about. He mentioned north Wales, which I was very pleased about, because I have been lobbying the Conservative Government to link north Wales into the so-called northern powerhouse. I will work with the Welsh Government, the UK Government and local authorities to get a good deal for growth in north Wales, but we need to see the detail. What we heard were big plans for the long-term future that we have heard before. What we wanted were radical, bold initiatives to invest in this country, invest in people now, invest in those who are losing out on pensions and invest for those in the next generation, helping them today—not giving them false promises for tomorrow.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
It is a privilege and an honour to follow the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), but I am afraid I cannot agree with much of what he said, and particularly not with his pessimism about what he called ordinary people. Thanks to the enormous growth in jobs, many of those people are now in work when they were not before. They are paying lower taxes and getting higher wages, so I think he is wrong to be pessimistic and should welcome much more of the Budget than he did.
I might also remind the hon. Gentleman of where we were in 2010, when more than 2.5 million people were unemployed and Government borrowing was more than 10% of GDP. That was a consequence, unfortunately, of years of reckless spending under the last Labour Government, who built up a ballooning budget deficit, even when the economy was strong. That, in turn, built up the country’s debt month by month. Opposition colleagues have no plan to pay off that debt—I can only assume that they plan to pass it on to future generations.
Mr Kevan Jones
The hon. Lady was not in the House at the time, but will she explain why it was, then, that the Conservative party not only agreed with the last Labour Government’s spending until 2008, but, in some areas—including defence, which was my area—asked for more spending?
Helen Whately
There are areas where we disagree on the allocation of expenditure, but overall my party has a plan for stability and Labour does not have a plan and simply wants to borrow more.
This Government have worked hard, and are working hard, to turn the economy around. We know that involves some tough choices, but one part of being a Conservative is thinking of the long term. I do not think that any of us, on either side of this House, wants to pass debt on to our children as individuals, and we should not do so as a country either. I welcome a Budget that looks to the future, investing in education, cutting taxes for businesses to stimulate growth, and balancing the books so that we are prepared for whatever financial shocks we may face.
I want to live in a country where every child has a chance to succeed and make the most of their lives, and that starts with a good education. Educational standards have gone up, but it is a mixed picture. I welcome the Chancellor’s and the Secretary of State’s announcement on schools, particularly the new funding formula, which I have campaigned for. The old funding formula was arbitrary and unfair. It left some schools in my constituency receiving far less per pupil than other schools with very similar students. As a result, those schools have had to cut back on important subjects and extra-curricular activities. We are also going to get an extra £500 million of funding that will speed up the introduction of the new funding formula. That is very important, because with every year that goes by another group of children in my constituency loses out under the current system.
My hon. Friend the Minister will know that I care a great deal about health. In the Health Committee, expert after expert told us that obesity is one of the greatest threats to the health of the nation, particularly among children. One in five children leaves primary school overweight. Obese children are more likely to grow into obese adults, with the associated health risks that that brings, as well as the cost to the economy. In the Health Committee we have also heard evidence on the quantities of sugar hidden in soft drinks. For instance, an average can of cola can contain nine teaspoons of sugar, or even up to 13.
I am therefore very happy that the Chancellor has been bold in introducing a levy on the soft drinks industry. That, in itself, sends a really strong message, rightly, about how unhealthy these drinks are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) said. I hope it will encourage manufacturers to reformulate their products. It will also raise some £520 million that will go to fund school sports. Despite the existing school sports fund, there is not enough sport in schools. Some children get to do sport for only one hour a week, and that is not enough for their health or for their academic achievement.
I look forward to the childhood obesity strategy that the Government are due to publish in the summer. I urge them to include in it more of the Health Committee’s recommendations: for example, its recommendations on controls on advertising and on promotion of sugary foods and its recommendations on giving greater powers to local authorities to ensure a healthier environment. A levy on sugar, or a sugar tax, is just one of the proposals that we put forward, and just one of the things that needs to be done to tackle the problem of sugar consumption and obesity.
Much in this Budget will be welcomed in my constituency, not least the tax cut that will mean that 1,854 people in mid-Kent are taken out of income tax altogether; the freeze in fuel duty, which is so important to rural areas; and a higher threshold for business rates, which will boost small businesses, hundreds of which will be completely taken out of paying business rates. The hon. Member for Ynys Môn might have laughed at the freeze in beer duty, but it will be very welcome in my constituency, not just to beer drinkers, who may raise a glass to the Chancellor, but to Shepherd Neame, the brewery, which is the largest employer in my constituency, so there will also be a big boost for jobs.
Rebecca Pow
I would like to praise the fact that we have also frozen cider duty. In my constituency of Taunton Deane, cider is a very important industry.
Helen Whately
I am glad that the cider industry in my hon. Friend’s constituency is benefiting as well. However, one of my local industries in this sector that did not benefit was the English wine industry. While beer and cider have been supported, I would like the Chancellor to give some support to the fast-growing English wine industry.
Farming is very important to my constituency, and I know that farmers will welcome the alignment of the national living wage and national minimum wage cycles. I am afraid that they will be disappointed, however, that there are no mitigations to help them to cope with increased labour costs, which hit fruit farmers particularly hard. May I ask the Government to keep considering how they can help farmers who have large numbers of employees to manage to pay the national living wage, which they very much want to do to, without going out of business?
Young people in my constituency can struggle to buy a home, because houses in the south-east are very expensive and not everyone is on a high income, so I think that young families will welcome the lifetime ISA to help them do so.
Unemployment in my constituency has more than halved since 2010. Stability and jobs are the best thing that the Chancellor has given the country, and this Budget will continue to provide them.
The UK expects to have the fastest growth of any G7 country, but the fact that the OBR revised down its growth estimate shows that we cannot be complacent. These are turbulent times and we need to be prepared.
Many of us would love to spend money on shiny new buildings, as past Labour Governments did, but unless we do that out of a balanced budget we will just pass debt on to the next generation. I have heard Labour Members complain about the savings that need to be made, but if this Government had not made difficult decisions to reduce the structural deficit, cumulative borrowing would have been on course to be £930 billion higher in 2019-20, and we would have been in a much worse position today.
I welcome this Budget for the next generation. It supports education, employment and businesses as the engines of growth, puts long-term stability ahead of short-term fixes, and sets Britain up for the future.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
In following the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), it is worth setting the record straight: it was a worldwide banking crisis that caused the recession, not Labour investing in teachers, nurses, doctors and shiny new buildings, as she called them. I think what she meant to say was hospitals and schools. In fact, in 2010, the economy was growing when Labour left Government.
It has been 24 hours since the Chancellor’s Budget statement, and I think it will be remembered not as a Budget for the next generation, but as a Budget of unfairness. That is most starkly emphasised by the £4.2 billion-worth of support taken from disabled people, many of whom cannot work, to give £2.7 billion-worth of support in capital gains tax cuts to wealthier people, many of whom do not need to work.
It is certainly not a Robin Hood Budget, because he was good at hitting his targets. I also note that the Chancellor pledges to fix 214,000 potholes in the next year, but I think that filling the huge one in his deficit plans will take much longer.
The bulk of what I want to say is about the effect of this Budget on my constituents in a city in the north that is apparently a key player in the northern powerhouse, although the Government seem to forget that Hull is part of the northern powerhouse, because they focus mostly on the Manchester area. As someone who has been a Hull MP for 11 years, I know that we have to fight every inch of the way for a fair deal and we often have to make our own luck. After getting only £1 million in the autumn statement, I was pleased that the Budget made available to Hull a more fitting £13 million for its year as city of culture in 2017. That happened only after the issue was raised on numerous occasions in the House and with Ministers, but I am pleased that the lobbying by the three Hull MPs has paid off. Granting the £5 million to renovate Hull’s new theatre will leave a legacy after 2017, which is one of the main city of culture objectives. I also welcome the £1.2 million for the British mercantile marine memorial collection in Hull.
Elsewhere, however, the news is more mixed for people in Hull. Although Labour in particular has championed changes to business rates for small businesses and letting local areas keep business rate revenue, the Government’s approach ends any recognition of the needs of poorer areas—the cause that George Lansbury went to prison for so many years ago. This Government constantly favour wealthy areas that have a stronger local tax base and that have experienced less deep cuts than more deprived areas such as Hull.
Hull, like many other northern cities, is left facing a social care crisis, even with the social care levy that the Government have announced. It worries me greatly that local social care providers and other small businesses in the area are not getting enough help to ensure that the living wage meets its objectives and does not mean job losses in the months ahead.
There is little hope in the Budget for Hull’s policing or NHS services. Today, the Secretary of State for Health is in Hull demanding that the people who work in the NHS in Hull perform better, but taking no responsibility for the disastrous Lansley reforms introduced in the last Parliament. Neither is the Secretary of State taking any responsibility for his mishandling of the junior doctors’ contracts, which is affecting morale and recruitment in an area where it is very difficult to recruit doctors in the first place.
I want to move on to infrastructure investment, which is a vital part of rebalancing the economy, increasing productivity and raising overall UK growth. There is good news, I note, for those in Hertfordshire who want to travel to Surbiton via Chelsea, with the £27 billion for Crossrail 2. Although High Speed 3 between Leeds and Manchester was announced again, our privately financed initiative for rail electrification between Selby and Hull, to get average speeds above 42 mph, has been stuck in the sidings in the Department for Transport’s decision-making process for the last two years. The Department has been studying the business case since September, but time is running out on the proposal if we are to get it by 2021.
Clearly, Hull is not given the same priority as building a £500 million Crossrail station at Canary Wharf or plans for a £175 million Thames garden bridge. With no A63 road upgrade, and even a delay in building the bridge over the A63, Hull faces running city of culture 2017 with not one of the transport improvements that would have assisted in its success. It beggars belief that we cannot even get a bridge built over a road, but we can put a man on the moon. Similarly, I am concerned about the increase in flood insurance premiums. Hull flooded terribly in 2007, and I want to make sure that some of that investment comes to our city.
I want to close by talking about devolution. We heard about the greater Lincolnshire model for devolution yesterday, but we heard nothing about Yorkshire. That is a real pity, because it will divert attention away from the Humber estuary.
Albert Owen
On the issue of devolution, only a few months ago the Chancellor said that he would devolve business rates to local authorities. Does my hon. Friend feel that local authorities will lose out as a consequence of the threshold changes?
Diana Johnson
The poorer areas of the country are going to lose out. The way in which the Government have handled devolution is really sad. They have rushed it through and imposed arbitrary timescales for putting deals forward. The public have not been properly engaged. I have talked to people in Hull who say that they have not been asked for their opinion about what they would like. They also object to the fact that the Government want to impose this one-size-fits all model of an elected Mayor. That may not be suitable for whole swathes of the country, but it is the only option available.
There is a real problem, particularly in my area, with the idea of the greater Lincolnshire model. There is nothing for Yorkshire at the moment, and I think that there will be real problems for Hull. All in all, if we are serious about getting devolution right, we need to go back to the drawing board and think carefully about what suits the needs of different parts of the country, rather than rushing ahead. My constituents will find the Budget wanting, and they will think that it does not really meet the needs of a city such as Hull.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). Among her negativity, I was pleased to hear her praise for the Chancellor and the funding that he is giving to Hull for the year of culture and for its theatre, in particular. I would like to visit and have a look. Hull got more from the Budget than we did in Taunton.
I cannot imagine that too many children listened to the Chancellor’s statement yesterday—no offence to the Chancellor—but if they had they would have heard that the school day for secondary school children is likely to get longer. That may not be welcome news for some children, but when they see what they are going to get, they will realise the benefits of it. I welcome the new funding provided for extracurricular activities, such as Mandarin, Chinese or music lessons and special clubs. I would like to talk to the Secretary of State for Education and put in a bid for her to teach children more about where their food comes from. I am working with local farmers on that, and we have a “Farm to Fork” event coming up. Our children could benefit a lot from such teaching.
Helen Whately
I support my hon. Friend’s point about the benefits of an extended school day. One of the greatest divides between the state sector and the independent schools sector is how much extra is offered by independent schools after the main school day, so this is a very good initiative to narrow that gap.
Rebecca Pow
Interestingly, when I asked one teacher at a school in the most deprived part of my constituency what single thing would make the biggest difference to the children’s lives, he said, “Extending the school day.” That gives them many more opportunities. They may not be fortunate enough to have such opportunities at home. If the parents are working, they may not be able to run around with their children to the after-school activities we all want our children to take part in. The Chancellor must have been listening because we now have this funding, which I welcome.
I welcome many of the other things connected with education in the Budget. A good education underpins everything we are doing to raise standards for our children. Ultimately, such an education will have an impact on the skills, businesses and opportunities we are so trying to encourage and increase. In Taunton Deane, we have great ambitions to do that. We are part of the way there, but we need to do more. I hope the Secretary of State will listen when I ask this: how about a university for Somerset?
Primary schools have scored well in the Budget, with the funding for sports provision doubling from £160 million to £320 million. I was a governor of a village school for quite a number of years, so I realise how difficult it is to provide good PE input. I welcome this funding because it will enable schools to get in outside coaches, have specialist PE classes and even to share a teacher with other schools. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) and other colleagues.
It makes so much sense to get our children to take up sport because it will make them fitter and healthier, while the incidence of cancer, diabetes and all the other awful diseases increases for those who become obese. Upping the profile of sport in schools will also have an effect on mental health, about which there is an awful lot of data. Only this week, the launch of the mental health charter for sport and recreation highlighted the fact that physical activity is as effective as medication in treating depression. The money for the sport scheme will come from the tax on sugary drinks, which has been much mentioned today. The funding is welcome, but because we are tackling obesity, it also means there will be fewer such diseases and the NHS will therefore have more money to spend on other things.
The move to make every school an academy by 2020 will simplify the education system. We have two systems at the moment, so having only one will mean the system is much more dynamic. In such a system, the best schools will benefit with more freedom, and the schools that need help will get help from others. In many cases, that will be done through forming multi-academy trusts. The sharing of resources in such trusts will bring advantages. The Taunton Academy, which is part of a multi-academy trust, already receives such an input, including through sponsorship from our excellent Richard Huish sixth-form college. On that note, will the Secretary of State provide clarification about whether academies can take international students and offer higher education?
We have heard quite a lot about students doing more maths, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan). Students may not fancy the idea of continuing to do maths to the age of 18, but maths is a must. This will not be highly academic maths, but the sort of user-friendly maths—reading balance sheets and all that kind of thing—that will help people in the world of work, and I welcome that.
I welcome the fairer funding deal mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately). I, too, campaigned long and hard in Taunton Deane for fairer funding, because pupils in my constituency get, on average, £2,000 less than those in the 10 best funded schools. That is unfair, and I welcome the fact that that anomaly will be ironed out, as well as the extra funding announced by the Chancellor to speed up that introduction. Much in the Budget is designed to benefit the next generation, and for the sake of my three children, and indeed everybody’s children, I welcome that.
I also welcome initiatives to benefit the self-employed, who too often have been regarded as second-class citizens in our society. I will not refer to all those initiatives because I am running out of time, but we all know what they are, and they will be of benefit. In 2015, employment in the south-west grew faster than anywhere else in the country, but we must build on that with the better skills that we will get through better education. That is all referred to in this sensible, sensitive Budget, which is very necessary in a time of global uncertainty. We will build on a low tax, enterprise economy with a special emphasis on education as the building block. It is as simple as A, B, C, and I welcome it.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) and I agree with some of the points she made in the early part of her speech. Like her, I want to comment on the education measures in the Budget.
In 2001-02 I was the Schools Minister responsible for the introduction of the Teach First programme. That was a successful response to the teacher recruitment crisis at that time, and it has continued to do a great job until the present day. We now need that kind of innovation and imagination from current Ministers, to respond to the teacher recruitment problems that we have at the moment. There was nothing in the Budget about teacher recruitment or retention, but those problems are building and we need an initiative on that front.
Along with London Challenge, Teach First was a key element in the dramatic improvement in the performance of London schools since 1997, and it is important that the new national schools funding formula does not put that improvement at risk. As has been mentioned, the Chancellor said yesterday that he was providing an additional half a billion pounds to speed up the implementation of the school funding formula so that it will apply to 90% of schools by 2020. Will that extra money be used—as I hope it will be—to ensure that the formula is implemented by levelling up the finances of underfunded schools, not by taking funding away from schools that are adequately funded at the moment? I hope that that is what the half a billion pounds is for, and I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed that at the end of the debate.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that some boroughs, particularly in London, are affected by as much as 10% by some of these worrying proposals?
Stephen Timms
There is a lot of worry about the proposals, and I hope that the Government will assure us that there will be no real-term cuts in the funding of individual schools. Half a billion pounds could go a long way to achieving that, and it would be helpful if the Minister could give us that assurance.
As we have heard, the Red Book contains a chapter called the “Devolution Revolution”, but the Budget ends local authority influence over education, which always used to be devolved. The hon. Member for Taunton Deane said that it was wonderful that we will have one system for education in the future, but I thought the Government were in favour of devolution, and the Red Book claims that they are. It is a big contradiction to proclaim devolution on the one hand, at the same time as ending local influence over education.
I am particularly sceptical about the benefits of turning every primary school into an academy, because I have seen no evidence that doing that will be a good thing. The Minister and the Secretary of State will know of local educational authorities—other Members have spoken of them in the debate—that do a very good job in supporting the local network of primary schools, enabling schools that are struggling to be supported, for example by a gifted head from another school nearby. I therefore want to put this question to the Minister and ask him to respond on behalf of the Secretary of State: what is the case for simply dismantling and smashing up all the successful arrangements of that kind?
The Church of England referred in its response to
“the particular challenges that many smaller primary schools will face as they seek to develop such partnerships”.
The Sutton Trust was quoted by the Secretary of State and by me in an intervention. It rightly makes the point in its impressive research that good
“academy chains are having a transformational impact on pupils’ life chances”,
which is a very good thing, but it also says that
“others have seriously underperformed and have expanded too rapidly.”
That is why I pressed the Secretary of State specifically on whether the mass process of turning every primary school and every remaining secondary maintained school into an academy will be done by adding those schools on to existing chains, too many of which are underperforming. Only about a third are doing well, according to the Sutton Trust. The chains that are doing badly are doing badly because they have expanded too quickly. The process could make that far worse by forcing hundreds of additional schools into those same underperforming chains. I therefore press the Minister again. I did not get the assurance I was seeking from the Secretary of State that the process would not be done by adding new schools on to underperforming chains. I hope he can give us that reassurance in his response.
Local authority support for families of primary schools is successful. Do the Government envisage those simply being rebadged as multi-academy trusts? Perhaps that is one way out of the problem. Destroying those arrangements is potentially very damaging.
Mr Steve Reed
My right hon. Friend makes an interesting observation. What are his thoughts on the initiatives of Labour councils such as Brighton and Hove, which are setting up co-operatives for their schools to join together to try to undermine the Government’s attempts to isolate and atomise schools?
Stephen Timms
I very much welcome that. I thought everybody agreed that diversity in school provision was a good idea rather than having the one-size-fits-all model for which the hon. Member for Taunton Deane argued. Surely we should be encouraging exactly the kind of arrangement that my hon. Friend draws attention to, so that we can enjoy the benefits of the diversity that results.
I am glad that, in opening the debate for the Opposition, my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) focused on the failures that the Budget highlighted yesterday. The OBR pointed out to us that the Chancellor had three fiscal rules in the run-up to yesterday’s Budget. He has broken two of those. He has broken his commitment, which was made less than a year ago, to reduce debt as a proportion of GDP in every year. We had that rather puzzling passage in the Budget speech when the Chancellor talked about numerators and denominators and a paradoxical outcome. It turns that he was saying that he had failed on that rule.
The second rule he failed was on the welfare cap. It is hard to think of any Treasury legislation of the past 20 years that has backfired so spectacularly as the welfare cap. It was legislated for last summer with great fanfare, but within weeks it was announced that it would be broken. The OBR now tells us that it will be broken in every single year of this Parliament. The whole thing has become a complete fiasco.
The third rule that the Chancellor went into the Budget with was the commitment on delivering a surplus. Of course, in the last Parliament, the centrepiece of the Chancellor’s project was to eradicate the deficit by 2015. He failed on that, and it now looks very likely that he will fail to achieve the surplus he has promised by 2019-20. To deliver it would require extraordinary fiscal tightening in what will almost certainly be the year leading up to the next general election. I cannot see that happening. By then, the Chancellor will have failed on all three of his rules.
The Budget raises important questions and I hope we get answers on the specific education points when the Minister winds up.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and his typically thoughtful contribution. Both he and I will know that the great disadvantage of speaking late in a debate is that everything that can be said has been said, although of course not everybody who can say it has said it. I will try not to be too repetitious, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I commend both Front Benchers for taking so many interventions during their speeches. That set a very good tone for the debate. I trust that that will continue. Perhaps the shadow Chancellor will even extend me the generosity of allowing me to intervene on him next time.
When I was listening to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor make his eighth Budget speech yesterday, I was thinking about how different the world was six years ago when he made his first Budget speech. At that time, unemployment in Tamworth was rampant. Businesses and jobs were going to the wall. Walking down Glascote high street, one would see notices of repossession in the windows of people’s houses. When Gordon Brown left office not only were people losing their jobs, but their homes too.
After eight Budgets, the situation has been transformed. Unemployment in Tamworth is now at fewer than 300. Just about everybody who can work in Tamworth is working in Tamworth. The Jobcentre has turned into a recruitment agency, going out looking for people to do better-paid, better-skilled jobs. House prices are going up and people are better off. Having continually raised the income tax threshold, my average constituent is now £1,000 better off than he or she was in 2010.
I heard Opposition Members, in particular my otherwise good friend the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), criticise the lifetime ISA. This savings initiative sends a very good message to young people about the importance of the savings culture. As the Chancellor was making his speech, I got a message from a young constituent of mine called Dan Ball, aged 19 from Amington. He said, “How can I get one of these ISAs?” I will be writing back to him before the end of this week to tell him just what he can do to save and invest in his future.
The support that the Chancellor has given to businesses—for big businesses, in the form of corporation tax; and for small businesses by reforming and changing the business rate—will help businesses in my constituency, from small newsagents in the high street to companies such as Tame Plastics and Invotec. That will help jobs and growth, so I commend what the Budget has to offer.
If I could make two pleas in the time I have left, they would be these. Given that we want to create a Budget for the next generation, part of it must be about infrastructure investment. The Chancellor made great play—rightly so—of the midlands engine. One of the overlooked pieces of infrastructure in the midlands is the A5 corridor running through Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire. Much of the A5 is single carriageway. It would benefit from being dualled, so that we could open up developments and house building along the corridor. There are plans for such development and house building. I hope the Exchequer Secretary will make a note of that and use all is artistry and eloquence to prevail on the Transport Secretary to put the dualling of the A5 in the next road investment strategy.
May I also encourage more house building? Hon. Members on all sides of the Chamber have mentioned the need for more house building. Some 88,000 new houses are needed in the west midlands. We are building, and are planning to build, more houses in Tamworth, but one of the challenges—even though we have reformed planning, introduced Help to Buy and are selling public land to private developers—is the number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the development supply chain. Many were wiped out during the crash, and we need to get them back in. I would like the Government to encourage big developers, such as Bovis, Persimmon and Redrow, to franchise some of their land bank to smaller developers so that they can build houses on that land. It would de-risk the big developers, because they would not have to take the risk of building the houses, and help smaller developers, because the planning activity would already have been undertaken and so would not cost them so much. That would get more SMEs into the supply chain and help us build those homes for the future in the midlands and beyond.
I listened attentively to the Budget, and I was not carried away by the doom-mongers on the Opposition Benches, and I listened attentively to the Leader of the Opposition, who I thought began rather well but then, like the rest of us, lost interest in his own speech halfway through. He can do better next time by listening to and learning from the Chancellor and by supporting our plans for a Budget for the future.
Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)
I share the many concerns raised about the Budget’s giveaways to the rich at the expense of the poor and disabled. It is despicable and against the British sense of fair play but entirely in line with the behaviour of a Government who are pushing more people into poverty and then blaming and punishing them for it.
Others have spoken movingly about that, but I would like to focus on what the Budget says about the Government’s commitment to devolution. Their actions do not match their rhetoric. The Secretary of State, who introduced the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill, at the same time introduced the Housing and Planning Bill, which contained more than 30 new centralising measures. The Budget contains more of that same centralising instinct. Yesterday, the Government centralised control of every school in the country. They have learnt nothing from the Trojan horse scandal in Birmingham and are now stripping away local accountability from every school.
There is no way that the Department for Education can provide proper oversight of 24,000 schools from Whitehall, and a lack of oversight means that problems will not be noticed or tackled until they have grown into crises. It is not devolution to hand schools over to giant national academy chains, and it is not localist to do that in the teeth of opposition from parents, teachers and communities. I do not understand how the Secretary of State can come here and lecture the House on the need to listen to parents, when she will not listen to parents over forced academisation.
Catherine West
What does my hon. Friend make of Conservative Peter Edgar, the executive member for education at Hampshire County Council and a former teacher, who said that the scheme could result in Britain’s education system “imploding” and urged the Government to think again? He said:
“I am horrified to think that the county council’s role in education is going to be destroyed by George Osborne in his budget. We have worked with the government to deliver the reforms and have been congratulated”—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Lady has said enough.
Mr Reed
It is sad that the councillor has felt forced to say that, but he is absolutely right of course.
There is little evidence of devolution over how local services are funded as a result of the Budget. Yesterday, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has now confirmed, the Chancellor tightened his fingers around the neck of local government funding. He has handed over limited powers to city regions and others but refused to link those powers to resources. I want to see the Government go much further on devolution—more local control over schools, housing, health and the Work programme—but we need real fiscal devolution as well. If the Government hand over services but then cut the funding centrally, all they are really doing is devolving the blame for cuts made in Downing Street.
Yesterday’s Budget graphically underscored that point. The Chancellor made much of his plans to allow 100% retention of business rates, which of course sounds good, but he will not be clear about which services they will have to pay for. At the same time, he is entirely scrapping the central Government grant, leaving councils far worse off and less able to fund the services that local people rely on. He will not explain, either, what mechanism, if any, will be in place to ensure that business rates retention does not just benefit areas that are already wealthy and penalise those that are not. There needs to be a fair funding mechanism in place that helps areas to expand their capacity for economic growth, otherwise they will be locked into a downward spiral, with no way out.
Of course, we should not be surprised that the Budget did not include anything about fair funding. Under this Government, the 10 poorest councils have suffered cuts 23 times bigger than the 10 richest. Last month, the Government voted to cut Croydon’s funding by another £44 million, but handed a £23 million windfall to far wealthier Surrey next door. Unfairness is the defining feature of this Government.
What these further cuts mean for the vast majority of communities in this country is the closure of libraries, museums, youth services and children’s centres. They will leave streets unswept and street lights turned off at night. They will mean home care taken away from frail older people, and disabled people left to struggle alone. They will mean a cut to early intervention in troubled families, and social workers will not be there to protect children from the impact of domestic violence. Services will not be there any more to protect children at risk of abuse. We are simply storing up problems for the future, while watching young lives get ripped apart.
This Chancellor has got so much wrong. He has had to downgrade growth forecasts that he made only four months ago. He missed his own deadline for paying down the deficit caused by the banking crash. He delayed the recovery by cutting big infrastructure projects early on in his tenure, and he is now struggling to make up for lost time. He has failed to tackle the economy’s desperately low levels of productivity. Now, the IFS has questioned his ability to meet yesterday’s forecasts without more cuts or tax rises to fill a £55 billion financial black hole. The IFS further says that the Budget will reduce wages, lower living standards and lead to further austerity.
Quite simply, this is a Chancellor who cannot be trusted, and who is himself unable to trust. He gets the big decisions wrong, and he is afraid to devolve decisions to others. Instead of reforming public services, this Government are laying them to waste. Instead of sharing the proceeds of growth more fairly, this Government are presiding over growing inequality. Instead of handing decision-making to local communities, this Government are centralising power in their own hands. Instead of shaping a fairer Britain, this Chancellor has thrown a financial bung to his wealthy mates and thrown the rest of the country to the dogs.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I rise to support the Budget statement, particularly for the support it gives to small businesses. Of the 4,000 businesses in my Congleton constituency, all but a handful are small and medium-sized enterprises, started up and sustained by hard-working individuals and their supportive families. It is right to champion the value of and encourage SMEs, which are the lifeblood of my local economy.
It is a truism, but it is well said that every big business started small. When Lord Digby Jones was head of the CBI he said that
“without businesses there are no taxes and without taxes there are no schools or hospitals.”
I am therefore delighted that the Chancellor is taking 600,000 small businesses across the country out of bearing the burden of any business rates at all, while another 250,000 firms receive a reduction in those rates. This will save small businesses £6.7 billion over the next five years, enabling them to take on more staff, invest and grow. I know it will be warmly welcomed in my constituency.
Welcome, too, are the new tax-free allowances of £1,000 a year for micro-entrepreneurs who trade goods or rent property online on a small scale. Positive, too, are reductions in capital gains tax, the reform of stamp duty on commercial premises to help small firms move to bigger premises and, for incorporated businesses, the substantial reduction in corporation tax to 17% in 2020—down from 28% in 2010. This means that we will have the lowest corporation tax in the G20, and it will benefit more than a million businesses.
For 3 million self-employed people, the cancellation of class 2 national insurance contributions is also welcome. Some may say, “Well, that’s only a saving of £2.80 a week”, but that fails to appreciate that many small businesses live on the margins, particularly in the early years, as I know from experience. My husband and I had to sell our home to keep our business going, and live above our offices with our first child, with the staff tea and coffee-making area being our kitchen.
My story is not unusual, and I mention it only because that is so and because I know that, just as Government support for small business matters, so does Government support for the families who stand behind the businesses. Stable families contribute to a stable economy. If we want small business to flourish, we need families to flourish, too. It is important to note that these are related: the one sustains and supports the other. I therefore greatly welcome the Government’s commitment to including family stability measures in their life chances strategy. However, just as family stability supports business, family breakdown has a negative impact on productivity. According to a survey conducted by Resolution, the family justice organisation, one in seven workers said that relationship breakdown had had a negative impact on their businesses’ productivity.
In his Budget statement, the Chancellor said:
“We as Conservatives understand that tax affects behaviour.”
I welcome that, and I therefore also welcome the tax on sugary drinks, which the Chancellor is introducing to incentivise healthy behaviour. He said many times that it was
“to help children’s health and wellbeing”,
and that this was
“a Government not afraid to put the next generation first.”—[Official Report, 16 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 964.]
May I urge the Chancellor also to do what he can to encourage healthy family relationships for our next generation?
Sir Edward Leigh
The marriage tax allowance that the Chancellor has introduced is still very low. Moreover, its aim is not, as has been claimed, to encourage people to get married and stay married, but simply to remove the disadvantages in the overall tax and benefit system that are incurred by women who look after their children at home. Will my hon. Friend say a word about the allowance, and about how we should upgrade it?
Fiona Bruce
I will, and I thank my hon. Friend for raising the issue.
The Prime Minister said recently:
“Families are the best anti-poverty measure ever invented. They are a welfare, education and counselling system all wrapped up into one.”
I have heard that the cost to the national health service of treating child obesity has been estimated at £5 billion. By contrast, the cost of breakdown is £48 billion. Increased investment in relationship strengthening to help to prevent that would be money well spent. According to a survey carried out by the Department for Education, every pound invested in strengthening family relationships would save the Treasury £11.50. I believe that spending on creating healthy relationships for the next generation is as valid as promoting that generation’s physical health and wellbeing. Few Members can disagree with the principle that such early intervention is key if a child’s life chances are to be maximised, or with the principle that maximum support should be given to children in the areas of greatest need.
Let me end by making a few practical suggestions. The Chancellor would do well to think again about the transferable tax allowance for married couples. He should consider refocusing it on the families with the youngest children. That would be an exponential investment, as the highest rate of family breakdown occurs in families with children under three. By focusing the scheme on couples with low incomes and children under five, and doubling the amount receivable to about £9 a week, the Treasury could offer more substantial support for some of the country’s lowest earners and neediest families, and could do so at no extra cost, because there is an underspend in the money already allocated for the purpose in a previous Budget. A further nuance would be to target for greater take-up those living in the 100 housing estates that the Prime Minister identified for regeneration, and those living in the 100 local government wards with the highest levels of family breakdown.
Perhaps the Chancellor could also consider using any remaining underspend to strengthen parenting and relationship support. A practical suggestion from the Centre for Social Justice is the provision of an online one-stop shop to give families information about local relationship support.
Strengthening families by supporting healthy relationships should be an aspiration for the Government. Reversing family breakdown and building strong and stable family life as a foundation block of a healthy society must be our ambition. That would really put the next generation first, and it also makes sound economic sense. If we want our productivity to flourish, families must do so as well.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. We are running out of time. I must reduce the speaking limit to five minutes.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Yesterday I listened intently to both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, hoping against hope that we would see a Budget for the poor as well as the rich—a Budget that would be not just for private businesses but for local services, and not just for London and the south-east but for the north-east of England.
First, I heard the Prime Minister boast about a very welcome drop in unemployment in the UK, but he did not have a word for the 3,000 more people out of work in the north-east of England than 12 months ago. The Chancellor, apart from mentioning his pet project to impose an extra tier of politicians on an unwilling electorate to deliver devolution of power without devolution of real resources, failed to announce anything that would provide the north-east with the investment in infrastructure—or anything else, for that matter—that would help to create the jobs we need to employ the people this Government have clearly forgotten.
Today’s theme is about education and equality. It is time the Chancellor recognised that there is tremendous inequality between the regions, and that it has been created as a direct result of his policies and those he shared with the Liberal Democrats. Others have already detailed the colossal failures of the Government in missing self-imposed targets, but still the Chancellor maintains that all will be well because he can always squeeze those who have been squeezed before. Sadly, this means that women and less well-off folk are again in his sights.
The Chancellor’s warm words about acting now to protect future generations, about shrinking inequalities and about us all being “in this together” were designed to create an image of fairness and social justice, but they do not paint an accurate picture. They do not, for instance, detail how 81% of the Chancellor’s cuts, totalling £82 billion in tax increases and cuts in social security, have fallen on women. Nor do they mention the fact that the Government’s policies are projected to be even more regressive than those of the coalition that went before, hitting women and lone parents disproportionately hard.
In fact, contrary to what the Chancellor would have us believe, women in Britain are now facing the greatest threat to their financial security and livelihoods for a generation. Never before has a Chancellor upset so many middle-aged women at a stroke of his red pen; the pensions issue for women born in the 1950s is just one area of their income he has attacked. An awful lot of people will remember this, should he ever realise his ambition to lead the Conservative party. He might do that, but his blindness to the anger and upset felt by women on all manner of issues will probably mean that he will not fulfil his second ambition: to win a general election.
I spoke last week to my constituent, Amey-Rose McGrogan, who manages a small but successful independent business in Stockton North. The business is about to celebrate its second birthday. As of this coming Monday, the non-domestic business rates for which the business is liable are set to rise from £157 a month to £581. The business is facing tremendous increases in costs all round. The measures announced yesterday will help a little, but they are perhaps going to be a bit late. As the North East Chamber of Commerce has highlighted, this is just another example of a Government paying lip service to stability and failing to provide businesses with sufficient detail to plan for the future.
The Chancellor is not really doing anything to help our overall economy. He is not using any of the money available to central Government to fund this planned benefit to small businesses. Instead, he is stealing it from the local authorities, which are planning their budgets based on his previous proposals for the localisation of business rates, only to find out that he has cut their income yet again. That simply places further constraints on their ability to deliver the vital services that local people need, and I have no doubt that that will create untold difficulties for local authorities as they strive to cope with cut after cut and change after change.
Bill Esterson
My hon. Friend is right to point out that the Government are giving to small businesses with one hand and taking away from local government with the other. Does he agree that these measures will take money out of the local economy that those same small businesses were relying on for part of their success, and that the overall package is far less impressive and attractive than the Chancellor has made it out to be?
Alex Cunningham
Indeed; I certainly agree with that.
The Minister needs to tell us what assessment has been made of the impact on local economies and on local authority funding of this policy change. In my constituency, Stockton Borough Council has faced funding cuts of £52 million in the last six years, and that is set to continue with a further reduction of £21 million over the next four years. The concessions to businesses are great, but local authorities should not be suffering as a result. Instead of empowering local councils, the Chancellor is undermining their effectiveness. Authorities such as Stockton with low tax bases will lose out as the vast wealth realised by rich councils in the south will no longer be redistributed to provide vital services across the country.
Unemployment is another particularly pertinent issue. When the Chancellor spoke in the House yesterday, he chirped merrily about a labour market delivering the highest employment in our history and unemployment having fallen again. What he did not say, however, was that that is not the case across the whole country. In Stockton North, for example, unemployment has actually increased, adding to the pressures that have been created by a spate of business closures and by Government failures to do more to protect our vital steel industry and related supply chains. As recently as Friday, 40 highly skilled workers at a specialist steel foundry in Stillington in my constituency were told that their jobs would go in May. What did the Budget offer such firms? Simply nothing. This Government stood in the way of EU tariffs on steel produced in the far east and now prefers to use foreign-made steel, rather than home-produced materials, to build Navy ships.
Speaking of materials, despite the hint from the Business Secretary during departmental questions on Tuesday that we would soon hear whether the materials catapult proposed by the Materials Processing Institute would be created, we heard nothing. It is all very unfair. We need fairness for the north-east of England.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this Budget debate, particularly because the topic is education. Since being elected, I have visited a school a week in my constituency, which has given me the opportunity to discuss with heads, staff and pupils what they want from their schools. I have visited almost 50 schools and must say that I do not recall academisation being a particular ask of any of them.
Of my five secondary schools, only one is an academy and it has made me somewhat open-minded about academies. When it was built only six years ago, it was decided to build classrooms, or pods, for 90 students and that students would need a microphone to ask a question. As it was situated in a ward that is ranked within the bottom 5% for deprivation, it would not have taken Einstein to work out that that would cause some pupils to shrink into themselves and for behaviour to deteriorate. The situation became so bad that thanks to our new headteacher, a visionary leader, a welcome £6 million was awarded by the Department for Education to turn the pods into classrooms for 30.
The school is being transformed under a new head, but the situation should never have been allowed to happen and the £6 million would have been better spent improving the ageing facilities of my neighbouring schools, which are ranked as outstanding despite their buildings being poster children for the 1950s. Had the school been under the governance of East Sussex County Council, I would venture that the situation would not have arisen. That is not to say that I do not recognise the virtues of schools operating outside of local education authority control, I just happen to be an advocate of choice. I also believe that, call it a free school, an LEA school or an academy, the key is having the right leadership in place and the good times then tend to follow.
Prior to moving to East Sussex 10 years ago, I spent five happy years as a governor of the Phoenix High School in White City. There were over 50 different first languages, a high proportion of pupils received free school meals, and just 9% of its pupils achieved five grades at A to C compared with a national average of over 50%. Our new headteacher, William Atkinson, was empowered by his team of governors to transform the school and did so through strong leadership, discipline and an expectation of excellence from staff and pupils. I spent many an hour dealing with disciplinary procedures as another child was excluded for a period of time. The head transformed the school from one that a parent would not want to consider into a centre of pride. The GCSE comparison went from 9% to over 60% and the head is now Sir William Atkinson. I recall that he did not have too much time for the services offered by the LEA, and it was no surprise that our school became an academy.
I make that point because it is proof that some schools work brilliantly as academies, but they should not be seen as bullet-proof. A good leader, excellent staff, a committed board of governors, and support are key for any school to thrive. Ultimately, however, I am excited by schools having the ability to make their own decisions.
Of my five secondary schools, only one has a sixth form. Two are outstanding, but the children have to leave at 16 years old. Children at one of the schools, Claverham Community College in Battle, are required to leave the town and travel long distances to study A-levels. I would like such schools to be able to make their own decisions on expansion and not be told by the LEA that they have to fit into a wider model. If academies allow that to happen, I can see the positives. However, we should be mindful that the considerable support that a good LEA such as East Sussex County Council provides, particularly to small primary schools, will need to be found from elsewhere. I look forward to reading the White Paper.
Yesterday, I happened to meet pupils from Herstmonceux Church of England Primary School straight after the Budget and was able to tell them the exciting news that they may be required to study maths until the age of 18. I did not detect a huge amount of excitement in their faces, but I recognise the desire, fuelled by our employers, that our young people should have the basics of maths and English covered when getting ready for the workplace. Much is made of this country learning from attainment in south-east Asia, but this is not Singapore, it is Britain. As well as mastering Maths and English, I want my children to explore the creative subjects, as that has allowed their fellow countrymen and women to become global leaders, inventors, entrepreneurs, explorers and pioneers.
Time will not permit me to continue, but ultimately, I would say, as a son of a teacher, that if we could give our heads and teachers more freedom to do their jobs and inspire our children, we may surprise ourselves and find that the need to dictate becomes less of an imperative.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
I am sorry, but we have to reduce the time limit to four minutes.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
The Chancellor hailed his Budget as being for the “next generation”, so I want to focus on a nationally significant research and development, industrial and economic issue that feeds through from STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—to higher education and into our industrial base, to which I urge the Government to give their attention. Disappointingly, there was nothing in yesterday’s Budget to address this matter, but I wish to address it now.
Against the backdrop of the steel closure debacle at SSI on Teesside, many deficiencies and challenges were identified in our steel industry, and several asks were made of the Government. Sadly, there was no meaningful or timely intervention from them to save the SSI plant, which employed many hundreds of my constituents, but there could have been and there should have been. Although, without doubt, the entire materials sector is still critical to the UK economy, it is also widely accepted that critically important innovation in the sector is patchy and poorly co-ordinated. The UK industry Metals Forum has said:
“A forward-thinking, collaborative approach to R&D will have embedded innovation throughout the industry, from the smallest firms to the largest, directed by customers’ needs.”
In the UK, the catapult concept is where we have the mechanism for innovation intervention whereby we transform our capability and drive economic growth. Sadly, there is no catapult for the metals and materials sector, but there is an opportunity right under the Government’s nose and I ask them to seize it. The proposal is a joint one from the Materials Processing Institute, the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, and The Welding Institute—TWI—which jointly propose to meet that very need by establishing a new national materials catapult, as a not-for-profit partnership. The partners have letters of support from leading universities, which show this to be a major concern for the development and upscaling of fundamental research. There is widespread support for the proposal across industry. In a short period, more than 50 letters of support have been received from employer associations, trade associations, industry, small and medium-sized enterprises, universities, the public sector and private consultants.
The beauty of the proposal is that the partners are already in play. The catapult will work with universities and the other catapults, across all the sectors, and it would be headquartered at the campus of the Materials Processing Institute in Redcar, in close proximity to TWI in Middlesbrough and Teesside industry. Of course, the proposed location for the catapult would also enable the Government to deliver on the commitment they made in the Tees valley city deal, signed by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), to encourage Innovate UK to establish this catapult at the Tees valley innovation and commercialisation hub.
The concept of a materials catapult was raised by the CBI in 2014 and has been reaffirmed in its Treasury submission in advance of yesterday’s Budget. Support has also been expressed by UK Steel and FSB, but, sadly, that was not reflected by the Chancellor yesterday. With the partners having collectively more than 300 years of experience, world-leading facilities and an immediate national presence, the catapult presents excellent value for money. There are minimal start-up costs and because it is proposed to use existing buildings there is no lead- in time for construction activity. The ask is for £5 million per annum of revenue support and £2 million per annum of capital, under the normal catapult funding model, and an initial capital award of about £10 million to fund equipment for core projects. The catapult will leverage recent and secured future investments that have been used to upgrade materials research and support facilities in Rotherham, Port Talbot and Cambridge, as well as on the two sites in the Tees valley.
Alex Cunningham
This must be an organisation worth backing because this week it actually started a new steel production facility on Teesside.
Andy McDonald
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that, and it shows the value of these initiatives. I regret to say that sometimes we have to keep on pressing and repeating these requests. We are talking about a major contribution to our economy and it should be grasped, because, based on previous studies, a benefit of £15 per £1 of Government spending would be expected, giving a gross value added benefit of £75 million per annum.
The catapult is needed by industry nationally and could be delivered immediately. It would give some credibility to the much-vaunted but singularly absent northern powerhouse. The catapult is an entirely appropriate response to the steel crisis and builds on existing capabilities and expertise. It is cost effective and would have an immediate positive impact on UK companies. As well as that fifteenfold return, it could be a beacon for inward investment, and there is the real potential for a £300 million project to come to the catapult.
The catapult would improve productivity in the materials sector, strengthen manufacturing supply chains and drive growth by supporting new and growing technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises. It would improve international competitiveness by addressing the UK’s relative disadvantage in materials innovation compared with Germany, the USA and Japan.
I urge the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills not to block this proposal, because I am convinced that it is vital for our industrial base and will provide immediate and significant research and employment opportunities. It will be readily achievable and make a huge contribution to our economy.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) on his excellent speech. He and a number of other Conservative Back Benchers gave the Government fair warning that the proposals in the White Paper will not be accepted without a great deal of scrutiny and challenge. He raised some very serious and correct concerns.
I am a parent of two children who are at secondary schools in my constituency, and a community governor of a primary school, which is also in my constituency. I must say that the primary schools in particular work extremely closely not just with other primary schools, but with the local authority. They view the education proposals with growing horror, as they see the flaws in what is being put forward.
Let us examine the Government’s record on education since 2010. One of their first actions was to cut the Building Schools for the Future programme and to make other cuts in capital spending, with a disastrous effect on the then recovery—yes, it was a recovery, which was happening as a result of the actions of the outgoing Labour Government.
When the Exchequer Secretary responds to the debate, I am sure that, as a former member of the Education Committee, he will want to comment on the Government’s education plans. Over the past nearly six years, we have seen cuts in sixth form college funding, with a third of colleges facing an uncertain future, the forced academisation programme with a likely price tag of half a billion pounds and an extra £500 million cost for extending the school day, which is on top of £4 billion of cuts over the next four years. I have been asked: what will happen to special schools and to children with special educational needs?
Mr Steve Reed
Does my hon. Friend share my view that it is hypocritical of the Government to claim that they support localism while forcing schools to academise whether they want to or not?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. Just before anyone else gives way or intervenes, it must be noted that there is only a certain amount of time for this debate and that Members who are at the end could be squeezed out altogether. Giving way and adding an extra minute to somebody’s speech does not add any more minutes to the time in a day.
Bill Esterson
I was going over the Government’s approach over the past six years. They scrapped compulsory work experience, with the knock-on effect on the economy. The education and business partnership in my borough is a great success, but it has been consistently undermined over that six-year-period. It had established very good working relationships with businesses and employers generally, and there is a profound economic effect of that policy, as there is with the undermining, and almost destruction of, the careers service.
Turning to forced academisation, we have many good and outstanding schools in the maintained sector. We have parents, children, staff and communities that value the partnership between schools and the local authority. We have academies that are successful, so why are the Government hell-bent on making changes?
In an intervention earlier, I referred to the White Paper and the section on removing the requirement to have parents on governing bodies. Parents will be ignored in the forced academisation process, despite the words from the Secretary of State in her foreword expressing confidence in parents and calling on them to join in the process to improve standards, but clearly not so much that the Department wants parents to be involved in the governance of schools in future.
All that is done in the name of localisation. I think not. This is centralising to the Whitehall desk of the Secretary of State and her Ministers, as is the land grab—the biggest land grab since Henry VIII ransacked the monasteries—with the Government taking ownership of all the land. When the Treasury Minister responds, he will have to demonstrate to me that that is not the case. That is what is proposed by transferring ownership of the land to the Secretary of State.
We have a centralising Secretary of State and a centralising Government who do not trust local people, parents or school leaders. At a time when we have a shortage of staff and a great lack of confidence in Government, all they can do is force schools to do things against their wishes. That is not the way education should be run.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
Growth has been revised down last year, this year and for every year of the forecast. Business investment has been revised down last year, this year and for every year of the forecast. In this Budget the Chancellor has failed to provide a future for the next generation.
I have some fantastic schools in my constituency and I have been privileged recently to visit two of those schools which have improved their Ofsted results, Fleetwood High School and Carter’s Charity Primary School in Preesall, both coastal schools which, with strong leadership and under the headships of Richard Barnes and Brendan Hassett, respectively, are showing great signs of improving, with the support of the local authority. But all this is at risk from the Chancellor’s reckless plans to force all schools to become academies, whether they want to or not. Parents must have a say in the future of local schools, and it is wrong for this Government to impose a one-size-fits-all solution on schools. That will take away the national curriculum, accountability to local people through councils, and the ability of parents and of the community to obtain information to find out what is going on through freedom of information requests.
How does removing local authorities’ role from our schools put power in the hands of local people? Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, has written to the Secretary of State, highlighting to her the serious weaknesses in academy chains, but this Government have failed to listen to the evidence.
I have great concerns for my constituents about the future of museums. Although I welcome the announcement in the Budget of support for museums, that is of little comfort to my constituents, who are worried about the future of Fleetwood Museum, the Maritime Museum in Lancaster, the Judges’ Lodgings and the Cottage Museum, all of which are supported by Lancashire County Council, but after budget cuts year after year, the council is unable to provide that support and we risk losing our northern museums.
On disability, I pay tribute to my constituent Graeme Ellis who, until yesterday, had been a lifelong Conservative party member. He felt that the choices made by the Chancellor to hit disabled people to give tax breaks to the rich was a step too far. He resigned in style.
I welcome the principle of the sugar tax as a positive step towards encouraging people to make healthy choices. As an MP with a heavy dairy-farming constituency, I welcome the decision to remove milk-based drinks from the levy. The situation in the dairy industry is far from good right now. Average dairy farm incomes are forecast to fall by half in 2015-16 and arable incomes are expected to be down by almost a quarter. Sadly, there is little comfort for the 90% of UK farm businesses which are unincorporated and therefore will not be beneficiaries of the Chancellor’s continued focus on reducing corporation tax.
Three months on from Storm Desmond, the Chancellor’s announcement of £700 million for flood defences is welcome for the parts of the country that benefit from it. I was concerned to see that Lancashire was not included, and it is little comfort to my constituents around the River Cocker and in Winmarleigh and Thurnham, who suffered so badly in the flooding.
One of the biggest issues, which fills my inbox every week, is the effect of council cuts and losing local services, but there is nothing in the Budget that helps councils. This Budget fails local government.
Rather than investing in building new homes to fix Britain’s broken housing market and cut housing benefit costs, the Chancellor has slashed housing investment by 60%, and housing benefit has risen by more than £4 billion a year in cash terms.
This Budget is a failure, it lacks any fairness and it offers nothing for the future. If anything it only amplifies the question: how can we trust the Chancellor to get it right for the next four years, when he has not had it right in the last four months?
Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)
Yesterday, in his Budget announcement, the Chancellor made much capital out of the economic recovery and the rate at which unemployment was falling, but he needs to understand that not every part of Britain is enjoying this economic recovery. In my constituency, not only do we have above-average unemployment, but the latest figures from the House of Commons Library show that unemployment recently increased for the third month in a row. The Chancellor says he wants to put the next generation first, but youth unemployment remains stubbornly high in my constituency, at nearly twice the national average.
The Chancellor says all schools have to become academies by 2020. While I wish the schools in my constituency that are already academies every success, there is simply no evidence that forcing all schools to become academies will deliver higher educational standards and more qualified teachers. I am also concerned that removing accountability to local authorities may put children with special educational needs and disabilities at risk of losing the vital support they need. Schools are also still struggling financially, and we have a particular problem in my constituency with recruiting and retaining teachers, which puts huge strain on our schools’ ability to meet the educational needs of our children.
We struggle to recruit skilled professionals in not just education, but healthcare, and that is in part down to our poor transport infrastructure. It is all very well the Chancellor announcing money for the northern powerhouse and talking about High Speed 3, but that does nothing for people in Cumbria, who have totally inadequate road and rail infrastructure. To get people to come to west Cumbria, we need to be accessible from the outside world. Simply upgrading the A66 between Scotch Corner and Penrith does not help west Cumbria or our recruitment crisis. I have been calling for investment in the crucial A595 artery, which will be heavily relied on following the new investment in the nuclear new build at Moorside.
To be honest, people in west Cumbria are fed up with the usual warm words and rhetoric from the Government. It is about time Ministers recognised that the north extends beyond Lancashire. With the nuclear new build at Moorside, Cumbria will physically put the power into the northern powerhouse.
The money announced yesterday for flood defences is welcome, because it is important we do everything we can to ensure we do not see a repeat of the devastation caused by Storm Desmond. My constituents need safe, secure homes and businesses, and I understand from the Treasury today that money will be available for the village of Flimby in my constituency, but there is no mention of Workington or Cockermouth.
The Budget documents talk about investing in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, yet the Government want to close the office at Lillyhall in my constituency and to centralise operations in Manchester and Newcastle—more than two hours away. That means not only that my constituents will lose any access to face-to-face interaction, but that hundreds of people will lose their jobs.
My constituents are absolutely fed up with being left out of the Government’s plans. Just because west Cumbria is remote, that does not mean we should be forgotten. We have huge potential—given the right tools to make things happen. I urge the Government to look again at how west Cumbria can be properly incorporated into the northern powerhouse so that all our people can have a future.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
George Osborne’s Budget yesterday was nothing more than an attempt to—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Lady has to say “the Chancellor of the Exchequer” or “the right hon. Gentleman”.
Patricia Gibson
The Chancellor’s Budget yesterday was nothing more than an attempt to confirm that austerity is king for this Government. Ideology has blocked the path of any attempt to ease the burden on the backs of the less well-off. Even setting aside the cuts to welfare and capital spending, the OBR estimates that between 2009-10 and 2019-20 Westminster funding for day-to-day public services is forecast to fall by the equivalent of about £1,800 per head. Chillingly, the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts that the scale of the cuts to departmental budgets and local government will reduce the role of the state to a point where it will have “changed beyond recognition”, with £3.5 billion of new cuts in this Budget. That is an additional £3.5 billion of cuts for 2019-20 that will once again hit unprotected Departments. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has not specified where that money will come from, either. Scotland faces a £1.5 billion cut in its funding for public services, which means that between 2010-11 and 2019-20 Scotland’s fiscal departmental expenditure limit budget has been reduced by an eye-watering 12.5% in real terms.
I listened earlier to this Government lauding their support for young people, but we have already witnessed the slashing of student maintenance grants for some of the poorest students and their being converted into loans. Housing benefit for unemployed 18 to 21-year-olds has been scrapped, which will create enormous hardship for young people. Student fees will continue to rise. Student nurses will no longer receive grants, but loans instead. All calls for the reintroduction of the post-study work visa in Scotland have gone unheeded.
Of course we welcome the support for the oil and gas industry—as far as it goes—but what is really required is a strategic review of the whole tax regime for oil and gas. The SNP called for a such a review ahead of the Budget, but again that went unheeded. The freeze on fuel duty is to be welcomed. This is a victory for small businesses and rural communities such as Arran in my constituency, and it will also be welcomed by families with stretched budgets across the UK.
More than anything, this Budget bolsters and consolidates inequality across the United Kingdom. Increasing the personal tax allowance is a very expensive approach and it badly targets help for the low paid. That is the view of the Child Poverty Action Group, and the Government should take note. It is not a social justice measure when 85% of the £2 billion that the Treasury spends goes to the top half and a third goes to the top 10%. For every £1,000 by which the personal tax allowance goes up, basic tax rate payers gain £200, but universal credit rules will claw back 65% of that gain from the low paid, leaving them gaining only a maximum of £70 a year. Child poverty campaigners have concluded that this Budget sets the next generation up to be the poorest for decades. Yet there is still money—between £15 billion and £100 billion—to be found to renew Trident. Disability rights groups have warned that these changes will be a devastating blow to disabled people. This is a Budget of missed opportunities.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
With time not permitting me to go further, I will focus my remarks on the northern powerhouse schools strategy.
Bradford lies near the bottom of the school league tables, as I have mentioned several times in this place. From what I have seen in the few paragraphs of the Chancellor’s Red Book, I tentatively welcome some aspects of the strategy to improve education in the north, as it is clear that we cannot carry on as we are, but the proposal needs a greater level of detail. I hope that the report from Sir Nick Weller in the next six months will provide that detail. I also want to point out that I am extremely cautious of other aspects.
Schools that are classed as vulnerable and coasting are often those in the most deprived areas, and that is the case in my constituency. They are the schools that are most in need of funding to get them on the road to recovery and to provide the standards of education that we expect and need for our children. We need to support those schools, so I will be interested to see how the Department for Education plans to implement the funding boost for turnaround activity in coasting and vulnerable schools.
I also note the intention to look at ways of recruiting and retaining the best teachers. The situation is close to crisis, particularly in Bradford, and it was recently highlighted by a damning report by the National Audit Office. I hope that the Department for Education will carefully consider that report and that it recognises the problems with teacher recruitment and retention. I look forward to its response to the report.
I cannot help feeling that I have seen some of the measures before. They look very much like the London challenge, which achieved extraordinary results in London, but the Government scrapped it in 2011. They also happen to look like the Bradford or northern challenge, which I have called for repeatedly. The Government appear to have finally seen sense, accepted the results the previous scheme achieved and decided to bring it back in another form.
Unfortunately, however, the Chancellor’s proposal appears to be an academised version of the London challenge. Despite the promise shown by some of the other measures, I am unsure about the Government’s plans to invest in expanding academy chains, as I see little evidence to suggest that academies are the best way forward.
I am also perplexed as to how the academisation of all schools fits in with the Government’s devolution agenda, as it will take responsibility for education out of the hands of local authorities and centralise it in the Department for Education. As well as removing the ability to focus on and scrutinise school performance, the proposal leaves me questioning what the role of local authorities will be after they have had huge funding cuts and responsibility for education taken away from them.
I await the publication of Sir Nick Weller’s report in the next six months, and I hope the Government will finally deliver solid recommendations for an effective strategy for improving the state of education in the north once and for all.
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain).
What a dismal failure of a Budget from a failing Chancellor. We heard yesterday that there are to be additional spending cuts of £3.5 billion in 2019-20, as austerity is forecast to still be with us 12 years after the financial crisis. Yet we hear that, among other measures, capital gains tax is to be cut. Let us contrast those two measures: tax cuts for the wealthy, and ongoing austerity for everyone else. That demonstrates once again that austerity is no more than a political choice by this Government.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
I agree with my hon. Friend. Does he agree that this Budget contains more cuts than a Bates motel shower curtain?
Ian Blackford
Indeed it does. This Government have missed an opportunity to create hope for a better future, with investment in our economy and people.
When the OBR tells the Chancellor that growth forecasts are below expectations, he finds room for tax cuts and balances the books with further spending cuts. He said yesterday,
“nor as a nation are we powerless. We have a choice.”
No kidding! He is choosing to punish the poor again with the choices he is making. He also said that
“productivity growth across the west is too low”.—[Official Report, 16 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 951.]
He made no analysis of why that is, and he did not reflect on why productivity in the UK, which we were told was central to the long-term economic plan, has been flatlining for so long.
There is no long-term economic plan. It is a myth and a meaningless soundbite from a Chancellor who does not have a plan to deliver sustainable economic growth. His only plan is to move out of No. 11 and into No. 10 Downing Street as soon as possible. Without a plan to drive productivity, we cannot drive sustainable economic growth.
Let us look at what the Chancellor is changing in the pensions world. We need predictability and a high degree of certainty if we are to encourage savings in this country and make sure that people have security and dignity in their old age, but the Chancellor carries on fiddling with the arrangements and undermines confidence in pension savings. The Chancellor’s abandonment of radical reform of tax relief in the Budget was a missed opportunity to rebalance the system and instil fairness at the heart of pension savings. The current pension tax relief regime is regressive, because it benefits higher-rate taxpayers exponentially, while modest earners miss out. The Financial Times last week ran a story with the headline:
“How to double your money instantly using pension tax breaks”,
adding:
“Welfare for the wealthy has rarely been so generous in the UK”.
That is the reality from this Conservative Government. The SNP support the offering of incentives through tax relief, but we want that to be done in a way that supports equity and fairness.
It is wholly remarkable and unacceptable, when we are told that welfare must be cut—when the poor have to pay the price—that pension tax relief, which is skewed towards helping higher tax-rate pensioners, is left untouched. Just where are the Government’s priorities? We are incentivising the wealthy and squeezing the poor; that is the Chancellor’s Britain.
The Chancellor has sat on his hands on tax relief in the week in which the Select Committee on Work and Pensions has published its report on the communication of state pension age changes. It is worth highlighting that the report’s conclusions and recommendations state:
“We recommend that, if the Government is subsequently able to allocate further funding, it should commission an independent assessment of the merits of the following options: slowing the increase in the state pension age to 66; revising the timetable for increases in the state pension age to reach 65 by April 2019 and 66 by April 2021…and a transitional pension benefit.”
Why has the Chancellor not reflected on that in the Budget, and why is he refusing to do something about frozen pensions? I tabled an early-day motion asking that we look at the issue of frozen pensions, because 550,000 foreign pensioners have paid into Britain, but their frozen pensions mean that they cannot benefit fully from that. The Government have to answer this charge. We are going into a European referendum. If the Brexiters win the day, an additional 400,000 British citizens will lose the automatic uprating of their pensions. That is something that the House must address.
Why does the Chancellor not look at redirecting some of his funds from pension tax relief to benefit the women born in the 1950s who are suffering inequality? This is a Budget that could do far better than it has done.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
We heard in the Budget yesterday the story of a record of failure, which was highlighted by my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor this afternoon. Growth has been revised down. Investment has been revised down. Debt—both public debt and household borrowing—is rising. Productivity has been revised down. The welfare cap has been breached, and it will be in every year in this Parliament.
The Opposition welcome increases in the employment rate, although we should acknowledge that such rises have not been seen everywhere—particularly not for young people, as my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Sue Hayman) pointed out—but the scandal of in-work poverty is one that Conservative Members really should attend to. I say to the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) that it is not enough just to create the jobs; they need to be secure, sustainable and adequately remunerated to ensure that work really lifts families out of poverty. The Government’s strategy does not do that. Indeed, secure jobs and a secure economy are made all the more vulnerable by the Tory chaos over Europe.
We heard from the Chancellor yesterday that this was
“a Budget for the next generation”—[Official Report, 16 March 2015; Vol. 607, c. 995.]
and we heard from the Secretary of State for Education earlier today about the detail of the policies that would give effect to the Chancellor’s intentions. Concerns have been expressed by many of my hon. and right hon. Friends, including my hon. Friends the Members for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), for Enfield North (Joan Ryan), for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) and for Croydon North (Mr Reed). It is fair to say that there is real concern among Members on both sides of the House about the policy of forced academisation in the teeth of a report by the head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, that is at best ambivalent about the performance of academy institutions.
The proposals are against the wishes of teachers—the Secretary of State herself said that we ought to treat them as professionals—and they ignore the fact that some, indeed many, local authority schools, especially primary schools, around the country perform extremely well. That was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) and, indeed, by the Tory chair of the Local Government Association children and young people board.
There is no guarantee that failing academy chains will not expand their failure by absorbing more schools into their academy structures. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham specifically asked about that, but he received no reply from the Secretary of State. There is a lack of clarity, although the Secretary of State made a welcome commitment to look at the particular situation of co-operative schools, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas). There are real worries that the proposals ignore the wishes of parents, who will no longer have the right to be on school governing bodies.
Michael Tomlinson
I understand what the hon. Lady is saying about academies, and she will have heard the points I made. Will she say whether Labour Members are now in favour of fairer funding for our schools, as they were when they were last in power?
Kate Green
Of course we are in favour of fairer funding, but as we have always said, the devil is in the detail. It is particularly important to ensure that it does not create a situation in which schools serving a large number of disadvantaged students lose out. That will be a challenge for the Government to address if they are not prepared to put in funding where it is most needed and make sure that that funding is sufficient.
We have heard several right hon. and hon. Members express the concern that the Secretary of State’s proposal for academisation will in fact replicate the massive top-down reorganisation we saw in the NHS. In particular, the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) made that point. The proposal was not in the Conservative party manifesto, and we have not had the opportunity to put it to the electorate, but now it is being forced on us. [Interruption.] It is not Labour policy to force academisation on any successful school. The Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), really ought to get the detail correct before he intervenes from a sedentary position.
We have heard real concerns about the crisis in teacher retention and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) said, in recruitment. The target for teacher recruitment has been missed in each of the past four years. In particular, there are recruitment issues in mathematics, an area that the Secretary of State wishes to expand. We heard no mention of how rising class sizes and the crisis in school places is to be addressed. There was no mention of the cuts to further education and sixth forms, and no acknowledgment of the need not just to increase the number of apprenticeships, but to improve their quality.
The proposals do not form a coherent and complete strategy for education for young people, and we must also remember that the Government’s failure of young people goes further than failing them in their education. I was particularly struck by the passionate speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) and for Croydon North, who highlighted the slew of policies that have been or have the potential to be extremely threatening to the wellbeing of young people—from cuts to Sure Start and child protection to cuts to youth services.
My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) highlighted the IFS’s projections about the very worrying rise in child poverty during the course of this Parliament, and many colleagues have also raised concerns about young people’s lack of access to housing. We of course agree that many young people aspire to own their own homes, and we wish to see measures to support them to do so. It is very disappointing that, alongside that, the Government are not prepared to support young people who are renting, whether from choice or necessity. Indeed, the situation of those young people has been made significantly worse by cuts to housing benefit. Members from right around the House acknowledge that the fundamental problem in housing is the lack of supply. The central part of this Budget should have been about building more houses.
Inequality in the Budget stretches beyond young people. We heard again and again about the disproportionate burden of the cuts to tax credits and benefits and the tax changes that have fallen on women, and there does not seem to have been much progress in negotiating away the tampon tax. My hon. Friends the Members for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), and the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), spoke about how the needs of women pensioners born in the early 1950s have been overlooked.
The Labour party is appalled at the further cuts to benefits for disabled people, which will shred the dignity of those who need help with dressing or using the toilet. We are also concerned about the geographic unfairness inherent in many of the measures announced by the Chancellor, which have been highlighted by my hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), for Croydon North, and for Stockton North. In particular, given that the business rate cuts that will help small businesses are not being funded by central Government, they will place a significant burden on local authorities—[Interruption.] Well, I am glad to hear that, but we did not hear that from Ministers earlier. [Interruption.] I am pleased to acknowledge it if I am in error, but the issue was raised earlier and not challenged by Ministers. I would expect them to be more on the ball in defending their policies.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) highlighted the need to ensure that the extra support for communities devastated by flooding reaches those communities, and my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) highlighted the need to ensure industrial investment in his constituency. Overall, this Budget will benefit the better off at the expense of the poorest. The Resolution Foundation stated that 80% of changes to income tax will benefit the 20% richest people in the country, and capital gains tax changes will certainly benefit the better off. The TUC says that workers are on average £40 a week worse off than they were before the recession. This Budget does not deliver fairness, prosperity or a secure future for the next generation. It is a hotch-potch of excuses, revisions, disguises and failures driven by ideology. That is not fair to today’s young people, or to the next generation.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Damian Hinds)
Today’s young people can look forward to some of the most exciting opportunities that a generation has ever faced, but also to a much more uncertain world. They face a changing world order, where the economic and political dominance of the west is increasingly challenged by developing and emerging economies. They face a changing labour market, with a growing premium on high value added jobs and the knowledge economy. They are unlikely to stay in the same job for life, they are much less likely than their parents to have a defined benefit pension, and they face much higher house prices, albeit that those are greatly mitigated by the low interest rates that have come about from our sound economic stewardship.
That comes on top of long-standing issues that the Government inherited in 2010 but that, to be fair, have existed for much longer. There is a productivity gap between the UK and other major global economies, an educational gap between rich and poor and between different parts of the country, and a lack of financial resilience in many parts of the population, without even the cushion of a small savings account.
The Government have been facing up to those structural issues through our educational reforms, the revolution in apprenticeships and the national living wage. This Budget puts the next generation first. It builds up our young people’s skills, and builds the infrastructure for a modern economy and higher productivity. Alongside all that is rightly being done to increase housing supply, it also helps young people to save for their retirement and for owning a home, with all the security that that can bring. For many, the Budget makes possible a rainy-day savings cushion for the first time.
The Budget also commits £1.6 billion extra over this Parliament to education in England. Academies are a key part of our education reforms, as the Education Secretary outlined earlier, and research from the OECD, the European Commission, and others, has repeatedly shown that more autonomy for individual schools can help to raise standards.
The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), my cloakroom neighbour, rightly talked about the performance of London schools and the London challenge. Many factors have gone into improving the performance of London schools. In fact, the improvement in performance predates the London challenge—the year the London challenge started is the year that the GCSE performance in London caught up with that of the rest of the country—but one of the factors in London’s outperformance was the school mix, including the disproportionate contribution to improvement made by academy schools.
Alex Cunningham
I am grateful to hear the lovely compliments for my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). The Secretary of State could not tell us where the extra money was coming from to fund the forced academies programme. Can the Minister do so?
Damian Hinds
The money announced in the Budget comes on top of what was announced in the spending review.
The right hon. Member for East Ham asked how the national funding formula would be done. We will consult on the principles through which it will work, but the intention is to ensure that it is fair and that it reflects need, unlike the rather arbitrary system we can have currently.
Damian Hinds
I am sorry but I am going to make some progress.
A number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), talked about post-16 maths. There is a massive premium on the study of maths and maths qualifications, as the report by Professor Alison Wolf identified. Maths will become more important as time goes on, but it is right that we ask the question and work out the best way to have further maths study, including by taking into consideration the questions that a number of hon. Members raised.
Hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) and for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), raised the importance of sport in school. My hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) rightly mentioned in an intervention that the difference in opportunity in sport and other extracurricular activities is part of the gap in opportunity between children in state schools and children in public schools. It is therefore very important for social mobility.
A number of right hon. and hon. Members talked about the levy on manufacturers and importers of sugary soft drinks. My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) movingly spoke of her own family and reminded us of the health benefit that is at the centre of the policy, which was also mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and for Faversham and Mid Kent, and the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis). Of course, we would rather not collect that much of that tax. The reason for the delay before it is introduced is to allow the manufacturers to change the formulation of their drinks or change their marketing so that they are pushing and promoting more the lower-sugar variants and products. We hope they will do so.
Rightly, a number of times in the debate, the important subject of the support that is given to people with disabilities has come up. I reassure the House that real-terms spending on the personal independence payment and its predecessor, the disability living allowance, has increased by more than £3 billion since 2010. The PIP budget will continue to increase from now until 2020. The reforms announced last week will bring spending closer to the level forecast in November and ensure that increased spend is targeted on those who need it most.
Damian Hinds
I am sorry but I will not give way.
We are exempting disability benefits from the uprating freeze and exempting recipients of them from the benefits cap. We are aiming to halve the massive employment gap between those with disabilities and those without. Over the past year, the number of disabled people in employment has risen by 150,000, but there is much more to do, hence the increase in the Budget for the Access to Work programme, the expansion of the Fit for Work scheme, and the increase in funding for dedicated employment advisers in IAPT— improving access to psychological therapies—services, among other programmes.
As today’s theme is education and young people, I should mention the replacement—it comes from the previous Parliament—of statements for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities with educational health and care plans, which for the first time bring together the care, health and education needs of some of our most vulnerable young people from the age of zero right up to 25. It is too early to measure the full effect of the programme, but most hon. Members would welcome it—I hope so.
On some of the other issues raised in today’s debate, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) talked about the catapult proposal. I am not in a position to comment on that in detail, but I am very happy to hear more about it. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) talked about tax simplification. We have eliminated the carbon reduction commitment part of the tax system, and there is also the zero rating of petroleum revenue tax. We are making the filing of taxes easier and making sure there are more people in HMRC call centres to take calls.
On the carer’s allowance, raised by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), the spend has increased by almost half since 2010. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole rightly mentioned the increased funding to deal with homelessness and the attention being given to provide second stage accommodation for people leaving hostels and refuges.
The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green)—it is a pleasure to speak opposite the hon. Lady from the Dispatch Box for what I think is the first time—suggested that inequality was rising due to the Government’s policies and the Budget. Inequality is actually coming down. The simple fact is that, if we look at the effect of policy over the period, the pattern of how public spending goes to different income groups in society remains broadly flat, while the incidence of taxation has shifted towards the top end.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) and my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent reminded us of the Government’s employment record. I remind the Opposition that the bulk of those jobs have been in full-time and higher-skilled occupations. My hon. Friends the Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Reading West (Alok Sharma) and for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) reminded us that only business can create the wealth that gives security to families, and affords us the excellent schools and our world-leading national health service. We are therefore right to reform small business rate relief; fuel duty, which is an important cost for many businesses; and corporation tax to make sure that investment is incentivised, while at the same time introducing a further £8 billion package on tax avoidance by multinationals. We say that we are going to have a very competitive tax system and that we want to attract investment to this country, but when companies operate in this country we expect them to pay the full tax that is due.
Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was candid with the House about the challenges facing the global economy. They are challenges from which no economy is immune, particularly a globally connected, trading economy such as ours. That is why it is so important to make Britain fit for the future, whatever challenges may lie ahead. It is why we focus on stability, employment, enterprise, innovation and opportunity. It is why we put in place policies helping people at every stage in their lives: from early-years childcare, to financial security and dignity in old age.
The reforms in education announced in this year’s Budget take that agenda forward. They help our aim of creating a society where everybody can achieve their aspirations and fulfil their potential—for children to get the best start in life, regardless of background; for them to be able to go to work in businesses as committed and skilled employees, companies that are incentivised towards productive capital investment; for young people to get on to the housing ladder; for our towns and cities to prosper, and to attract investment; for families to save for their retirement; and for everyone in our society to have a stake in the prosperity that, through this Budget, this Government are continuing to deliver.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
If the hon. Lady wishes to speak, she may.
Catherine West
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the Minister for being very quick in his remarks and allowing a little time. I just wanted to know what he thought of Councillor Edgar, from his own authority, who stated that he was very angry with the Chancellor about the proposals brought forward yesterday for academisation. He almost sounds ready to rip up his Conservative card, so upset is he about the fact that all schools—[Interruption.] He is a local authority man who is very proud of his schools and who would like to reiterate his dedication to education—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Lady has made her point, but a response is not possible. Things are rather in the wrong order.
Business without Debate
School Places (Barking and Dagenham)
(8 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jon Cruddas (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)
I want to make several points regarding school places and school funding in the London borough of Barking and Dagenham. I will not use all my allotted time so that my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) can also contribute before the Minister responds.
From the outset, I should say that our local authority appreciates the work carried out between the Education Funding Agency and local authority officers and that the need to meet additional demand has been recognised by the Government. My concern today is to ensure that this recognition translates into genuine action and appropriate funding arrangements over the years that lie ahead. I want to go into some detail regarding the challenges we face that are difficult for national allocation formulae and systems fully to understand, in the hope of ensuring that the Treasury grants the Department for Education the money it needs.
To set this in context, there are obvious London-wide pressures on school places. London Councils’ “Do the Maths 2015” analysis shows that London’s pupil population is set to increase by a further 146,000 between 2015 and 2020; that London needs to create 113,000 new school places over the course of this Parliament; and that it needs £1.5 billion of basic need funding by 2020 to create the new places required. Even set against that capital-wide challenge, the challenges facing Barking and Dagenham are unique in terms of demographic change, pressure for school places and an ageing school estate.
When I was first elected, the borough would have been characterised as a relatively stable community with a slightly ageing population. This picture of stability was reflected in the school numbers: between 2000-01 and 2005-6, primary school numbers actually fell by 150. In contrast, over the last 10 years, the borough has become one of the fastest-changing communities in Britain. We have to deal with demographic changes the likes of which we could never have imagined back in 2001, let alone 2005, driven by the fact that we remain the cheapest housing market across Greater London.
We saw a 43% increase in primary pupil numbers between 2009-10 and 2014-15, and this is likely to rise to 48% by 2016-17. At 48%, this will be the highest increase in England. Between 2009 and 2013-14, the headcount rose by 7,421. Those areas with a higher headcount were Birmingham, Bradford, Hertfordshire, Manchester and Surrey—none comparable in terms of the size of the community. Barking and Dagenham remains a relatively small London borough. This year—in a single year—we saw a 12.7% increase in the number of year 6 children applying for secondary school places next year, which is the highest in London by over 3%. The proportion of children under 19 in the population is expected to reach at least 33% before 2020. This is 10% higher than the average for England and around 8% higher than the average for London.
All those increases are before the significant increases we expect owing to increased housing units across the borough. For example, we are looking at development sites across Castle Green, Barking Riverside, Barking town centre, Creekmouth, Thames road and Beam park and the old Ford stamping plant, which amount to some 29,300-plus units over the next decade or more.
Already, the borough has committed to support the London Mayor by providing 5% of the planned growth in housing for London—some 75% higher than we might have expected on a pro-rata basis. This will go a long way to meeting London’s housing crisis, but we must make sure that it does not fuel a deepening school places crisis locally. The latest estimates from the LEA are of a further 5,500 increase in the primary school population by 2021-22 and a 7,700 increase in the secondary school population. Overall, we are witnessing a unique population surge. Just after the 2020 election, the school population will be over 50,000—virtually double the headcount compared with when I was first elected in 2001.
Let us now consider some of the funding implications. Based on our place projections for up to 2021, a total of 20 additional forms of entry will be needed at primary level, which is equivalent to around seven new schools, costing approximately £63 million. At secondary level, we anticipate 41 extra forms of entry, which is about the size of four large secondary schools, costing about £100 million. We will also need to expand our special educational needs provision, while early years numbers are also rising.
I have just alluded to an awful lot of money, but we are talking about an awful lot of children. Within these estimates, and given the record of our borough, our capital costs per place are well below the median for the region—and below our immediate neighbours—for both expanding and new school places. To add to the picture, we cannot forget how we as a borough lost out badly with the end of both the Building Schools for the Future and the primary schools capital programmes.
BSF covered all nine secondary schools in the borough. In the event, only two schools, Sydney Russell in the Barking constituency and Dagenham Park in my Dagenham and Rainham constituency, were covered by the residual BSF programme. Those two schools cost roughly £50 million. The BSF programme was valued at some £250 million, so the investment gap stands at about £200 million. Since BSF, capital spending on Eastbury, Eastbrook and the Riverside schools has reduced this investment shortfall to about £105 million, according to the latest estimate. Given that the primary capital programme never happened in any significant way, money to improve the structure of existing buildings has had to be spent on addressing our primary places shortfall. Obviously, things do not stand still, and programme cancellations have contributed to a growing need for capital repairs and minor works to keep the school estate functioning.
Basically, we receive £4 million from the Government for this, but estimate that we need £32.5 million for secondary school condition improvement and £40 million for primary school condition improvement. Why? Well, unlike much of the London schools estate, many of our schools were built during the 1921-1935 period and now require major infrastructure repairs.
Two of our largest and most popular secondary schools, Barking Abbey and Robert Clack, missed out on both the Building Schools for the Future programme and the more recent bid rounds for the priority schools building programme. We also have some schools that require significant investment to make them 100% accessible—with the growth in pupil numbers, our schools are serving many more children with special education needs and disabilities. Cumulatively, given the exceptional demographic growth, the investment shortfall and deteriorating estate, we face extraordinary funding problems.
Barking and Dagenham has been allocated £162 million between 2011-12 and 2017-18, yet we need to expand our primary provision at the same time as needing to meet the growth in demand reaching our secondary schools. This is simply not enough to build the quality of schools that our children deserve. Overall, we need to use revenue funding to supplement capital costs and maintenance—vital money that is needed to improve outcomes and meet the needs of a very mobile community.
We also have to factor in how the Government wish to create a national funding formula, but we hope this will not further disadvantage students in our borough. We will obviously respond in detail to the national funding formula consultation, but fear it will impact on the revenue available to support our schools in meeting this huge population increase.
On a more positive note, I can say that, despite all those challenges, Barking and Dagenham has a strong track record of delivering sufficient places. We have opened, on time, a higher number of school places than any other borough in the country, but if we are to continue to achieve that, we shall need sufficient long-term funding commitments. We have invited Lord Nash to visit the borough so that he can see at first hand the state of the buildings and the pressures on space. He has acknowledged that the borough has taken a pragmatic approach to securing school places, working with the EFA. We should like to extend, again, that invitation to view schools and meet headteachers, officers and local politicians to discuss the issues.
Despite needing to manage a huge increase in population, our schools are improving. Over the past five years, we have closed the gap between ourselves and others in good Ofsted outcomes by some 30% at primary level. In November 2014, Ofsted said:
“A good quality education for all and improving academic standards are at the heart of Barking and Dagenham’s ambitious vision. The local authority is facing significant demographic changes and challenges, such as an increasing population, increasing population mobility, greater ethnic diversity and increasing poverty. None of these is accepted by officers and elected members as a barrier to educational achievement.
Senior officers and elected members provide strong leadership. The impact of the local strategy is fewer schools causing concern and rising standards across all phases of education that now match or exceed national averages.”
As I have said, we appreciate that we are recognised as a special case by the Government, but that is not enough. During the Budget debates yesterday and today, we have heard a lot about school structures, but very little about the kinds of pressures we are facing locally.
Literally within the last hour, the Department has sent LEAs the 2018-19 allocations. We welcome the allocations of some £5 million in 2018-19 and £17 million in 2017-18, which increase our capacity to start planning in advance of some of the changes to which I have referred. We hope that longer-term allocations will be available, as secondary schools cannot be built bit by bit, and need to be planned several years in advance. The figure is lower than we hoped, given the cost of building a new secondary school, but it is a contribution, along with the allocation of free school places to the borough.
I assume that the Minister’s response will be to acknowledge the pressures and challenges that I have described. May I suggest it is now time to move beyond mere acceptance, and towards detailed discussions of the actions and funding that are required to secure continued school expansion and improvement in the years that lie ahead?
Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) on securing the debate, and on selecting this issue.
I will not give all the figures, but Barking and Dagenham has experienced the greatest increase in school numbers in the country over the last five years, a massive increase of 48%. Although the increase will slow down a bit over the next five years, it is still huge. The growth in primary school figures is now hitting the secondary school estate, which will experience a 57% increase over the next five years. It is predicted that a third of the borough’s population will be under the age of 19. I think that we face a problem of huge proportions, and I hope that the Government will accept that.
I want to add two comments to what my hon. Friend has said. First, the current estate, especially the secondary estate, is horrific in some instances. Barking Abbey, a secondary school in my constituency, teaches to really high standards in atrocious buildings, all of which are portakabins. When I took the Public Accounts Committee down to see the borough during our an inquiry into school places, we saw dangerous wires coming out of some parts of the building. There are not enough science classrooms, and the entire sixth form is being taught in portakabins; yet the school has been asked to accept more young people. That is an impossible ask when the current conditions are so atrocious.
Gascoigne primary school, which is also in my constituency, is the largest primary school in the country. We are constructing a new building for it some distance away. I am always very sceptical about the ability of a headteacher to manage two buildings that are not on the same site. When I last visited that school, it had lost practically all its playground space. In a week when the Government are talking about encouraging school sports, I have to tell the Minister that the places are simply not there. It has also had to lose its library, which has moved into a portakabin, and it will be impossible for it to meet the aims of the anti-obesity strategy that the Government have spelled out. I just want to draw to the Minister’s attention the reality of people’s lives as they try to manage, given the insufficient number of school places.
I get endless cases of this nature, and I am sure that my hon. Friend does as well. One involves a young girl who is looking for a secondary school place. She has not been given a place at either of her first two choices of school. She wanted to go to Sydney Russell school, where her older sibling is, but she is being sent instead to a school right in the east of my hon. Friend’s constituency, a 45-minute bus ride from where she lives. Another involves a young boy who has also not been given a place at either of the schools he wanted to go to. He wanted to go to the new school, Riverside school, which is a 15-minute walk from his home, and we should be able to cater for his needs. However, he has been given a place at Eastbrook school, which involves a 40-minute journey on two buses. I hope that the Minister agrees that that is unacceptable. It is not what any responsible Government should be providing, which is the very best start in life for our young children.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) on securing this debate. I also congratulate him and the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) on speaking so passionately about the educational opportunities available to young children in their constituencies. This debate is timely as it allows me the opportunity to set out clearly the Government’s position on the provision of sufficient quality school places across the country as well as, more specifically, in Barking and Dagenham. I agree with the right hon. Member for Barking that this is about not just the availability of places but the quality of the school buildings.
First, I want to take the opportunity to reiterate that ensuring that every child is able to attend a good or outstanding school in their local area is at the heart of the Government’s comprehensive programme of reform of the school system. We know that our growing population means that new school places are needed in many parts of the country, so the Government are absolutely committed to providing capital investment to ensure that every child has a place at a school.
We have already shown the strength of our commitment to ensuring that good quality places are available, and we are investing a further £7 billion to create new school places between 2015 and 2021. We are also investing £23 billion in school buildings to create 600,000 new school places, open at least 500 new schools and address essential maintenance needs. This is on top of the £5 billion we allocated to local authorities to invest in school places in the last Parliament, which was over double the amount spent in the equivalent four-year period between 2007 and 2011. Today, we released new data showing that nearly 600,000 additional pupil places were created between May 2010 and May 2015, with many more delivered since then and in the pipeline; 150,000 places were delivered between 2014 and 2015 alone.
The hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham mentioned the Budget, and referred to the absence of commentary on school places. I want to draw his attention to an announcement that we have made today. We are announcing £1.1 billion of funding for local authorities in 2018-19 to create the school places needed by the 2019-20 academic year. I know that he is concerned about that matter. This is part of the £7 billion that I referred to earlier and, alongside our investment in 500 new free schools, we expect this to deliver a further 600,000 new places by 2021. In making these allocations, the Government are continuing to target funding effectively, based on local needs, using data we have collected from local authorities about the capacity of schools and forecast pupil projections. Those are the announcements that we have made today, and I will definitely ask the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Lady to look at the detail.
Returning to the central point of the debate, ensuring that every child has access to the benefits of a good-quality education is a fundamental responsibility of everyone across the education system. As the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham knows, the statutory duty for providing school places rests with local authorities. Our financial commitment is therefore a concrete demonstration of the level of importance that the Government attach to the provision of places and of our wider commitment.
Our manifesto referred to the creation of 500 new free schools, and 40 applications have been approved since the election in May, with many more entering the process. We continue to encourage businesses, cultural and sporting bodies, charities, community groups and parents to come forward with their proposals for new schools, adding to the nearly 400 schools opened since 2010 and the more than 190 currently in the pipeline.
It is important that local authorities across the country seek to capitalise on the opportunities presented here. The free schools programme is working alongside local authorities to create the school places we need in order to provide a good education for all our children, and many authorities are choosing to work actively with the Government to meet the challenge. I pay tribute to all those in authorities and in schools who have helped to deliver the significant progress of recent years. The task is not yet done, however, as the increase in the number of pupils moving through the primary phase is now beginning to be felt at secondary level. Local authorities and schools must rise to that additional challenge. We should not pretend that that will be easy, which is why we are committed to helping through funding and through establishing new schools directly under the free schools programme.
London’s situation is unique, and the unsurprising surge in pupil numbers has been mentioned. As a thriving global city, London has a large part to play in meeting that challenge. Some 34% of new places delivered by 2015 were in London, and the capital will clearly have a big part to play in coming years. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the London borough of Barking and Dagenham has played its part in that regard. The local authority has effectively created places to meet demand, but it will face, as he pointed out, further challenges as pupil numbers continue to rise and larger primary cohorts transfer into the secondary sector. Rising pupil numbers in neighbouring local authorities will also reduce the number of pupils able to take up places outside Barking and Dagenham, further increasing the challenges to be managed.
The way we provide funding for new places is based on local authorities’ assessments of the number of pupils that they expect to have, taking local factors into account. That approach has helped the Government to allocate Barking and Dagenham a further £6 million, taking the total to £167 million in funding for school places from 2011 to 2019, on top of more than 3,300 places in free schools that we have funded centrally. The funding has been put to work. By May 2015, there were 7,450 more primary places and 4,450 more secondary places than there were in 2010, with plans to create many more when they are needed in the coming years. Barking and Dagenham has four open free schools, including an all-age special school. In addition, it has a university technical college and a further secondary school is due to open in 2017.
Of course, providing sufficient quality places is about not only capital investment, but ensuring that revenue money for schools gets to where it is needed most. The hon. Gentleman was bang on the money when he talked about the likely consequences of the national funding formula for Barking and Dagenham. In the spending review, we delivered on our manifesto pledge to maintain per pupil funding for the core schools budget for the duration of the Parliament, providing an overall real-terms protection. That includes protecting the extra funding for our most disadvantaged children through the pupil premium, worth over £2.5 billion this year. Next year, we will be providing over £40 billion of schools funding, the highest ever level of any Government.
We also committed in the spending review to introduce a national funding formula for schools and for pupils with high needs from 2017 to ensure that funding reaches the places where it is needed. I believe these reforms will be transformative and the biggest step towards fairer funding in more than a decade.
The current funding system is unfair and out of date. It means that a primary pupil with low prior attainment in Barking and Dagenham attracts £800 to his or her school, but in neighbouring Newham the same child would attract nearly £1,800. The situation is similar for pupils with high needs—funding is not correlated to need and there is wide local variation in the way children’s needs are assessed. Earlier this month, we launched the first stage of our consultation on proposals to end this postcode lottery and to put in its place a funding system that gives every pupil the same opportunities in education; where children with the same characteristics and the same needs are funded at the same rate, wherever they live; and where there is one, consistent, fair formula, instead of 152 local variations.
Across all our proposals for a national funding formula, we want to deliver three key priorities: to allocate funding fairly and get it straight to the frontline; to match funding to need, so that the higher the need, the greater the funding; and to make sure that the transition for such significant reforms is smooth. The proposals in our consultation include arrangements for funding schools with significant growth in their pupil numbers, and I look forward to the response to the consultation from the Barking and Dagenham local authority. This Government are committed to long-term investment in education. We have already protected revenue funding for this Parliament and we are acting now to make sure this money is allocated equitably for all pupils, wherever they are in the country. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham for raising this important issue today.
Question put and agreed to.
draft Child Support (Deduction Orders and Fees) (Amendment and modification) Regulations 2016
(8 years, 8 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Shailesh Vara)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Child Support (Deduction Orders and Fees) (Amendment and Modification) Regulations 2016.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Ms Ryan.
The draft regulations were laid before both Houses on 8 February this year. They enable the Department to waive collection and enforcement fees on the 2012 child maintenance scheme for a specific group of cases for a limited period of time. That is to allow non-resident parents with a poor history of meeting their child maintenance obligations the chance to demonstrate a change in behaviour. Some minor technical amendments are made to enforce the orders.
A comprehensive reform of the child maintenance system began in 2012 with three express aims: to incentivise parents to collaborate in the best interests of their children; to move away from the idea that applying to a statutory scheme should be the default option for separated parents; and to offer an improved statutory scheme. Alongside that, an ongoing programme to close all existing Child Support Agency cases is giving parents a fresh chance to consider what arrangement for providing financial support for their children best suits their circumstances.
When approaching case closure, we are taking careful steps to minimise the risk of child maintenance payments being disrupted, in particular with those cases in which money is only flowing as a result of enforcement being undertaken on the CSA case, addressing key concerns raised at consultation. We will close cases in which money is flowing as a result of enforcement action last, and we will introduce a new positive test of compliant behaviour for such non-resident parents, which is to be known as a compliance opportunity.
The compliance opportunity will last for six months, provided the non-resident parent pays maintenance in full and on time. During that period, the non-resident parent will be required to pay half the maintenance liability via the collect and pay service through a voluntary method of payment. Where case circumstances allow, an enforced method of payment will be put in place to collect the rest of the liability. That payment safeguard is intended to minimise the risk of payment disruption for the parent with care during the compliance opportunity.
The non-resident parent will be expected to make all payments on time and in full, and if they miss one payment they will fail. Only in exceptional circumstances, when the non-resident parent is not at fault, will an exception be made. If all payments are made, the parent will pass. The outcome of the compliance opportunity will inform a decision on whether the parent’s 2012 scheme case should be a voluntary, direct pay arrangement or a collect and pay arrangement in which the Child Maintenance Service manages collections and charges apply.
Following consultation with stakeholders, we now propose to offer the compliance opportunity in the first six months of the new 2012 scheme case, rather than the final six months of the CSA case. That avoids unnecessary disruption to clients who do not wish to apply to the new scheme, and it can be delivered at a lower overall cost to the public purse.
We will still use enforced methods of payment as a payment safeguard for the duration of the compliance opportunity, when case circumstances allow. Ordinarily, that would attract collection and enforcement fees, so introducing a waiver for those clients during the compliance opportunity will ensure that they are not required to pay until we know it is absolutely necessary.
The draft regulations will also make minor technical amendments to the rules governing regular deduction orders and lump sum deduction orders. I commend the statutory instrument to the Committee.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
It is nice to see you in the Chair, Ms Ryan.
I thank the Minister for his opening remarks. As he said, the draft regulations propose two changes to the 2012 child maintenance scheme, administered by the Child Maintenance Service: first, to allow collection and enforcement fees to be waived for six months for certain groups transferring to the 2012 scheme; and, secondly, technical changes to the regulation deduction orders and lump sum deduction orders to
“increase operational efficiency by allowing the collection of fees in certain circumstances not already covered by existing regulations”,
as well as enabling arrears accruing in earlier child maintenance schemes to be collected. However, the Government need to address a number of issues relating to the changes, and I would be grateful for the Minister’s response to the following questions.
Parents on the three previous child maintenance schemes are only being invited by the Government to apply to the 2012 scheme; transfer is not automatic. Will the Minister explain why it is not automatic and the administrative implications? I understand what he has said about people not wishing to apply, but I think there are assumptions that have not been fully explored.
What is the progress in transfer to the new scheme for the different segment groups and when is the transition of all live CSA cases expected to be completed? Will the Minister explain why, from the quarter of a million invitations to CSA cases to transfer to the child maintenance service, only 28,800 have been transferred to date?
Whereas there are no collection fees under the legacy schemes, that is not the case with the transfer to the 2012 scheme. In particular, can the Minister explain the Government’s thinking in relation to non-resident parents currently in segment 5—those who are subject to some CSA enforcement action as a result of non-payment of child maintenance? As I understand it, non-resident parents who have in the past not complied will be given a six-month grace period under which they will be able to demonstrate that they will fulfil their obligations by providing the necessary child support for their child or children. That will determine whether they can move on to the direct pay system or the collect and pay system via the Child Maintenance Service, with the associated charges.
For non-resident parents who demonstrate that they have complied during the six-month period, will the Minister clarify what happens to the arrears owed in child maintenance from the legacy schemes? I understand that a system of arrears cleansing is currently under way to ensure that a precise figure of what the non-resident parent has failed to pay in child support can be reached, but why is that taking so long? When will it be completed and why was that not done at the outset, so that non-resident parents’ willingness to pay could be tested for both the new and old child support schemes? Will the agreed arrears be collected by the same enforcement method or, having been found compliant with the new scheme, will the parent be able to transfer to direct pay or collect and pay? What assessment has been undertaken of the likely non-compliance in arrears repayment for the different scenarios, and what does that mean for delays in child support to children?
I understand from Gingerbread that an estimated £700 million in arrears is owed to children. Will the Minister explain why some parents with care are getting letters saying,
“Some clients in a similar position to you tell us that they do not want their child maintenance to be managed by the new organisation and wish to make a fresh start by writing off their arrears”?
I am concerned about that and would appreciate the Minister’s response. It seems to be a pressure in terms of writing off debt.
On deduction from earnings orders, can the Minister explain what enforcement methods will be used during the compliance opportunity for the bit that is being enforced alongside the voluntary partial payments? The Minister in the other place mentioned using DEOs, but in some cases, such as self-employed non-resident parents, a DEO is not appropriate. What other tools will be used for the enforcement part of that payment if a DEO is not appropriate? For example, will deduction orders or freezing orders, or setting aside of disposition orders, be available during the compliance period? Finally, as the Minister in the other place was unable to answer this question—and a number of others, I have to say—I would be grateful if this Minister could explain what powers the second regulation will give the Government that they do not have now and in what circumstances they envisage using them? Will he confirm that all the cases covered by the regulations will still have statutory maintenance arrangements, not voluntary or family-based arrangements?
It is absolutely right that parents who are separated or divorced fulfil their obligations to their children and provide financial support, as well as other support. As the noble Baroness Sherlock said in the other place:
“It is the responsibility of the Government to demonstrate that, in their desire to save money running a child maintenance service, they have not reduced the incentive on non-resident parents to take responsibility for their children, and reduce the incomes of their children as a consequence.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 March 2016; Vol. 769, c. 216.]
Mr Vara
I thank the hon. Lady for that huge series of questions. I will try to address as many as I can. She raised several points, one of which was to ask why the transfer is not automatic for all cases. If the cases were transitioned into the 2012 scheme automatically without requiring a new application, it would lead to excessive complexity and confusion and undermine the Government’s fundamental commitment to offering a fresh choice to all parents regarding their child maintenance arrangements.
The hon. Lady asked when the transfer can be completed. We do not publish information on the timetable for individual segments, but I can assure her that we are on course to have ended the liabilities for all segments by 31 December 2017.
The hon. Lady asked how long the arrears cleansing process takes. It can take up to six months from the point at which CSA liability ends. In most cases the process takes less than six months, but the time can vary based on the complexity of the case. As for how CSA arrears cases are dealt with in the context of a compliance opportunity, if CSA arrears are transitioned to the 2012 scheme during the compliance opportunity, they will be included in the payment schedule. Failure to comply with the schedule will mean that the non-resident parent fails the compliance opportunity.
The hon. Lady asked whether the transitions arrears in the 2012 scheme will be dealt with in the same enforced way as they were in the CSA. If the non-resident parent complies with the schedule, the historical arrears will be recovered, so nothing will be gained by enforcing collection. If the non-resident parent does not comply with any element of the schedule, that will be taken as evidence that they are unlikely to pay and action will be taken to enforce payment of the arrears and the ongoing liability.
The hon. Lady asked whether the letter asking parents whether they want to write off their debt is to be sent to all parents with care. The answer is yes. She also discussed regulation 2. It makes minor consequential amendments to powers we already have to deduct fees from a person’s bank account, alongside maintenance by regular and lump-sum deduction orders. Regular deduction orders may also be varied to include legacy scheme arrears that have been transitioned to the 2012 scheme. The measures are tidying-up provisions to ensure that the legislation in this area is consistent. There is no change to the policy as a result. In a nutshell, we are introducing new powers that make minor consequential amendments to make the process easier.
As for what would happen in cases in which we are unable to use a DEO as a payment safeguard, the parent would be required to pay 100% of their liability by an enforced method of payment. When a payment is missed, swift action will be taken to enforce the resulting arrears.
The hon. Lady asked about statutory maintenance arrangements. All cases covered by the regulations will be managed in the statutory scheme. She asked several questions and I have given several answers. I hope that she is satisfied with them and commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Companies (Address of Registered Office) Regulations 2016
Draft Registrar of Companies and Applications for Striking Off (Amendment) Regulations 2016
(8 years, 8 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Companies (Address of Registered Office) Regulations 2016.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the draft Registrar of Companies and Applications for Striking Off (Amendment) Regulations 2016.
Anna Soubry
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. The two sets of regulations provide new procedures to protect innocent parties when there is inaccurate information on the public register about a company’s registered office address or the appointment of a company director.
I will discuss first the regulations that deal with registered office addresses. Every company must have a registered office to which all communications and notices may be addressed. The company need not trade from that address. It can use the address of a third party—for example, a firm of solicitors—as its registered office. The registrar of companies receives complaints that some companies use the address of another business or a private individual that they are not authorised to use. If someone finds that their address is being misused in that way, the impact can be significant and, of course, distressing. In the worst cases, bailiffs can be sent to the address in the false belief that it is linked to the company; they do not know otherwise. However, the existing provisions in the Companies Act 2006 allow only the company itself to apply to have the address removed from the public register.
The regulations provide a new procedure to prevent a company from continuing to use an address when it is not authorised so to do. A person will be able to apply to the registrar for a registered office address to be changed on the grounds that the company is not authorised to use it. The registrar will send a notice to the company, directing it either to change its registered office address or to provide evidence that it is authorised to use the address. If the registrar is satisfied that the company is not authorised to use the address, they will change the registered office address to a temporary default address. The intention is for the registrar to operate an address at Companies House for that purpose. That is eminently sensible and will help innocent parties caught up in no doubt illegal, shoddy and shameful dealings to clear their name. One can imagine that if they were the occupier of a house, it would be particularly distressing, especially if bailiffs tipped up on their doorstep.
I come now to the regulations on disputes about director appointments. Companies must inform the registrar when a director is appointed or removed, or when a director’s details change. At present, a person who appears on the public register as a company director can apply to have their name taken off on the grounds that they did not agree to the appointment. However, the company can stop an application merely by objecting, without having to provide any evidence to support its objection. The regulations change that by requiring the company to provide evidence that the person consented to become a director. If the company supplies that information, the person’s name will stay on the public register. If the company does not, the person’s name will be removed from the public register.
The two sets of regulations share the aim of providing a more effective way of correcting information on the public register. They will enable the registrar quickly to change addresses to protect innocent third parties and make it easier to resolve cases in which people have been appointed as directors without their agreement. There is a very good explanatory note with each draft statutory instrument. I nearly said that my speech is almost word for word the same, but it is not. However, the explanatory notes could not be clearer, so I pray them in aid of all that I am saying.
I hope that the regulations will be passed. If we need to debate them, I am happy to do so. They will mean that the things that I have described can be done. They are really about tidying up injustices and inefficiencies to make things better for everyone, including businesses. We do not anticipate that they will add further cost or burden to businesses, especially small businesses. I therefore commend both sets of regulations to the Committee.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Happy St Patrick’s day to you, Mr McCabe, and to the Committee. I have to say that, as the son of a man from west Cork—my late father, who is sadly no longer with us—but happy St Patrick’s day to one and all.
There is a small burden to business set out in the impact assessment. I am sure that the Minister would like me just to correct her on that. I think that £180,000 is given as the net cost to business of resolving disputes about registered offices that companies state on the public register of companies. However, the Minister is right that the measure is not controversial. I think everyone would agree that it is entirely improper that companies are able easily to register someone else’s address as the address of a business, whether by error, as does happen, or with more malevolent intent. That can be done to avoid the serving of writs or other measures such as bailiffs calling, or even to avoid customers contacting the company via its registered address at Companies House.
There should be a quick and easy procedure to rectify such occurrences, without affecting the business or individual whose address might have been registered in that way. Clearly, it could be distressing and damaging to the reputation of an individual or company if bailiffs called at their address in relation to something that was nothing to do with them. The reputational damage, not to say the distress and cost, could be great.
It is right, therefore, that the Government should seek through the regulations before us to rectify the problem, just as it is right to rectify the problem that directors are often wrongly registered with companies. According to the Government’s impact assessment, there are 500 or 600 cases of that a year. That is a relatively small number, given the number of directors that there are, but for each individual it could be the cause of considerable embarrassment or difficulty. Being wrongly registered as a director of a company could lead to their being drawn into disputes that are nothing to do with them. Again, it is wrong that a person should be prevented from removing their listing as a company director simply because the company objects, as the law currently states. The registrar should be able to resolve the dispute in a straightforward and proper manner, using a simpler procedure.
The measures are uncontroversial and we do not intend to divide the Committee, but I have one or two questions for the Minister. She will know that the free protected online filing scheme, known as PROOF, already gives greater security to a company filing its details at Companies House. It is surprising that not all companies are members of the scheme. The two main reasons are, first, that once a company has joined PROOF, almost all of its documents have to be filed electronically and, secondly, that many officers of small companies have simply never got round to applying to join the scheme. Will she tell the Committee whether there is any intention to make the scheme compulsory for newly registered companies or to promote it more rigorously to companies? That might make it possible to avoid some of the difficulties that the Committee is trying to rectify.
What does the Minister feel is the size of the problem? How many companies have their addresses hijacked each year, and what are the costs to business of trying to resolve those disputes? Although there is a small cost to businesses from introducing the measures, there are also, obviously, costs in the existing situation.
Do the Government intend to look at the penalties and sanctions that can be exercised against rogue companies that hijack addresses? What measures do they have in hand or are they thinking about to tackle that problem? In addition to an easy passage for companies that are victims of the practice, there should, on the other side, be sanctions for those who misuse the system in this way and cause businesses and individuals cost, distress and reputational damage.
It would be helpful if the Minister elucidated those points a little further, but I reiterate that the regulations appear to the Opposition to be sensible and proportionate measures that will assist businesses. Therefore, it is not our intention to vote against them this morning.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Will the Minister clarify a question that I have? Currently, an individual will not know whether they have been named as a company director or whether their address has been hijacked until they are alerted to a problem. Do the regulations contain a mechanism whereby there is an obligation for a letter—a “To whom it may concern” type of letter—to be sent to an address to ensure that an individual knows that that is happening in advance, rather than just having a mechanism to deal with it after the event? Likewise, is there an obligation to write to individuals at their known address so that they are notified in advance, rather than waiting for a problem to arise?
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
I wholeheartedly welcome the regulations. They are an important contribution to the fight against corporate fraud.
I have seen addresses being hijacked on three occasions. It can lead to all sorts of complications and go on for a very long time. People who are using the wrong address inadvertently will want proof that it is the wrong address; it can really be very complicated indeed. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff West that we need to query what penalties there are for people who use addresses wrongly.
Do the regulations on directors extend to shadow directors—not just to a bog-standard director, but to people who should register and therefore should be included in the regulations?
Anna Soubry
We have had some very good and interesting questions. I think I will be able to respond—[Interruption.] Ooh, as if by magic! I may have to write to hon. Members in relation to some of their questions.
Every company must have a registered office to which all communications and notices may be addressed. A company might provide an address that turns out, effectively, to be a bogus one. We have a really good set of regulations to deal with that. I was really struck—and I did not know this until I looked through my notes—that Companies House alone receives 100 complaints a month about the unauthorised use of addresses. That is an astonishingly high number of complaints. There is a real problem out there.
On the basis that companies must provide a registered address, if a company provides one that is then found to be bogus, it is already breaching the law and action can be taken. I suggest to the hon. Member for Cardiff West that there are those powers, because a process will be triggered. Clearly the company does not have a registered address if a complaint has been made that a false address has been used. The company is therefore in breach of existing law.
Mr Djanogly
My right hon. Friend mentioned companies giving a bogus address. What happens if individuals hijack a company and give a bogus address?
Anna Soubry
I do not know the answer to that question, but I might be able to answer it in a few moments. If not, I shall write to my hon. Friend.
In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes, the registrar is now required to write to every newly appointed director, which will give them the opportunity to object if they have been falsely appointed. I hope that that deals with her question.
Returning to my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon, the regulations do not extend to shadow directors. They apply only to directors registered as such at Companies House.
Mr Djanogly
The other aspect is alternate directors, who have a duty to register. I would have thought that the regulations should apply to them. Do they?
Anna Soubry
At the moment, I do not know the answer to that. I will write to my hon. Friend. Is it not excellent that we have Members on the Back Benches who know what they are talking about? They have huge experience of these things. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] My hon. Friend is a very good example of the wealth of experience that exists in this place.
By way of magic, I can say that section 1095 of the Companies Act 2006 provides a way for the registrar to remove factually inaccurate or forged information or material deriving
“from anything invalid or ineffective or that was done without the authority of the company”.
That may be helpful in answering my hon. Friend’s excellent questions.
I am pleased that the regulations are not contentious. Some important and interesting points have been raised, and I will deal with them all by way of letter.
Kevin Brennan
I asked some questions about the voluntary PROOF scheme that was introduced in 2005. Can the Minister say anything about that, or will she confirm for the record that she intends to write to the Committee about it?
Anna Soubry
I am so sorry, Mr McCabe. I should have made it clear that all Members who have asked me questions will get proper letters. I always say that the usual rules apply: if I cannot answer it, I will provide an answer by way of letter. That letter will specifically look at the questions that the hon. Gentleman has raised about that scheme, such as whether it can be made compulsory, whether we should do more to promote it, and so on and so forth. That may be another way to deal with these problems.
The important thing is that the regulations have got the balance right. The cost sounds like a lot of money, but when it is spread across the 3.6 million companies registered with Companies House, it is a drop in the ocean. The regulations are the right way to go about things. Yes, there will be more of a duty on companies, but it is very minor. It is about striking the right balance so that we do not place too much of a burden on companies, but we do redress this wrong. There can be few things as annoying as discovering that someone has used one’s address. If bailiffs turn up, that is the ultimate distress and a gross annoyance.
I am pleased that the regulations are not contentious. I apologise for not having all the answers, but we will sort that out by way of letter. On that basis, I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
DRAFT REGISTRAR OF COMPANIES AND APPLICATIONS FOR STRIKING OFF (AMENDMENT) REGULATIONS 2016
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft Registrar of Companies and Applications for Striking Off (Amendment) Regulations 2016.—(Anna Soubry.)
Westminster Hall
(8 years, 8 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
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Backbench Business
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Cabin Air Safety/Aerotoxic Syndrome
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered cabin air safety and aerotoxic syndrome.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mrs Gillan. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) and the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) for joining me in my application.
I said in my application to the Backbench Business Committee that I am always willing to approach issues of industrial safety with an open mind and a willingness to consider the concerns of the workforce. The reason for that can be summed up in one word: asbestos. We have a terrible legacy of asbestos and mesothelioma in my constituency, and no one would wish to find themselves on the wrong side of history when it comes to a potentially serious health issue in the workplace. From the outset, I acknowledge that I understand and appreciate that aerotoxic syndrome is not yet a recognised medical condition, but it is something of considerable debate, hence our having this debate today.
I am not a medical professional, and I am not saying that it should be down to us as MPs to decide what is a recognised medical condition. However, aerotoxic syndrome has attracted a great deal of attention, both from passengers and, crucially, from those working in the airline industry, which is why it is right for us to have this debate today. Workers are worried, and we have a responsibility to treat the issue seriously. Everybody deserves to have confidence that the air they breathe in the workplace is clean and safe. Many people have got in touch with me since I secured the debate, and they are extremely grateful that their concerns are being raised in the House today. My aim is to present the concerns that have been raised and to make some requests of the Government, which I hope the Minister will listen to and accept.
I will now provide some background for those following the debate who may not be well versed in the topic. The key factor is the use of bleed air to provide a pressurised air supply to the cabin during flights. Bleed air is compressed air from the jet engines, and it is used by the vast majority of passenger aircraft in operation today. The problem arises when faults with engine seals cause seepage into the cockpit and cabin, which in turn can lead to contaminated fumes containing toxins being digested by people on board the plane. It is worrying that the long-term and short-term effects of exposure to contaminated air containing such toxins is not fully known, nor has enough work been done to establish the link between contaminated air and aerotoxic syndrome.
Aerotoxic syndrome affects the peripheral and central nervous systems and the brain. Symptoms include migraines, fatigue, difficulty thinking, numbness, aches and pains, breathing problems and digestive problems. Furthermore, there has been a significant rise in the number of cases, which simply cannot be ignored. It is significant that the Unite trade union tells me that it is currently acting on behalf of 61 individual cases. There is evidence pointing to aerotoxic syndrome being an illness to which cabin crew, not to mention passengers, may be exposed, and it must be treated seriously.
One of the aims of today’s debate is to raise the profile of cabin air safety and aerotoxic syndrome. Until recently I was not particularly aware of aerotoxic syndrome. Today’s debate has caught the attention of the national press and has brought the issue to wider prominence, which can only be a good thing. The issue came to my attention in a briefing for MPs organised by the Unite trade union, of which I am proud to declare myself a member. Unite has been doing some fantastic work on the issue and is doing exactly what a good trade union should do, which is representing the interests and concerns of the workforce. The Government’s attitude towards trade unions can often be quite negative, as evidenced by the Trade Union Bill, but they would be wrong to dismiss this issue raised by the trade unions. We should all agree that representation of the workforce to ensure a safe and healthy environment is a right for all working people.
The briefing was attended by the father of Matthew Bass, which struck a chord with me and other Members present. Matthew, known as Matt to his friends, was a British Airways flight attendant who sadly died in January 2014, having been in the job for almost a decade. He loved his job, and it was a shock to his friends and loved ones when he passed away. He was just 34 years of age. The cause of his death has not been established, but he kept himself fit and healthy. In the last six months of his life, he frequently complained of tiredness and occasionally suffered mild bouts of trembling. After his death, post-mortem tests ruled out Crohn’s disease but failed to establish an alternative cause of death. His family still have many questions, not least as to whether aerotoxic syndrome had some responsibility. My sympathies, and surely those of the whole House, are with Matt’s family and friends as they search for answers. We owe it to him and them to help to find those answers and to take the issue seriously.
Furthermore, the senior coroner for the county of Dorset wrote to the Civil Aviation Authority last year regarding his concerns about the death of British Airways pilot Richard Westgate. He wrote that organophosphate compounds, which are present in aircraft cabin air, were found in Mr Westgate’s system and presented a risk to health. Worryingly, there is no real-time monitoring to detect such compounds. The coroner also added that, in his opinion, there is a risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate, which is relevant to the organophosphate poisoning campaign run by the Sheep Dip Sufferers Support Group, with which I have worked on behalf of my constituent, a farmer, Stephen Forward. This is obviously a Department for Transport debate, but does my hon. Friend agree that the debate is equally relevant to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department of Health and that we need the Government to be far more active in addressing these issues?
Jonathan Reynolds
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for putting that point on the record. I was not aware of the DEFRA angle until she informed me of it, which further reinforces the case and people’s concerns. I would be particularly interested if the Minister addressed that point and the coroner’s letter regarding the British Airways pilot.
By raising this issue I am in no way seeking to do down the British aerospace industry, which I am sure is true of everyone here today. The aerospace industry is a vital part of the UK’s manufacturing output, and I am proud that that is particularly the case in north-west England—and long may that continue. I also have no desire to do down the UK’s successful aviation industry and this country’s world-class airports, which are another vital part of the UK economy. Like many Members present, I have a strong relationship with my local airport in Manchester.
Airlines have a duty of care to their staff, as do all workplaces, and I am sure they would want to reassure their staff on safety. I will be writing to the UK’s major airlines to find out exactly what they are doing on this issue. I dare say that pressure from the Government would strengthen that campaign. Many concerns have been raised by Unite and by cabin crew, and we have a duty of care to those people to reassure them and, if necessary, to protect them.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
I echo what the hon. Gentleman says about the duty of care. I imagine that no one here would feel comfortable working in an environment where we and our customers may possibly be exposed to the risk of breathing in contaminated fumes.
Jonathan Reynolds
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for coming along to the debate and making that point. She is absolutely right. By addressing issues where concerns exist, it only strengthens an industry if it can reassure its workers and service users that their safety is guaranteed. I am sure we would all echo that point.
No one disputes that fume events, where toxins enter the cabin, occur. Estimates suggest that fume events happen at least once in every 2,000 flights. Given the number of flights in the UK every day, that weighs on the mind. It should be of great concern that no aircraft currently flying has any form of detection system fitted to warn crews when cabin air has become contaminated. Furthermore, there is a lack of training and crew awareness of the possible adverse consequences of contaminated air exposure in the cockpit and cabin. There are even examples of crews saying that they felt they became impaired or incapacitated in-flight as a direct consequence of exposure.
I have two requests that I would like the Minister to consider and to which I hope he will refer in his speech. First, I would like an independent inquiry to be set up to consider the risks and hazards associated with contaminated aircraft cabin air. Setting up an inquiry has a lot of support both from unions and cabin crew, and it is the right thing to do. I do not believe that adequate work has been done on the issue yet, and such work would answer a lot of questions. I seriously urge the Minister to consider making that happen. If not, I would appreciate a reply as to why it is not possible now.
Secondly, I would like appropriate cabin air monitoring and detection systems to be installed in aircraft that operate using bleed air. I am told that the technology exists to do that, and it seems to make sense to do so. The Government could consider legislation to make that happen or, at the very least, they could begin discussions with airlines and our European counterparts. Just as it is now commonplace for homes and workplaces to install simple carbon monoxide detectors to prevent tragic deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning, so we must ensure that it is the norm for aeroplanes to be fitted with devices that can detect air bleed events.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
This issue was brought to my attention not by Unite but by a constituent of mine, Alessia Iacovone, who was a colleague of Matt Bass. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is not only about the desire for an explanation of why colleagues die; it is about the fact—this is precisely the point he made—that cabin crew working for BA and other airlines do not know at present whether or how frequently they are at risk, because there is no monitoring on board aircraft?
Jonathan Reynolds
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. That is exactly my perspective in bringing this debate. From what I have seen, there is enough concern out there to warrant a serious attempt to reassure people that their safety is secure. That can only be an asset to the UK aviation and aerospace industry.
To bring my remarks to a conclusion, I thank the Backbench Business Committee again for granting us the time to debate this issue. I thank my fellow sponsors, Unite for the help it has given me in my office and the many cabin crew workers who have assisted Unite and contacted me directly to bring the issue to greater prominence. I appreciate that aviation issues tend to lend themselves to international solutions and that the matter is being discussed in several other countries too. It is significant that the new Boeing Dreamliners do not operate the bleed air system, and I understand that that may eventually become the industry standard. In the meantime, however, a clear majority of aircraft still operate the bleed air system, so the issue will not go away.
Out of respect for the many thousands of cabin crew who work in this vital industry, let us take action to ensure that we know everything we can about cabin air safety. By arming ourselves with greater knowledge, we can better place ourselves to guarantee them the safe working conditions that we expect for all workers.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) on securing this debate, and I add my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for the important issue of cabin air and aerotoxic syndrome to be discussed properly. I start by associating myself with all the words of the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde and agreeing with what he said. Matt Bass was my constituent, and I dedicate my remarks as a tribute to him and all the other individuals who have been affected by possible aerotoxic syndrome.
I first became aware of the issue only a year ago, when, as right hon. and hon. Members of all parties will know, we were busy engaging with our local communities. Whether I was meeting constituents in Ifield ward or on the other side of my constituency in Maidenbower, people were raising this matter with me. It is perhaps not surprising, as Gatwick airport is in my constituency. I am fortunate that my constituency contains the headquarters of Virgin Atlantic and many charter companies, such as TUI Travel. It is also the airport with the largest operations anywhere of easyJet, and of course British Airways flies from there, as do many other airlines. Therefore, unsurprisingly, many people in my constituency work in the aviation industry. What struck me clearly was that this issue was of huge concern to them.
On fortunately, being returned to this place at the last general election, one of the first things that I sought to do was raise the issue of toxicity in cabin air. I was pleased to secure a debate on the Floor of the House in July 2015, and I followed it up with a letter to the Secretary of State for Transport and raised the issue with the Minister with responsibility for aviation, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill). I have been grateful for the replies that I have received.
As the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde clearly outlined, the vast majority of aircraft fly at a very high altitude and must force the intake of air for passengers and crew. That usually takes place through the engines, right next to where lubricants are often used for the operation of those engines. In the all too many incidents that have been reported to me, it can cause contamination of cabin air. I suspect that that contamination has caused some of the awful illnesses that a number of aviation crew have experienced.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that some of the symptoms can be confused with other illness and are therefore misdiagnosed? Worryingly, although the effects of short exposure are usually reversible, cabin crew who may be exposed more regularly could suffer permanent neurological damage and, as we have heard, it could be fatal.
Henry Smith
Yes, I think that is a distinct possibility. As the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said, most Members of Parliament are not doctors and are not necessarily medically trained, although there are some notable exceptions, so it is not for us to seek to diagnose. What I was hinting, in the strongest possible terms, is that the symptoms that affect many cabin crew can be confused with other conditions such as Crohn’s disease, which has been mentioned. Also, it seems highly likely to me from the research that I have done on the issue that aerotoxic syndrome is a real health outcome of prolonged exposure to toxic air. The issue therefore deserves the attention of Parliament and of the Department for Transport.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
The issue was brought to my attention by two of my constituents, Jakki Purdon and Lynn Perkins, who are both cabin crew on long-haul flights. To the best of my knowledge, “aerotoxic syndrome” was first suggested as a medical term in 1999. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that given the passage of time, it would be a travesty if an investigation were not convened at the earliest possible opportunity?
Henry Smith
Yes. The evidence that I have found is that the issue started to be spoken about slightly before 1999, in the mid-1990s. It is now about 20 years since the issue first started to be identified, which means that we should not lose any more time in having a proper investigation into the issue.
As the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said earlier, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is the latest type of aircraft not to take in cabin air through the engines, which is welcome. I am pleased that airlines operating from Gatwick airport, such as Thomson and Virgin Atlantic, have ordered 21 Boeing 787 Dreamliners. That is positive for the working environment of cabin crew and pilots on the flight deck, not to mention passengers. However, of course, the vast majority of aircraft on long-haul or short-haul flights still take in air through the engine, so the issue, as well as having grown more current over the last two decades, will be around for a long time unless it is addressed properly.
As I said earlier, I am very grateful to the aviation Minister for the responses I have received from him, and I am encouraged that both the European Aviation Safety Agency and the Civil Aviation Authority are looking into this issue. I understand that they have said that they aim to report on their findings later this year. I encourage the Department for Transport to ensure that both EASA and the CAA follow through on their research into this issue, so that we maintain the pressure on the industry to take it very seriously.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
On precisely the issue of the CAA, I will say, briefly, that this matter was brought to my attention by one of my constituents, Mr Dominic Moynihan, whose nephew, Matthew Bass, a long-standing cabin crew member with easyJet, died in 2014 in circumstances that seem to imply aerotoxic syndrome. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the CAA has been rather dilatory in researching, approaching and regulating this matter? I agree with him that the CAA must report back to the public and Parliament as quickly as possible, so that we can move forward and clear up this whole issue.
Henry Smith
I am grateful for that intervention, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Given the number of suspected incidents that have been reported—as I have already said, even though I am not medically trained I am increasingly convinced about them—and given the length of time that this issue has been known about, I do not think we can lose any more time before we investigate it properly. Therefore, I reiterate what I said a few moments ago, namely, that the CAA and the DFT need to follow up on this issue. It is incumbent on all of us here in Westminster Hall today, and on right hon. and hon. Members across the House, that we remain very focused and diligent, to ensure that this issue is followed up.
I know that many other people want to speak, Mrs Gillan, so, without wanting to take up any more time, I again thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate; I thank the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde for securing it; and I look forward to hearing the remarks of my hon. Friend the aviation Minister. I encourage him to continue the efforts that he has begun making to ensure that this matter is properly investigated, so that no more of my constituents, or indeed anyone who works in the aviation industry around the country or around the world, need suffer the dreadful effects that I believe aerotoxic syndrome has caused.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan.
First, I will declare an interest, having been a Unite rep in a previous existence; I remain a member of the union. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) for securing this debate, and for his very measured opening speech.
My background is in science; I used to work as a biochemist for the NHS. So I am very wary about jumping to any conclusions; we need to weigh up the evidence. However, I support the request for an independent inquiry into this issue. The evidence is quite compelling and we need to progress. The employer’s duty of care has been talked about, and it is absolutely key to this issue that we assess the evidence that is available, examine the incidents that have occurred and try to establish whether there is a causative effect. We really need to take some action, and I hope that that is what we decide to do at the end of this debate.
Both my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde and the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) have already talked about cabin air and where it comes from. It is quite significant that the new Boeing 787 uses a different method of supplying cabin air. The air is supplied by electronically driven compressors that take air directly from the atmosphere so there is no contact with the engines; there is no possibility of a seal failing and contaminants from the engine oil getting into the cabin air. One of my constituents, who is an air steward, has suggested to me that this new plane has been developed because it has been recognised that there are issues with the old system of bleed air. Again, however, that is speculation.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
I asked precisely the same question of my officials: was it done for that reason? They said, no, it was done for other reasons, not because of the air quality issue. Obviously, however, the effect is that air does not have to pass through the engine. The aircraft was designed for efficiency and that change was one way of making the aircraft more efficient; it was not made in reaction to this bleed air quality issue.
Liz McInnes
I thank the Minister for that intervention; that is very useful information. It reinforces the point about speculation and causative effects. Obviously, cabin crew say that the air issue was the reason why the 787 was developed with that system. If there is a public inquiry on this matter, I hope that information about that system will form part of the evidence.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said that some statistics showed that fume events occurred in one flight in 2,000. One of the statistics that I pulled out is from the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment. COT reported in 2007 that fume events occur on one flight in 100, so again there is some dispute over the incidence of these events. There is also anecdotal evidence that fume events occur even more often than that, but they are not being reported. The really surprising thing about all of this is that there are no chemical sensors in the aircraft. The noses of the cabin crew are the only detectors.
My constituent asked me not to give her name, but she was quite happy to talk to me about her experience as a cabin crew member. She described these fume events to me. She said that she has been in cabins when fumes have entered. She has flown for four different airlines and fume events have happened in planes from all four of them. She said to me, “Fumes come in. You smell the oil. It’s not being acknowledged by managers and higher officials in the airline industry when these incidents are reported.” When I spoke to her, she compared the effect of fume events with Gulf war syndrome. With Gulf war syndrome, we had soldiers coming back to the UK with massive neurological problems and it took a very long time for any investigation to be made and for it to occur to somebody that these problems were happening too often to be a coincidence. It is interesting that she made that comparison.
My constituent said to me that all cabin crew want is for this problem to be recognised and acknowledged. Until we have a full investigation, cabin crew will not feel that their employers are doing everything they can to safeguard them while they are at work.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Is part of the issue the lack of training for cabin crew to deal with these incidents when they occur?
Liz McInnes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. From the research I have done and from the comments of people I have spoken to, I know that that is probably true. My constituent told me, “Smoke hoods are there in the plane if there is a fire or fumes on board.” Until recently, those smoke hoods had been used very rarely, but she told me that crew members were starting to use them because of their concerns about fume events on flights. Again, that is anecdotal evidence, but it shows the real concern out there and highlights an issue with training. These things should not be used, but they are used because crew are fearful for their health. He makes a good point, and I am grateful to him for raising that issue.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde and various other Members have spoken about when the incidents started to be reported. My constituent said that she first heard of it 1998, when she started working for an airline. She said that cabin crew were talking about fume incidents even then.
Several hon. Members have mentioned the cases in which deaths unfortunately occurred, possibly as a result of aerotoxic syndrome. I, too, first became aware of the issue at a Unite briefing, where the parents of Matt Bass described what happened to their son. His symptoms appeared to be fairly non-specific, but it was reported that he was fatigued. He went down to rest and tragically he never woke up. There is a feeling that his symptoms were consistent with exposure to organophosphates, which are the chemicals that leak out occasionally in the bleed air.
George Kerevan
It is worth informing the Chamber that Matthew Bass had been an air worker for 15 years, so the effects were probably cumulative.
Liz McInnes
That is an important point. While the average member of the public goes on a flight perhaps twice a year—luckier people might fly more frequently than that—cabin crew have constant exposure. Working as cabin crew is a hard job. The hours are unsocial and it is a difficult environment to work in. I think most of them would probably expect not to feel 100% well most of the time. That colours the whole issue with the health of cabin crew. Some of the symptoms of so-called aerotoxic syndrome are non-specific and could easily be put down to the stresses and strains of the job, and that has served to confuse the issue.
The other prominent case, as has already been mentioned, was the pilot Richard Westgate, who sadly died in 2012. The coroner who dealt with Richard’s case issued a report that detailed five concerns, which I will go through because they are relevant to the debate. Those concerns were: that organophosphate compounds are present in aircraft cabin air; that the occupants of aircraft cabins are exposed to organophosphate compounds with consequential damage to their health; that impairment to the health of those controlling aircraft may lead to the death of occupants; that there is no real-time monitoring to detect such compounds in cabin air; and that no account is taken of genetic variation, which may render humans susceptible to exposure. That final point is important. There is a school of thought that not everyone is susceptible to organophosphate compounds and that there may be an element of genetic variation and genetic susceptibility, and I hope that that will be covered in any independent inquiry.
Kirsten Oswald
I am interested in the hon. Lady’s comments on the coroner’s report. When I looked into the issue, I noted that the responses of British Airways and the Civil Aviation Authority to the report have not been made public. Does she agree that it would be useful if that information was made public, because what is clearly lacking in this whole picture is facts?
Liz McInnes
Like the hon. Lady, I could not find any responses to the coroner’s report. She is absolutely right. We are here to establish the facts, to bring them together, to weigh up the evidence and to come to a scientific conclusion.
I want to talk a little more about Richard Westgate’s case. He was treated by Dr Michel Mulder, a specialist aviation doctor. He believes that Richard Westgate fell into the category for aerotoxic syndrome. Richard became a commercial pilot in 1998. He voluntarily grounded himself in 2011 after suffering whiplash in a car crash, but by that time he had already become concerned about his health and his memory. He was suffering from persistent headaches, chronic fatigue, loss of confidence and mood swings. Like many pilots, he failed to tell his employer for fear of losing his job. That is a key issue. We have to encourage our cabin staff and airline pilots to speak up if they are concerned about their health. I can understand the fear of losing their job, but I am sure most airlines are good employers, and we need to give all staff the confidence to express concerns without fear of any punitive measures being taken against them.
Richard sought private medical advice so that he would avoid any blemishes on his health record, and he was treated by Dr Mulder. Interestingly, Dr Mulder said that Richard had been misdiagnosed with depression. He said:
“So many pilots are misdiagnosed because there is so little awareness of aerotoxic syndrome.”
Dr Mulder obviously believes that aerotoxic syndrome exists, and I hope his evidence would form part of any sort of independent inquiry.
I want to touch on organophosphate poisoning. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) is no longer in her place, but she made comparisons between aerotoxic syndrome and organophosphate poisoning caused by sheep dip chemicals, which is quite common in farmers. It is interesting that the described symptoms of aerotoxic syndrome and sheep dip poisoning are similar. That link was discovered by Dr Peter Julu, an autonomic neurophysiologist, when he was doing some work on sheep dips for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Coincidentally, he had several pilots referred to him at the same time who were suffering from unexplained illness. Dr Julu said:
“To my amazement, the kind of symptoms and findings I was getting from farmers was very similar to the pilots, yet occupationally they couldn’t be more diverse.”
I found it interesting that those two completely different jobs have a common link. The issue with organophosphates is that they attack the autonomic nervous system, including the brain stem. That part of the nervous system deals with emotion and short-term memory. Significantly, it affects an important group of neurotransmitters, including serotonin, and that explains the incidence of depression.
I reinforce the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde made. Unite is pursuing 60 health and safety cases related to toxic air. There is dispute over the causative link between health problems and the quality of cabin air, and we need further evidence to confirm a causative link. There is insufficient research into the matter. I also echo his requests for an independent public inquiry, enforced monitoring and testing of exposure levels and, finally, mandatory reporting of fume events.
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) on securing this debate and on the fine way he set out and shaped the discussion. He explained a lot of the technical detail and referred very appropriately to the coroners’ reports. He also highlighted, as did the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) and my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith), the fact that at the heart of the matter are a lot of personal tragedies of which people around the Chamber will be aware. Like my hon. Friend, I have a close interest in Gatwick airport, which borders my constituency of Horsham. As the Minister knows from other discussions, that can occasionally be a mixed blessing, but I am delighted to say that it means a large number of aircrew and retired aircrew live in my constituency. It is a great pleasure to represent them.
I knew nothing of this issue prior to my election to Parliament, but I have been shocked by the number of people coming forward, some with very obvious medical issues, who have apparently suffered from aerotoxic syndrome. It comes as no surprise to hear that Unite is currently dealing with some 61 cases. I am fortunate to have in my constituency Captain Tristan Lorraine, who over 15 years has devoted a lot of study to this worrying condition. I am grateful to him for his support and willingness to share his findings.
Like other Members, I am no GP, but it seems apparent that there is significant evidence that aerotoxic syndrome exists and is a real condition. One constituent wrote to me:
“I was exposed to contaminated air. These exposures were notified to the Government regulator. I presented my medical reports to the Civil Aviation Authority…the CAA accepted the reports and revoked my medical certificate to fly without asking for any further opinion. British Airways retired me on ill-health grounds.”
Given that that is what is happening in practice to those who have suffered from contaminated air, and that that is the reaction of those in the know, I am mystified as to why successive authorities have consistently not found any long-term effects from contaminated air. I am no conspiracy theorist and I understand that the Government and others have in good faith relied on academic work on the impact of the relevant chemicals. Nevertheless, as we are all aware, we are talking about complex and varying combinations of chemicals.
After earlier reports of contaminated air in cabins, the Countess of Mar asked the then Minister, Lord Davies of Oldham:
“What exposure standards currently apply to any synergistic effects of simultaneous exposure to numerous chemicals which may be experienced by aircraft passengers and crew during a contaminated air event in a reduced pressure environment?”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 October 2005; Vol. 674, c. WA167.]
The Minister replied: “None.” That parliamentary question was asked and answered more than 10 years ago. I believe that since then, four reports have been sent to the independent Committee on Toxicity. The Civil Aviation Authority found,
“no positive evidence of a link between exposure to contaminants in cabin air and possible acute and long term health effects.”
As my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley said, the European Aviation Safety Agency is due to present a report on in-flight cabin air measurement in the autumn, and we look forward to seeing and studying it. Notwithstanding all the reports, aircrew in particular, and others, appear to suffer ill effects as a result of engine bleeds, which have been linked by coroners’ reports and others to the circumstances we are discussing. Aside from hard-working crew members who are clearly at regular risk, I am concerned that the travelling public, the unborn and the young are being exposed to a complex cocktail of chemicals about which there is clearly an element of doubt. I do not for one second question the integrity of the reports or, indeed, of those who have received them, and unlike the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) I am certainly no biochemist, but we are all acutely aware of substances in the workplace—including tobacco, asbestos and organophosphates—for which it took years to establish that positive link to ill health to which the CAA refers.
The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde referred to international solutions, and he is of course right. He also referred to the Boeing Dreamliners, and I was delighted to hear the Minister’s intervention on the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton, because if the Dreamliner solution not only solves this problem but is more efficient, that is a very positive solution indeed. We all know that engine bleeds happen, and that the technology exists to prevent them. This is a genuine, ongoing source of concern. Does the Minister agree that we have every right to assume that the precautionary principle should apply in this area?
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
I should declare that I have a few friends in the airline industry, and I also take the occasional flight, so toxic air on planes is of interest to me. I am also a member of Unite and GMB. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) for his excellent opening speech.
One of my friends who works in the airline industry consistently has hay fever-like symptoms all year round, even when there is no pollen in the air. Having listened to the debate so far, I wonder whether some of that might be a symptom of his working environment. I, too, am no expert on this issue, but I have read through some of the paperwork and information that was presented to me. A 2011 report by Cranfield University for the Department for Transport found that there were no pollutants in aircraft exceeding the available health and safety standards, but those standards are measured differently. They are measured with regard to those of us on the ground and do not take into consideration people in an aircraft at high altitude, where pollutants will obviously have a different effect. It worries me that there is no proper measure of what exactly is going on in aircraft.
As has been mentioned, the European Aviation Safety Agency will be reporting in October 2016 on the suitable implementation of measures to tackle the problem. It is great that we have heard from the Minister that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s new design is not only to avoid contaminating the air supply. As I understand it, the bleed-free design was introduced in the ’50s and ’60s because it delivered a considerable reduction in fuel consumption. It was considered good for the overall environment because it used less fuel to fly.
It is strange that the cumulative effect of pollutants in aircraft on those working in the industry has yet to be measured, because employers have a responsibility to their employees, as is established in law. Cabin crews and pilots deserve to be working in the best possible environment. After all, they ensure that we get from A to B safely and make our journey as pleasant as possible. The least we can do in this House is to ensure that they have a safe working environment.
Margaret Ferrier
One possible solution that has been suggested by the Aerotoxic Association is for less toxic oil formulations to be used. That would lead to improvements in cabin air quality. Does the hon. Lady agree that although that would not fully address the issue, it should be considered as a measure to be taken while an inquiry is undertaken?
Dawn Butler
I absolutely agree. It might be a case of asking what we can do to restrict the poisonous fumes and toxic air that are coming into the plane. The airline industry should look into that.
We know that toxins such as carbon monoxide are invisible and odourless, so the only way we can really find out what is going on in an aircraft is to measure what is going on in real time, not after the plane has landed. I do not think that would be too costly. Instead of all the inconclusive reports that have been written, it probably would have made more sense to measure the air on planes in the first instance and do a report based on the findings.
Big industry normally does a cost analysis of how much something costs versus how many people might die as a consequence of certain events. However, the issue is not only the people who tragically die after toxic air situations but those pilots who, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), end up losing their licence. Having dated a pilot, I know that the constant threat of being tested and the fear of losing their licence is frightening.
The British Airline Pilots Association sought to attract UK airline support for the completely independent US multimillion-dollar Occupational Health Research Consortium in Aviation—a bit of a mouthful—but was given a runaround on the report and was told to go to the Department for Transport. It is strange that the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment produced a report without taking any independent evidence or evidence from Bupa, which initiated the drive for the report. Will the Minister commit, under the Freedom of Information Act, to make public the action that has been taken to address the responses to the report, of Bupa, the Transport and General Workers Union and Unite? We need transparency. We all surely want the same thing: a safe environment for crew members and travellers. It would therefore be a good thing to disclose under the Freedom of Information Act everything that has happened.
Previous Governments also failed on this issue, but given that experiences are being shared online and on social media, the situation has become urgent. As we have heard, Unite is pursuing several cases. Employers have a duty of care to their employees, which means that they should not just address whether such substances exist but, as has been said, prevent leakages into the air cabin.
Much has been said about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It is great that the technology is moving forward. The Dreamliner does not use the bleed-air system, so this problem will not occur. The Government cannot force people to purchase such aeroplanes, so what can we do to make the work environment safer until all airlines roll out aeroplanes that do not use the bleed-air system?
I call on the Minister to ensure that the UK stipulates that a cabin air monitoring and detection system must be installed in any aircraft with bleed technology. Airline companies should be obliged to release the data unedited, so that the problem can be fully investigated. I am concerned about the health of cabin crews, pilots and friends and family members who fly.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. May I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) on opening this debate so well? All the contributions have been incredibly positive in addressing this important issue. I, too, was at the meeting. It was humbling to hear from Mr Bass in January, when he presented us with a moving account of what happened to his son Matt, who died so tragically at the age of just 34. He deserves answers; he deserves action.
I, too, declare an interest as a member of Unite and a former national official of the union, but I also had a dual career. I was a clinician and worked in the interface between respiratory and neurological medicine, so I very much understand the clinical presentations that have been described by many cabin crew staff.
Matt had spent 10 years as a flight attendant. He was a young man. Following a shift, he had gone out to socialise with his friends, like so many others. He was fatigued, so he went to rest on the sofa. He never woke up. In fact, the organophosphates that he was exposed to during his career had caused him to feel unwell for some time. He was not to know why; he was not to know that they could kill him. The job he loved could have been slowly poisoning his system. We know this is true for the 61 cases that Unite is currently pursuing. As the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) said, this could well be a global issue; therefore, the number of cases is unknown.
Margaret Ferrier
Does the hon. Lady agree that, in addition to needing greater evidence-gathering, we should perhaps develop routine blood testing to measure the effects on cabin crew?
Rachael Maskell
It is important that proper screening is introduced—obviously the methods of screening need to be determined—thereby ensuring that cabin crew staff have proper occupational health support. The availability of those health services is vital.
We have also heard how long these symptoms have been recognised in the aviation industry. Indeed, my research showed that it was realised in 1954 that using air in this way with jet engines can result in gases escaping and coming into planes’ air systems, so we can establish that this has been recognised as a long-term issue, whatever date that was first known. We have also heard today about the report from the senior coroner, who has clearly established, as a matter of fact, that organophosphates are present in aircraft cabins and therefore can have a detrimental impact on the health of those who occupy that space.
It is important to understand who this issue could affect. We have talked about the cabin crew staff, but pilots and frequent fliers could also be exposed to the cumulative risk from such gases. Also, we are talking not just about the civilian airline industry, but about what is happening with military aircraft, where people are already putting their lives on the line. Could there be a risk for our service personnel as well? It would be interesting to know what work is being done to protect members of the RAF.
Before moving on, I want to thank the Unite the union health and safety reps, who are at the forefront of taking forward these issues, many in their own time, but all serving their fellow colleagues day in, day out, asking very difficult questions of their employers. It is to be regretted that they have been unable to find an industrial solution to this problem or get a direct response from the airline industry. That is why it is so important that they brought to the attention of parliamentarians the plight of people working in the industry. It is absolutely right that we support them in that. Indeed, the way in which this serious issue of concern was raised and presented to parliamentarians shows—if I may say so in this debate—a really responsible use of the political levy, which is what unions continually do. We should note that the current attack on the trade union political levy is totally inappropriate, because without it we might not be having these kinds of debate in this House.
I will now return to the matter under consideration. What is really shocking about this debate is that we are talking about a safety-critical industry—one that works to ensure the greater safety of those who work in and use it. In such a safety-critical industry, where lives could be put at risk, we therefore need to ensure that measures are taken as a matter of urgency. I know there has been a long, drawn-out debate, but this is a matter of urgency, because it may only take a pilot to be poisoned during a journey for there to be fatalities. We already understand that lives have been lost, but how many more need to be taken before action is taken? Therefore, I urge that we move forward in addressing this issue.
We know that there are poisonous gases that we experience in all sorts of places in our environment. The complete, holistic impact that that has on our lives is not yet understand, but what has been brought to the fore is the fact that these fume events are occurring frequently. I, too, had the statistic of one in 100 instances, which I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), but the research suggested there could be even more. None of us know, because we do not have the detection systems to give us that information. What we do know is that the impact is very serious indeed.
The toxicity of organophosphates inhibits enzymes. That inhibits the neurotransmitters in our nervous system and at the neuromuscular junctions from operating fully, and that is the reason for some of the symptoms we see, such as drowsiness, along with some of the neurological impact and the impact on the autonomic nervous system. Our red blood cells, too, are affected, so exposure, as we would expect, will affect people in different ways, whether because of their genetic make-up, or even their body mass index or other factors. The important thing to do is to carry out research so that we have a good understanding of why people experience the different symptoms.
The symptoms can range from nausea and other gastroenterological conditions, through respiratory problems to the fatigue-type syndromes—the sickness syndromes—that are typically experienced. Often, people would not relate that to their work environment, and might think that they just feel under the weather, but continual exposure to such risk can build up toxicity over a period of time, thereby causing neurological injury.
We know—we have heard about this in quite a lot of detail—how those gases come into aircraft cabins, but what stood out for me was that it is often because of the failure of the seals on aircraft. Therefore, it is important that we ensure that the maintenance programmes of these aircraft are brought into check, because we have also heard how developments in the 787 Dreamliner aircraft have shown that that does not have to be the case with new designs.
I want to conclude by listing some of the things that I believe could be done to improve the aircraft environment for staff and public. First, as we have heard, there is monitoring. Monitoring devices would not be an expensive way of getting information and also ensuring that staff are kept safe as they go about their daily duties of keeping us safe in aircraft. I make a plea that we should put proper monitoring devices on aircraft, but also ensure that there are proper alerts when fume events happen, so that cabin crew can take the appropriate action to safeguard themselves and, obviously, the people they are there to serve.
We have also heard about reporting, which is so important. We know that it is absolutely at the centre of health and safety legislation, so that we can understand the prevalence of an issue. I would therefore ask that reporting be put at the forefront. We have also heard about the independent inquiry—which is so important as well—and the need for research into the impact of toxicity on individuals. I would also like to ask about the opportunities for greater engineering development. We know that filtration systems can be developed to filter out such air, so I would urge the Minister to make resources available for research into this area, to develop filtration systems that can provide the protections we need on existing aircraft, but also to look at the design of future aircraft.
I have already mentioned the need for good health checks and making sure that occupational health support is made available for staff, but we also need to ensure that the public are aware of the risks as they take their flights, so that they are conscious, if they detect any symptoms themselves, of what support they need, should such an occurrence arise. Finally, we know that the oxygen supply in cabins comes mixed with cabin air, which could well be toxic. Is it possible to look into how to get cleaner air into that oxygen supply, so that, should there be a serious escape of fumes, we know that we have a safe source of air to inhale during the flight?
Matt Bass was one of so many people in the airline industry who put our lives ahead of their own, day to day, serving us. Tragically, he lost his life. I do not want there to be another like Matt Bass, so I urge positive action today.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mrs Gillan.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for the debate and all Members who supported the application for one. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) for the professional and comprehensive way he put forward the case, and to the contributions of both Government and Opposition Members, in particular that of the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith), who I suspect has not got the credit he deserves for raising the issue. The proposals and suggestions have been extraordinarily helpful, and I hope that the Minister will respond positively.
I must declare my interest as chair of the Unite group in Parliament. I am a proud member of Unite and I feel, as my colleagues do, that this is an important part of the work we do for our members and their families. I also pay tribute to Matt Bass’s parents, Charlie and Fiona, who might be listening to the debate today. I had the great privilege of meeting them and some Unite members who are air crew. At a meeting in Parliament, they relayed to us their personal experiences and concerns.
I thank my trade union, Unite, for its excellent and detailed briefing on such an important issue, and a number of Members have emphasised some specific aspects. It is important to recognise the valuable work of Unite in investigating concerns and protecting passengers and cabin crew from toxic fume events. I am concerned that airlines, regulators and, with due respect to the Minister, Governments do not seem to be terribly active in considering contaminated cabin air.
It would be remiss of me not to remind people—the general public who are listening to the debate or reading it in Hansard—that Unite has established a fume event register and a helpline, which are available through the website. Given the lack of any official reporting, I hope that when air crew and members of the public who are frequent flyers feel that there has been such an incident, they will use the Unite register to report it. We need the evidence and an objective assessment. We need public and cabin crew affected by fume events to come forward and identify them.
If we are not successful in convincing the Government to take action and to investigate the matter fully, we will need evidence because the only other option for people is to seek legal redress. As my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) mentioned, Unite is taking up the case of 61 of our members in relation to this issue. Earlier in the debate, the hon. Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) suggested that there was not a causal link between symptoms and exposure, but I am old enough to remember the arguments made against any causal link between smoking and lung cancer, or exposure to asbestos and the development of mesothelioma and asbestosis. I fully understand the reluctance of the industry to have an investigation, because of the potential costs involved, but it is beholden on us and the Minister in particular to look into such a link with all seriousness.
Jeremy Quin
I think I might have misheard the hon. Gentleman, but, if not, I would not want the record to suggest that I think there is no causal link—I am concerned that there might be. The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) referred to asbestosis and we have also heard about organophosphates. I think there may be a causal link, and I am keen that the precautionary principle applies until we get really hard evidence that there is not. Like the hon. Gentleman, I am genuinely concerned.
Grahame M. Morris
I am grateful for that intervention; I did not mean to misrepresent the hon. Gentleman’s position. It is important that we look at evidence. Considerable pressure is building to have a proper investigation and to make an objective assessment as to whether there is a causative link between the symptoms, which are wide and various—I do not propose to go into them again because other Members have already done that—and exposure to toxic air fumes that have come from engines through bleed air systems.
Other Members have referred to the new generation Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which uses bleed-free systems. Those systems are not an industry standard, nor does Boeing’s decision seem to mark the beginning of a transition to a safer system. I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde, because, apart from anything else, Unite has a substantial number of members involved in the aviation industry—not just flight and aircraft maintenance crew but those working in the manufacture of aircraft components and engines. I do not seek to damage confidence in the industry, but it is important that we ensure that this safety-critical industry enjoys complete confidence and we have those necessary assurances and investigations.
Grahame M. Morris
I will give way to my friend, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens).
Chris Stephens
Is there not also confusion about which body is responsible for occupational health and safety? It seems to be split between the Civil Aviation Authority and the Health and Safety Executive, and that is confusing in terms of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002—the hon. Gentleman will be familiar with them—which the CAA has denied responsibility for.
Grahame M. Morris
That is a good point. I hope that the Minister will reflect on it and perhaps refer to it in his response.
I am afraid that we do not have a lot of information on the frequency of these events in the United Kingdom. The much-criticised UK Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment estimated that smoke and fume events are reported by pilots in one in every 100 flights—I think that was previously mentioned—but those are conservative estimates. If there is under-reporting, as many seem to believe anecdotally, that might be another reason why many fume events are not being investigated. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) mentioned, it is important to monitor in real time rather than bring portable equipment on to aircraft when they have landed.
I understand that UK fleet figures are not available—if the Minister does have such figures, I am happy to take an intervention from him to put them on the record—but what was initially thought to be quite a rare event anecdotally seems to be happening far too often. Figures available from the United States are quite alarming, although they have many more aircraft and flights. Clearly exposure to contaminated bleed air can have a serious impact on health, particularly for cabin crew, who are at greater risk of exposure and of cumulative effects.
We have already heard about the coroner’s letter following the sad death of pilot Richard Westgate and the regulation 28 report, so I do not intend to go into that. However, it seems to be an omission that there is nothing on the public record. We have heard quotes from the Civil Aviation Authority response to that letter, but we have not seen the full response. The CAA said that
“there is no positive evidence of a link between exposure to contaminants in cabin air and possible acute and long-term health effects”.
Although it did conclude that
“such a link cannot be excluded.”
I am not sure what good that is. It seems to me that this issue is crying out for some further research and evidence so that we can either establish a link or rule it out.
I am prepared to concede that there is a knowledge gap, but the industry and regulators are relying on a system of denial rather than fitting the detection systems required to collect evidence on the true number and concentration of fume events. I do not believe that the industry—or the Government for that matter—would deny the existence of fume events. Again, the Minister can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe they also accept that fume events are detrimental to health. While they may disagree on the extent of such impacts, I ask the Minister to support calls for an independent inquiry into the risks and hazards associated with contaminated air.
We need monitoring and detection systems for cabin air to be introduced so that we can ascertain the true extent of the problem. We also need a better system to diagnose, treat and compensate workers whose health and wellbeing has been compromised and damaged by fume events. Finally, all future aircraft should be designed to be bleed-free. If there is a shred of doubt about there being cumulative, long-term adverse effects on health, surely that is a sensible way to proceed when drawing up design specifications. In the meantime, it is possible to mitigate any effects, perhaps by looking at maintenance schedules, because aircraft that are not maintained to such a high standard are more likely to be subject to fume events as seals go—that is the nature of a mechanical design. Things could therefore be done; indeed, engine oils and hydraulic fluids could be reformulated to minimise potential adverse effects on health.
Ultimately, we need airlines to step up to the plate and accept their responsibilities and duty of care to employees and passengers. If not them, regulators need to demand changes, and detection systems should be fitted to seek further evidence on fume events. If not the airlines or the regulators, the Minister and the Government must take charge. Until such time, I do not believe any of us—the travelling public or indeed air crew—can say with confidence that air travel is completely risk-free and that fume events are not a risk to public health.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)
I do not think that any other Members are seeking to catch my eye, so we will move to the wind-ups.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mrs Gillan. I start by giving credit to the hon. Members for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) and for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) for securing the debate on this important issue. I think it has been a real eye-opener for many Members, including me. Despite having an interest in the aviation industry and having Glasgow airport—UK airport of the year—in my constituency, I was not aware until those hon. Members appeared before the Backbench Business Committee that the air we breathe in aircraft cabins is compressed air supplied from the engines.
We have heard some interesting and substantive points from many Members. The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde, who led off, compared the safeguards put in place for asbestos with the lack of safeguards for aerotoxins and indeed the lack of official recognition of health repercussions. He also listed the symptoms involved and said that one purpose of the debate was to raise the issue’s profile. He praised Unite’s work on this issue over many years and spoke about the lack of detection systems on board aircraft. I think we can all agree that such systems should come into force in the next few years.
The hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) paid great tribute to his former constituent, Matthew Bass. The hon. Gentleman outlined his work in trying to get this issue a much higher profile than it has had until now and he supported calls for an inquiry. I would like to hear the Minister’s response to that.
The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) asked us to assess all the available evidence and come to the obvious conclusion that there should be an independent inquiry. She spoke keenly about the safety of the crew on board aircraft, and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) made the point that training in this area was perhaps lacking. The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton listed the five concerns noted by the coroner in relation to the death of the pilot Richard Westgate, and my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) called for both the responses from the CAA and British Airways to the coroner’s report to be made public, because they do not appear to be public at the moment.
The hon. Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) spoke about his lack of awareness of the issue before being elected. However, he said that due to his constituency’s proximity to Gatwick, a number of current and retired aircrew have been in touch, and he set out one such constituent’s case. He also said that he was looking forward to the European Aviation Safety Agency’s report, which is due shortly.
The hon. Member for Brent Central mentioned the Cranfield University report that claimed that safe limits were not exceeded, but said that there were real problems with the work, as it tested effects at ground level, not in a pressurised altitude setting.
[Mr David Hanson in the Chair]
The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) perhaps understands better than most Members present the health issues involved, given her background. She reminded us that this was a safety concern as far as back as the ’50s and raised the Government’s attack on the trade union levy.
The hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) paid tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Crawley and that of Unite, which offers information and assistance to those in need of it. He also rightly complained that fume events are not recorded.
Other Members have contributed and raised concerns from constituents, including my hon. Friends the Members for East Renfrewshire, for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan), for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) and for East Lothian (George Kerevan).
The 8.7 million passengers who fly through Glasgow airport annually place their trust in the pilots and airline crew. The staff who work in the air industry perform an important job and it is only appropriate that we pay tribute to the work that they do. As well as securing the safety of our passengers, it is vital that we provide safety to the thousands who work in our airline industry. We acknowledge and are deeply concerned about the health problems that have been reported by cabin crew and pilots due to the potentially toxic air that can be present in commercial aircraft during so-called fume events.
I have received a number of emails from local constituents who work as cabin crew, airline staff and pilots, and they have alerted me to some of the health effects that have been caused to some of their colleagues, including blurred vision, vomiting, shortness in breathing and seizures, among many other health issues. Despite the excellent work of the Aerotoxic Association, there is still very little information and awareness of aerotoxic syndrome.
We have heard about the following process from Members, but it bears repeating: an aircraft cabin has to be pressurised with sufficient air pressure to allow passengers to breathe comfortably at the altitudes at which jet airliners fly. For that, a supply of warm compressed air is required, which is supplied by the engine. The danger arises when there is an engine oil seal failure and substances from an aircraft’s engine oil supply leak into the cabin through bleed air from the engine, causing so-called aerotoxic syndrome. That is said to affect one in every 2,000 flights and despite the relatively low numbers, aerotoxic syndrome could potentially affect anyone—pilots, cabin crew or passengers.
The Aerotoxic Association stated that not enough is being done to protect those who are affected when a fume event occurs. I have been advised that airlines are supposedly not providing adequate safety measures to those who are in a cabin when the cabin air has been contaminated. The drop-down masks are not useful in providing any form of protection when a fume event occurs, as we have heard.
The lack of awareness of this issue would suggest that there is conflicting evidence on aerotoxic syndrome. However, the Aerotoxic Association stated that numerous scientific studies provide clear evidence on contaminated air being the cause of chronic health problems. In addition, the most recent UK Government report on this issue, from the Committee on Toxicity, stated that contaminated air is a serious problem that can cause severe health implications for those affected. That was supported by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee when it claimed that an illness, whether caused by toxicity or nocebo effect, can be severely disabling.
It would appear that there is growing acceptance of the health problems that contaminated air can have on those exposed to it. Naturally, the question that we should now be asking is: what is being done to address the problem? The Government appear to want to commission further evidence into the issue of contaminated air and if possible, look at tackling the issue on an international level. I welcome the fact that the Government, through the CAA, have outlined their intentions to continue to monitor the situation; however, there is only so much time that we can continue to monitor the effect of contaminated air without taking proper action against it.
I have great sympathy for the calls being made by Unite and others, who are demanding that an independent public inquiry is commissioned to look into cabin air safety and the potential health effects. The Government’s committing to that would send a strong message on how concerned we are about aerotoxic syndrome, and any recommendations from such a public inquiry would carry stronger weight for further action to be taken. If the Government are unwilling at this stage to acquiesce to such an inquiry, may I ask the Minister if they could, at the very least, make this a much higher-priority issue than it appears to be at the moment?
Mrs Gillan, we owe it to the cabin crew and pilots to take proper action—[Interruption.] Mr Hanson, I do apologise—this is what happens when you read out a speech and don’t look up! We owe it to the cabin crew and pilots to take proper action to understand fully the health problems that can arise from being exposed to contaminated cabin air. We also owe it to the memory of Matthew Bass who, as we have heard, unfortunately passed away in January 2014 as a result of chronic exposure to organophosphates.
We all travel by air—following this debate, I am heading to Gatwick—and we place great trust in the airline staff. We owe it to those working in the industry to offer that same level of safety to them, and I trust that the Government will take the appropriate and just action to limit the effects of aerotoxic syndrome.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
Mr Hanson, I welcome you to the Chair. I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) on securing the debate, as well as to my hon. Friends the Members for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) and for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), who supported him in his application to the Backbench Business Committee. I thank that Committee for granting this very important debate.
I also thank all hon. Members from both sides of the House who have contributed today. I counted 12, taking into account interventions and speeches, which shows the importance that Members attach to this issue. We heard speeches from the hon. Members for Crawley (Henry Smith) and for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), as well as from my hon. Friends the Members for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who both brought scientific expertise to the debate, which was very welcome. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central spoke with a lot of personal knowledge of this issue from her involvement in the aviation industry. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) spoke with a great deal of passion. Like my hon. Friend the Member for York Central, he emphasised the importance of trade unions being able to bring these kinds of issues to the House’s attention and talked about that being an important part of democracy.
The aviation industry and the aviation sector is a key pillar of our economy, but it is more than that, even though that is important enough in its own right; travel by air has made our world a smaller place. It fosters direct face-to-face contact and understanding between peoples across the globe in a way that no other mode of travel ever has. That is why it is right that we pay tribute today to those who work in the civil aviation sector, on the ground as well as in the air.
However, this debate really does raise genuine welfare concerns, particularly for cabin crew and pilots: some of the people on whom we rely to get comfortably and safely to our destinations. Their work, as many hon. Members have said, is far from easy. Fatigue is regularly among the top concerns of staff in the air, and we know that that is an underlying but ever-growing problem. We also appreciate the impact that their work can have on their family life.
Despite all those pressures, however, what is clear is that air crew do the job because they love it, and two such people were Richard Westgate and Matt Bass. I want to join the tributes to their families and to Unite. I declare myself a proud member of Unite and draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is right to recognise that parts of the media have tried to move the issue up the public agenda. It has received attention from, for example, BBC’s “Victoria Derbyshire” programme and ITN’s “Tonight” programme.
All those people and institutions are right in saying that key unanswered questions remain: on research into air fume events, monitoring and detection systems, and awareness, education and diagnosis of symptoms. The Government’s responsibility is to do all they can to ensure the safety of passengers and crew alike. The existence of regulators is important, but does not take away that overall responsibility. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said, we know from the asbestos issue that what authorities often believe for a long time to be the case does not always turn out to be correct.
We know that many modern aircraft use bleed-air systems—that has been referred to many times in this debate—to supply air to the cabin, but we also know that faults with engine seals and seepage can lead to contaminated fumes containing toxins. What is not crystal clear is the implication of short and long-term exposure to contaminated air and its links to aerotoxic syndrome which, given the range of systems, is clearly difficult to diagnose. However, there are some things we already know. The coroner’s report on the death of Richard Westgate recognised:
“symptoms consistent with chronic exposure to organophosphates.”
We know that Matt Bass shared similar symptoms. The inquest into his death is ongoing. We also know that Unite is pursuing some 61 individual cases. The question is real: is aerotoxic syndrome an occupational illness?
A number of Members today have drawn attention to reports and position papers produced by the Committee on Toxicity and how its findings have been interpreted. There is a clear distinction between saying there is no evidence of aerotoxic syndrome, as some suggest, and saying that there is not enough evidence to prove that link. As Professor Alan Boobis, the Committee’s chair, said in his interview on ITN’s “Tonight” programme last year:
“We made proposals for research that could be pursued…as far as I know, no one came back.”
The Association of Flight Attendants also called for further research in its critique of the committee’s 2007 report, in which it stated that
“there is a need for a large scale sampling study.”
My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde rightly called for an independent inquiry to get to the bottom of these things, and that call has been echoed by others. The Minister will no doubt say that the UK is supporting an international approach for research through the European Aviation Safety Agency. That is important, and I understand that the agency will publish a preliminary report in the autumn. It is also important to know exactly what that is about and who is doing it. I understand that the agency has contracted out the work; in that context, will the Minister confirm the independence of the bodies commissioned to do that study and who was consulted on the choice of contractor? If he does not have the information now, I understand, and perhaps he will write to me.
Mr Goodwill
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that. I follows on from four pieces of research in the UK, most notably that by Cranfield University, so it is not as if we have not already carried out a lot of work in the UK.
Richard Burden
I am grateful to the Minister for that information, but I want to press him on EASA’s study and its remit. His letter in November 2015 to the Chair of the Transport Committee suggests that EASA is currently looking at what equipment should be put in place to undertake cockpit and cabin air measurements in future and will report in the autumn. That is important, and I will come back to it in a moment. I shall be grateful if the Minister will confirm whether the current EASA project has any remit to survey existing evidence from inquiries and studies—he mentioned some of them—whether from the UK, from other parts of Europe, international or in, for example, Australia.
Those inquiries and studies of air cabin safety have happened already. If the EASA does not have a remit to look at those other studies and can look only at monitoring for the future, should the Minister not ensure that someone is doing that work already? If it is happening, that is great, but it would be useful to know who is doing it. If it is not happening, why not? A number of hon. Members have mentioned the importance of the precautionary principle, which we need to apply in this case. The state has a duty of care.
On research, I have been told that no toxicity studies have reflected the real-life atmospheric pressure and temperature levels of planes at altitude. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central made this point. To me, that says that we simply do not know the synergistic effects and impact of prolonged exposure. Understanding that is critical if we are to establish whether this is an occupational disease. Will the Minister tell me whether I am right and, if I am, who will do that study and who will put in place those tests on aircraft in flight?
Whatever else is or is not being done, it seems from what the Minister said in his letter to the Chair of the Transport Committee in November 2015 that EASA is looking into the use of monitoring equipment, and that is important. It is vital to improve the data available for research. There are already legal requirements for cabin air to adhere to set levels of, for example, carbon dioxide and other toxins, but without appropriate detection equipment in place how do we know whether those standards are being met? Will the Minister say whether systems are available that could be put on aircraft? If there are, why are they not on aircraft and what can we do to ensure that that happens from now on?
No one denies that the fume events occur, but we do not know the true extent to which contaminated air incidents happen, as we have heard time and again today. Without monitoring, it is up to aircraft crew to report incidents. As was also said today, it is down to the noses of air crew. That makes it equally important that they receive adequate awareness training to detect leaks, whether by smell or other means. It is not unreasonable to suggest, as various hon. Members have, that pilots and cabin crew may be reluctant to report, particularly in the highly competitive environments in which airlines now operate, what they suspect could be minor instances, especially given the possible implications for airlines and perhaps for their own professional interests.
The 2008 ASA critique of the Committee on Toxicity also noted that the rate and reliability of reports coming in were flawed. So what steps are the Government taking with the regulators to ensure that awareness training is in place and that reporting is expected and enforced?
Finally, on the types of aircraft, what guidance does the Minister have on whether certain aircraft are particularly susceptible to fume events? In line with the precautionary principle that Members from all parties have said we need to adopt, where there is now bleed-free architecture available, what steps can we take to ensure that all future aircraft built adopt that technology? I am glad that the Minister asked his civil servants whether there was any link with cabin air in the design of the 787 Dreamliner. They told him that the design was about efficiency, not cabin air. I am sure it was partly about efficiency, but will the Minister go back to them and ask them to check whether representations were made and whether the Federal Aviation Administration talked about air quality in cabins being a factor in the design of bleed-free engines?
I hope the Minister will address the questions that all hon. Members have raised today. We owe it to Richard Westgate and Matt Bass, and to their families. We owe it to cabin crews and pilots themselves. Because all of us are in this category as well, we owe it to the travelling public, the passengers. We need to get to the bottom of this without further delay.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship yet again, Mr Hanson. I congratulate the hon. Members for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) on securing this debate about cabin air safety and aerotoxic syndrome. I should also declare an interest as a member of a union that has members who have been involved with OP toxicity issues. As a member of the National Farmers Union, I have dipped many thousands of sheep and used chemicals at many thousands of times the concentration of the ones we are talking about in this debate. Also, I have two friends who have suffered the sorts of symptoms that we have heard described today: chronic fatigue and sickness and so on.
Grahame M. Morris
The Minister is making a good point. In fact, the issue was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden). Does he accept that the problem is the regular, continuous exposure to various levels, whereas sheep dipping, even though it was done without proper protection initially—he can correct me if I am wrong—would presumably be for a limited period? It would not be every day in someone’s working life on the farm.
Mr Goodwill
I will go on to describe the levels that those in aircraft cabins are likely to be exposed to under normal operations when a fume event has not taken place. However, as I was saying, neither of my two friends who are suffering from career-finishing symptoms—they are not able to work—had been involved in either the aviation industry or in agriculture. I suspect that if they had been involved in agriculture, I would have been asking questions about whether their exposure to sheep dip or to other agrochemicals may have been to blame. Similarly, if they had been in the aviation industry, I would perhaps be asking the same questions.
The Government take the health and air safety of passengers and crew extremely seriously. The United Kingdom is recognised throughout the global aviation community for its high standard and excellent record of safety in commercial aviation. I must make it clear that the Government must always act on evidence and we have over the years worked hard to collect evidence, as did the previous Government when the problem first came to public awareness. There has been much public debate about the issue as so many people are aware of the problem.
There are currently two inquests into deaths where the relatives of the deceased are trying to establish whether contamination by cabin air could have been the cause of death. Both inquests are still open, and in both cases the CAA rather than my Department has been named as an interested party. Both of the deceased were employed by the same airline, and so far the evidence that has been gathered does not support the view that the deaths were connected to contamination of cabin air.
In the case of Richard Westgate, the Dorset coroner’s January pre-inquest review has been adjourned to 30 March 2016 to allow time for medical experts’ reports to be submitted, but he did release a prevention of future deaths report in 2014, which some have taken as a signal that the death might be attributed to contamination of cabin air. However, there was no evidence to suggest that this was the case, and we await the full inquest verdict with a great deal of interest.
In the case of Matt Bass, who has been mentioned during this debate and whose case is before the Berkshire coroner, the January pre-inquest review has been adjourned until 15 June 2016 to allow time to locate medical samples and to instruct the experts. I offer my deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the deceased, but, as the two inquests have not been concluded, it would not be appropriate for the Government to comment in further detail.
Dawn Butler
The Bournemouth coroner, in respect of Mr Westgate, issued a regulation 28 report to prevent future deaths under the Coroners (Investigations) Regulations 2013 in relation to both British Airways and the CAA on 16 February 2015. In it he states:
“In my opinion urgent action should be taken to prevent future deaths and I believe that your organisation has the power to take such action.”
Is that part of your consideration?
Mr Goodwill
As I said, the inquest has not been finalised and no verdict has been reached. In many ways, the precautionary principle may have prompted the coroner to issue that advice at that time, but the case is still before the courts. Similarly, if the case was before a criminal court, one would not want to comment before the verdict. It would be inappropriate for the Government to do so and my legal advice is that we should not comment before the verdict. In at least one of the cases we will not have long to wait for the verdict, and we will look very carefully at the scientific evidence brought before the inquest and how that is interpreted.
Kirsten Oswald
I am interested to hear the Minister say that the Government want to look carefully at the evidence; I appreciate the sentiment behind that. Would it be useful to also look very carefully at the responses to the report referred to by British Airways and the Civil Aviation Authority, because this information will help us to decide how best to move forward?
Mr Goodwill
Certainly the CAA is involved in this. I meet regularly with the unions involved, particularly BALPA, so it is not something that we are trying to shuffle away, but we need to wait for the result of the inquest before we report on these particular cases. I will go on to present various pieces of evidence and show where we are on this important matter. I will talk about what work has already been done and what work we believe needs to be done.
The safety of cabin air is an issue that has been a matter of public debate over several years—in fact, over a decade now. This continues to be the case, and I, together with my noble Friend Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, have received a considerable amount of correspondence and responded to several parliamentary questions on cabin air quality. As background, some crew and passengers have expressed concerns that they have suffered long-term health impairment, which they contend is due to exposure to organophosphates present in small amounts as additives in aviation engine oils and hydraulic fluids.
As ever, we have to be careful to have regard to whether there is evidence to support the link between the illnesses and cabin air. That is why the concerns have been investigated at length over a number of years. In 2006 the previous Government arranged for the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment—an independent advisory committee of toxicology experts—to review evidence from the British Airline Pilots Association. At the time, the Committee on Toxicity considered that it was not possible to conclude whether cabin air exposures in general, or following incidents such as fume events, cause ill health in commercial aircraft crews. It recommended further work to ascertain whether substances in the cabin environment could potentially be harmful to health.
A second inquiry was held by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, which looked into this issue as part of a wider inquiry in 2007, and published its findings in a report called “Air Travel and Health”. In that report, the findings of the Committee on Toxicity were supported. Following the recommendation in 2007 by the Committee on Toxicity, the Government commissioned a series of scientific studies as part of a research programme on cabin air. The principal research study, which was carried out by Cranfield University, was published in 2011. It found that, with respect to the conditions of flight experienced during the cabin air sampling, there was no evidence of pollutants occurring at levels exceeding health and safety standards and guidelines. Levels observed in the flights that formed part of the study—I stress that they did not include an instance of an oil seal failing—were comparable to those typically experienced in domestic settings. No higher levels of exposure were found than, for example, we would experience in this Chamber.
In addition to the principal study, three further research studies were commissioned and published by the Government. Those four published studies were formally submitted to the Committee on Toxicity for consideration in 2012. The Committee considered the research reports, as well as other research published in the scientific literature since 2007, and subsequently published a position paper on cabin air in December 2013.
I have recently written to several Members of Parliament regarding the findings of the Committee’s position paper. In that letter, which was also placed in the Libraries of both Houses, I summarised the advice the Committee gave and its conclusions. In short, the paper recognises that contamination of cabin air by components or combustion products of engine oils does occur, and that episodes of acute illness have occurred shortly after such episodes. However, it found that levels of chemicals in bleed air would need to occur in far higher concentrations than those found during the studies to cause serious toxicity, and that the symptoms that have been reported following fume events have been wide-ranging, and less specific than those that typically occur from chemical toxicity.
Grahame M. Morris
I am grateful to the Minister, who is being characteristically generous in giving way. Is there not a basic flaw in that suggestion, if we do not count incidents? Could it be that in some older aircraft that may not be maintained to such a rigorous standard, air fume events are more frequent? Is that not a possibility, if we do not do a proper investigation, in situ, in real time?
Mr Goodwill
That is a very reasonable point to make. The findings have been made by professional toxicologists, whose job it is to analyse the effects of toxic compounds in a variety of locations, including the workplace. I shall come on to talk about the number of so-called fume events, and I have some evidence from the CAA to put it in context.
Richard Burden
I understand the reports that the Minister refers to. I do not know whether he saw, as I did, the interview that Professor Boobis gave to the “Tonight” programme, when he was at pains to say that the Committee on Toxicity was not saying that cabin air was safe when the incidents occurred. He went on to say that it had made proposals for further research that could be pursued; as far as he knew no one came back to the committee. Has that been followed up?
Mr Goodwill
Research is ongoing, not least through the European Aviation Safety Agency, but the levels of OP concentration in situations where no fume event has occurred—which have been measured widely—have been found to be no greater than they are in this Chamber or any domestic location. They are very small background levels, as one would expect. Particularly given the sensitivity of some of the testing that can now be carried out, it is not difficult to find OPs almost anywhere.
As a toxic mechanism for the reported illnesses was found to be unlikely, a nocebo effect was considered a plausible alternative explanation for the symptoms. A nocebo effect can be defined as a detrimental effect on health produced by psychological or psychosomatic factors—for example where a subject develops symptoms as a reaction to a situation that he or she perceives as dangerous or hazardous. However, neither option could be proved beyond doubt given the available data; but we know that the nocebo effect happens in other circumstances. I hesitate to give this example from my own experience, but when I was a child my mother would serve us a cooked breakfast and after we had finished she would say, “I hope those sausages were all right. They were well past their sell-by date,” and one felt a feeling in one’s stomach. It is not the same thing, but it shows how psychological effects can pass into physical effects. That is one of the theories put forward by the scientists looking at the matter. The nocebo is an established psychological and medical situation.
Rachael Maskell
The Minister is being generous with his time this afternoon. What I want to know is what is behind the research. What about the cumulative impact of constant exposure to instances of gases being released into the cabin?
Mr Goodwill
I am going to come on to the frequency of fume events. I think none of the toxicologists or other scientists involved in the projects consider that there is a risk in the normal background level of chemicals in an aircraft cabin. As I have said, those are similar to the levels found in any other setting in the UK. The fume events are what we need to look at, and I will be discussing a little more evidence that I have been given about the frequency of those events.
As a toxic mechanism could not be categorically ruled out as the cause of the symptoms, the Committee concluded that more research would be beneficial. It stated, however, that it would be necessary to balance the likelihood that the further research will usefully inform further management of the problem against the costs of undertaking the research. There are various aspects of the issue to take into consideration, including the results of the research that has been undertaken and the unpredictability and rarity of the fume events. I said I would have some information on that. The Civil Aviation Authority operates a mandatory occurrence-reporting scheme and, contrary to what we may have heard during the debate, the CAA is determined that every type of occurrence should be reported. Indeed, if airlines do not report instances, questions are asked about whether their culture is a good one.
When I was a member of the Select Committee on Transport we visited the CAA and were given a list of the sorts of reports that came forward, which included things that people might not see as relevant, such as both pilots eating the same sandwich. That would be an issue if there were a food poisoning incident. Even what might seem trivial and unimportant incidents must be reported, and there is a culture of reporting in the airline industry, not least in the case of fume events, which people are well aware of.
Jonathan Reynolds
The Minister is being very generous. How does the CAA envisage the compulsory reporting of incidents being carried out, when there is not the monitoring available to find out whether one has occurred or not?
Mr Goodwill
I am advised that if a fume event occurs it is apparent to everyone on the aircraft. The smell of the oil is absolutely apparent to people. As I mentioned, there is a culture of reporting in the CAA and the aviation industry—which, incidentally, we would like to spread to the health service, where near misses and potential accidents are often not reported. Its reporting culture ensures that the aviation industry is one of the safest in the world.
Rachael Maskell
That is the crux of the debate. The reality is that it may be possible to detect a serious fuel event; but what about a minor one, where there is slight leakage into the cabin?
Mr Goodwill
I will also give way to the hon. Member for Brent Central before I respond.
Dawn Butler
To pick up on that point, there are also some toxins that one cannot smell, so is not the way to gather the empirical evidence, as has been said, just to monitor what is going on in the aircraft at the time? The Minister is absolutely right: the airline industry has a culture of reporting the errors or mistakes that people make, so that it can improve its system. However, that is exactly what is not happening with these incidents, because they are not being monitored.
Mr Goodwill
A lot of air quality monitoring has been carried out on aircraft. The problem is that fume events are relatively rare and therefore there has not been the ability to pick one up during one of those monitoring situations.
Under the CAA’s mandatory reporting scheme, the trigger for a report is an event that is considered by the crew to be a
“safety-related event which endangers or which, if not corrected or addressed, could endanger an aircraft, its occupants or any other person.”
None of the flights where fumes and smells were reported in post-flight questionnaires met those criteria; they are the ones that we actually tested. However, I have some data from the CAA on the number of those reports where smells have been reported in the cabin. We heard from the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde that he had been given the figure of about one in 2,000 flights. We heard from the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) that it is about one in 100. The evidence that I have is that in the last decade we have seen annually between 282 and 471 reports of smells or fumes in the cabin. The last year that we have report numbers for is 2014, when there were 426.
However, it must be emphasised that up to now, reports of fumes have included all causes of smoke, odour or fumes, both internal and external, and not just incidents of bleed-air contamination. The CAA estimates that a maximum of 10% of those incidents reported are regarding bleed-air contamination—in other words, less than one a week—and therefore it has not been possible as yet to have testing equipment on an aircraft when one has happened. I hope that that puts into context the frequency with which these situations occur.
Rachael Maskell
I would like to press the Minister a little further on this issue, because it is very important. The fact that detection equipment is not available or not placed on aircraft means that we are moving to subjective measures of whether an incident has occurred. Is it not vital that we first do the correct monitoring in order to understand how big, small or frequent these incidents are, and then go on to take action? I do not think that the reports to which the Minister is referring are satisfying us that that empirical evidence is available.
Mr Goodwill
I could not agree with the hon. Lady more. I am laying out what research has been done and what information we have to date. That is why it is very important that EASA makes further progress. Indeed, we are keen to find out what research is happening around the world. Because of the international nature of the aviation industry, it is the Government’s view that an international approach to any future research investigations would be appropriate.
Chris Stephens
Will the Minister comment on the occupational health and safety aspect and look at this issue again? It seems to me that air cabin crews’ Health and Safety Executive protections apply only when they are on the ground and outside the aircraft. Things such as Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations seem to be falling through the net between the CAA and the HSE.
Mr Goodwill
My advice is that the CAA is the body responsible for the safety of crew and passengers in this case, and the CAA, as I have said, takes this very seriously. We are working with international bodies such as EASA to try to progress some of the research. The opportunity to collect data from a broader sample base than is available in the UK—
Chris Stephens
The Minister has been most generous in accepting interventions. My understanding is that COSHH regulations would apply to much of this, but that the CAA has said that COSHH regulations do not apply to it. Could the hon. Gentleman go away and look at that, in terms of the health and safety protections that should apply to these workers?
Mr Goodwill
I am certainly happy to interrogate the CAA on its interpretation of the rules on COSHH. I am well aware of the operation of the regulations; as a former road tanker driver, I know all about COSHH regulations. But of course aviation is an international business and aircraft are not necessarily within our jurisdiction as they are flying, so it is important that we have international agreements. Indeed, many aircraft that carry British nationals are flagged to other countries around the world, and therefore we need to ensure that their standards are as high as ours and that work can be progressed internationally.
Richard Burden
I will add to the interventions now, so that the Minister can get them out of the way in one go. Could I press him a little more on the business about EASA? If I understood him correctly just now, he was saying that EASA was looking at the research that is available. The letter that he sent to the Transport Committee, as I understood it, suggested that EASA was looking not at that, but at the future of monitoring equipment. That is very important, but my question stands: who is looking at the body of research that is already there, nationally, in Europe and internationally, pulling it all together and seeing whether any action can be taken on the basis of what we already know?
Mr Goodwill
Certainly the UK has looked at the studies that have already taken place. Indeed, many of those were initiated in this country by the previous Labour Government. But we are obviously very keen to look at how we can work to get further information. In terms of the EASA research, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. In fact, due to the unpredictability and rarity of fume events and due to the international nature of the aviation industry, it is the Department’s view that an international approach to any future research investigations would be appropriate. The opportunity to collect data from a broader sample base than is available in the UK alone would lead to a higher probability of more meaningful evidence being collated. The Department therefore wrote to EASA with those views in March 2014.
EASA did launch in the spring of 2015 a preliminary in-flight cabin air measurement campaign. That will develop a methodology and put in place adequate equipment to perform cockpit and cabin air measurements. The results of that campaign, which will be used to prepare for an envisaged large-scale project in the future, are expected in autumn 2016. The Department will follow with interest the progress of that work; indeed, I will update the hon. Gentleman when I get further information.
At national level, the aviation health unit within the medical department of the CAA will continue to monitor issues relating to cabin air, as part of its wider role as specialist adviser to the Government on aviation health issues.
As I said, EASA has launched preliminary work, and we hope to carry that further. I point out that the UK is not the only country in the world conducting research in this field. For example, the German authorities, as well as the country’s biggest airline, Lufthansa, have conducted similar research projects to the ones mentioned here, and they have arrived at the same conclusions. That is not to say that the industry is complacent—far from it. New technologies for improving the filtration and monitoring of cabin air are emerging all the time, and as we have discussed, there is a particular aircraft type, the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, that uses a different source of air, although it must be noted that the equivalent Airbus aircraft, the A350, uses the conventional bleed-air system for cabin air sourcing.
The aviation industry is aware of the concerns that have been raised and is continuously reviewing the current practices, as well as developing options for future improvements. The Government are working together with the industry to support that momentum. The joint Government and industry funded aerospace research and development programme, supported by the Aerospace Technology Institute and Innovate UK, is supporting projects in related areas, including air and oil systems, electronic technologies and system health monitoring, all of which will lead to enhanced cabin air quality as one of the outcomes. The Aerospace Technology Institute is currently working with industry to launch further projects in these areas.
In 2013, industry and Government, working together through the Aerospace Growth Partnership, made a joint funding commitment worth £2.1 billion in total for aerospace research and development over seven years. That was protected, and extended by an additional £900 million over six years to 2025-26, in the spending review in 2015. The industry has committed to matching the investment from the Government in this area. The industry certainly understands the importance of research and development aimed at improving overall safety. However, for the industry to drastically change the way the aircraft are air-conditioned or, indeed, to change the lubricants, there would have to be clear evidence that shows that cabin air quality is harmful to crew and passengers. The current practice of using air from the compression stage of the engine—bleed air—has been shown to be an effective, fuel-efficient and reliable way of providing air to the cabin.
I hope that I have demonstrated that the issue is taken seriously by all parties involved. However, as it is a complex issue with little evidence to show that a change is needed, it will take time to find new and innovative solutions that would be accepted by all. We certainly need to co-ordinate international research and I will raise that with the CAA at our next meeting. I will also discuss the issue with the British Airline Pilots Association, although I have to say that the issue has not necessarily been very high on its agenda at some meetings I have had with it. Maybe debates such as this will further raise awareness among those who work in the industry.
Finally, I urge a note of caution on the precautionary principle. I was a member of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy and, very often, the precautionary principle was used as a way of taking action on something for which there was no supporting evidence. I cite the case of phthalates used as a softening substance in PVC for medical uses and for things such as babies’ bottles. The outcome of making a change based on no evidence other than some very limited migration evidence actually resulted in products that were not as suitable and could have jeopardised people’s treatment. We need to be very careful about using the precautionary principle. We need to look at the actual evidence. I am pleased that research has been carried out, and more research will be carried out.
Once again, I stress how seriously I take the issue and how important it is that we get more evidence. I thank the hon. Members for Stalybridge and Hyde and for Brent Central, and my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) for securing the debate and for providing us with the opportunity to discuss this important and, to many, very personal issue.
Jonathan Reynolds
Mr Hanson, thank you for the opportunity to summarise the debate. I reiterate my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for awarding us the time. I am extremely grateful for the support of colleagues in the debate, which has been well attended, particularly as we are in the second day of the Budget debate. I particularly thank the hon. Members for Crawley (Henry Smith) and for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), who obviously stressed that this is a cross-party issue. I was remiss in my introduction not to specifically thank the hon. Member for Crawley for his existing parliamentary work on the topic. It was the first thing that I looked at when addressing the issue. That is much appreciated and I am grateful to be able to do that.
I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Newport East (Jessica Morden), for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) and for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) for their support for the debate and for the points that they raised.
In addition, I thank the hon. Members for East Lothian (George Kerevan), for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) and for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens). I am, of course, grateful for the contributions of the Front-Bench spokesmen, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), who made an excellent speech, and, indeed, for the Minister’s response.
In my opening speech I said that I felt I had seen and heard enough to warrant the call for an inquiry into the issue. That view has only been strengthened by listening to the testimony and speeches of colleagues who have come along to the debate today. I wanted to bring a specific point to the Minister’s attention—and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield echoed this—which is that I have copies of the American Federal Aviation Administration’s presentations on the new Dreamliner, suggesting that cabin air was among the design considerations for the new 787. I would be happy to send those to the Minister, although I am sure he has the means to obtain them himself.
Notwithstanding the very good speech the Minister made presenting his position and the seriousness with which he took the issue, it seems unlikely that the controversy will diminish. I think it is reasonable to say that the studies he mentioned have not reassured many people working in the industry to date, and that must be our primary concern.
I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Easington and the hon. Member for Horsham said, which was that, until we can rule out an adverse effect on health, it is reasonable to consider the precautionary principle. I certainly intend to continue my interest in the issue and to call for a full inquiry, and I urge hon. Members present to continue to do the same.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered cabin air safety and aerotoxic syndrome.
Written Statements
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Electoral Law
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)
It is a long-standing feature of electoral law that if third parties wish to engage in campaigning at an election, they should report their expenditure to ensure transparency, and that there should be spending limits on that expenditure to ensure a fair and level playing field and prevent undue influence.
Part 2 of the coalition Government’s Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 amended those limits to stop third parties engaging in “distorting” activity during elections; updated the definition of controlled expenditure to include canvassing, events and rallies, as well as election literature; and regulated how spending was applied in individual parliamentary constituencies.
The Government continue to believe that the legislation is a necessary check and balance to ensure free and fair elections, and open and accountable campaigning at elections. The checks just ensure not just fairness for political parties’ candidates, but also between rival third parties—especially on strongly contentious topics.
At the 2015 general election, 68 organisations were registered with the Electoral Commission as third party campaigners. Organisations that spent money campaigning at the general election included the likes of trade unions, the National Union of Students, the Campaign for British Influence in Europe, 38 Degrees, London First and CND.
As required by section 39 of the Act, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts was appointed last year to conduct a review of the operation of third party campaigning provisions, in relation to the 2015 general election. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has today laid Lord Hodgson’s report before Parliament.
The Government are grateful to Lord Hodgson for his comprehensive and balanced report. We are pleased that he recognises the need for effective regulation of those campaigning at general elections to prevent undue influence and the need for transparency about who third party campaigners are and what they are spending.
The package of recommendations proposes tightening some rules and relaxing others. For example, it suggests ending the exclusion for supporters (as opposed to members) of an organisation and requiring campaigners at an election to register with the Electoral Commission if they intend to spend more than £5,000 in any one constituency. It also recommends that campaigners should provide more detailed information about the political issues on which they are campaigning, which would be published by the Electoral Commission. Equally, it advocates clearer guidance by the Electoral Commission to address some misunderstandings about the actual provisions of the legislation.
We will now carefully consider the package of proposals. Some involve changes to the existing regulatory regime, some changes to primary legislation and some are recommendations to the Electoral Commission.
It can also be viewed online at:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2016-03-17/HCWS627.
[HCWS627]
Convergence Programme
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
Article 121 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union (TFEU) requires the UK to send an annual Convergence Programme to the European Commission reporting upon its fiscal situation and policies. The UK’s Convergence Programme will be sent to the European Commission by 30 April. This deadline was set in accordance with the European semester timetable for both Convergence and National Reform Programmes. The Government support the European semester which plays an important role in EU level co-operation on economic and fiscal policy.
Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993 requires that the content of the Convergence Programme must be drawn from an assessment of the UK’s economic and budgetary position which has been presented to Parliament by the Government for its approval. This assessment is based on the Budget 2016 report and the most recent Office for Budget Responsibility’s economic and fiscal outlook and it is this content, not the Convergence Programme itself, which requires the approval of the House for the purposes of the Act.
Article 121, along with article 126 of the TFEU, is the legal basis for the stability and growth pact, which is the co-ordination mechanism for EU fiscal policies and requires member states to avoid excessive Government deficits. Although the UK participates in the stability and growth pact, by virtue of its protocol to the treaty opting out of the euro, it is only required to “endeavour to avoid” excessive deficits. Unlike the euro area member states, the UK is not subject to sanctions at any stage of the European semester process.
Subject to the progress of parliamentary business, debates will be held on 23 March for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, in order for both Houses to approve this assessment before the Convergence Programme is sent to the Commission. While the Convergence Programme itself is not subject to parliamentary approval or amendment, I will deposit advanced copies of the document in the Libraries of both Houses tomorrow and copies will be available through the Vote Office and Printed Paper Office.
The UK’s Convergence Programme will be available electronically via HM Treasury’s website prior to it being sent to the European Commission.
[HCWS630]
Boosting Mobile Connectivity
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)
I wish to set out, along with my hon. Friend the Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy, how the Government will support digital connectivity to provide the opportunity for everyone to connect to the information superhighway and boost our economic prosperity.
“Fixing the foundations: Creating a more prosperous nation” (Cm 9098) set out our commitment to support market investment and streamline legislation to make it easier to roll out the mobile infrastructure that this country needs.
Views on how this could best be achieved were sought through the call for evidence: “Review of how the planning system in England can support the delivery of mobile connectivity” published on 10 July 2015. The review also sought evidence on the effectiveness of planning freedoms introduced in 2013.
The Government are firmly committed to ensuring there is sufficient capacity to meet the growing demand for mobile connectivity. The majority of respondents recognised that digital connectivity is an essential service that communities and business want and need. There was support for the Government’s ambition to maximise coverage and for commercial investment.
Importantly, it has been recognised that there are opportunities to support mobile connectivity while ensuring local communities retain their role in influencing the visual impact of new infrastructure.
This Government intend to bring forward provisions in England to provide greater freedoms and flexibilities for the deployment of mobile infrastructure. The changes outlined below are vital for our continued economic prosperity and social inclusion for all. They will help ensure that mobile operators have the confidence to invest in their network coverage and boost capacity for both voice and data.
Where a site is already used for telecommunications infrastructure, we will extend permitted development rights to allow taller ground-based masts to be built. The threshold for new ground-based masts will increase from 15 metres to 25 metres in non-protected areas and a new permitted development right allowing new masts of up to 20 metres will be introduced in protected areas. To ensure that there is appropriate community engagement a prior approval will apply where a new mast is being built, meaning consideration will always be given to how to minimise the visual impact of masts.
Operators will also be able to increase the height of existing masts to 20 metres in both non-protected and protected areas without prior approval; between 20 metres and 25 metres in non-protected areas with a prior approval; and have a new automatic right to upgrade the infrastructure on their masts in protected areas to align with existing rights in non-protected areas. There will be a height restriction of 20 metres on highways and residential areas to accommodate vehicle lines of sight and pedestrian access.
In addition, we will lift restrictions on the number of antennae allowed on structures above 30 metres, while removing the prior approval requirement for individual antenna greater than 6 metres in height in non-protected areas and for two small cell antenna on residential premises in both non-protected and protected areas as the visual impact is limited.
We will also grant rights so small cell antenna on residential and commercial premises can face highways, and increase from six to 18 months the right for operators to be able to install emergency moveable transmission equipment.
To complement these changes, we will work with the industry and interested parties to strengthen the sector-owned code of practice to ensure best practice is always applied when it comes to the siting and design of mobile infrastructure.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport will be consulting key stakeholders for six weeks commencing 17 March on changes to the Electronic Communications Code (Conditions and Restrictions) Regulations 2003 to complement planning legislation. These changes will apply to the whole of the UK.
The code regulations deal with the operational aspects of the way in which telecoms operators exercise their permitted development rights and include requirements to consult with planning authorities. These requirements will be revised to ensure that there is consistency in how operators consult planning authorities where there is no prior approval.
We intend that the planning changes will come into effect from summer 2016 and will apply to England only. The changes to the code regulations will apply throughout the United Kingdom, as telecommunications is a reserved matter, and will also commence in summer 2016.
[HCWS631]
Educational Excellence Everywhere
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)
Nothing better demonstrates this one nation Government’s commitment to social justice than our plans to transform the education our children receive. Since 2010, our education reforms, underpinned by the hard work of teachers and school leaders, have tackled the failures of the past and made a remarkable difference to education in this country. Record numbers of children, for example, are now taught in good or outstanding schools—1.4 million more pupils than in 2010 [i]. A record 18% of new teachers who started training in 2015 have a first class degree [ii] and 81 % of teachers and senior leaders say behaviour in their schools is good or very good [iii].
However, the education we offer our children does not yet consistently compare well with education in other leading countries in the world. The excellence our reforms has unlocked in some parts of our schools system has not yet spread across the whole country. For example, 11 of the 16 English local authorities that have fewer than 60% of children attending good/outstanding schools, lower than national levels of GCSE attainment and where pupils make less than national levels of expected progress are in the north of England. Of the 173 failing secondary schools in the country, 130 are in the north and midlands and 43 are in the south [iv].
We need to extend and embed the last Parliament’s reforms so that all pupils and families can benefit, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances.
Today I am publishing a White Paper which sets out our vision to achieve educational excellence everywhere, by providing a world class education to all children, regardless of where they live, or what their background is. The key elements of our approach are:
an education system that ensures teachers get the respect they deserve and that we have consistently excellent teaching in our classrooms;
support for existing leaders and help to develop the outstanding leaders of the future; an approach that allows great leaders to run more schools by removing the perverse incentives that prevent teachers from doing so;
a dynamic school-led system where every school is an academy and where pupils, parents and communities are empowered to have a more significant voice in schools, and more schools working together in multi-academy trusts (MATs);
preventing underperformance through support and autonomy, including transferring responsibility for school improvement from local authorities to those who know how to do this best: school leaders. There will also be a new focus on achieving excellence in areas where too few children have access to a good school and there are not yet enough high-quality teachers, school and system leaders, governors and sponsors to turn them around;
high expectations and a world-leading curriculum for all, so that all children receive an education that equips them with the knowledge and character traits necessary to succeed in 21st century Britain;
fair, stretching accountability that focuses on tackling underperformance; rewarding schools on the basis of the progress their pupils make; and incentivising strong leaders to take over underperforming schools; and
the right resources in the right hands: investing every penny where it can do the most good—through new, fair, national funding formulae for schools, improved effectiveness of the pupil premium and making the best possible use of resources.
We believe that the fastest and most sustainable way for schools to improve is for Government to trust this country’s most effective education leaders on the frontline, holding them to account for unapologetically high standards for every child, but letting them determine how to reach them. This system will respond to performance, extending the reach of the most successful leaders and acting promptly by intervening where performance is not good enough. It will also ensure they have the necessary tools to seize the opportunities provided by greater autonomy.
Our approach will take our self-improving school-led system to the next level; building capacity and setting up schools to use their freedoms effectively, rather than just intervening in cases of failure. We are providing not just autonomy, but supported autonomy, as the best approach to improve education everywhere.
The approach outlined in this ambitious White Paper represents our best chance of achieving the educational excellence that every child and young person deserves. The White Paper has been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
[i] Ofsted Annual Report 2014/15: Educations and Skills:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ofsted-annual-report-201415-education-and-skills
[ii] ITT census 2015/16:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/initial-teacher-training-trainee-number-census-2015-to-2016
[iii] Teacher Voice Omnibus June 2015:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/483275/DFE-RR493_Teacher_voice_omnibus_questions_for_DfE_-_June_2015.pdf
[iv] Ofsted Annual Report 2014/15: Educations and Skills:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ofsted-annual-report-201415-education-and-skills.
[HCWS625]
School Places
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)
My hon. Friend, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools has today made the following ministerial statement.
Today I am announcing £1.15 billion of capital funding for 2018-19 to support the creation of the new school places needed by September 2019.
Ensuring that every child is able to attend a good or outstanding school in their local area is at the heart of the Government’s comprehensive programme of reform of the school system and vital for delivering educational excellence everywhere. We know that our growing population means that new school places are needed in many parts of the country and the Government are committed to providing capital investment to ensure every child has a place at school. The previous Government more than doubled funding for new places to £5 billion in the past Parliament. We are committed to investing £7 billion in this Parliament, and delivering 500 new schools. By May 2015, this investment had already helped to create nearly 600,000 additional school places since 2010, with 150,000 delivered in 2014-15 alone. Many more places are in the pipeline and still to come—with local authorities already having firm plans for 260,000 more places. This progress follows a decrease of 200,000 primary places between 2004 and 2010.
Today we are announcing £1.15 billion of funding for local authorities in 2018-19. This is in addition to the £3.6 billion already announced for 2015-18, taking total investment through this Parliament to £4.8 billion. In doing so, we continue to recognise that good investment decisions require certainty. Announcing allocations for 2018-19 today means local authorities can plan years ahead with confidence, and make good strategic investment decisions to ensure they deliver good school places for every child who needs one.
In making these allocations, the Government are continuing to target funding effectively, based on local needs, using data we have collected from local authorities about the capacity of schools and forecast pupil projections.
Most local authorities are successfully delivering additional school places as the nearly 600,000 new places created since 2010 clearly demonstrates. However, where authorities are not delivering for parents, we will not hesitate to intervene.
Details of today’s announcement will be sent to local authorities and be published on the gov.uk website. Copies will be placed in the Library of the House.
[HCWS628]
Ministerial Correction
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
During the debate on the urgent question on the EU-Turkey agreement on 9 March my reply to my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) was not worded accurately (Official Report, col 282). I said, “The proportion of all refugees in Germany who get German citizenship is roughly 2.2%”. The correct response should have been, “The proportion of foreign nationals resident in Germany for at least 10 years who get German citizenship is roughly 2.2%”.
[HCWS626]
Justice and Home Affairs Council
(8 years, 8 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 10 and 11 March in Brussels: 10 March was the Interior day, which I attended on behalf of the UK; 11 March was the Justice day, and my noble Friend Lord Faulks QC, Minister for Civil Justice, and the Minister for Immigration, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) attended. The following items were discussed.
The Interior day commenced with a discussion on migration. The presidency introduced this discussion with a review of the main principles agreed at the 7 March EU-Turkey summit, the support needed for Greece, and the support required by others affected by the eastern Mediterranean/western Balkans route. The agreement made at the EU-Turkey summit was broadly welcomed by member states. A number of member states challenged the decision to expedite the visa liberalisation process with Turkey. I noted that Turkey’s announcement on Monday committing to take back all new arrivals was a major development, and reiterated the need to work through the legal, policy and operational aspects of the arrangement to ensure it is implemented swiftly.
The Commission welcomed the agreement of the new EU humanitarian aid fund which was adopted at the 15 March General Affairs Council. The Council also heard progress on the increase to the internal security fund (ISF) and the emergency assistance elements of the asylum, migration and integration fund (AMIF). There was broad agreement from other member states that further support should be given to Greece and that efforts on relocation should be accelerated. The Government do not support relocation as it is the wrong response to the migratory pressures the EU faces. It undermines the important principle that asylum should be claimed in the first safe country and does not address the causes of illegal migration. On the subject of migratory routes, concern was voiced by many over the shifting of migratory routes, to the central Mediterranean route in particular.
The Commission undertook to produce a progress report on relocation and resettlement, and confirmed that the visa liberalisation benchmarks would have to be met by Turkey and that all laws would be respected in returning migrants. The presidency noted a readiness to examine the legality of returns to Turkey and to contribute further to EASO and Frontex. The presidency confirmed that resettlement activities would remain voluntary but suggested that all should participate, and noted consensus on the need to control secondary movements and make returns more effective.
The presidency updated Ministers on the proposed European Border and Coast Guard Agency. The presidency confirmed that they are on schedule to adopt a general approach in April, and hope to reach an agreement with the European Parliament by June. The Commission hopes that the agency will be operational by August. We are clear that the UK will not take part in the proposed agency, but we support action by Schengen states to strengthen the external border.
Discussion then turned to progress on negotiation of a revised firearms directive. There were five issues raised for discussion by the presidency: a minimum age for the acquisition of firearms; a requirement for medical testing before obtaining a license; exemptions for museums and collectors; online sales; and which types of weapons to ban. I indicated UK support for options on the minimum age, medical tests, and museums issues which give member states the greatest degree of national discretion. This was supported by a majority of member states. On online sales, most member states supported strict controls. However, the presidency acknowledged that some member states, including the UK, favoured processes that allowed for the verification of the buyer’s identity. The most contentious issue was the banning of semi-automatic weapons. I argued in favour of banning the most dangerous types of these weapons, and that experts needed to conclude work on what those weapons were swiftly. A majority of member states opposed prohibition on the basis that there were legitimate uses of semi-automatic weapons, but indicated they were open to considering additional controls. The presidency concluded that it would take work forward based on majority views.
The counter-terrorism co-ordinator updated member states on the implementation of the November 2015 Council conclusions on counter-terrorism. The co-ordinator said that progress had been made, but barriers remain, and welcomed the presidency’s intention to develop an information sharing action plan for discussion at the June JHA Council. The co-ordinator stressed the importance of improving the use of Schengen information system (SIS) II, allowing law enforcement access to relevant migration instruments, rapid implementation of the passenger name record (PNR) directive, development of national passenger information units, using Europol systems to full effect and providing increased resources to the Europol counter-terrorism centre.
I then presented a joint UK-France paper on data and information sharing in support of the presidency’s initiative. I supported the call to improve the use of SIS II and highlighted the absence of a requirement to record expulsion or removal decisions, the legislative gap preventing the UK from sharing and accessing such data with the Schengen area, and the limited use of fingerprint data in SIS II. I also pushed for progress on systemic, proactive sharing of criminal records data. The UK-France paper drew strong support from the Commission, the presidency, the co-ordinator and other member states. The presidency concluded that efforts would continue towards the June JHA Council and that the UK-France paper would form a key building block for its forthcoming action plan.
To close the day, Germany and France presented a non-paper outlining a draft European initiative to prevent and combat organised domestic burglary. The proposed initiative will be debated in a future meeting of the Standing Committee on Internal Security (COSI).
Justice day began with the agreement of a general approach on the directive on minimum standards for terrorism offences. Member states declared broad support for the proposal during the discussion, but there was an appetite among many for greater ambition in some aspects. Several member states argued for the criminalisation of travelling for terrorist purposes to be extended to intra-EU and EU-inward travel, to fit with the recently adopted PNR directive which includes intra-EU travel. However other member states urged caution to ensure that criminal law was balanced with human rights and fundamental freedoms. The UK welcomed the new directive but noted that we will not be opting in as the UK’s domestic legislation already meets the standards set out in the directive. As the UK is already compliant with UN Security Council resolution 2178 and the additional protocol to the Council of Europe convention on combating terrorism, not opting in will not undermine our co-operation with other EU member states in combating terrorism. The presidency aims to adopt this measure in June.
The presidency then gave an update on the progress of two new proposals under the digital agenda covering harmonised consumer rights for digital content and distance sales of tangible goods, and noted that the proposal on digital content had been welcomed by member states. However, many member states had asked for more time before tackling the proposal on tangible goods in order to wait for the results of the Commission’s ongoing REFIT work on consumer protection. As such, the presidency will first take forward work on digital content, with the aim of the Council agreeing a position on the key parts of the package at the June Council. The Commission agreed with the presidency’s proposed approach, but stressed the importance of not losing sight of the proposal on tangible goods and confirmed that they anticipated the necessary data gathering exercise from the REFIT work being completed in the summer.
On the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), the Council discussed the provisions of the draft EPPO regulation concerning expenditure. Most member states supported the position that the costs of investigative work should be met by member states, with a small number arguing for EPPO to meet the costs. A third group suggested that this cost could be subsidised by the EPPO in exceptional cases where it is prohibitively high. The UK intervened to emphasise that while the UK does not participate in this measure, we support the shared objective with the EU to tackle this type of crime and welcome the acknowledgement that the EPPO regulation would not impose obligations on Eurojust. Furthermore the UK underlined the need to avoid non- participating member states financing EPPO, which was supported by other non-participating member states. The presidency indicated the issue would be brought back for discussion at a technical level.
On the EU-US umbrella agreement, the Commission updated Ministers on two separate data exchange negotiations with the US. The law enforcement focused umbrella agreement and the exchange of data between commercial controllers under the proposed “Privacy Shield”. The umbrella agreement had been initialled, and with the signing of the Judicial Redress Act by President Obama at the end of February, the EU’s final requirement had been met. The Commission suggested that signatures to conclude the agreement could take place at the beginning of June. On the Privacy Shield agreement to replace the invalidated Safe Harbour decision, the Commission informed Ministers that the draft text had been published on 29 February and would now be considered by the group of EU data protection authorities —the Article 29 Working Party—before being submitted to member states for agreement.
Under any other business, the presidency reported back on the conference it hosted earlier in the week on jurisdiction in cyberspace. There were practical ideas to improve mutual legal assistance processes, a call for a clearer framework for relationships with the private sector distinguishing between different types of data, and discussions around the rule of law, proportionality and transparency in the context of loss of location. The presidency will prepare conclusions for the June Justice and Home Affairs Council, to be considered first at expert level.
The Commission then updated Ministers on the proposal for the EU to accede to the Istanbul convention, which has already been signed by 25 member states and ratified by 12.
The Commission also provided an update on the dialogue with IT companies to tackle hate speech online. Following a meeting in early March concerning the type of content to be taken down and time targets, the Commission will facilitate further discussion with a view to bringing proposals for a public commitment or a code of conduct to June JHA Council.
Over lunch, the presidency facilitated a discussion on enhancing the criminal justice response to radicalisation, following the conclusions of the Council and the member states agreed in November 2015. member states discussed the challenges in respect of managing the radicalisation threat in prisons in particular, including whether extremist prisoners should be segregated or dispersed, and considered the value of member states sharing best practice.
Ministers also held an exchange of views on two new proposals for enhanced co-operation on the regulations on matrimonial properties and the property consequences of registered partnerships, following the failure to agree these proposals at the last December JHA Council. The UK had not opted in to either proposal. In the discussion, the UK argued for the removal of references to the charter of fundamental rights from the operative clauses of the two proposals for reasons of best practice in legal drafting.
[HCWS632]
Statutory Inquiry: Anthony Grainger
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I am announcing today the establishment by the Home Office of an inquiry, under the Inquiries Act 2005, to investigate the death of Anthony Grainger who was fatally shot by an armed officer of Greater Manchester police in March 2012.
The inquiry will be chaired by His Honour Judge Teague QC. In accordance with section 3(1) of the Act, I have decided that this inquiry be undertaken by Judge Teague alone as chairman.
Judge Teague is a circuit judge who was nominated by the Lord Chief Justice to lead the investigation and inquest into Mr Grainger’s death. It has been necessary to convert the inquest to a statutory inquiry so as to permit all relevant evidence to be heard by the judge. I have agreed with Judge Teague that the inquiry will have the same scope as the current inquest, which is being adjourned prior to the setting up of the inquiry.
The inquiry terms of reference are therefore:
To ascertain when, where, how and in what circumstances Mr Anthony Grainger came by his death during a Greater Manchester police operation, and then to make any such recommendations as may seem appropriate. In particular it will investigate:
The objectives and planning of the operation;
The information available to those who planned the operation, and the accuracy, reliability, interpretation, evaluation, transmission and dissemination of such information;
The decision to deploy armed police officers and to make arrests, and the criteria applied in reaching those decisions;
The command and control of the operation, its implementation, the actions of officers during the arrest phase, and the circumstances in which the officer who fired the fatal shot came to discharge his weapon;
The suitability or otherwise of the firearms, ammunition and other munitions deployed in the operation;
Any relevant firearms policies, protocols or manuals in force at the material time, together with any subsequent revisions or amendments;
Whether—and, if so, to what extent—the judgment, reactions or operational effectiveness of any of the planners, commanders or firearms officers were compromised by extended hours of duty or by limitations in their professional capabilities;
The extent to which Mr Grainger’s injuries would have incapacitated him while he remained conscious;
Whether, after Mr Grainger was shot, his life could have been saved.
The arrangements for the inquiry will now be a matter for Judge Teague. The Ministry of Justice and Home Office will provide support to him.
[HCWS629]
Rail Reform
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)
In July 2015 Nicola Shaw, the chief executive of HS1, was asked to provide options for the future shape and financing of Network Rail in order to support growth and investment. Her report, published this week, confirms that the rail network should be held as a national asset and a key public service. It builds on good progress already being made by Network Rail and focuses on steps to improve performance for passengers and freight users. I welcome the report’s recommendations.
The Shaw report proposes strengthening the role of Network Rail route managers to increase accountability and efficiency. It also recommends a new northern route, and a new freight route to ensure the rail freight industry can continue to contribute to growth.
My recent consultation on the role of the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) showed clear support for strong independent regulation to put customer needs at the heart of rail. To support the ORR, I will work with it to implement changes to bring greater clarity to its statutory duties and to enhance its working relationship with Transport Focus. I will also update the statutory guidance I provide.
The recent report by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) into competition in passenger rail services recommended open access operators could benefit passengers if important reforms are made. These reforms include fairer charges and robust protections for taxpayers and investment. While charges are for the ORR, I hope that changes to charges can be made as soon as possible. I will now explore options for potentially implementing the CMA’s recommendations, including legislation if required.
I will make a fuller response to the Shaw report later this year. I am placing a copy of the Shaw report in the Library of the House.
It can also be viewed online at:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/commons/2016-03-17/HCWS624/.
[HCWS624]
Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Henig) (Lab)
If there is a Division in the House the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
General Practitioners: Appointments
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Earl Attlee
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of how quickly an economically active patient should be able to secure an appointment with their GP and how that compares with other professions.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, the Committee will recall the fabulous opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics held in London and its NHS component. Interestingly, some young indigenous Brits take for granted our fabulous health service, free at the point of delivery. They do not really appreciate how clever we have been as a nation, but hard-working immigrants from other countries certainly do. We have much to be proud of and I salute the efforts of all those involved. Our European partners have a variety of health systems that appear to work for them. However, you have only to look at the political challenges with the health system in the United States to see the problems that we have avoided and to understand that their healthcare costs are considerably higher than ours. There is no doubt that the NHS is very good if you are seriously ill, which is one reason why I am not the slightest bit interested in private healthcare. However, we would be deluding ourselves if we denied that we have some serious difficulties with the NHS; the most obvious are A&E and ambulance services, but I want to concentrate on GP services, although they are related.
I recently had to move house from one parish to an adjacent parish, but which was in a different GP catchment area. My original surgery was co-located with a rather good convenience store and the nearest ATM to my house. The surgery met all my requirements, I never had any difficulty in securing an appointment when I needed one, and the practice premises were purpose-built and relatively new. My new surgery’s building is old and small and there was local evidence that appointments could be a problem, probably due to increasing demand from a growing and also ageing population. Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that I did not want to register at that new, nearest surgery but I was told that I had to. I am sorry to say that my worst fears were realised. The administration of the surgery was relatively poor from the start. Clearly not all practices operate to the same standard—though I hope that my noble friend Lord Bridgeman will describe to the Committee how a good practice works.
Worse still, several weeks ago now, I developed some slightly worrying symptoms. However, my judgment was—correctly—that I was not an urgent case and I was not prepared to claim otherwise. Unfortunately I could not secure an appointment at all. Given that men are notoriously bad at presenting with unpleasant symptoms, how can it possibly be right to deny a patient an appointment with the doctor? The fact is that people who are fit, well and working ask to see the doctor only when absolutely necessary. All they need is a bit of maintenance from time to time to keep being productive and generating the money needed to fund the NHS.
Before suggesting to the Committee what is going on, I want to make it clear that I fully appreciate that GPs have to deal with a wide range of patients, many of whom have serious conditions or are even terminally ill. I feel that practices fall into the trap of believing that they are providing a service to a certain standard and that patients should be grateful for what they get. Surgeries do not regard themselves as being competitive, which means that there is no mechanism for them to individually determine the appropriate level of service, although no doubt they try hard. It also means that they cannot determine what services to offer or how to provide them.
Take the appointments issue. Suppose I rang my solicitor’s office and said that I had had a fairly worrying meeting with another businessman who claimed that I was infringing his patent. I do not think that the solicitor’s office would say, “Well, we have no appointments available for the next two weeks. Try again next Monday, but make sure you ring early because the available slots go quickly”. I suggest that any professional services outfit with that sort of ethos would not stay in business very long. I have to tell the Committee that that is exactly what I experienced with my new GP surgery and I doubt that this is unusual. This is why my Question compares GPs to other professions.
Or take blood tests. GPs no longer seem to take blood samples. A separate appointment has to be made, either with the practice nurse or with a local hospital. This is fine if one is retired, but if one is working it is another appointment to be made which conflicts with economic activity. It also tends to lower productivity, which we know is a general UK problem. I have not been to an A&E department for many years, but it seems to me that the majority of walk-in patients could equally well be dealt with by a GP surgery, and far more quickly than the four-hour target, which is itself an admission of total failure. At present, GP surgeries do not market themselves for that business because they do not need to.
Surely, a practice in a competitive environment would say, “Why wait at least four hours in an A&E department for a minor injury when, if you were registered with us, you could be on your way within an hour?”. I am not suggesting for a moment having mini-A&E centres. Serious injuries and life-threatening conditions are clearly a matter for a large A&E department with the appropriate range of facilities.
Since the time when I was forced to change my GP the rules have changed, I am pleased to say, and with certain, sensible caveats one can register with whichever surgery one wants. I am pleased about this but there is still no evidence of any commercial competitive pressures between GP surgeries. I hope the Minister can tell the Committee what, if anything, he is doing to introduce competition between GP surgeries. Does he see this as being important, so that economic output is not lost due to a GP service that does not suit busy working people, especially if they work a long way from home? Does he agree that GPs should be doing more to relieve the unnecessary load on A&E departments?
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for bringing this important subject to debate. I fear that it is now widely acknowledged that the situation in primary care is dire. However, I have to say that my own general practice seems to be an exception; perhaps because it is in leafy Hampstead, perhaps because it has enough partners and staff to withstand the buffeting of the rest of the NHS, and perhaps because it has such excellent leadership. Or, most likely, because it has all three. Elsewhere, in much of the country, general practice lacks all three and the picture is less than rosy. Many practices are small, with two or three partners, and if one goes off sick, retires early or goes abroad, the remaining one or two are stuck in an almost unsustainable situation.
One young GP I know is struggling with just such a burden. She is about to lose her partner, who is retiring early, and she is now running her practice with little or no support. She is finding it impossible to attract any staff to join her and cannot find another GP to come into her practice. There are just too few around who want to work in a less than affluent part of London, despite the Government’s blandishments. It is very hard for her to find other staff too. Meanwhile, she is running around, sitting on committees and the local CCG, as well as dealing with the mound of NHS-inspired paperwork and trying to look after her young family at the same time. Working from eight in the morning until eight at night is an impossible burden to place on anyone. I fear that that is the experience of far too many GPs and it is not much wonder that too many are leaving early and too few are willing to join.
It is absolutely vital that the Government rethink their efforts to encourage and support GPs. Whatever they are doing now is clearly not working properly. Of course, every area of the NHS is suffering from underfunding but primary care, once the beacon of the service, is now merely a flickering candle. If there is anywhere that the NHS needs to see reignited, it is primary care. Of course, a move to larger group practices, with added support, where that can be achieved, would help. But too many practices are too small at the moment. Some GPs gain comfort from being salaried rather than self-employed. That at least cuts down their administrative burden. If it can be made a more attractive option—something the Government might pursue—it offers advantages to some.
Finally, I will say just a few words about research in primary care. I express my interest as scientific adviser to the Association of Medical Research Charities, an organisation whose member charities well understand the valuable role that GPs can play in research. But at the moment too many GPs are so stretched and overworked that there is no way that they can even think about research in the face of everything else they are asked to do. If we are to achieve what Ministers, the Chancellor and even the Prime Minister have spoken about, which is to embed research in the NHS as a major function, and if we are to see what is mandated in the Health and Social Care Act 2012 on making research an inextricable part of the NHS, we are going to have to give GPs all the support necessary for them to be able to fulfil their part. We are still way off that and if, as I understand it, NHS England has not even signed off its research strategy for last year, never mind this year, what hope do we have that we will see any change here? Is there anything the Minister can do to persuade NHS England to do more to support research in primary care and, incidentally, stimulate it into publishing its long-awaited research strategy?
To return to the main thrust of my remarks, is there anything the Minister can do to persuade the Government to look at how we can get general practice out of the black hole it is heading for before it is too late?
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. There is of course much controversy at present concerning what I will call the Government’s preoccupation with the weekend working practices of junior hospital doctors but it seems to me that many people in need of medical support would have preferred the Government to keep concentrating on issues such as strengthening out-of-hours services for GPs and using modern technology to enable people more easily to interact with a GP.
Of course, much progress on these issues was being made prior to the general election and I am seeking some reassurance in this debate that that progress will continue. Just prior to the general election, it was announced that GPs in more than 1,400 practices across England would receive £550 million of government funding to reorganise their services so that surgeries could be open from 8 am to 8 pm, seven days a week. My good friend Norman Lamb, who was then the Care Minister, told me he hoped that some of this funding would lead to much greater use in those practices of patient consultations by videolink, email and telephone, together with a greater provision of online booking services. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us about progress since that announcement last March.
That funding, however, was directed at slightly fewer than one in five GP practices in England so I hope that we might also hear more today about how the remaining 80% of GP practices can be supported in improving access for their patients. This is both very important in terms of improving patient care and essential if we are to avoid the crisis in our hospitals getting even worse. I would like to hear from the Minister about how the £250 million infrastructure fund, which was first announced in the 2014 Autumn Statement, is helping to improve and provide more integrated health centres and more use of technology. The Government’s press release at the time claimed that they would help to fund additional services, including on-site pharmacists, speech therapists, minor surgery and diagnostic tests. It was also intended to make it easier for GPs to return to the profession following a career break, encourage more medical students to take careers as GPs, and enable GPs considering retirement to work reduced hours in the interim. This timely debate will allow the Minister to describe, I hope, progress on these issues over the past 12 months.
However, we need to go much further and be much bolder in using new technology to improve access to GPs. Ten years ago I visited India and looked at the provision of health services in remote rural areas, where access to a GP, let alone a hospital, was bound to be extremely difficult. I was very impressed by the use of webcams in specially equipped vehicles that could tour rural areas and with the help of a trained nurse allow some basic tests to be undertaken and a face-to-face conversation to be held with a GP or even a consultant. This made me think about how we could do much more in this country, using new technology, to let people talk to a GP without necessarily visiting the surgery. As technology develops, those GPs or other people, including carers and family members, can monitor certain conditions remotely.
My own Fitbit tells me how many steps I have walked each day, and what my heart rate and my sleeping pattern are. While I do not wish to share this information with anybody else, it is easy to do so. I acknowledge at this point that it was active intervention by my own GP’s practice that led me to undertake a more active exercise regime and improve my own diabetic control. In time, I expect that my blood pressure and glucose levels will be monitored remotely by health professionals.
For some elderly or housebound residents, this could be a good way for GPs to help keep an eye on them without clogging up their surgeries, while enabling the professionals to determine properly whether or not an appointment is really necessary. At the moment, getting an appointment when needed is often very difficult. Getting access to a doctor at night is usually extremely difficult, but this was not always so. Something has gone wrong when people feel the need to turn up at A&E if they can or call an ambulance when they should really have been seen by a GP at a surgery or in their home.
These problems are well illustrated in the recent report by the Public Accounts Committee in the House of Commons, which highlighted the following facts. There are simply not enough GPs to meet demand. Deprived areas are particularly short of GPs and nurses. Finally, there is much variation in patients’ experience of getting and making appointments, with people who work full-time among those who are most disadvantaged.
It is also clear from that report that information about basic facts, such as services provided at GPs’ surgeries and the availability of those services, is sometimes difficult to obtain. The report also makes it clear that the Department of Health and NHS England do not have the data that they need to make well-informed decisions about how to improve access to general practice or where to direct their limited resources. In the long run, these issues come down to improving the way in which we try to do things, endeavouring to make efficiency savings. But without a doubt, funding is the major issue.
The results of the most recent general elections show people’s reluctance to pay higher levels of taxation and politicians’ reluctance to ask them to do so. This is in spite of the fact that people now expect a pension from the state for a much greater proportion of their lives than ever before; with this comes the probability of them needing greater provision of health and social care. Improving access to GPs and funding the health and social care services that we need may require the introduction of a hypothecated tax in future. I believe that all parties should be considering this option if they are to be honest about addressing these problems. I would welcome the views of the Minister on that.
Viscount Bridgeman (Con)
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Attlee for initiating this debate. We heard from him that in his view the conduct of the practice of which he is now a patient leaves something to be desired. He has also been good enough to indicate that I might be able to sketch out for your Lordships a somewhat contrasting view. These two interventions, from my noble friend and myself, have not been co-ordinated; we only exchanged views two days ago.
I and my family are fortunate to be patients of a practice in central London which tells a different story. This practice has a walk-in surgery open for an hour and a quarter in the morning and two and a half hours in the evening Monday to Friday, with the exception of Wednesday evenings. I have never had to wait more than 20 minutes to see a GP. The practice has first-class support in practice nurses and receptionists. Repeat prescriptions can be requested online—this is now fairly common among GP practices. Significantly, and in many ways this is the acid test, the practice has some of the lowest referral rates to A&E in central London. In other words, more patients can be treated for minor ailments in the surgery without going to A&E. The cost of an A&E admission is approximately £80. Your GP is paid that same sum to have you for one year, so if you go to A&E for a runny nose that is the same money paid out again.
In 2006, under the GP settlement, practices could opt for PMS premium status where for extra work undertaken they received extra pay. On the whole the more enterprising practices—including the one where I am a patient—took advantage of this offer. Now I understand that the latest proposal from NHS England is for this premium to be substantially reduced or eliminated over a period of four years to bring the funding of PMS practices in line with the GMS practices that did not take advantage of the 2006 premium. It would be interesting to know if my noble friend Lord Attlee’s practice is one of the latter. It is policy to recycle the resultant savings thus made back to CCGs and through them to the practices within their groups. Where PMS practices are in a group with a substantial number of other PMS practices, the clawback available to CCGs will be considerable and as I understand it there will be significant funding available for improved services and financial support. However, PMS practices that stand virtually alone within their groups will not enjoy the same level of support. Note also that all funding deriving from the cutback to PMSs will be available to both PMS and GMS practices—a further subtle discrimination against the former.
Let me attempt to be constructive with three examples of welcome initiatives instituted by NHS England. The first is integrated care: a structuring for the patient to formulate with his GP a health plan. In my case, this involved an hour-plus session with the doctor—just think of that length of time being made available in an NHS practice. As I understand it, that model draws on experience in the US and elsewhere where patients with planned maintenance prove to be much less of a demand on healthcare services. This is being funded by CCGs, which are investing very considerably in it. It is a nation-wide initiative and much to be welcomed.
Another development in our part of London is the rapid response teams under the control of local health trusts but funded by CCGs. These consist of doctors, nurses and paramedics and I understand they are extremely effective in saving GPs in practice from having to leave their surgeries to answer emergency calls. The noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, suggested the damage caused by such calls in terms of the time of doctors in small practices.
Thirdly, I draw attention to the development of GP federations, where GPs join together in a unique and largely unprecedented way. These are set up as limited companies and their mission is to bid for services that hospitals may wish to contract out. Examples I know about are smoking cessation clinics, cardiograms, testing patients on warfarin for anti-coagulation and looking after airways disease—in short, widely disparate procedures. I think we can assume that in all cases there will be cost savings for NHS England and any profits made by the federations will be available to their GP shareholders.
I revert to the subject of my noble friend’s debate. My question for the Minister is how NHS England is to reconcile the very different standards that are emerging from this short debate. The challenge for NHS England is how to bring the less adventurous practices up to an acceptable standard without effectively dumbing down the forward-looking practices which, as I have tried to illustrate, have the potential to introduce new, co-operative practices with a substantial contribution to cost savings.
My own NHS practice reckons it will lose around £400,000, resulting in a cutback to the PMS premium over four years. From the resulting benefits that are to be made available by the CCGs to the practice, and I have given three examples, it is estimated that the practice will reduce the loss to about £200,000. Why should any loss be acceptable in this of all branches of healthcare? This is one branch of healthcare which is showing real initiative, particularly in regard to enterprise and its financial viability. Surely the NHS is in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. I shall very much welcome my noble friend the Minister’s comments on that. I am in danger of mixing my metaphors, but general practice is one of the jewels in the NHS, which has been made clear by all the speakers today. Let the entrepreneurial practices not only be an example to their less-motivated colleagues but also lead the way in taking advantage of the imaginative developments that NHS England has initiated—but free from the financial penalisation that many practices are now facing.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for allowing us to debate this very important question and congratulate him on the quality and range of his contribution, which was extremely interesting. I echo his initial comments about the value of the National Health Service. However, he also referred to the considerable challenges we face, not least the amount of money that is being made available. I note the comments that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, made and I will be most interested in the Minister’s response to his suggestion that we need to move to hypothecated taxation. Interestingly, we have a recommendation from the Liaison Committee—of which I am a member—which I hope will come to the House next week to establish a special Select Committee in the next Session looking at the long-term sustainability of the NHS. I think that that will be a very interesting discussion, not least because it is clear, as the noble Earl said, that alongside A&E and ambulance services, general practice is facing considerable pressure.
Like my noble friend Lord Turnberg I am very lucky to enjoy an exceptional GP practice, which is a small branch of a large inner-city practice. It is clear from the comments of noble Lords and from the regular GP patient survey that people’s experiences are very mixed. The noble Earl focused on economically active members of society, but his comments could have applied to all patients. Noble Lords are often fond of quoting the Commonwealth Fund’s international comparators, which do not always compare with the OECD research covering the same ground. I was interested in its latest report on public perception of primary care in the UK and the fact that there has been a dramatic drop in the positive view of how primary care works, with the percentage of those expressing satisfaction going down from nearly 50% in 2009 and 2012 to just over 20% in 2015. So there has no doubt been an appreciable change in attitude by the public in relation to GP services. The GP patient survey shows, for instance, that only 70.4% of patients find it easy to get through to someone at their GP surgery on the phone. This is down from previous figures. It also showed that 6.5% book their appointments online, up from 3.2% in December 2012. It is really disappointing that such a low number of people actually take advantage of online booking or, indeed, that such a low number of practices promote online booking. Obviously, it would make life so much easier if it were easier for people to do that, and it would deal with the problem that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, described, about the differentiation between an urgent appointment and one that is important but does not have to take place within 48 hours. Many GP practices seem quite unable to devise a system to cope with those circumstances.
It is also interesting that the GP patient survey showed that 23.1% see their preferred GP a lot of the time. We need to think through the implications of that, particularly with seven-day working, because I suggest that with the move into larger federations, which I support, the seven-day working concept inevitably means that people will have less opportunity to see their preferred GP—particularly, as we know, when many GPs do not want to work full time any more. That seems to me to depend on information, particularly electronic information, being available, so that a patient does not have continually to tell different GPs in a practice about their conditions, because they actually have systems where that is noted down.
I also note that in the survey 57.7% were happy with the amount of time that they had to wait for an appointment. Again, that is down—it is not a great figure. The overall satisfaction with GP opening hours, at 74.8%, is down and again not very satisfactory.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred to the PAC report on access to general practice, which came out only a couple of weeks ago. I thought that it was a very interesting report and, no doubt, the Government will respond in due course. But it showed that we have problems with retention and recruitment, that good access to GP care is too dependent on where patients live, and there is an unacceptable variation in patients’ practices and in the appointments system. Tellingly, it said that the Department of Health and NHS England do not have enough information—that is a point that the noble Lord made—on demand, activity or capacity, which one would have thought might have been of interest to NHS England. I think that it is clear that both the department and NHS England has really failed to ensure that staffing in general practice has kept pace with growing demand. I think that they have been complacent about general practitioners’ ability and, indeed, willingness to cope with the increase in demand caused by rising public expectations and the needs of an ageing population.
No doubt the Minister will tell us about recent initiatives, which are welcome in themselves, but a lot of changes will come about because GPs themselves will make them happen. I am really impressed by the large federations that have been established. There is one very large one in west Birmingham and the Black Country, which has had some incredibly impressive results in relation to access. It is through having a large enough federation that you can meet the work patterns of individual GPs, and it is through the simple use of phone and email to have much more flexible appointments. I do not know whether the noble Lord has read a report from David Pannell, the chief executive of Suffolk GP Federation, which complains that the department is not really giving support to the development of provider networks and federations and that the only initiative promoting working at scale was the Prime Minister’s GP access fund, which was doing little to diverge from the traditional model of contracting with individual practices.
The point being made here is that every single contract which is part of the PM’s access fund has been a traditional primary medical services or general medical services one with an individual practice. Would the Minister be prepared to have a look at this and to talk to the National Association of Provider Organisations? Its chair has commented:
“Whereas NHS England supported the vanguards programme, there has been virtually no support for the leadership of federations which are not part of a vanguard”.
I have quoted from a story in the Heath Service Journal and I have also looked at comments which have been made on it. One comment, which was anonymous—I do not know why—said:
“Brighton and Hove CCG have been developing a really innovative and ambitious contract with GPs working at scale which the LMC have supported”.
It may well be worth looking at that to see whether more can be encouraged.
Finally, I wonder if the development of federations means that the Government need to look at CCG governance. If you have a large-scale federation covering an area roughly the same size as a CCG, I can see a potential conflict of interest. The federation could dominate the election of members to the CCG board. The contracts should be at that level, not held by NHS England, so I wonder if we need to go back to the issue of CCG governance and have a majority of lay people on CCG boards. That would enable the Government to be much more proactive in supporting these federations. I am convinced that they are the only way we can deal with the problems raised by the noble Earl.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)
My Lords, I also thank my noble friend for raising this issue. General practice has been a golden thread running through the NHS since 1948. It is worth reminding ourselves that although the situation may be dire in some parts of the country, as the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, mentioned, the NHS is still almost unquestionably the most efficient, highest-value healthcare system in the world. Not long ago, I was with some people from the Mayo Clinic who made that point—we are very self-critical. It is right that we should be but also right that we should remember that much of what we do in the NHS is absolutely world class and we do it with very little resource. My noble friend Lord Bridgeman and other noble Lords made the point that the NHS is, in their own individual experience, absolutely first class. If you read the newspapers every day you might think that everything is going to hell in a handbasket but most people’s individual experience of the NHS is extremely good. I have not seen the Commonwealth Fund report to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred but I would like to.
We should be extremely concerned if confidence in primary care is diminishing. I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, about research. I could answer his question if it was directed at specialist research, but I am not sure how much money or resource is going into research into primary care. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, raised the issue of hypothecated tax. The argument for hypothecating tax for health is no stronger or weaker than doing so for education or overseas aid, or other areas. He will know, as well as I do, that the Treasury has wrestled with and discussed this issue for many years. Any decision will be made in the Treasury, not by me. I could argue both sides of the case with equal conviction and sincerity, so I cannot give the noble Lord the answer he might want to elicit from me.
The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and my noble friend Lord Bridgeman raised the issue of variation. We have got thousands of GP practices and there will inevitably be variation. The question is how we reduce that variation and shift the curve to the right in terms of getting a great general practice. I happen to believe that one way of doing that is through networks and federations. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to Vitality in Birmingham. Unquestionably, it will spread best practice within that group. The good CCGs are measuring the performance of GPs in their area much more intelligently than they used to. My noble friend Lord Bridgeman mentioned that his practice has very low referral rates. That is exactly the kind of information that should be measured on a GP-practice basis across all GP practices in CCG areas. For example, I have seen the metrics that the CCG in Camden looks at. You can see very clearly what the referral rates are from practices. The outliers can be seen and you can manage that down. They have had some very good results. If noble Lords would like to look at the atlas of variation, or at the Right Care model that NHS England is using to try to identify variation on a disease on a population basis to drive down that level of variation, I can well recommend that they do that.
I have come to the view—it is almost a statement of the bleeding obvious—that of all the tools that we have in our toolkit to try to secure improvement, be it in clinical outcomes, performance of trusts or in general practice, the best is identifying variation. The crucial thing about variation is that you have good-quality data. The first thing when you shine a light on clinical practice, for example, is that the clinicians will dispute the data—often rightly—so you have to demonstrate that the data are good. If you can prove the data, GPs, psychiatrists, acute physicians, surgeons and the like will take that as a challenge, because they tend to be competitive individuals. They like their own practice to be better than anybody else’s. Variation based on good-quality data is essential.
I will take away the comments made by my noble friend Lord Bridgeman on PMS. NHS England is committed over the five years to increasing spend on primary care by some 25% in real terms, whereas in the rest of the NHS it will be more like 15%. There will be more resource relative to other parts of the NHS going into primary care. They will want to be sure that they are getting real value out of any premium payments made under the PMS contract, but I will take that away if I can and write to my noble friend on that matter.
Governance is an extremely important issue. I had not thought about it in terms of where a network of general practice is almost the same size as the underlying CCG, which raises another issue about governance. We thought about it in terms of conflict of interest and the award of contracts, but that is a very serious point. NHS England is looking at these governance issues. I will bring this aspect to its attention.
I turn to what I had pre-prepared. My noble friend Lord Attlee is quite right that people should receive the right care from the right professional at a time convenient for them. However, we know that there is variation in people’s ability to access a GP and that those in full-time employment report lower levels of satisfaction with surgery opening hours than other groups. This is one of the reasons why, by 2020, everyone will be able to access routine GP appointments at evenings and weekends as part of our commitment to a seven-day NHS. That does not mean that every practice will be open seven days a week. We hope that by 2020 most general practices will be part of a network or federation and they will be able to offer that kind of service across the federation.
As I am sure my noble friend will understand, it is not possible to make a direct comparison between accessing GPs and other professionals such as solicitors, but he is, of course, right that people should be able to access a GP appointment when they need it. This is why the Government have already invested £175 million in the Prime Minister’s access fund to test improved and innovative access to GP services. I know that it is very spotty across the country still, but there is a growing understanding that the traditional model of GP practice—lots of small practices with two or three partners, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg —is not a viable model of delivering primary care for the future.
The traditional model is going to change. We will have networks and much bigger practices with 10 to 20 salaried partners supported by a much larger team of skilled people—pharmacists, physios, OTs, physician associates, prescribing nurses and the like. As well as providing extended hours, schemes are also looking at other ways of improving access for patients, including better use of telecare and health apps. This is an issue that noble Lords raised in the debate today. Not only will we see much more use of the telephone but, for example, the Hurley Group has an e-consultant system, and more people will use other ways of accessing primary care rather than being seen by the GP. This has a lot of legs, if you like. Apps such as Babylon, with which noble Lords will be familiar, and many other apps will make a face-to-face consultation with a GP less critical than it has been in the past.
My noble friend also asked about competition between surgeries. Here, I will point to what we are doing to increase choice for patients. In particular, my noble friend raised a concern about having to move from one practice to another when he moved house. I was pleased to hear that he is now aware of the steps that have been taken to make it easier for patients to exercise choice over which practice they are registered with. The GP contract for 2014-15 brought in a measure allowing GP practices to register new patients from outside their traditional boundaries, but without a duty to provide home visits for such patients, which seems reasonable in the circumstances. This measure is designed to increase flexibility in the system and the freedom that patients have to choose a GP practice that suits them. For example, commuters may wish to register with a practice close to their work as opposed to where they live or a patient who moves house may wish for continuity.
I return to the technology point about booking systems raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Take-up may be low at the moment—I think that 6.5% of bookings are done online—but I have no doubt that it will grow. If you look at the number of people now ordering basic food from supermarkets online, that is the direction of travel and it will speed up as time goes by.
The noble Lord raised the issue of reducing pressure on A&Es. In January, there was an increase of 10% in A&E attendances on the previous year. This is putting huge pressure on hospitals because if the front end of the hospital is being flooded, it makes it increasingly difficult for it to meet its waiting times on elective surgery, for example. Delivering more care to people outside hospital will not only lower the cost but provide better care because going into A&E with a fairly minor problem is not a great way of delivering care.
The noble Earl raised an issue about blood tests. Examples of improved access to diagnostic tests can be seen in both the vanguard sites which NHS England is developing. They are part of the new models of care programme and access fund schemes. For example, a vanguard in Birmingham offers consultant-led outpatient clinics and diagnostic facilities, such as X-rays. We often talk about integrating social care with healthcare, but integrating healthcare is also not a bad way to go. We have talked in the past about collocating GPs in A&Es or just outside them, but there are also many specialist outpatient clinics that can be delivered in primary care settings, so long as the facilities are there. We hope that the £1 billion infrastructure fund that we have announced will deliver better facilities closer to where people live.
We have a lot to be proud of but we are inclined to dwell on areas where we are failing and forget sometimes where we are achieving great success. The workforce is a serious issue. We are committed to finding 10,000 new GPs or GP equivalents in general practice by 2020 and we have increased the number of training places by 3,500 from this year and going forwards. To be honest, there is a risk around whether we will be able to get that number of people into general practice. However, without that kind of workforce commitment it will be difficult to deliver our ambitions.
So, it is a combination of technology, workforce and infrastructure. The five-year forward view is behind the thrust of the comments made by noble Lords and, if I am still here in 2021, I hope that I will be able to say that we have spread the best practice that exists in large parts of the country on a much wider basis. However, I am afraid that we will not have eliminated all variation.
Children: Maternal Care
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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The Earl of Dundee
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to promote ongoing maternal care for children.
The Earl of Dundee (Con)
My Lords, I look forward to the comments and guidance of colleagues speaking today and thank them very much for their interest in this debate. In my remarks I would like to touch on three aspects: first, the obvious connection between an early solid quality of childcare and a later stability of adulthood; secondly, a distinction between the effect of childcare within the home on the one hand and that in day centres on the other; following from this and, thirdly, the case for giving better financial incentives to mothers to stay at home with their children if that is what they might prefer to do in the first place.
On how it may have induced quality or otherwise, childcare policy should of course be judged on several fronts, not least, when the child is a bit older, through early education itself and the extent to which that may have reached all income groups. Here the Government deserve credit for their commitment to a package of schemes. This includes 15 hours of free early education for all three year-olds and for around 40% of the most disadvantaged two year-olds, administered by local authorities; and 30 hours of free childcare a week, worth around £5,000 a year per child, to working parents of three and four-year olds. In a written government paper, replying to the Affordable Childcare report’s recommendations, my noble friend the Minister announced these and other measures; that government response also followed our debate last year on that report, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland.
All political parties agree the priority of giving the child from the start the best possible deal of security, confidence and education. Each political party seeks to raise such standards, acknowledging the connection between an early quality of childcare and a later stability of adulthood, while also recognising the enormous contribution that success in this way can make to reducing the problems of society, such as the current huge increase in mental health ailments.
The next point is the distinction between the effect of childcare within the home and that outside it in day centres. All of us are grateful for the availability and national distribution of day centres. Many of these are very good, as well as essential to working mothers. Daycare can also assist academic performance from low-income homes and, along with parent-infant therapy, even improve children’s emotional well-being. Yet it is misleading to assert that babies or toddlers need stimulation, education or friends. The truth is that at that age they develop best as a result of close supervision by and affection from a familiar responsive adult in the home. Every study reveals that the child’s emotional security develops in a far more assured way through maternal bonding than it can ever hope to do in day centres, however good these may be.
This leads to the choices of mothers themselves. Recent opinion polls show that 80% of them believe that one parent should be able to stay at home, while 88% of mothers with very young children have said that the main reason for returning to work is financial pressure. My noble friend the Minister may concur that if mothers and families express such views, they should be offered wider choices than those at present. The objective would not be to discourage mothers who want to work from so doing. Instead, the aim would be to enable those mothers who prefer to stay at home to do that rather than working simply because they consider that the family cannot otherwise afford for them not to do so.
Of course, there is also the distinction between maternal and family home care of children who are under three years old and that for older children. Does my noble friend the Minister therefore consider that if in better corresponding to family wishes much wider choices should be offered in general, the Government should also analyse much more sharply in particular how these preferences may differ in regard to home care for children under three years old and that for older children?
Most countries operate either a joint taxation system or an individual tax system which allows families the option of being taxed jointly, either by transferable allowances or credits. Will my noble friend the Minister agree to review the merits of certain expedients, including: a system of transferable personal allowances where a non-earning spouse would be able to transfer the whole or part of the basic income tax personal allowance to their earning spouse; income-splitting, under which for tax purposes families would be able to split family income in two and allocate half to each partner, as well as keeping both personal tax allowances; and child allowances, already practised by some countries, which allow an extra tax allowance per child? In fact, a recent OECD assessment notes that, apart from Mexico, the UK is the only developed country with a population of more than 10 million to apply tax based on individual income with no allowances for spouses or transferable allowances.
Perhaps inevitably, there are trade-offs inherent in any government policy that seeks on the one hand to promote child development and on the other to facilitate parental employment. For example, cheap low-quality childcare might help parents to work but would not meet the Government’s child development objectives. Yet, through adoption of some of these financial and fiscal adjustments as proposed, that anomaly reflected by trade-offs could be quite considerably redressed. Such steps would assist ongoing maternal care for children. As a result, to a greater extent children would become more secure, society more stable and, through choice rather than necessity, family employment much fairer.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for securing this debate today and for introducing it in such eloquent fashion. Early years, the early start in life and maternal support were a key priority for the coalition Government. It is good to have the opportunity to return to this issue. We do so in the week that a new all-party group has been set up. I am not really a fan of new all-party groups because there are thousands of them already, but this is the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Conception to Age Two—The First 1,001 Days. That shows the consensus which now exists around the importance of the first 1,000 days of a child’s existence. Throughout the mother’s pregnancy and up until the age of two, approximately, is the key formative stage in any person’s life, physically, mentally and socially. I am glad that we now have that consensus about the importance of interventions during that time to make sure children grow up happy, healthy and well adjusted.
Needless to say, midwives have a key role in assisting mothers. This House, under the repeated instruction of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, has over the years come to understand the continuing importance of midwives, not just in the support and information that they give to women during pregnancy but also in their ability to prioritise post-natal care plans with women so that they, once they come out of hospital, have in place a way to see them through what is sometimes the most demanding not to say frightening time in a parent’s life.
It is recognised by all parties that continuity in midwifery is extremely important. Quite often, one hears women talking not about the fact that they could not see a midwife but that they had to see different midwives. On each occasion they had to start from scratch and go through all sorts of details, so that by the time they got to the end of a short consultation they had had very little time in which to have a proper discussion about the issues bothering them. In the light of the recent report by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, what impact does the Minister believe that the introduction of personal budgets, as she proposed, would have on the availability of midwives? What is his assessment of the impact that it might have on the training—and access to that training—of midwifery students, who are so important for the future?
On 1 October 2015, services for children aged under five were transferred from the NHS to local authorities, which are now required to make provision for maintaining the universal health visitor reviews as part of the healthy child programme—specifically, the antenatal promotion review; new baby review; six to eight week assessment; one year assessment; and two to two and a half year review. We know, because there is a lot of evidence now both from this country and abroad, that early intervention with disadvantaged families can have a profound effect on the life chances of a child. We know that the public health interventions that are needed have to be integrated at a local level with the NHS to ensure that the healthy child programme and family nurse partnerships can identify and work with those families who are most in need. We know that investment in health visitor programmes pays off in terms of the benefits that they bring to families and the way in which they enable children to thrive and not to need far more expensive interventions later on. The transfer of powers to local authorities is well founded in evidence. How will the programme’s implementation be monitored and evaluated in practice and when can we expect to see the initial results? When will we be able to see figures, particularly in relation to the eradication of child poverty, which is a target by which this and all previous Governments are judged?
I touch briefly on mothers, work and childcare, which the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, alluded to. According to the Department for Education survey of parents in 2014-15, two-thirds of mothers—about 66%—were in employment and one-third of mothers were not working. About half of those non-working mothers agreed that they would prefer to go out to work if they could arrange good-quality childcare that was convenient, reliable and affordable. Among the mothers who had returned to work in the previous two years, the most commonly reported factor that had influenced their return to work was finding a job that enabled them to combine work and childcare. The availability of not just childcare but of suitable childcare is the single biggest problem for working parents. It is quite often the case that it is impossible to find childcare for half a day. Yet, when children start at nursery schools, sometimes they go for only half a day, which leaves parents desperately trying to juggle work around the time they have to get back to pick up the kids. Equally, some parents have to work part time but can only arrange with their employers to work for, say, two full days. If they cannot find childcare to fit around that, their chances of moving back into work—as the majority wish to do—are severely hampered.
We in the Liberal Democrats supported the extension of free childcare, particularly to parents who were not in work: free childcare is a very early-stage intervention and makes a big difference to children in deprived communities. We also recognise the importance of the role of fathers and believe that shared parental leave should be the aim of all Governments, so that individual families can arrive at solutions that work best for them and their children. Will the present Government continue the work of the coalition in trying to work with employers to improve the availability of affordable high-quality childcare, so that those parents who wish to can continue to work while giving their children the best start in life, which is what the vast majority of parents in this country want?
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. I think I can say that I agree with every word that she said. I was particularly pleased that she referred to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and the importance of the continuity of care from midwives, specifically from practices where midwives are there at the beginning of pregnancy, deliver the child and keep in contact for a short time after pregnancy. That is definitely the ideal situation. I am also grateful to the noble Earl for calling this important debate. Many of these issues have been raised with the Minister in the course of the Childcare Bill. A particular concern is that many babies in childcare are often placed with the least qualified and experienced staff. I hope the Minister will perhaps have a chance to look at that.
I would like to address three issues: family learning as a means of promoting ongoing maternal care for children; the particular importance of continual maternal care from conception to the age of two; and the impact of homelessness on maternal care. I hope to concentrate most of my remarks on the area of the Minister’s immediate responsibility, which is schools. I begin by welcoming the new investment in schools by the Chancellor. I am delighted that he has chosen to introduce the sugar tax and will invest the benefit of that in education. The Government have also committed to expand still further the number of academy schools. I hope I may encourage noble Lords of all parties or none to use any business contacts they may have to promote application for high-quality sponsorship. Whatever one may think of academies it is becoming clear that it is vital for our children that there are sufficient excellent sponsors.
On family learning, I suggest that continuing good maternal care throughout a child’s development is becoming increasingly important. On the one hand, fathers are becoming increasingly absent. By the 2030s about 30% of our children will be growing up without a father in the home. On the other hand, housing continues to be in short supply and children are being obliged to remain at school: they cannot move out. It is becoming increasingly important that mothers stick with their children through the difficult adolescent years. Family learning can strengthen maternal relationships through the early school years and so help mothers tolerate their teenagers later.
Family learning can also hit another number of important goals. It improves children’s educational attainment. It engages fathers more effectively in their families. It can help migrant families to settle well, and may help combat childhood and adult obesity. I developed an understanding of family learning by meeting foster carers who had benefited from the prepared reading developed by Dr Andrea Warman at the British Association for Adoption & Fostering. Many of the foster carers themselves had difficulties at school and were taught to draw on those difficulties in efforts to understand the challenges that some of their foster children experienced. The training package gave the foster carers the confidence to read regularly with their children, and the results were significantly improved literacy results for their foster children and a reduction in placement breakdowns—foster parents and foster children sticking with each other. John Coughlan initiated paired reading at the local authority at which he is director of children’s services in Hampshire. Early indications suggested that paired reading also reduced the breakdown in placements in children’s homes.
I then had the opportunity to meet mothers at one of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education events to celebrate family learning. One mother had had a heroin addiction but was now able to work, thanks to the confidence that she had gained through family learning. Another mother had gone to get driving lessons following her success; another still described her joy at taking her son on a field trip to explore the natural history of a field and pond.
More recently, I spoke with the mother of a child who graduated from the Pimlico Academy, which the Minister established. The mother is the catering manager in a local secondary school and has a second, part-time job in a launderette. She is an immigrant of African origin; she said that in her country mothers will sell their jewellery to secure a good education for their child. Every school day, she and her son and daughter read together for 20 minutes, looking up any difficult words. She spoke of her pride in her daughter’s academic success. Now reading physics at a prestigious university, she gained 12 GCSEs, A*s or As, and four A-levels. Family learning arguably strengthens maternal bonds with children and certainly leads to significant increased attainment. If the Minister wishes to extend academic success to areas of generational deprivation, such as County Durham, he could do worse than to consult the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education and the Workers’ Educational Association. The WEA has spoken to me about how it would position its teachers near the primary school gates to engage parents as their children begin their education.
No doubt, the Minister is also concerned about childhood obesity. Only this morning I heard about a project led by North Eastern Electricity which provides parents with cooking classes so that they can avoid wasting money on takeaways and feed their children more healthily. We heard on the “Today” programme that many schools require their pupils to run a mile a day. Schools find that their pupils lose weight, sleep better and have more concentration in lessons. So it may be possible to offer opportunities to parents to learn about exercise and so encourage their children to walk, and to run with their children. In all the above, I remember my own family experience and the importance for me of learning with my mother and father things such as cookery, reading and other study.
I commend to the Minister NIACE’s report on family learning, chaired by my noble friend Lady Howarth of Breckland, the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children. With the expansion of academies, free schools and early years care, and the additional funds, I hope that he may wish to weave family learning much more strongly into what he offers.
On the importance of the continuity of maternal care between conception to the age of two, which the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, emphasised strongly in what he said, I hope that I can pay tribute to the many parliamentary colleagues who have raised the importance of early years to successive Governments. I think particularly of the right honourable Iain Duncan Smith MP, Graham Allen MP, Andrea Leadsom MP and the vice-chair and officers of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Conception to Age Two—The First 1001 Days, to which the noble Baroness referred. Then there are Tim Loughton MP, Frank Field MP and others. Following on last year’s report for the parliamentary group, Building Great Britons, we recently heard from health professionals from Croydon how their trust was enacting the report’s inquiry in building a seamless partnership between midwives and health visitors, so extending even further the continuity of care to which the noble Baroness referred. I commend the report to your Lordships and am very grateful for the efforts of midwives, visitors and other health professionals to provide excellent perinatal care to mothers.
As a society, we need to give every attention to perinatal maternal care, if mothers are successfully to make a strong, continued attachment to their infant, which is vital to their child’s future health, education, economic independence and own family. I applaud again the Government’s investment, and that of the previous coalition Government, in health visiting, and indeed the resurrection of that service.
In my final area, I would like to explore the importance of homelessness on maternal care. Here again the perinatal period is a particular concern, and I much appreciate the work that the London Scholars at the University of East London have undertaken in the last six months of the effects of homelessness on perinatal maternal care. I await those conclusions. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, for undertaking to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, that the Government would review policy on those pregnant women in detention, awaiting immigration removal, on Report of the Immigration Bill. Regrettably, in recent years the number of homeless children has increased to 100,000 in England alone. The Government’s legislation on housing and planning and their investment are a golden opportunity to make more secure affordable housing available to families with low incomes. I declare my interest as a landowner and residential landlord.
Again, I am very grateful to the noble Earl for calling this important debate and look forward to the Minister’s reply.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester
My Lords, I am also grateful to the noble Earl for securing this debate because I am utterly convinced about the importance of ongoing maternal care for children. I speak as the father of two adopted children. I have learned through experience and study how crucial is the relationship that children have with their mother. It is an essential and defining part of the process of perinatal life that a bond is formed between child and mother, regardless of the latter’s conscious attitude towards her baby.
Research shows that healthy development depends on the quality of attachment from primary carers during the first three years of life when the brain’s structural plasticity is most available to being shaped by interactions with parents. In systemic terms, there is a benign, recursive, interactional loop operating between parent and child such that the baby’s brain responds to parental input—love, care, et cetera—by developing and growing physically and psychologically. This in turn triggers the parent or carer to provide more love and care.
As the noble Earl has said, the Government deserve much credit for their determination to improve the lot of children. I do, however, believe that other measures would help significantly. With this is mind, I applaud the Motion which the noble Earl and others introduced to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in September 2015, advocating, among other things, financial assistance for maternal care in the home for a minimum of three years, ensuring that such a care subsidy is independent of paid work. The organisation CARE, summarising its latest annual review of taxation in this country, said:
“According to our most recent research, a single-earner married couple with two children on the average OECD wage are liable to 35% more tax than the OECD average”.
Of course mothers should be able to go back to work when they wish but CARE boss Nola Leach said, when the report was published:
“Stay-at-home parents are making an important investment in their children and yet at present they end up being discriminated against by our current tax system”.
I should add that I have nothing against single parents or working parents: I am one. However, I would like the tax break for couples, which was announced in April 2014, to be extended, along the lines that the noble Earl suggested, to a 100% transferable allowance, which would carry far more significance and would mean that couples could benefit to the tune of £2,000 a year. The campaigning group Mothers at Home Matter argues that it matters for families to have choices in care, so that all are able to choose what works for them in their unique circumstances. That will surely be for the good of all.
Mothers are also presently concerned about conditionality placed on households on the new universal credit. Will family responsibilities at home be properly factored in? How much pressure will there be on second earners to return to work? Preliminary research seems to indicate that more mothers will be “encouraged” to sign up for interviews when children are 12 months old, even when they have significant care responsibilities at home.
As has been intimated, our concern should not just be about the early years: it is important for someone to be there for children in the middle and teenage years as family circumstances and pressures change. The availability of decent, part-time, paid work, particularly during secondary school, is key to achieving balance for some parents with care responsibilities. We need, in sum, a greater recognition of the loving one-to-one care that babies need and of children’s need for family time at all ages. We need to do all we can to facilitate it.
At the same time, while ongoing maternal care is important, so is parenting in general. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, pointed to the importance of family and family learning. Churches are also doing much to provide training on parenting, for which there is an appalling lacuna in our society. The Mothers’ Union runs and trains facilitators for its “passionate about parenting” course. A participant said:
“This parents’ group helped me in so many ways. We talked in small groups and helped each other, my children found my parenting handbook (a resource I was given that I could take away and read through at home) so I thought I had been busted. But it was great, after a few weeks my 18-year-old gave me a hug. The first in years and he wasn’t the teenager I was having problems with!”.
Similarly, Care for the Family runs many positive parenting programmes, and Alpha provides parenting children and parenting teenagers courses.
As the father of adopted children, I know that the separation of children from their mothers is immensely traumatic. It is referred to by adoption specialist Nancy Verrier as “the primal wound”. It takes a great deal of love on the part of adoptive parents to begin to heal this wound. That shows the importance of the maternal bond and maternal care. It can be done, as was done by my wife. Tragically, she died when my children were aged nine and 15. That brought home to me, by tragic means, the importance of ongoing maternal care.
It is, of course, not true to say that healthy adults cannot develop if they have experienced a lack of maternal care. There are alternatives to it; attachment from other loving and caring adults, most especially fathers, can be very nurturing and healing. These are important alternatives, but no substitute for ongoing maternal care.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, for initiating the debate. Perhaps he and I are the only two people in the Room who know that our titles are very closely associated—although maybe not in their level. Invergowrie is a village on the outskirts of Dundee, where I spent all but the first 18 months of my life. I have an affinity in that sense, if not with the noble Earl.
I should also say that my mother was a teacher. At that time, when female teachers got married they had to give up the job. That seems incredible these days. I am sure that that has brought a sharp intake of breath from the noble Lord, Lord Nash, but that is what happened. In that sense, what the noble Earl seeks happened in some way for some women because they were forced to give up what they had trained to do. They could take other employment, of course, but they could not follow their chosen vocation. I am obviously not advocating that and it is long in the past, but I certainly appreciate the noble Earl’s motivation in the debate. He introduced it in a manner that underlines his clear commitment to ensuring that every child has the best possible start in life. I hope he will forgive me if I say I will not comment on his fiscal proposals. As far as I am concerned there is quite enough in the education portfolio, so I will leave that to others.
As the parent of a child currently in reception, I can say from experience that I appreciate the benefit of the integrated approach to early learning and care promoted by the early years foundation stage framework. It provides a clear set of common principles and commitments for professionals to deliver quality early education and childcare experiences to all children. Some changes were made to the framework in 2014, which have strengthened standards for the learning, development and care of children from birth to the age of five, producing a uniformity that, in theory at least, offers all children the same opportunities. But, of course, I think we know that life is not like that.
There is no equality of opportunity for newborn babies. That is much to be regretted, because the first two years are crucial in shaping a child’s life chances. When a child is just 22 months old it can already be accurately predicted what her or his educational attainment will be at 22 years of age. The noble Earl said that studies reveal that a child’s emotional security develops in a more assured way through maternal bonding than in day centres or nurseries. I certainly agree that maternal—and, let us not underestimate it, paternal—bonding is essential from the minute the child draws its first breath. However, the extent to which bonding alone can sustain the crucial early development of a child depends to a great extent on the home environment to which the baby is introduced. That is where I part company with the noble Earl, because I am convinced that it is both unrealistic and, in most cases, unfair to expect the mother alone to keep the child at home and provide it with all the support that it needs in its first two years.
We have already heard the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, say that two-thirds of women either want or need to seek employment, but the reason I believe a mother needs support is that it may be her first child, in which case she is on a really steep learning curve, or if it is a subsequent child then, for obvious reasons, the time available to have sole responsibility for that child is limited, so she should seek support from a variety of sources. Not least among those is interaction with her contemporaries as mothers, in formal or informal group settings.
In 2010-11 report after report emphasised the enormous importance of early intervention, including the Tickell review of the early years and two reports by Graham Allen MP. At that time it seemed that a cross-party consensus was emerging to prioritise early intervention, but it seems that that soon evaporated, because the coalition Government began to cut early intervention budgets and poorer families have been suffering ever since. Hardest hit, in that sense, has been the network of Sure Start centres. When Sure Start was established by the Labour Government in 1998 the aim was to provide an accessible children’s centre in every community. Each centre would offer a wide range of high-quality services for families with children under the age of five. Sure Start was immediately popular and a network of some 3,500 centres was quickly established.
What was also established was that Sure Start works. There is comprehensive, independent evidence that it delivers quantifiable outcomes and that it is immensely popular with families. However, since 2010 funding has been cut by some 35% and over one-fifth of all children’s centres have now closed, meaning that Sure Start is approaching a point of no return. Last year the Government promised a consultation on the future of Sure Start. We still await this and I very much hope that the Minister can tell noble Lords today when it is likely to begin.
Sure Start was founded on the basis of extensive academic research. There is a plethora of evidence that demonstrates beyond doubt that Sure Start works. The national evaluation of Sure Start has been analysing the long-term development of 5,000 families who used Sure Start when their children were young. The evaluation has found clear evidence that children attending Sure Start centres are less likely to be overweight and more likely to be immunised; they have better social development and are less likely to offend in later life. Parents attending Sure Start centres provide more stable home environments and are more likely to move into work. It is a win-win situation for parents and children, yet the network is having to be dismantled.
Children’s centres have been found to be immensely popular with parents and evidence shows that they have been successful in reaching the parents who are likely to be the most disadvantaged. Also, the beneficial effects for parents persist at least two years after their last contact with Sure Start; often, social interventions do not have such a sustained impact. These findings have been reinforced by the children’s centre census produced annually by the charity 4Children. Its 2015 census found that, from 600 responses, 90% of parents reported that their children’s centre had a positive impact on their child and 83% reported that it had a positive impact on themselves. Tellingly, 80% reported that life would be harder for their family without their children’s centre.
It has been suggested by Government, or perhaps by some of those speaking on their behalf, that Sure Start is dominated by the sharp-elbowed middle classes. Evidence completely contradicts this. Independent Oxford University research in 2015 found that disadvantaged families use children’s centres for an average five months longer than more affluent families. This is because,
“the open-access, walk-in activities encouraged vulnerable families to take part because they did not feel there was a stigma attached to using the Centres”.
The Government have attempted to conceal some of the cuts that Sure Start has suffered. In 2011 the ring-fence established by the Labour Government was ended. In 2013 Sure Start funding was merged into local authorities’ general funding, and we all know what has since happened to that, most recently in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement and, indeed, in yesterday’s Budget. Last year the charity Barnardo’s called on the Government to act to stop the life being squeezed out of children’s centres as many local authorities face impossible stresses and strains on their budgets.
No doubt the Minister will note that the amount of free childcare for three and four year-olds is to be extended, which is an important step, even if it will perhaps not be quite as extensive as we were first led to believe. He will also refer to the fact that more children aged five are making good progress against the early years foundation stage profile, and that is, of course, to be welcomed. More children are reaching the expected level of development in maths and literacy as well as in the key areas of social and emotional development, physical development and language. That is all to be welcomed, but these are measurements of children at the age of five. The progress made by many of them could be much better and much more likely to be sustained if more of them had an early opportunity to benefit from the support provided in so many forms by children’s centres, whose value is widely appreciated. It is to be regretted that the Government do not appear to share that appreciation.
It surely goes without saying that maternal care is of prime importance to any child, but it must be enhanced by external influences: everything from health visitors to educational psychologists and the benefits of interacting with their contemporaries in a secure, welcoming setting. Children’s centres have a vital role to play in that, and I invite the Minister to acknowledge that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Dundee for calling a debate on this important subject and congratulate him on an excellent speech. I also thank other noble Lords who have contributed. My noble friend had a number of suggestions about how the overall system could be improved. Our provisions for flexible working and for parental and shared parental leave are now substantial. We have one of the longest periods of paid maternity leave in the EU and our rate of maternity pay exceeds the requirements of the EU directive. I am tempted to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Watson, about the point my noble friend made about financial incentives, but it is rather beyond my pay grade. On the tax incentive to which he and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester referred, I will write to him and refer the matter to Her Majesty’s Treasury.
I think we all agree on the importance of maternal care and attachment in early childhood and its implications for longer term social and emotional development. International and UK studies have shown that the foundations for virtually every aspect of human development—physical, intellectual and emotional—are laid in early childhood. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to the importance of this. What happens to a child from the womb to the age of five has lifelong effects on many aspects of health and well-being from obesity, heart disease and mental health to educational achievement and economic status.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, referred to the importance of health visitors, and I am pleased to report that there are now 4,000 health visitors, which is nearly double the number there were in May 2010. This expansion supports effective, sustainable services that help families to give all children the best start and promote local communities’ health and well-being.
The evidence-based healthy child programme is the key universal public health service for improving the health and well-being of children. It aims to prevent problems in child health and development and to contribute to a reduction in health inequalities. The healthy child programme is the overarching service for the provision of interventions to strengthen parent-child relationships. Health visitors’ support can identify families who will benefit from extra help, including support for parents and children early in life. This can include referring families to specialist services, arranging access to support groups and practical support. I should mention here our extremely successful troubled families programme.
The noble Baroness asked about the introduction of personal budgets and the impact on midwives and on access to training for student midwives. The Department of Health and NHS England are considering all the recommendations of the maternity review and more detail on implementation will follow shortly. She also asked how the healthy child programme will be implemented and monitored post its transfer to local authorities and when we will get the initial results and figures, especially in relation to child poverty. The Department of Health has commissioned Public Health England to review mandation arrangements for the healthy child programme. Post transfer to local authorities, Public Health England is expected to report its findings later this year. The life chances strategy is expected to be published in July and will set out the Government’s plans for improving the life chances of all children. The strategy will introduce new indicators for measuring children’s life chances. The noble Baroness referred to childcare and I am delighted to report, as I have in the House, that 96% of three and four year-olds are accessing it and, of course, we have had a massive increase in childcare places over the past six years, an increase of nearly 250,000 places. I assure the noble Baroness that we will continue to push for more quality, available and flexible childcare.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, made a number of points in relation to this Government’s policies ranging from sugar tax to academies. I am extremely grateful for his support, and I share his great concern about absent fathers, a problem I see constantly in our schools. He also referred to obesity, and I was pleased that the Chancellor yesterday doubled the pupil sports premium for primary schools and created an extra fund for all schools to extend their day for activities, particularly sport.
There are also opportunities through schools for parents to learn more themselves and to work with their children. Good schools have been particularly good at involving parents in school life and bringing them in for assessment, and an effective use of IT can be helpful in this regard. The noble Earl referred to family learning, which is obviously integral to strengthening paternal relationships and widening horizons. I am delighted that following the spending review, the Government are protecting funding for the core adult skills participation budgets—in cash terms, £1.5 billion. This will support families that are socially disadvantaged and will build confidence and resilience.
I am grateful to the noble Earl for his comments on family and child homelessness, and I share his concern in this regard. The Government believe that the most important thing for a family who have become homeless is to resolve their housing crisis and get them into settled accommodation as soon as possible. To do this, the Government have invested more than half a billion pounds in the past five years, enabling local authorities to help nearly a million households in becoming homeless. I also remind the noble Earl that the number of children in temporary accommodation is just over 100,000, which I agree is far too many, but it remains well below the peak achieved in 2006, when it was more than 130,000.
The Autumn Statement announced real-terms protection for central funding for homelessness, demonstrating our commitment to this area. Further support was available in the Budget, which included £100 million to deliver low-cost, second-stage accommodation for rough sleepers, £10 million over two years to support and scale up innovative ways to prevent and reduce rough sleeping, doubling the funding for the rough sleeping social impact bond announced in the Autumn Statement from £5 million to £10 million, and other action to decrease the number of rough sleepers. I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester. He referred to the work of the church in improving parenting skills and, of course, I pay tribute to the church’s work in the whole area of schools.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred in detail to children’s centres. The Government are considering their policy in this area as part of the development of the cross-government life chances strategy and plan to publish details in the summer. At that point we will make clear how stakeholders and members of the public can contribute. We want a strong network of children’s centres, and we believe the debate should be about the effectiveness of those services. Quite a few centres have merged, and some have closed. The debate should be about the effectiveness of the services, not purely about counting buildings.
We have also substantially increased the money available for childcare. The 4Children’s survey of children’s centres suggested that more than a million families frequently accessed children’s centres in 2015. This estimate is unchanged since these statistics were first published in 2013. As the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, the latest Early Years Foundation Stage profile data reveal that an increasing proportion of children are achieving a good level of achievement at the age of five, 66% in 2015 compared with 52% in 2013, which is a substantial and impressive increase. I thank all noble Lords for contributing to today’s very stimulating debate.
Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital: Redevelopment
(8 years, 8 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for the redevelopment of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore; and in particular what the timings will be for that redevelopment.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)
My Lords:
“I am very grateful to have an opportunity of raising the question of the future of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore. I also appreciate the courtesy of the Minister in coming to the House to reply. I hope that he will respond positively to my remarks on the future of the hospital”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/5/1984; col. 1413.]
I agree with those words, which are very relevant to today’s Question for Short Debate. However, they are not my words: I was quoting from the introductory remarks of Hugh Dykes—now the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, in this House—who was then the MP for Harrow East when he opened his debate on 25 May 1984, over 30 years ago. In his response, the Minister, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health, John Patten MP—again, now a Member of your Lordships’ House—referred to the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, then a Minister, answering a Question in the House of Lords on the same topic from Lord Diamond. I could have quoted from a debate in Westminster Hall sponsored by the current honourable Member for Harrow East, Bob Blackman, on 4 March last year, at col. 347.
So the issue of the redevelopment of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital has been debated for 30 years. In that time there have been 13 independent reviews, all of which have concluded that the hospital should remain as an individual organisation, continuing to provide on the Stanmore site the excellent care that it has done for over 100 years of its existence.
The hospital has a national and international reputation for excellence and is the UK’s leading provider of specialist orthopaedic treatment and surgery. It is the nation’s largest provider of complex spinal surgery and it trains 25% of the nation’s orthopaedic surgeons. It is rated in the top 20% of hospitals in the national in-patient survey. Its 1,400 staff—70% of whom provide clinical services—look after some 15,000 in-patients and over 100,000 out-patient attendances every year. The care provided by the hospital is highly rated by the Care Quality Commission, which gave it outstanding for medical care, outstanding for clinical outcomes for patients, outstanding for innovative surgery to improve the quality of patients’ lives, and outstanding for the executive board, which it declared as,
“demonstrating leadership and vision for the hospital”.
It judged children and young people services as needing improvement, a factor being that the location of the wards for these patients meant that they had to be taken outside the buildings in order to access and return from theatre—one of the many reasons why a decision to proceed on the redevelopment is now, after over 30 years, not only pressing but urgent. A decision must be taken and acted on.
Indeed, the National Clinical Advisory Team review concluded that reprovision of services on the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital site was urgent given the condition of the estate and the potential impact on quality of services of any further delay. That is not surprising as some of the buildings go back to the Second World War, built for the airmen defending our shores in that conflict. They are totally unsuited for today’s needs of a modern health service.
Another review concluded that some £50 million was required to be spent on the backlog of maintenance and repairs to bring it up to the required standards. That is more than the cost of delivery of the proposed development now being considered.
So how does it get done? It is not too surprising—those of us who have worked in the public sector will possibly have experience with projects—that the redevelopment of this hospital has gone through several iterations over 30 years. Hopes have been raised and then dashed for a variety of reasons. But now, with a strong executive leadership and vision commended by the Care Quality Commission, the hospital has the best chance yet to get the go-ahead. Some in the hospital and its partners say it is the last chance. One said to me, “Brenda, it is a bit like the Elvis song, ‘It’s Now or Never’”, and, frankly, that is how it is seen by many associated with the hospital.
The outline business case was approved by the NHS Trust Development Authority in March last year. It came, unsurprisingly, with conditions, all of which have been addressed. The full business case is scheduled to be officially approved by the hospital board on 30 March and then submitted to the TDA. The hospital is not asking the Government for enormous sums of money, just £40 million—yes, that is a lot of money in anyone’s terms but, when you put it in the big picture, it is not. Half of that £40 million would be repaid immediately as land is released to a private development partner. The balance of £20 million would be a loan to be repaid by the hospital over 20 years. This is not a PFI scheme; the hospital will not be tied into a project of crippling fees on a never-ending merry-go-round. The TDA has said that it needs eight weeks after receipt of the final business plan to approve the money. Against that promise, the hospital has planned on a contract signature to go ahead by the end of June with Balfour Beatty, which is lined up to start on the site in July this year.
Mitigating the cost of the project will require some of the 112-acre site to be sold for redevelopment. Planning permission is in place and there is no local campaign against the project. It is all going in a positive direction, except for the decision. The hospital board submitted the necessary land sale part of the project to the NHS TDS Investment Committee in March this year, which was approved. The cost to build will be £42.5 million, which is why the initial £40 million investment is needed. The first build will be a ward block and completion of the first stage will allow for the sale of the land for redevelopment—decanting into the new building will release the land. This will bring in, according to the professional assessments, an estimated £20 million, which will be repaid immediately to the NHS.
The project is visionary and will secure not only world-class facilities for a hospital providing world- class treatments, but more than 300 new homes locally, including affordable housing, as well as staff accommodation for the hospital itself. The plans include a new private patient care centre, which will generate income from outside the NHS both nationally and internationally, as the hospital has international patients. Investment of £23.5 million, of which £16.5 million is from University College London, with the balance coming from the sale of the orthopaedic hospital land, will be used to build a new bioengineering hub, with UCL. This will increase the orthopaedic hospital’s role as a national research reference centre. In addition, the redevelopment will provide for the expansion of the current National Orthopaedic Alliance vanguard and getting it right first time programmes. All this will help to realise improved care and savings for not just this hospital but the wider NHS.
Before I close, I should cover the issue of the current financial position of the hospital. For the last six years it has been in surplus. This year, for the first time in quite a long period, as with the overwhelming majority of hospitals in the NHS, the hospital will be in deficit by circa £5 million—not the eye-watering amounts that we have seen elsewhere. That is for the year, not the month, as it is in some other parts of the NHS, particularly in London. It is most certainly not something that should cause a delay in approval to go ahead.
This hospital is not part of a big trust group; it is not, in that sense, a local hospital simply providing services for people in the area. It therefore has no active campaign group making a noise to make sure the development goes ahead. It is a national, and international, provider of excellent care. It deserves support in our UK national interest, with an ageing population needing the very services the hospital provides, because it is a centre of excellence leading the way in so many areas of speciality—and, yes, because it is so highly regarded internationally too.
I could put it no better than the statement of the Care Quality Commission itself, which said:
“The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital is a recognised world leader in treating patients with complex orthopaedic conditions”.
My request today, and the purpose of this debate, is to ask the Minister and his department for their full and active support in getting approval for the final business case to go ahead. Furthermore, I ask the Minister for his department to commit and lend support to the eight-week timetable given by the TDA. I ask for support to be given in minimising the barriers to the April to June period, given the history of delay, and that a clear, yes or no, decision is given, not a maybe.
I thank all Members of the House who have given up their time today to take part in this debate; it is just one hour but it is very important. I look forward to their contributions as much as I do to the Minister’s.
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, on securing this brief debate on the future of the RNOH at Stanmore. I first came to know the hospital some 30 years ago when my wife was transferred there from Stoke Mandeville to continue her rehabilitation from the injuries she had suffered in the attempt by IRA/Sinn Fein to murder Prime Minister Thatcher. Indeed, until this year when the deterioration in her health has made the journey there from our home in East Anglia too arduous for her, my wife had continued to be a patient at Stanmore.
Through those years, we have also seen the development of the splendid charitable trust facilities to provide for both able-bodied and disabled people alongside the hospital, and they are an important part of the whole complex. Less happily, we have also seen the inability of successive Governments to get on with the long overdue replacement of the tatty, inefficient buildings which have hampered the skilled and loyal staff in their offering of the treatment needed by patients, not least the spinally injured ones, from around London and the Home Counties. We know that the extent of recovery from serious spinal injury is critically dependent on whether the patient can receive immediate care in a specialist unit. That is why Stanmore is so important to London and the Home Counties. I have lobbied many Ministers for many years over this rebuilding programme. At least it is now a great comfort that the most pernicious proposal—and I use that word as I usually use words, in its literal sense—of a PFI has been rejected. They are the most awful device which has ever been created in an attempt to dodge the rules of public sector accounting.
It seems, at last, that something like the charitable finance initiative, proposed by Mr Laurie Marsh and others, to finance the rebuilding of the hospital out of the profits from residential development of surplus land, is now to go ahead. I am, however, still concerned that—if I read the briefings right—the development of the surplus land is expected to yield only £20 million. That seems a pathetically small sum of money to come from the sale and development of residential land in the Stanmore area. It is extraordinarily small, and I hope that the Minister will look very closely at how that sum has been reached. Finally, I give heartfelt thanks for the great kindness and the care which my wife received at Stanmore, and I say to my noble friend Lord Prior, come on, for goodness’ sake get on with it.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Dean for this vital and timely debate. I am pleased to speak in the presence of the chairman and the chief executive. I am very glad to count myself among the friends of the RNOH. I have absolutely no experience or knowledge of the NHS, but I am speaking out of gratitude because my husband is a very appreciative patient at the royal national hospital, so I am in a similar position to the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit.
My husband has an NHS position, which I should mention: he is chair of Whittington Health, a trust in north London which consists of a hospital and community services. He was initially treated at the Whittington last autumn for a very serious, life-threatening infection and received the most marvellous and dedicated care from the medics there, whom he and I cannot thank enough. Thanks to them and his own fighting spirit, he pulled through, but his leg had to be amputated, so he passed into the care of the royal national hospital, Stanmore, initially as an in-patient for five days. To be frank, my only personal experience derives from being a visitor there for those few days.
I was, it is fair to say, aghast when I first saw the hospital. “It’s a bunch of Nissen huts”, I exclaimed, which is, of course, precisely what much of it is. I did not see the whole estate, but as it was built in the 1940s, I think that that was fair comment. We went in through a heavy, plastic door, which was all that kept the winter winds from the ward into which we entered directly. So my second thought on arrival was, “What on earth are the heating bills?”. My third thought was that, on a dark winter night, having to find the visitors’ loo outside, across the road and down some steps was less than congenial.
So my first point is that this is no way to treat a national, indeed, an international, centre of excellence. The staff are first class and deliver excellent care, as recognised by the “outstanding” rating given to the hospital by the Care Quality Commission in 2014 for its medical care, which includes the rehabilitation from which my husband is benefiting. However, the staff, the patients, their families and the community are being horribly let down by the appallingly bad, old and decrepit physical conditions. The CQC said the hospital’s premises were,
“not fit for purpose – it does not provide an adequate environment to care and treat patients”,
which is, no doubt, why the ratings for out-patients and children’s services were, “requires improvement”. I did not see the children’s wards but I am told that they are the worst of all.
What is it doing to staff morale and the ability to attract the brightest and the best that the powers that be are stalling over the green light for desperately needed redevelopment? With the best will in the world, the morale of patients and their families, at a time when they may be very vulnerable, whether after an amputation or for another reason, will not be increased by such grotty surroundings.
Secondly, I want to express deep frustration at the delay in getting the go-ahead from the NHS Trust Development Authority. This unelected quango— I use that term not to be abusive but as a statement of fact—seems to be the body on which everything now depends. It approved the outline business case a year ago, and I do not understand why it takes so much to get to the final sign-off and permission to borrow.
When the local MP, Bob Blackman, with whom I have been fortunate to have a word, initiated a short but very valuable debate a year ago, the Minister, Dr Daniel Poulter, rightly said of the RNOH:
“With the care it provides to its patients, it is one of the best centres in the world … a leader in the field of orthopaedics in the UK and worldwide”—
including through training and research, and—
“produces the very best possible care and results for patients … The RNOH is renowned worldwide for its clinical excellence”,
He said:
“I am aware that most of the buildings at Stanmore date from the 1940s, and many are no longer appropriate or fit for purpose for the high-quality care and excellent clinical outcomes that the RNOH provides for its patients”.
He agreed:
“The RNOH’s proposed redevelopment of the Stanmore site is key to ensuring that it can continue to improve the care it provides”.
I was a little worried by his comment that the RNOH,
“manages to maintain high standards of outcomes despite the condition of the estate ”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/3/15; cols. 350-51WH.]
That is only through the heroic efforts of its staff, which no doubt cannot be taken indefinitely for granted. If they are being heroic about rising above their surroundings, I would prefer their heroic efforts to go into patient care.
Dr Poulter acknowledged the frustration at the delays, saying that due diligence was necessary to ensure financial viability. That is understandable, but the TDA has been on the case for three years, asking for more and more information. As we have heard, the deliberations have gone on for 30 years. Planning permission was received three years ago, which was, of course, the result of a transparent and democratic process by the London Borough of Harrow.
Given the high degree of centralisation of the NHS, I am bemused by the gap between expressed ministerial support and the lack of speedy output from the TDA. Surely the Government cannot be saying that they have no levers to encourage the TDA to get on with it. The medical case for a modern, state-of-the-art hospital seems unanswerable, and it seems that the financial case is equally sound and straightforward. It was given by the noble Baroness. The debate that Bob Blackman MP held was followed five days later by TDA approval of the outline business case. Let us hope that we, through this debate, thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, might have a similar catalytic effect on its final decision. I look forward to hearing from the Minister that this will indeed be the case.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate and to join colleagues in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, on securing the debate and on the way she introduced it. She absolutely captured a sense of what the RNOH is and has been, and what it means for the patients whom it has looked after.
In that respect, I share with my noble friend Lord Tebbit a sense of gratitude for how the RNOH has looked after Margaret Tebbit. Indeed, it was at exactly the same time 30 years ago that I first got to know Stanmore because I was the Civil Service Private Secretary to my noble friend, who was then Secretary of State. When I was not carrying his box to and fro at Stanmore, I was learning about the hospital. About 25 years later, it was somewhat ironic that my noble friend was lobbying me as Secretary of State to secure the rebuilding of Stanmore. I believe he was right when he said that it would have been wholly wrong to have pursued the PFI route to secure the rebuilding of Stanmore. It was my responsibility in 2011 to say that that was not the way I thought Stanmore should go. I am pleased that that is not the way that the RNOH chose to go.
I will quickly say three things. First, I believe in specialist institutes in the NHS. That was not always the case. I remember that probably 25 or so years ago, Stanmore was being pushed to merge with Northwick Park. Subsequently, there were other proposals for the hospital to be absorbed into a large trust. All the evidence tells us that this is the wrong way to go. Amazingly, specialist institutes in the orthopaedic field, not just the RNOH but the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Gobowen near Oswestry, obtain excellent results. That is true for clinical outcomes and for innovation and research. When we introduced the friends and family test, I was especially struck by what fantastic numbers the specialist institutes, such as Stanmore and Gobowen, got on recommendations through the friends and family test from staff and patients. That is incontrovertible. That being the case, we have to find ways to support them where they are.
Secondly, the partnerships that they create are tremendously important. Papworth Hospital in my former constituency is going alongside Addenbrooke’s. It will remain a specialist institute but it needs to be alongside for clinical partnerships and research partnerships. Given its location, Stanmore does not need to move anywhere else for these partnerships to function. Indeed, as the noble Baroness said in introducing the debate, it has drawn UCL into an excellent bioengineering centre based at Stanmore. That is evidence of the partnerships that are integral to specialist institutes’ future success, not least because they need to be part of the academic health science networks to make that success work. Creating those partnerships is tremendously important and can secure its position.
Thirdly, and finally, however, we need to understand where the difficulties lie. RNOH is an extremely well-run hospital and has been for a very long time. The calibre of staffing and clinical leadership is excellent. For example, when we looked at MRSA bloodstream infections, notwithstanding the circumstances in which RNOH works, I do not think it has had such an infection for about seven years. That is a wonderful record. When you look at clinical leadership, Tim Briggs, a clinician at Stanmore, has been integral to the work that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, and his team are doing on delivering improvement and efficiency by demonstrating how it was done at the RNOH.
However, since the NHS is the overwhelming customer for this work, it is very hard if the tariff does not support it. We must recognise that the heart of the issue lies in the prudential work done by the TDA—and before it by the strategic health authorities and others—to ensure that the project and the hospital are financially sustainable for the long run. Frankly, it is not just about asking, “Is this a good project?” or, as my noble friend asked, “Do the numbers all stack up?”. I am sure that it can be afforded in the sense of borrowing being available, but what also needs to be affordable in the long run is the revenue to support it. That is where NHS England and Monitor, working together, need to bring in tariffs—not least through the latest iteration of ICD tariff structures when they get to them—that recognise the additional costs involved in the complex and specialised work done by hospitals such as the RNOH. Many big hospitals used to be able to carry such specialist work in the midst of very large amounts of routine work, but a specialist institute cannot do that. Indeed, many large hospitals cannot afford to do it now either. We need the NHS and Monitor together to design a tariff that recognises not only the quality but the cost involved in continuing to deliver this world-leading work.
Lord Dykes (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure and honour to follow the former Secretary of State, whose analysis I agree with entirely. It is good to focus on these issues again. The analysis given by the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, who we thank for initiating the debate, was exactly spot on about the problems facing a hospital that I thought would be redeveloped and modernised years ago. I remember the speeches I made on this—one from 1984 was referred to, but there were many others after that. I had the great honour of being a member of the board of governors in the old days of the teaching hospital. Subsequently, I was chairman of the save the hospital action committee when there was a threat of closure in the 1980s. I had the pleasure of being president of the league of friends for many years.
When I first went to the hospital in 1972, I immediately fell in love with the place. Its history is magical, given what it achieved in the war, what it did for brave airmen and other service men and women who were injured—incredibly hideously sometimes—and its work of repair. Subsequently, in inadequate buildings, the amazing achievements of this hospital have been really stunning. I am so glad that the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, was able to make his tribute to its work as well as to offer his analysis about the facts and figures. I remember exchanging correspondence with him when Margaret Tebbit went there for the first time. I was so glad about the treatment she received after that horrific incident. The noble Lord has been a good champion of the hospital ever since.
It really is now time. The analysis has gone on for so long. When I was defeated in the 1997 election, I never believed that it would take so long for this to get going. There is no reason for any further delay. The amounts of money are minuscule and modest. I also rather share the apprehension of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, about the amount of money to be realised by property sales. In that area, where property values are stupendous, if it is a free market syndrome—presumably it will be in the final analysis when the transaction is completed—then it should be done on a much higher basis. Maybe that can be looked at again, although I am not in any way criticising the present management team because it has dealt with this for a long time and knows all the ins and outs.
However, there is now no excuse or reason for any further significant delay. This is a magical specialist hospital with a wonderful history. It has a future that will be even greater. We are also getting to grips with new technology and new invention possibilities, particularly in spinal injury cases. An exciting scenario is opening up with the recent developments that have been announced in many parts of the world, including, of course, in the United States. That, too, is an opportunity for this hospital to shine again as it has done over so many years.
There is a lot of local loyalty. It is interesting that the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, said that there is no campaign against redevelopment, which there often would be if suddenly there was going to be an urban sprawl created around a hospital. Not a bit of it: there is a lot of local geographical loyalty and a history of support in the London Borough of Harrow as well. This hospital needs to remain separate but specialist, with modern buildings and new facilities, to build on patient care, especially that of physically injured children, which is a very important area.
I conclude by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, for this debate and repeat the sagacious advice of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, to the Minister to get on with it please.
Lord Finkelstein (Con)
My Lords, occasionally it happens in the House of Lords that after five people have spoken everyone else starts to repeat the arguments that have already been made. I am the sixth to speak and will do so briefly.
I start with the words of the Secretary of State for Health:
“I visited the hospital two years ago and it was clear to me then that the facilities on the site did not match with the world renowned status of RNOH. I am thrilled to announce the rebuild of the Stanmore site today. ... The urgent need for this rebuild has been apparent for many years now”.
Quite right too, except that the Secretary of State in question was Andy Burnham and the statement that he made was in 2010. The Health Minister said:
“I fully accept that the buildings at the hospital are not ideal at present. That is why the trust has made its proposals and the London regional office is currently considering them. … It would be very unfortunate if no progress was made on refurbishment over a number of years. We should look at this issue with some sympathy”.—[Official Report, 28/2/01; col. 1293-94.]
Quite right too, except that the Health Minister was the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the year was 2001.
The Health Minister said:
“A detailed appraisal of the options for capital development at Stanmore should be undertaken”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/3/1988; col. 1402.]
Quite right too, except that the Health Minister was Edwina Currie and the year was 1988. In considering the future of Stanmore, the Health Minister said that,
“my hon. Friend will be familiar with some of those problems, including the very poor condition of some of the buildings”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/5/1984; col. 1418.]
We have already heard that, and quite right too, except that the Health Minister in question was John Patten—as he was then—and the year was 1984. Another Health Minister said:
“My Lords, I am aware of the faintly unsatisfactory state of the Stanmore premises”.—[Official Report, 3/5/1984; col. 632.]
Quite right too, except that the Minister was my noble friend Lady Trumpington and the year again was 1984.
The arguments have been made today and in the past, and for many years, for rebuilding Stanmore RNOH and they do not need my elaboration. They have been made for more than 30 years and they are so obvious that they make themselves. We now need action.
I have risen really just for one purpose, which is to add my name to those people demanding action and to add my sense of urgency to that of the others around the table. To have a world-class facility that requires action, to agree upon action and then not act is shameful. There is no point in saying that we are the builders if we do not build.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, mea culpa. The noble Lord certainly got me bang to rights. As noble Lords have heard, many noble Lords and Ministers have commented on the position of the RNOH. I start by paying tribute to it for its outstanding work. I certainly paid a ministerial visit. I do not know about the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, but I remember digging a hole in the ground there. Alas, I think that the hole is still there. I have no doubt he too has been to see the site to look at where the development would take place.
Clearly, a powerful case for this wonderful hospital’s development has been made by my noble friend. It is significant that the NHS TDA gave business-case approval a year ago. Therefore, it is absolutely right to press the Minister to say what on earth has happened and why the NHS TDA apparently, if not reversing its decision, does not seem to be able to take it any further forward.
I pay one other tribute to the RNOH and that is to the partnerships that are developing. We have already heard about UCL, but my noble friend Lady Dean is also aware of the work that is being done with the Royal Free. That is very encouraging in relation to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about the importance of specialist hospitals working with other hospitals.
I shall put four or five points to the Minister. First, it is always risky to ask a Minister for a straight answer, but it seems to me that the time has come when a straight answer needs to be given. If it is no, no should be said, and the hospital can make other dispositions. It surely cannot be left in abeyance for another one, two or three years because it must be impossible for the people running this institution to know whether to invest any money in the current infrastructure, whether they should wait, what they should do about the staff and how they retain staff. An honest answer is required at the very least.
Secondly, is the state of the current public capital programme within the Department of Health having an impact? I know of the Department of Health’s financial difficulties towards the end of this financial year, and the five-year forward look at money for the NHS involves a transfer of capital to revenue. What has happened to the public capital programme? Is that the real reason that the NHS TDA cannot give approval?
The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, and I probably disagree about PFI because, although some of the contracts were clearly badly negotiated, we have very fine buildings and hospitals as a result of it. However, if there is no public capital—and public capital is much less than was expected—and we do not use PFI, how are we going to see investment in health infrastructure over the next five to 10 years? It is a very serious question which the noble Lord, Lord Prior, is, no doubt, looking at very carefully.
I want to come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. We have already heard of the number of reviews that have taken place. All have come to the conclusion that this hospital should be redeveloped on its current site, yet he will be aware that within the NHS managerial culture there is opposition to single-site specialty hospitals. I wonder whether at heart the issue is that, although Ministers and reviews have said this hospital should be redeveloped, the truth is that the managerial cadre at NHSE and in London do not think it should take place. That was always my suspicion. When I answered that debate in 2001, the distinct impression I had was that actually the powers that be, below ministerial level, simply did not want this to happen because they do not believe in specialist hospitals. The noble Lord mentioned Oswestry. He could have mentioned the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham as well, which is another stand-alone hospital. I have always got the impression that senior executives in NHS England now and before in the department think these hospitals should not be stand-alone and should move into DGHs. It is legitimate to ask whether this is the real reason. Given that NHS TDA officials almost all come from NHS managerial backgrounds, I ask whether this is the real reason, alongside the squeeze on capital.
The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, asked about the tariff. It is my impression that NHS England is not favourably disposed towards specialist services in general and that the squeeze on specialty tariffs is because of that. I remind him of the order that he forced through this House taking away the right of providers to object to tariff proposals. They can no longer use the arbitration system because they need commissioners to object as well, and frankly the chance of a commissioner objecting to any tariff proposals by NHS England is a little remote.
Finally, will the Minister arrange for the NHS TDA to meet parliamentarians to discuss this urgently? The NHS TDA has new leadership: its chief executive and its chair. Mr Ed Smith will bring a great deal of fresh thinking to the work of the NHS TDA, and I would appreciate an opportunity for noble Lords to talk with him further rather than either the decision being delayed for many more months or years or it simply not going ahead.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, for bringing forward this debate. I did not know anything about the history of Stanmore until today and the briefing I had beforehand. It has been an extremely good debate. I echo the words of my noble friend Lord Finkelstein that we have reached the stage where everything has been said but not everyone has said it. I fall into that category. Let me put on record that I agree with everything the noble Baroness said in her speech rather than repeating it, as I would otherwise have done.
I wish to address a number of points and themes. First, this is not a PFI. We need not today go into the pros and cons of PFIs, save to say that my sympathies are with my noble friend Lord Tebbit: many of them have been incredibly expensive. When he used the word “pernicious” I think he meant that not only were they expensive but they have hidden liabilities that should appear on the public sector balance sheet. He may like to know that the future costs of the PFI schemes for health alone total £79 billion. This includes some of the soft FM contracts but it is a huge liability that ought to be on the face of the public balance sheet but is not. I say that on PFI, but this is not a PFI scheme.
Secondly, my noble friend Lord Tebbit and others made reference to the land sales that are part of this scheme. We use our property resource in the NHS fantastically badly. I am not saying whether or not the £20 million assumption here is a low level of money but sometimes in the NHS, because we are in a hurry, we sell things off quickly, whereas if we had more time and could explore matters through a joint venture or a more creative arrangement we might be able to bring in a lot more money. That is something I would ask the management to look at, but not as a way of deferring this scheme. I am pleased that Rob Hurd and Professor Goldstone, respectively the chief executive and chairman of the RNOH, are here today listening to this. We do not deal properly with our massive property resource. In gross terms we have £40 billion to £50 billion-worth of property assets within the NHS, which we do not use very well. If we walk around London we can see some of our hospitals in prime residential areas. These are worth a huge amount of money which we could use to redevelop our real estate within the NHS.
Thirdly, Stanmore is not only a beacon of excellence but the work that Professor Tim Briggs is doing to spread his Getting It Right First Time scheme across the NHS is hugely important. If we are going to get long-term sustainable improvement for the NHS we must have clinical engagement. The work that he is doing through his exposure of variation in orthopaedic practice is hugely important. If we can spread the learning that he has gained in orthopaedics into other surgical and medical specialties, it will make a huge contribution to the massive saving programme that we need to achieve over the next five years. Related to that, the fact that the RNOH is leading the National Orthopaedic Alliance vanguard around the country with a view to franchising the excellence in the RNOH into DGHs and other hospitals around the country must be a good thing.
My noble friend Lord Lansley raised the issue about specialist institutions. I agree the evidence is that, from a patient and clinical outcome point of view, specialist institutions are extremely successful. However, there are two caveats to that. One is that they can become insular; and the second is that they can be high cost. Often they are relatively small institutions and, because the tariff does not favour complex specialist work, they can be a disadvantage to the tariff.
The RNOH has addressed that insularity issue in two ways: first, through the tie-up with UCL on the biomedical engineering facility; and, secondly, through developing its work with the Royal Free, which is very important. That may enable it to take some costs out of its existing institutions.
The tariff, which my noble friend also raised, is something that we should address with NHS England and with NHS Improvement to be sure that it does not favour just those more commodity or routine orthopaedic operations at the expense of the more specialised, complex operations. I think—and my noble friend will know more about this than I do—that, originally, the tariff was structured to encourage the private sector to come into the more routine, so to speak, orthopaedic business. It has disadvantaged the more specialist institutions, which is something that we need to address. If I were coming here to say, “No, we’re not going to do this”, I would have to deal with not just my noble friend Lord Tebbit but an even burlier character in Professor Tim Briggs. He is a fairly typical orthopaedic surgeon and saying no to orthopaedic surgeons is never a happy experience.
I am, as I say, leaving aside the speech I would have made because it would simply repeat what has already been said. The TDA received the trust’s revised outline business case in January last year. Following its review of the business case, the TDA required assurances on two strands of work to be completed. The first was the development of an interdependent estates strategy and land disposal business case for the Stanmore site. The second was the further development of the NHS England vanguard partnership with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust as part of securing the long-term sustainability of the trust. In relation to the vanguard partnership, the trust plans to present a formal report to the TDA on progress ahead of the full business case submission. Negotiations with the Royal Free have gone well, with an MoU between the two organisations signed, which aims to identify the clinical synergies of the two organisations and how their working more closely together could strengthen the clinical model. Those discussions have gone extremely well.
An outline business case for the land sale has been submitted by the trust and approved by the TDA investment committee and will go to the full TDA board. That should not hold up this project. If there is a way of increasing the receipts from the land sale, then clearly the management will be trying to do so. A full business case containing Balfour Beatty’s final proposals for the redevelopment of the hospital is expected to go to the trust’s board on 30 March. In April, the trust is expected to submit a full business case to NHS Improvement for review. In June and July the full business case is expected to go to NHS Improvement’s investment committee and, following that, to the NHS Improvement board. Approval will allow the trust both to clear the site available for sale and to fund the part of the new facility not covered by the land sale receipt. Construction will be completed in December 2017, with the new facility opening to patients in February 2018.
To conclude, this is very much a priority project for the Department of Health and NHS Improvement. The Government fully support the redevelopment of the RNOH and are grateful for the contribution it has made to the Getting It Right First Time project, led by Professor Briggs. I am happy to arrange a meeting, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, requested, with NHS Improvement on this issue. If it is all proceeding according to plan, that meeting might not be necessary but, if there is a glitch, I am happy to come back for another debate, but we fully support this and can see no reason why it will not be given the go-ahead according to the timetable that I suggested. Before I sit down, is there anything that noble Lords would like to raise that I have not covered?
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde
We are not often asked to intervene in a Minister’s contribution so I thank the Minister very much indeed and welcome his contribution. If the hospital reaches any glitches, will his door be open for a meeting with the CEO and chairman of the hospital?
Lord Prior of Brampton
Yes, any time. I should have said that I have not had a chance to visit Stanmore but I would certainly like to do that. We are fully behind this case. I will go to the hospital anyway, but I hope that this will go ahead on this timescale.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde
They hope to break the land—first spade in—on 7 July. How wonderful it would be if the Minister did it.
Lord Prior of Brampton
Perhaps at the same time we could fill in the hole dug by my predecessor.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Brougham and Vaux)
As an ex-patient of the hospital, I can say that the Committee stands adjourned until 4 pm.
Occupied Palestinian Territories: Development
Lord Hylton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government to what extent they will implement the recommendations of the House of Commons International Development Committee in their report of July 2014, The UK’s Development Work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, I thank all the contributors to this debate. It may seem odd to discuss a Select Committee report of the other place one and a half years later. One reason is that a major war came between the report’s publication and the printing of the Government’s response. Also, the tunnels providing a lifeline to Gaza have been cut off. Another reason is that for many years British NGOs have worked very constructively in occupied Palestine. The report had 16 positive recommendations. I therefore ask to what extent violence in 2014 and since, with the collapse of the peace process, have made implementation difficult or impossible.
The UN organisations’ forecast that Gaza may become “uninhabitable” by 2020—just four years away—shows how things are getting worse. As for the West Bank, this was split into three by the Oslo accords of 1995. The Palestinian Authority is responsible only for Area A. It shares responsibility with Israel in Area B, while Israel totally controls Area C. I have personally seen a big sign saying, “Welcome to Israel” as one approaches the Dead Sea from Jerusalem. The temporary division into zones has become permanent. The Palestinian economy and revenue would be dramatically improved by good access to Area C.
The Department for International Development helps occupied Palestine in three main ways. First, it pays the salaries of many of the employees of the Palestinian Authority. This is understandable in view of the periodic withholding of Palestinian taxes by Israel. However, I would ask whether some of those employees in Gaza are now being paid to do nothing because of a failure to agree between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Secondly, DfID supports UNRWA in education, health and welfare for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. This reflects the absence since 1948 of a full peace agreement. DfID seems to expect UNRWA to make efficiency savings but how can this be done when the school population rises steadily and unemployment is sky high in both Gaza and the West Bank? Thirdly, DfID funds the health system, which has a chronic shortage of medical supplies. It tries to stimulate the Palestinian economy and assist selected NGOs. Will the Minister give us an update on these important sectors? Can he say something about land registration and title deeds?
I will mention some broad themes, trusting that later speakers will develop them. Water is a matter of life and death. Will Gaza have water safe to drink in four years’ time? A desalinator is urgently needed. In the West Bank, Israeli settlers use far more water per head than Palestinians. They also pay less per litre. In Area C, Palestinians are often refused permission for new wells.
Movement and access are critical. Some progress was being made by 2005. However, Gaza has never had the airport, seaport and secure link to the West Bank that it was supposed to have. It is blockaded and cut off from the outside world. Only minimum supplies are let in to sustain life without starvation. Access is equally important in the fragmented Areas A, B and C.
In illegally annexed east Jerusalem and the long-occupied West Bank, Israeli settlements are an obstacle to peace, as is the position on the ground of the separation wall. This is made worse by demolishing Palestinian houses, buildings and solar panels, et cetera, even some built with EU funds. The number of checkpoints is also unhelpful.
Israel has justified much intransigence because of threats from Iran, but do these amount to more than a paper tiger? The Hamas charter is often quoted, though this was written long ago and was never approved by the people. Homemade, unguided rockets have been seen as existential threats, so Hamas has been demonised. Little attention, however, has been given to Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and al-Qaeda or Daesh splinter groups, over which Hamas has only partial control.
I come now to our Government’s attitude to consistent illegality and disregard of international law. Successive Governments have treated Israel as a western ally, only making mild protests which are usually disregarded. There are seldom or never political, military or economic consequences following our protests. The nearest we have got is over the labelling of products from illegal settlers. Can the noble Lord tell us the latest news on labelling? Can British consumers always know where goods labelled as Israeli or Palestinian actually come from? Has the well-being of the Palestinian people, whether in east Jerusalem, Gaza or the West Bank, improved or slipped back since 2014? Have our considerable investments of money and thought been effective or have they barely staved off disaster?
I suggest that things are, in fact, getting worse. This explains the great frustration of the Palestinians who have recently expressed their anger by personal attacks on individual Israelis. Unless all sides quickly de-escalate and produce measures to build confidence, individual attacks may turn into collective ones. The demand for sanctions, boycott and disinvestment will grow throughout the rest of the world. What will HMG do to secure as great political priority for Israel and Palestine as they want to see for Syria and Iraq? Both are necessary if extremism, Islamism and terror are to be contained let alone ended. Israel, Palestine and the West all have equal interests in a just and sustainable peace.
Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for this debate and on the way he has moved it. The Commons Select Committee report is interesting, but also now depressing. Although the report is only 20 months or so old, the situation it describes has got considerably worse. Its recommendations are even more valid, as the noble Lord has said. I have been visiting Palestine for family reasons for well over 40 years. Throughout that time, short periods of optimism have always been dashed as the situation has got progressively worse for the Palestinians, with more of their land illegally built over by Israel and more of the restrictions that shocked this Select Committee. Grinding poverty, artificially imposed by occupation, hinders peace. It can also suppress cultural development.
For example, I believe that music opens hearts and builds bridges. For that reason I am a trustee of the UK Friends of the Palestine Music Conservatory. To bring a positive note to this debate, I am delighted to tell noble Lords that the Palestine Youth Orchestra will be touring the UK in July and August, playing in Glasgow, Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff and London. The tour will, of course, be a very special experience for the young people involved, whose lives are normally so appallingly restricted, but more than that, I hope it will also open British hearts and minds to their cultural achievements. Occupation crushes hope and without hope the future is, indeed, bleak for the holy land.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I give real appreciation, once more, to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. I declare an interest: in my past I was a Minister of State in the Foreign Office, responsible for the Middle East, among other functions; and I was, for some years, director of Oxfam, which has a long history of involvement in Gaza, Israel itself and the West Bank.
Some 61% of the West Bank is under full Israeli military control, as any of us who have been there can underline, with all the restraints that this brings—on agriculture, free movement of people and economic activity in general. On a human level, if Palestinians build essential structures, such as shelters, toilets or schools, without permits from the Israeli military, these are at risk of demolition. More than 98% of Palestinian applications were rejected between 2010 and 2014 and less than 1% of Area C has been planned for Palestinian development by the Israeli authorities.
The rate of demolitions in the West Bank has spiralled since the beginning of 2016, with 316 homes demolished in the first two months of the year, compared with 447 for all of 2015. It is essential that we in Britain, and our Government, directly challenge Israel’s inadequate and discriminatory permit and planning regime by initiating development projects that we believe are necessary in Area C, whether or not master plans have been submitted in these localities. While, of course, informing the Israeli authorities of our humanitarian strategies, we must move ahead without necessarily seeking prior approval from those authorities. DfID simply must move faster and more effectively to bring more humanitarian aid to vulnerable Area C, especially in the E1 area and the Jordan valley.
On Gaza, I will just say this in the time available: DfID’s approach should focus on building resilience and challenging the separation policy between Gaza and the West Bank. Support for longer-term development and investment in Gaza is essential. Very many Palestinians in Gaza, however, will struggle to move from aid dependency until the political and structural causes of their situation are addressed and their full range of rights is achieved.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, may I interrupt? When 2 comes up on the clock, that is time. I am anxious to give as much of a reply as is possible within the time allocated to me.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, on this debate. Of course we all hope for a peace agreement and a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in security, but sadly that is not happening yet. The government response said:
“Economic progress can never be a substitute for a political settlement, but it is vital that Palestinians see tangible improvements in their daily lives”,
and that,
“increased prosperity in the OPTs is firmly in Israel’s long-term interests”.
I agree with that. Will the Government tell us what more they are doing to fund people-to-people projects, which the report urged? We need more constructive dialogue, yet in DfID’s 2013 budget only £73,000—0.1% of the £70 million budget—was spent on coexistence. Will more such projects be funded in future?
I am pleased to congratulate the Palestinian teacher Hanan Al Hroub on winning the Global Teacher Prize for the work she is doing to combat violence. However, I was sad to see in the report that Palestinians in the audience pumped their fists in the air and chanted, “With our souls, our blood, we sacrifice for you, Palestine”, which rather spoiled the event.
I welcome DfID’s launch of the Palestinian market development programme, but a report by the Coalition for Accountability and Integrity has highlighted the amount of corruption in the Palestinian territories. This coalition is funded by several European Governments and the EU. Will the Government also fund this excellent organisation?
Are the Government taking steps to pressure the Palestinian Authority into ending awards to prisoners’ families, which give a perverse incentive to violence? The amount awarded increases with the period of imprisonment, which seems unrelated to poverty or the welfare of the family. We need to persuade it to change that system.
Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and I declare my interests as set out in the register. The report clearly appreciates Israel’s security concerns but at the same time notes that the measures taken in the name of security actually make it worse. It is therefore sobering that this report was published just as the Israeli military’s Operation Protective Edge was beginning in Gaza.
In the light of what we now know to be the impact of this military operation, irrespective of whether you feel it was justified, the claim in the committee’s conclusions that Israeli security measures can cause “very real suffering” is all the more true. Following the 2014 attacks, the UK Government generously reacted to the acute needs of the newly injured and disabled by providing access to limb reconstruction services in Gaza through a charity of which I am president—Medical Aid for Palestinians—in partnership with IDEALS. Teams of UK surgeons travelled to Gaza to undertake surgery on victims of the bombing and to train local surgeons in new techniques in this area. I am delighted to report that this work has now helped establish the first dedicated limb reconstruction unit in Gaza.
The UK has also been supporting projects in Area C of the West Bank. This vital work is helping sustain communities that face daily threats of eviction, demolitions and intimidation. In just the first few months of this year, more EU and internationally funded structures in Area C have been demolished than in the whole of 2015.
UK development work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is a vital lifeline for Palestinians and for efforts towards peace. It is essential that the UK combines support for construction and service provision in the OPT with advocacy in our bilateral relations with our ally Israel to ensure that everyone is reminded that the UK supports the Palestinians’ right to statehood, just as we support Israel, and that if we are to achieve the peace that we all long for it is essential that the rights and livelihoods of Palestinians are protected.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for securing this debate. As someone who wants to see the flourishing of both Israel and Palestine, I welcome this report, although I am saddened by the situation that has developed since its publication. In their response to the report, the Government affirm their support of a two-state solution. If that is to remain a possibility, we surely need to do all we can to persuade Israel to end the demolition of Palestinian homes and the confiscation of Palestinian land throughout the West Bank, including east Jerusalem.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, has drawn attention to the spiralling numbers of such demolitions. Abu Nwar is one of 46 Bedouin and herding communities that are targeted by the Government of Israel’s plan to relocate 7,000 Palestinians living in Area C, including in the contentious E1 area around Jerusalem, in order to allow for the expansion of Israeli settlements in the central West Bank. Diplomatic representatives visited Abu Nwar on several occasions, reaffirming that demolitions and settlement expansion in the E1 area were a clear red line for the European Union as they would effectively cut the West Bank in half, separate east Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and render the objective of a viable two-state solution unachievable.
If a two-state solution is to be viable, there is also a pressing need for a genuinely transformative peace process that is underpinned by international law, holds all to account and, crucially, is supported by mechanisms that allow both parties to understand the narratives of the other, not least the territorial expressions of identity that both express and promote.
Finally, as has been suggested, development work in the Occupied Territories cannot be separated from what is happening in Gaza and there needs to be an increased effort to help bring an urgent end to the blockade of Gaza and the collective punishment of the Gazan population.
Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for initiating this important and timely debate. Securing a sustainable future for the Occupied Palestinian Territories is essential to establishing peace in the Middle East. The International Development Select Committee’s report on the UK’s development work in the region outlines how we are helping that process. I welcome the committee’s report and the Government’s response. However, while I support the reasons for funding development of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, I have concerns regarding how the funding is used. Unsuitable use hampers the economic and political security of the region, making development a counterproductive objective in this case.
It is common knowledge that the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry for Prisoners’ Affairs provides salaries to all families of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. The Palestinian Government have been accused on a number of occasions of using UK aid to fund these salaries. The Palestinian Government have failed to provide evidence to the contrary and I am very uneasy with the idea that British aid could be used towards encouraging violent crimes. What steps have the Government taken to ensure that British funding is not used in this manner? We need to see this funding as an opportunity. Both the committee’s report and the Government’s response support a two-state solution in the region, leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a sustainable and sovereign Palestinian state.
Overall, I welcome the report in providing a foundation for peace. However, we must remember that:
“Economic progress can never be a substitute for a political settlement”,
and we must ensure that the recommendations put forward are carefully monitored to ensure that they are indeed used for economic purposes and not hijacked for ulterior motives.
Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (Lab)
My Lords, one of the many important recommendations from the committee is to encourage the development of entrepreneurship and other economic activity in the Palestinian Territories. Of course, this was precisely the mandate given to the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in 2007 when he became the unpaid envoy of the quartet. It is a little-acknowledged fact that he had considerable success in such development, at least in the West Bank—of course, Gaza presented special difficulties because of Hamas. The West Bank benefited from an excellent growth rate from 2008 to 2011 and projected growth for 2016 is 3.9%.
In my recent visits to Ramallah—the last just three weeks ago—I witnessed the boom in construction and housebuilding. I have also frequently visited Rawabi, the exciting and both inspirational and aspirational new town on the West Bank now awaiting its first inhabitants. DfID’s funding of the Palestinian market development programme is an encouraging first step in this right direction. Can the Minister give any information about developments on this?
However, I have seen for myself the very disturbing contents of some of the Palestinian children’s TV programmes and reading material, which incite violence and hatred against Israel and Jews—and I mean Jews, not Israelis—and this is a really horrible sight. I agree completely with the committee’s recommendation that DfID should check on the misuse of its funds. With great respect to the Minister, the Government’s response to that recommendation is far too complacent.
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for initiating this debate and refer noble Lords to my non-financial interests. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and my noble friend Lord Popat have said, the Palestinian Authority spends around 6% of its overall budget on paying salaries to Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons and to the families of suicide bombers. Will the Minister comment on whether the UK taxpayer is getting value for money?
The report also recommended the urgent address of the Gaza health sector, which it deemed in a situation of grave crisis. I have no doubt that nothing has changed and I wholeheartedly agree with the recommendations to reinstate the health sector as a key priority for DfID’s Palestinian programme. As we all know, trying to sort out and improve any health sector is difficult, but I will share with noble Lords a practical initiative which could be supported and that makes a difference to individuals and families. Save a Child’s Heart is an international, non-political NGO founded in 1996 for the sole purpose of improving the quality of paediatric cardiac care for children from areas in the world where there are few or no facilities and, thus, little or no chance of the child surviving. This NGO brings children to Israel for urgent heart treatment and surgery and, in addition, brings over the physicians and nurses from other countries and provides them with in-depth training so they can go back and continue this vital work. This all takes place at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, which I have visited on five or six occasions, often with Members of the other place.
Over 50% of the 4,000 children who received this life-saving treatment are from Gaza and the West Bank. On a Tuesday morning, there is a clinic for children from Gaza. I have been there and chatted to the worried parents whose children are ill and receive the chance of life from Save a Child’s Heart in Israel. Does the Minister agree that the clearly positive interaction between Gazan parents and children with the volunteer doctors and nurses in Israel is not only commendable but a worthy exercise in itself? Will he agree to meet me and explore ways that DfID could support and enhance this work which would help fulfil recommendations 33 and 34?
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, if we in Britain want to play a useful role in aiding the Palestinians, it is unhelpful to be laying the blame for their difficulties on one or other side. Just as we have heard the onus being placed on Israel for all the Palestinians’ problems, so one could point to the many Palestinian failures to take opportunities offered over the years, most recently when Mr Abbas turned down Joe Biden’s proposals for bilateral negotiations a week or so ago. However, I am not convinced that pointing the finger does any good.
The saddest thing I heard when I visited Ramallah in the West Bank a couple of weeks ago was from Khalil Shikaki, who has been conducting opinion polls among the Palestinian public for many years. He collaborates closely with his Israeli counterparts and he found that support for a two-state solution, in both publics, was at its lowest ebb for many years. More depressing was that the reason it was so low was that the Palestinians thought that the Israelis did not want a two-state solution and the Israelis thought that the Palestinians did not want it either. They themselves would go for it if only the other side wanted it, too. It was a complete misunderstanding of the opposition’s view.
If we want to make a difference for the Palestinians, should we not try to shift opinion among the public towards peace? Should we not be encouraging a re-education towards an understanding of what the man in the street on the other side really thinks and wants? Can we shift the emphasis in the publicity campaigns being run, I fear, by the Palestinian leadership, away from extolling the virtues of terrorism and towards a greater understanding of the infinitely more valuable virtues of peace?
This is what at least some of our aid should be used for and there are innumerable examples of close collaboration at the grass-roots level that we should be fostering. I know of many good, below-the-radar examples in the medical and commercial fields. These are where we need to focus our support, instead of it being diverted to fanning the flames by the leadership as I fear too much of it is now. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Sheikh (Con)
My Lords, I am glad that the Government have agreed to support the recommendations of the International Development Committee. Achieving lasting peace between Israel and Palestine must remain a significant priority for the international community.
In October last year in the other place, MPs voted by 274 to 12 on a Motion to recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel. We must all work to the establishment of a two-state solution, with a viable sovereign independent state of Palestine living peacefully alongside a secure Israel. I ask the Minister: what is our current attitude in regard to recognition of the state of Palestine?
I care about humanitarian issues and have been involved in facilitating four convoys of humanitarian aid being sent to Gaza following the Israeli invasion in 2009. I subsequently visited Gaza and saw for myself the devastation that has been done and tragically continues to this date. I have also visited Israel and the West Bank. I am very concerned about what is going on there with regard to stabbings and other killings which are being carried out by both sides. The cycle of violence appears to be unending.
There are commonalities between Islam and Judaism and it is therefore important that there is a dialogue between the two sides. I met with the acting ambassador of Israel last week and welcomed the positive statement he made about the passage of humanitarian aid to Gaza. We would, however, like to see a peaceful settlement and a lifting of the blockade. The UK and others must continue to support peace talks, keep hopes of the two-state solution alive and provide funding to support the Palestinian people and the development of a Palestinian state.
Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for securing this debate but ask the Minister when we are going to have a debate on this problem which is not so time limited. I declare an interest as chairman of the board of the Welfare Association UK, which disperses aid programmes in the West Bank, Lebanon and Gaza.
I agree with all the recommendations and comments in the report but will concentrate on only one of them. Recommendations 27 and 30 express concern about the lack of adequate audit of the money we give which, among many other things, is used to pay 85,000 civil servants’ salaries and compensates prisoners’ families. I agree with many of the comments that have been made but I particularly refer to a recent report by the Israeli economist Shir Hever, How Much International Aid to Palestinians Ends Up in the Israeli Economy. He calculates that 78% of total aid to the Palestinians ends up in Israel via transport charges, taxes and the monopoly that Israel has to supply any materials or produce needed. For example, how much does the cement to repair the buildings destroyed by Israel cost us? A bit rich, that. The World Bank, too, estimated that in 2013 the Palestinians lost $3.4 billion to Israel.
Can the Minister explain this and make sure that our aid goes directly to the Palestinians and not into the Israeli coffers? Would it not be more efficient and transparent if the bulk of our aid was disbursed via UNRWA, which has much experience and has made huge efficiencies recently? Despite this, it still has an $80 million deficit this year. Please help it. I have no time left now except to say that I have long been concerned that we help fund the illegal occupation by Israel of Palestinian land, which surely must make us accomplices in breaking international law.
Baroness Rawlings (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for giving us the opportunity to debate this report. The noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, spelled out clearly the importance of striving to find a constructive peace agreement rather than rewarding terrorists. I agree—be that anywhere in the world.
The first recommendation of the 2014 report calls for the resumption of peace talks and hails US Secretary of State John Kerry’s,
“leadership in bringing the parties to the table”.
Can the Minister tell the Committee why the Palestinian leadership rejected this peace proposal last week? We all understand that it will be difficult for any deal to satisfy the sensitive nature of the demands of both sides but to reject out of hand another good-faith deal offers little incentive to potential international investors.
Recommendation 27 of the report questions whether DfID is,
“taking adequate measures to prevent its funds from being misused”.
There is talk of building planned communities in Palestine as a viable option for developing the economy. The Israeli Government indicated support for the building of more planned Palestinian cities such as Rawabi, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, and projects such as the Ersal Commercial Center in Ramallah and the Al Jinan neighbourhood in the north of the West Bank. These are tangible initiatives which provide new business premises, jobs and homes for Palestinians facing youth unemployment that is hovering at 40%. My noble friend Lord Cope mentioned music. He is absolutely right, and I commend the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Surely it is through substantive projects such as these that the UK and the international community should be supportive. Has the Minister considered supporting planned communities as an option? Finally, can he confirm that the Palestinian Authority is giving its full backing to planned cities being built for Palestinians?
Lord Gold (Con)
The International Development Select Committee has proposed a number of positive recommendations concerning the UK’s development work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, not least the resumption of peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. I am pleased that the committee recognised that Hamas’s charter continues to call for the destruction of Israel and condemned the continuous rocket attacks perpetrated from Gaza.
I, too, recommend and welcome the resumption of peace talks but for such an initiative to be successful some trust must be built up between the parties. As I have said before, in my view the starting point has to be a recognition by Hamas that Israel has the right to exist. If, as the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said, the majority of Palestinians do not accept the charter, let them come forward and say that. No two-state solution can get off the ground without that.
Secondly, there has to be a stop to the continuing rocket attacks on Israel, which terrorise the civilian population. Unfortunately, since the publication of the committee’s report, the safety position in Israel has worsened, with a new threat of knife attacks, mostly on civilians going about their daily lives. Since September 2015 there have been at least 323 stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks. Fortunately, not all have resulted in fatalities but that does not reduce the seriousness of these terrible crimes. No wonder the Israelis fear that peace talks will get nowhere. The stabbings have to stop as well. If the terrorist activity ended, including the building of a new network of tunnels in Gaza, I believe that Israel would be more receptive to easing the travel restrictions and the movement of goods.
I recognise that the peace process has to be a two-way affair. In my view, if both sides genuinely want to achieve peace, Israel for its part must also move its position. The best way of doing that is that, simultaneously with the ending of terrorist acts, Israel should stop the building and expansion of settlements.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, I have visited the Middle East—Gaza once; Israel and the West Bank on many occasions—and I have seen for myself what the situation is. The most recent time I visited was last month with various other noble Lords and I understand that we were paid for by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I consider myself a friend of Israel, but a critical friend. In that, I should say that my wife has been stoned by settlers outside Hebron and I have been subjected to appallingly aggressive and intimidating action by border guards. I believe Israel can be both disproportionate in its military reaction and vindictive and punitive to Palestinians. If they treated me badly as a visiting Member of Parliament, I can only imagine how border guards might treat Palestinians.
But it takes two to tango. Having visited the Palestinian Authority only a month ago, I was shocked by the governance—or lack of it—that we saw and heard about. We all know how corrupt the Palestinian Authority has been; the report shows some of that. I am afraid that Hamas is beyond the pale in its actions. We have to consider that the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Hamas must get together as well. We cannot, as many people do, blame Israel alone. Both sides must sit down. We may assist—the Americans above all must assist—but it is foolish for some people in this country to bring out anti-Semitic comments, about which we heard. Indeed, I really regret the way that the Palestinian Authority sponsors and applauds anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic actions in the media.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for initiating the debate. The Opposition remain firmly committed to a two-state solution that recognises the importance of security and stability of any final settlement. As the Government recognise, it is essential that the UK continues to support the talks, to keep the hopes of peace and the two-state solution alive, and to provide funding to support the Palestinians, especially in building the foundations of a sustainable economy.
Because we have so little time, I will focus on recommendations 35 and 36 on support for organisations that can bring together people of all faiths—in part because I am also due to participate in the next debate on religious freedom. In their response to the report, the Government indicated that there had been mixed experience of joint Israeli-Palestinian people-to-people projects in the past, particularly in terms of weak results and scalability. However, one joint project with the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund that Desmond Swayne referred to in an answer to my right honourable friend Joan Ryan was the “Youth Creating Peace On/Line” project, which encourages educational co-operation between Palestinians and Israelis. As we have heard, getting peoples together is not about talks at the top, but about building community relationships, as I learned for many years working in Northern Ireland in the trade union movement. Will the Minister update the Committee on this project and tell us, in line with the response to the committee, whether DfID is considering any other joint projects that meet the operational planning objectives and value for money?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, I join your Lordships in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for securing the debate, and, indeed, all noble Lords for their contributions. I hope noble Lords will understand that my noble friend Lady Verma is in New York speaking at the UN Commission on the Status of Women. I am conscious that I come to this hugely important matter without the experience that she would bring to the debate.
The International Development Committee report on the Occupied Palestinian Territories was published in July 2014. The report was followed soon thereafter by a seven-week conflict in Gaza that sadly claimed 2,000 lives. Since then there has been an upsurge in continuing violence across Israel and the OPTs, to which my noble friends Lord Sheikh and Lord Gold referred.
The IDC’s report was, on the whole, supportive of DfID’s support in the OPTs, praising in particular its work in private sector development. DfID officials responded in writing to the IDC’s recommendations and provided a further update in December 2015. The report’s recommendations focused on five key areas: Palestinian-Israeli tensions; Gaza; Israeli accordance with international law; Area C; and DfID’s programmes in the OPTs. I will update your Lordships on these key areas before addressing some of the specific questions raised today.
Since the report was published, we have seen a significant increase in Palestinian-Israeli tensions. We are deeply concerned by the recent violence and terrorist attacks across the OPTs and Israel, as I mentioned. We continue to speak regularly to the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Government, urging them to use their influence to de-escalate tensions. We condemn all acts of violence and incitement to commit acts of violence, and urge both sides to work together to promote peace.
I was particularly struck by what my noble friend Lord Cope of Berkeley said about the promotion of culture and music specifically, which my noble friend Lady Rawlings also mentioned. I shall certainly speak to my noble friend Lady Verma about the health initiative, about which my noble friend Lord Polak spoke so powerfully. The noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, also referred to the importance of community, understanding and working together. Again, these matters can be dealt with at certain levels but it surely must be right that the communities try to work together more closely.
The situation in Gaza, which the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, raised in particular, remains severe following the devastating conflict and continued movement and access restrictions. Indeed, following that conflict in the summer of 2014, the United Kingdom provided more than £17 million in immediate humanitarian assistance to those affected. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, referred to employees of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. The UK’s assistance to the Palestinian Authority helps to strengthen the moderate Palestinian leadership. Many of its staff continue to deliver much-needed services to Palestinians living in Gaza. A limited number of employees are unable to work under the de facto authority but we believe it is important that the UK continues to support the work of the Palestinian Authority, which remains a vital element of efforts to achieve a two-state solution.
Through our assistance, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency was able to support 12,375 families to repair their homes and to help 1,733 families who were unable to return to their homes find alternative accommodation. DfID’s support also included an additional £3 million to the World Food Programme, enabling it to reach almost 300,000 people. In October 2014, at the Gaza reconstruction conference in Cairo, the UK pledged a further £20 million in early recovery assistance, including cash assistance to Palestinian refugees, mine removal and medical treatment. My noble friend Lady Morris of Bolton referred to medical treatment, which has obviously been so important. As part of this pledge, the UK provided £700,000 to the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism, which is facilitating the import of construction materials into Gaza. We are pleased that more than 130,000 people are participating in the GRM and 70,000 have completed repairs. The UK disbursed our Cairo pledge in its entirety and has since provided more than £25 million of additional support to Gaza, including for basic service delivery and support to the private sector.
The UK consistently calls on Israel to improve movement and access into and out of Gaza, which the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, raised. We need to see a sustainable political solution for Gaza that will address Israel’s legitimate security concerns while opening up movement and access, and supporting the return of the Palestinian Authority.
On DfID’s funding of health systems, medical supplies and support for some NGOs—the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, also raised this matter—the UK remains the third largest donor to UNRWA’s core programme budget. This provides basic healthcare to Palestinian refugees across the region, including 70% of the Gazan population who are Palestinian refugees. The UK provides support for the Palestinian Authority to provide basic healthcare services. During the 2014 Gaza crisis, DfID provided an additional £2 million to support health-related activities through a number of NGOs, including Medical Aid for Palestinians.
The IDC report rightly raised concerns over Israeli accordance with international law. We repeatedly call on Israel to abide by its obligations under international law and have regular dialogue with Israel on legal issues relating to the occupation, settlements, demolitions and the treatment of Palestinian children in military custody. The UK Government’s policy on settlements remains clear: they are illegal under international law, present an obstacle to peace and take us further away from a two-state solution. We strongly urge the Government of Israel to reverse their policy on illegal settlements.
Recent reports of a large increase in demolitions of Palestinian structures since the start of 2016 are extremely concerning. This was raised particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester. Demolitions cause unnecessary suffering to Palestinians, are harmful to the peace process and, in all but the most limited circumstances, are contrary to international humanitarian law. Our embassy in Tel Aviv raised our concerns about demolitions with Israeli authorities and will continue to raise this at the political level.
The IDC report contained several recommendations for DfID to scale up its work in Area C of the West Bank. The UK is fully aware of the critical importance of supporting Palestinian presence and development in Area C in preserving the viability of the two-state solution. We want to see sustainable development in Area C and better co-operation between the Palestinian Authority and the Government of Israel. DfID supports access to water for agriculture, the rehabilitation of existing infrastructure in Area C and legal assistance to Palestinian communities at risk of forced eviction, demolition and displacement. The noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay of Cartvale, mentioned this but through our Palestinian market development programme we support Palestinian businesses in Area C to improve their products and enter markets. That will clearly be important as we ensure that the economy and people working in business are able to prosper.
We continue to urge the Government of Israel to develop improved mechanisms for zoning, planning and permitting in Area C for the benefit of the Palestinian population. In 2015-16, we provided £500,000 to UN-Habitat to support the development of Palestinian outline plans in Area C to meet the requirements of the Israeli planning system. We are joining the EU’s programme in Area C to support construction of small-scale infrastructure. DfID provided more than £349 million in support for Palestinian development between 2011 and 2015, and will provide a further £72 million in the financial year 2015-16.
Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a UK priority. The UK Government have officials here in London, the British consulate-general Jerusalem and the British embassy in Tel Aviv working extremely hard towards this objective in an increasingly fragile context. As part of its bilateral aid review, DfID is in the process of agreeing future multi-year support for Palestinian development and will continue to consider carefully the IDC’s recommendations, in addition to consultations already under way with other donors, partners, civil society and the Palestinian Authority.
A number of questions were raised about misuse of funds. I will endeavour to answer as many questions as I can in the time but assure your Lordships that if anything is not followed up I will ensure that my noble friend Lady Verma does so. On the misuse of funds—which is very important and was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay of Cartvale, and my noble friend Lady Rawlings—the UK closely monitors its spending in the OPT. Safeguards ensure compliance with UK and EU legislation, particularly on terror financing.
On prisoner payments, to which my noble friend Lord Popat and the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay of Cartvale, also referred, DfID’s direct financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority is used to pay the salaries of that authority’s civil servants only and the process is subject to independent auditing.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, mentioned people-to-people projects, which again are all important. Through the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund the UK supports an NGO, Kids Creating Peace, to bring young Israelis and Palestinians together through workshops with the objective of transforming their perceptions. I very much hope that, across the piece, there will be scope for many more of these sorts of project with other donors as well as with us.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, mentioned land registration. DfID continues to be part of the collective donor effort to support Palestinian authorities on this matter. On support for planning, and in reply to my noble friend Lady Rawlings, I already said that we provided £500,000 to support the development of outlined Palestinian plans so that these can meet the requirements of the planning system. On the matter of labelling, the UK Government welcome the EU-wide interpretation notice on the indication of the origin of products from the Israeli settlements.
I am conscious of time, though I am not quite at 5 pm. To end, UK aid seeks to make a positive difference to the lives of Palestinians—an aim in which we all share. A negotiated two-state solution remains the only way to resolve the conflict and achieve a sustainable peace so that Israelis and Palestinians can live without fear of violence. We call on all sides to work urgently to improve the situation on the ground and pave the way for a resumption of peace talks. We can seek to do all that we can but in the final analysis the quest for a sustainable peace can be realised only with Israelis and Palestinians working together. As I said, I will make sure that my noble friend Lady Verma has a full record of this debate and I am most grateful to your Lordships for this opportunity.
India: Freedom of Religion
Lord Singh of Wimbledon
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the extent to which Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, relating to freedom of religion, is being upheld in India.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)
My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to highlight concerns over the plight of minority faiths in India. Narendra Modi, leader of the nationalist BJP, won a landslide victory in the May 2015 Indian election, mainly on ostensibly economic issues, but after his election he has given increasing support to the Hindu extremist agenda of those who helped propel him to power. He refers increasingly to restoring dignity and power to the Hindu community. His own credentials were questioned by many in India and abroad. As Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2002, he failed to stop widespread violence against the Muslim community and for some years was banned from entering the UK or the USA.
Narendra Modi’s election was seen, sadly, as a green light by some Hindu extremists to make India more Hindu and to put India’s large Muslim minority, as well as Christians and Sikhs, firmly in their place. Reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and other human rights organisations all tell the same story of forced conversions of Muslims and Christians, with brutal rape and killing and the destruction or seizure of property. This has been paralleled, sadly, by a more general crackdown on the right to free speech.
I do not want to take up too much time reciting detailed examples of an increasing disregard of Article 18 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some of these are detailed in the excellent briefing notes prepared by the Library. I will give just a few examples to explain the fear now felt, particularly by Christians and Muslims in India. The highly respected US Commission on International Religious Freedom expressed concern in its 2015 report over the biased application of state anti-discrimination conversion laws, under which Christian preachers have been harassed and arrested, while no action has been taken against those who, by inducement or otherwise, force people to convert to Hinduism. Its report also drew attention to the increasing harassment of Muslims and Christians, particularly those who have converted to Christianity, with physical violence, arson and the desecration of churches and bibles. Although this highly respected US Commission on International Religious Freedom is allowed to function in countries such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China, it is now banned from entering India.
Muslims in particular are targets of Hindu extremists and are routinely accused of spying for Pakistan, of being terrorists, of forcibly kidnapping and marrying Hindu women and of slaughtering cows. Muslim villages in remote areas, particularly in Bihar, are routinely attacked. Sadly, the police, as with the mass killing of Sikhs in 1984, are either silent spectators or active participants. Discrimination against religious minorities was prevalent, as Sikhs know too well, under successive Congress Governments. Under the BJP Government of Narendra Modi the increasing attacks on minority faiths have become more blatant and are accompanied by a disturbing silence of those in power.
Under Congress, discrimination against Sikhs was direct and brutal. In the run-up to the election that put him in power, Narendra Modi himself pointed out that the Congress Government were responsible for the mass killing of thousands of Sikh men, women, children and infants in 1984. A leaked American embassy document from 1984 revealed that more Sikhs were killed in just three days than the number of people killed in the 13 years of General Pinochet’s despotic rule in Chile. More recently, Prime Minister David Cameron described the organised killing of Sikhs as,
“a stain on the post-independence history of India”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/3/14; col. 348.]
Today, the pressure on Sikhs is more subtle but perhaps even more serious. It is nothing less than an attempt to dilute Sikh identity and absorb the community into the Hindu fold. Independent and forward-looking Sikh teachings on human rights and respect for other faiths were described by the writer George Bruce as a bridge between Hinduism and the Abrahamic faiths.
In India, a continuing attempt to erode Sikh identity began with the writing of India’s constitution in which Sikhs are—without their consent—described as a subset of Hinduism. There are other ways in which independent Sikh identity is under constant attack. In India today, people with Sikh names are increasingly shown in Bollywood films and TV soaps as villains wearing the distinctive Sikh kara—a bracelet of commitment to Sikh ideals. Sikhs are also frequently shown participating in Hindu religious ceremonies involving idol worship, contrary to Sikh teachings. In many ways, this subtle erosion of Sikh identity is more dangerous than the direct discrimination of Congress Governments.
Governments with large majorities have a tendency to develop a degree of arrogance that is dismissive of the views and concerns of others. This has become a real concern in India, with the Government becoming less tolerant of dissent of any sort. This was illustrated by government reaction to students at a New Delhi university who were stopped from demonstrating against the imposition of the death penalty on a Muslim convicted of terrorism. The Union Home Minister’s intolerance of dissent was evident in his comment that:
“If anyone shouts anti-India slogan and challenges nation’s sovereignty and integrity while living in India, they will not be tolerated or spared”.
He added, “I have instructed”—the police—
“to take strong action against the anti-India elements”.
The growing assault on freedom of speech has alarmed many in India from all walks of life. Recently, a number of prominent Indians honoured for their work in arts, science and business returned their awards as a protest against curbs on free speech.
Despite my concerns, I believe that India is a wonderful country that has a lot going for it. It is a country rich in talent with a vast pool of highly educated and qualified people in business, science and the arts. But to achieve its real potential, those in positions of authority should heed the words of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who declared that the care of minorities was more than a duty, it was a sacred trust. India has a lofty constitution with grandiose pledges of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. It is a country that is home to many different faiths, but it cannot fulfil its full potential unless it takes its religious minorities with it. Sadly, there is no sign of this happening. What can, or should, Britain do about the deteriorating attitude to human rights and religious freedom in India?
Recent pronouncements by UK Ministers on human rights are not encouraging. To my disbelief, the government Minister Michael Fallon, in the context of trade with China, actually declared that we should put human rights to one side when discussing trade. Our country rightly pushed for an international, independent inquiry into human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, a small trading country, but when I asked if the Government would press for a similar inquiry into the mass killing of Sikhs in India, a larger trading partner, I received the brusque reply that it was a matter for the Indian Government.
I have, as the Minister knows, asked the same question on half a dozen occasions, and got the same unhelpful response. Do the Government agree with the words of the great human rights activist, Dr Andrei Sakharov, that there can be no real peace in the world unless we are even-handed in our attitude to human rights? Britain has led the world in many enlightened ways. Today I appeal to our Government to move from the usual anodyne comment that we take human rights very seriously and be true to Dr Sakharov’s noble sentiment in giving a more robust condemnation to attacks on freedom of worship and human rights abuse, regardless of the country in which it occurs.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Singh, for securing today’s important debate. I declare an interest as a director of the Commonwealth Initiative for Freedom of Religion or Belief at the University of Birmingham, which works with Commonwealth parliamentarians to promote this vital freedom.
Most religions or beliefs of the Commonwealth are present in vast numbers in India. It has the potential to be a beacon within the Commonwealth, and across the world, for religious diversity and freedom. The predominant religion of the Commonwealth is Hinduism, a fact which derives directly from India’s membership. The Commonwealth’s second most widespread religion, Islam, is also well represented in India with 172 million people—the world’s third largest Muslim population. By 2050 India is predicted to have the largest Muslim population in the world. India currently has the world’s largest populations of Sikhs, Jains, and Zoroastrians, as well as substantial numbers of Christians and Buddhists and people of no religion at all. India has more people who are not Hindus—a quarter of a billion—than most countries have people. India’s religious diversity has always been part of its national identity and history.
The third century BCE Buddhist king Ashoka, who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent, is remembered for his edicts that did not seek to impose his Buddhist religion, but instead emphasised religious tolerance. Ashoka’s “Lion Capital”, with its four lions sitting back to back, is the state emblem of modern India. It is easy to trace the tolerant ideals of Ashoka to the secular ones of Gandhi, Nehru and the drafters of the modern Indian constitution. As Gandhi said:
“Free India will be no Hindu raj, it will be Indian raj based not on the majority of any religious sect or community but on the representatives of the whole people without distinction of religion”.
Articles 25 and 15 of the Indian constitution prohibit discrimination on grounds of religion and give the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion. These articles reflect Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. India played a key role in drafting the universal declaration and is a party to the core international human rights conventions. India plays a vital role in promoting human rights across the Commonwealth, not least in its membership of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group.
This is not to pretend that religious tensions and violence do not exist in India today: there have been well-publicised incidents of religiously motivated violence and communal attacks. In January 2015 more than 5,000 people attacked the Muslim-majority village Azizpur in Bihar, setting 25 houses on fire and burning three Muslims alive, following the murder of a young Hindu man. Catholic communities have documented a number of serious incidents, including an arson attack on St Sebastian Catholic church in Delhi, Christmas carollers in Hyderabad being beaten badly by a mob, and a Catholic shopkeeper in Delhi being brutally attacked for displaying images of Jesus in the window of his store. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Singh, in his opening speech, about threats to the religious freedom of Indian Sikhs. However, India possesses the institutional resources to deal with such matters and must do so swiftly.
Article 18 explicitly states that freedom of religion or belief includes the freedom of everyone,
“to change his religion or belief”
It is concerning that a number of state governments in India seek to enforce anti-conversion laws. As the noble Lord, Lord Singh, mentioned, coerced conversions or reconversions—of which there have been a number of allegations—are incompatible with Article 18, but so is a refusal to recognise a freely chosen conversion to one religion from another. It is extremely encouraging, however, that the new High Commissioner, His Excellency Mr Navtej Sarna, is the first Sikh to hold such a post. I would be grateful if the Minister would consider discussions on Article 18 with His Excellency and others from among the 1.5 million members of the British Indian diaspora who are concerned about the future of India.
India looks like being one of the 21st century’s success stories, with the fastest-growing large economy in the world, which is lifting millions of people out of poverty. Yet if it is to continue it must ensure that all of its citizens, from any and every religion and from no religion, have a stake in its prosperity. This requires upholding Article 18 and celebrating the religious pluralism and diversity that has characterised India throughout its history.
Lord Hussain (LD)
My Lords, India is the largest democracy, has a strong civil society, rigorous media and an independent judiciary, but also serious human rights concerns. I was reading the Human Rights Watch report 2016, which states that the Government did little in 2015 to implement promises by the newly elected Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to improve respect for religious freedom, to protect the rights of women and children and to end abuse against marginalised communities. Even as the Prime Minister celebrated Indian democracy abroad, back home civil society groups faced increased harassment and government critics faced intimidation and law suits. Officials warned the media against making what they called unsubstantiated allegations against the Government, saying that it weakened democracy. In several cases, courts reprimanded the Government for restricting free expression. According to the report, religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians, accused the authorities of not doing enough to protect their rights. Some leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party made inflammatory remarks against minorities, and right-wing Hindu fringe groups threatened and harassed them and in some cases even attacked them.
It has been widely reported throughout the past many years that Hindu extremism in India is growing and the human rights and freedoms of Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Dalits are hugely being victimised through its activities and attacks. I read two news articles in the past two days relating to India; one of them stated that four Kashmiri Muslim students were attacked and charged for eating beef in Rajasthan. That is the kind of environment that people are having to live in. For eating something they like, they are not only attacked and beaten up but then charged. At the same time, I read that an American watchdog had been refused a visa to look into the freedoms and rights of religious communities in India. That shows the intention of the Indian Government. If they have nothing to hide, why would they not allow such independent organisations to look at what kind of religious freedom people are enjoying? India claims all the time that people from every religion come to live in peace in India and enjoy themselves. However, you only have to be either a Christian, a Muslim, a Sikh or a Dalit to find that out for yourself.
In particular, Muslims, who form the largest minority in India, are facing enormous pressure because of various laws. For example, Kashmir is the only Muslim majority state in India, where, as we all know, Indian forces have been since 1947. However, since 1990, they have continuously enjoyed immunity via the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, through which they are being given licence to kill. I bring this up in the debate on religious minorities’ rights because 99.9% of the victims suffering at the hands of the armed forces with immunity under that Act are Muslims. More than 100,000 people have been killed in the last 20 years by the armed forces. I know that there have been reports lately that some soldiers have been charged for wrongdoings in Kashmir, but that is only a token prosecution. When the Foreign Secretary next sees his counterpart in India, will he raise the issue of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act and the immunity given to its forces in Kashmir? When will India take that away from them? When will it take the army back out of the cities and heavily populated areas?
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
My Lords, I have the greatest possible respect for the sheer resilience and joy of the Indian people, and the fact that the country sustains such a vast and complex democracy. However, at the moment—as the noble Lord, Lord Singh, so eloquently argued—there are some real worries about the observance of basic human rights, especially the right to practise one’s religion.
On paper, India has an excellent secular constitution. As Amartya Sen has argued, “secular” here does not mean the banishment of religion from public life but the fact that all religions are treated, in theory, with equal respect and concern by the state and its institutions. However, in practice, because of certain Hindu extremist groups, there is sustained violence against Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. Human rights are indivisible, and my concern is with the freedom of all religions in India—Muslims and Sikhs as much as Christians, although I wish to focus on Christians for a few moments.
A new report from the Evangelical Fellowship of India documented 177 recorded attacks on Christians last year. Church services were stormed and Christian leaders harassed and assaulted. There were beatings and violence, including the rape of a 71 year-old nun. There were even reports of 18 church pastors being arrested. This, the report stressed, is a drop in the ocean because most cases are simply not recorded by the police or local government. These attacks on Christianity must also be understood in relation to the caste system, because many Christians are Dalits—the former untouchables. As is well known, Dalits suffer disproportionately by every possible criteria: the number of rapes, lack of clean water and sanitation, poverty, and inability to obtain justice from the police and judiciary. It should also be noted that Christian Dalits do not qualify for the positive discrimination measures that other Dalits enjoy, so they suffer twice—both as Dalits and as Christian Dalits. A full list of these gross injustices is being set out this month at the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Not surprisingly, a good number of Dalit Hindus in the past sought to convert to Christianity or Buddhism. However, it should be noted—to the shame of the church—that caste has now also heavily infiltrated the church. The point here is that Christians are the object of attack by Hindu extremist groups, because these groups believe that they seek to attract converts from Hinduism by the promise of escape from the caste system. Whether this is true or not, it is very difficult for people to convert should they want to because of the threat of violence. Yet freedom to convert from one religion to another is fundamental to Article 18.
Mr Modi, in his younger days, was a member of the RSS, the main Hindu extremist group. He has not disowned that past, nor, as far as I am aware has there been a ringing condemnation of Hindu-inflicted violence against other religions. At the moment, there seems to be a culture of impunity, which can only poison the atmosphere further and lead to an increased number of attacks. Will the Minister, in our dealings with the Indian Government, call on Mr Modi to be clear, forceful and unequivocal in condemning these Hindu extremist groups, and firm in ensuring that perpetrators of religious violence are brought to justice? On too many occasions, there has been little or no action against criminals when the victims have been Christian Dalits or simply Christians.
There is one final aspect of this I wish to mention. I learn from people who know India well that NGOs are now being intimidated and are fearful of speaking out on this and other issues. Personnel who have links with foreign countries are having difficulty getting their visas renewed. In short, there is a growing climate of fear in which free speech is muffled and silenced. I hope that our Government will make it quite clear to the Indian Government that this is totally unacceptable.
Lord Sheikh (Con)
My Lords, I was born and raised in east Africa, but my father originated from the Punjab region of India. I am proud of my Indian roots. I have traced my family history back to 1812 and found out that one of my forefathers was a Minister in Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Government. I have just finished a book on the life of the Maharaja that will be published shortly. I mention this for a reason, as the Maharaja treated all his subjects equally and, irrespective of their racial or religious beliefs, they were treated very well. India has one of the oldest civilisations in the world and throughout its long history there has been an influx of different classes of people. As a result, India is a rich and diverse nation.
When India attained its independence, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad and other leaders made it very clear that India would be a secular state. As a Muslim, I would like to say that Maulana Azad was a man of vision and a very able First Minister of Education when India gained its independence. India is home to 1.3 billion people, who belong to all the major religions of the world. More than 780 languages are spoken there. We must recognise and appreciate the institutions that have developed within the country to support the rights of all citizens. It must be remembered that India has no state religion and that the state does not discriminate between religions. Additionally, the state cannot impose any tax to promote a religion or to maintain a religious institution.
The Indian constitution ensures that every citizen of India has the freedom to profess, practise and propagate his own religion. Therefore, citizens can follow their own religions and beliefs. We should all remember that India took an active role and was originally instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we are discussing here today. India is fully committed to the rights laid out in the universal declaration, being a party to the six core human rights conventions. In India, every citizen has a right to invoke the highest court of the land directly where violation of fundamental rights is concerned, under Article 32 of the constitution. Furthermore, discrimination in public employment on grounds of religion is prohibited under the constitution.
India has its own National Commission for Minorities, which is mandated to recommend effective implementation to protect the interests of minorities by the central and state Governments. Since 1993, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Zoroastrians have been noted as minority communities. I stand here as a Muslim of Indian origin. Approximately 15% of the country is Muslim, totalling about 180 million people. I stress that recent terrorist attacks that have taken place within India, such as the Mumbai attacks, were not perpetrated by Indian Muslims.
Yesterday, I attended a function at the residence of his Excellency, the High Commissioner for India, to celebrate the presentation of his credentials to Her Majesty the Queen. The present High Commissioner of India, his Excellency Mr Navtej Sarna, is a Sikh. In a country such as India, it must be appreciated that in recent years there was at one time an Italian lady who was leader of the Congress Party, a Sikh Prime Minister, a Muslim President and a Hindu Vice-President. We must all appreciate that anyone can reach the top in India irrespective of their religious beliefs. However, we must also accept that there have been some aberrations on human rights, which we all abhor. I am sure that, with the will of the majority of Indians and the Government, these undesirable blips will be ironed out. I am confident of this. India is a great country and I am sure that it will overcome the occasional prejudicial and undesirable practices.
Lord Ahmed (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Singh, for securing this debate and providing us with the opportunity of discussing this alarming situation in the so-called largest democracy in the world. Democracy without human rights, equality, fairness, rule of law and minority rights does not impress me. President Putin was democratically elected; Donald Trump is leading the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination in the US; Hitler was also democratically elected; and so were many others in history who had a terrible record in the treatment of religious minorities. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, with all due respect, that I disagree with him: India’s record on the treatment of religious minorities has been problematic for decades.
We are seeing, as many had predicted, disturbing new levels of threat emerging since the formation of the openly Hindu nationalist BJP Government led by Prime Minister Modi. There are almost daily reports of attacks, intimidation and marginalisation of religious minorities. In 2015, President Obama identified the risk of religious intolerance as a possible cause of India failing as a state. The noble Lord, Lord Singh, mentioned the tens of thousands of victims of mass violence, against Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 and Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, where mobs widely believed to have official backing massacred, raped and looted with impunity.
In the past year Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made numerous international trips in the hope of boosting trade and India’s engagement in global affairs. However, this did not go as planned as India continued to vote poorly when it came to human rights issues at the United Nations. I accept India being involved with the UN declaration, but India abstained from the Human Rights Council’s resolution on Syria, North Korea and Ukraine and voted against resolutions on Iran and Belarus. India’s long-term determination to play a larger role in global affairs and Prime Minister Modi’s aspirations have been shot down because of India’s weak record on human rights, both at home and abroad.
Christian communities in India have faced discrimination, as we have heard, and religious violence over a period of time. For example, on 17 June 2014 in the Bastar district of Chhattisgarh, over 50 village councils adopted a resolution which banned all non-Hindu religious propaganda, prayers and speeches. In those communities this effectively criminalised the practice of Christianity for approximately 300 Christian families in the region. Many were also injured in the violence following that. Numerous incidents of violence have recently taken place in India over the consumption of beef, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hussain, and many have been killed.
Lack of recognition of Sikhism as a distinct religion has gone on for too long. Article 25 of India’s constitution deems them to be Hindus for the purposes of religion and personal law. Sikhs’ efforts to amend that incredible, offensive and divisive article have been thwarted for decades. This has resulted in the prevention of members of the Sikh communities from accessing employment, social services and education, preferences available to other religious communities.
Sikh community members are reportedly harassed and pressured to reject religious practices and beliefs distinct to Sikhism. In October 2015, security forces in Punjab killed two Sikhs and injured scores more who were protesting peacefully against the desecration of Sri Guru Granth Sahib, which is the holy Sikh scripture. No action has been taken against those who committed this sacrilege or the security personnel who killed those innocent Sikhs.
The Indian Government have recently refused visas to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom; this denial of impartial international access proves that there is still a veil that the Government of India and Mr Modi do not want the world to lift. I think it is clear that India has been and remains in breach of its duty towards minority religions. Prime Minister Modi and his allies in hard-line Hindu groups, such as Vishva Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, present a challenge to the international community. Do we confront this overt threat to tens of millions of Christians, Muslims and Sikhs in India, or do we appease these extremist forces in the name of trade and profit? I urge the UK Government to make wiser choices and tailor their India policy towards the protection of internationally accepted religious freedoms. Backing India’s claim to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, for example, is folly under present circumstances. Surely we should demand compliance with international law as a bare minimum price for such a prize.
Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Singh, for initiating this debate. As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, outlined, India is a secular nation. India has a long and rich history of religious tolerance and its secularism is enshrined in its constitution. For millennia, India has been home to vast diversities, cultures and traditions. In the rich tapestry of Indian society, we see 780 languages and seven major religions. India’s commitment to the rule of law, democracy and human rights is as old as the nation itself.
Yet India also has a depressingly long list of incidents in which religious tensions have risen. Today’s debate could realistically have happened at any point in the past few decades and still reached worrying conclusions. While India’s diversity is one of its greatest strengths, it so often leads to moments of weakness. We should not pretend that religious tensions in India have come to the fore only recently, or under the BJP. Some, if not most, of the worst riots, including the Sikh massacre of 1984, which the noble Lord, Lord Singh, mentioned, were committed under the regime of the Congress Party.
“My government will ensure that there is complete freedom of faith and that everyone has the undeniable right to retain or adopt the religion of his or her choice without coercion or undue influence. My government will not allow any religious group, belonging to the majority or the minority, to incite hatred against others, overtly or covertly”.
Those were the words of Prime Minister Modi last year at an event honouring Catholic saints. A lot of what precedes this debate is a suspicion, held by some, that Prime Minister Modi may not be sound, that his past associations hint at a darker character. This suspicion has existed since before he was elected Prime Minister, often by the people who did not see eye to eye with him politically. Yet Modi could not have been clearer about where he stands. It is worth reminding ourselves that, when he was elected in 2014, he received considerable support from religious minority communities across India, including Muslim-dominated Jammu and Kashmir, because of his vision for India: to develop the nation economically, to build a cleaner India, and to help India emerge on the global scene.
In a young nation of 1.3 billion people, tensions will always arise. The best way in the long run for those tensions to be negated is to ensure that every person in India has access to a good education, that there are jobs for all people and that prosperity is available to all. Last year, for the first time since 1999, India overtook China on economic growth, helped by a reorientation of government spending towards needed public infrastructure, which helps all citizens. In the same way, we should condemn any acts of religious intolerance. As a Hindu, I absolutely condemn illegal actions taken in the name of my faith. We should also praise the Indian Government for the work they are doing to build a better India for all.
As an aside, we in Britain have to be very careful about how we, and other foreign nations, approach this topic. It is also not uncommon for us to have our own religiously motivated problems in the western world. We should also not lose sight of how these incidents are so often restricted to very small percentages of the population; nor should we forget India’s strong record of protecting small minority communities, such as the Jews and the Parsis. We must not be intolerant of the tolerance demonstrated by so many.
India is, relatively speaking, still a young nation, which is taking great strides to become an economically and socially developed nation welcome to all. I believe that, rather than see the glass as half-empty and focus only on the negatives, we must acknowledge that there is a tremendous amount of good happening in India, a lot of which is being led by the Indian Government. I believe Britain should be India’s—and Prime Minister Modi’s—partner. In the short term, we should take Modi at his word and support him in the desire to clamp down on religious intolerance, but we should also support him in the wider vision to build a prosperous and developed India.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Singh, for initiating this important debate. Countries that do not respect religious freedom invariably do not respect other basic human rights. Last weekend I listened to BBC Radio 4’s “Sunday” programme—I am a regular listener despite being a humanist—during which a representative from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom was interviewed about being denied the opportunity to visit India to examine reports of religious discrimination and abuse.
In the commission’s recent annual report, it was suggested that incidents of religiously motivated and communal violence in India had increased for three consecutive years. NGOs and religious leaders, including leaders from the Muslim, Christian and Sikh communities, attributed the initial increase to religiously divisive campaigning in advance of the country’s general election.
However, as we have heard, despite election promises, Prime Minister Modi appears to have done little since the election to improve respect for religious freedom. As the noble Lord, Lord Singh, highlighted, religious minority communities have been subject to derogatory comments by politicians linked to the ruling BJP and numerous violent attacks and forced conversions.
The UK Government have placed a considerable importance on Prime Minister Modi’s promise of economic reform within India, but will the Minister say what representations have been made on the reportedly increasing levels of censorship in India? Has the High Commission in New Delhi paid any attention to human rights within India, especially with regard to freedom of speech and what media outlets in India claim are rising levels of state-backed attempts to curb dissent?
It is a regret that the penal codes legislated during British colonial rule still govern important parts of Indian life. One that I have raised in previous debates is Section 377, which criminalises homosexuality. Happily, India’s Supreme Court agreed last month to reconsider its stance on this. Another section, often overlooked and loosely defined, is Section 295A, under which a person can be threatened with a jail sentence for hurting the religious sentiments of another, however personal and bizarrely delicate that portrayed sentiment might be.
As we have heard in this debate, the Indian constitution does not have any such imposition. This was confirmed in a 2014 judgment by the Supreme Court, which gave priority to the fundamental right of the people to express themselves as enshrined in the constitution. Again, as we have heard, some states still rely on that colonial penal code to impose penalties on religious minorities. Bearing in mind Britain’s responsibility for these laws, can I ask the Minister whether the Government have any plan to support and encourage training on human rights and religious freedom for the police and for the judiciary in India? Do the Government ensure that the issue of religious freedom is integrated into regular dialogue between India and the UK?
Once again, as we have heard, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office seems focused on what it called prosperity interventions in India, but what is being done on human rights since Prime Minister Modi came to power? The prosperity agenda and the lives and fundamental freedoms of people must never be part of a cynical trade-off. You cannot trade human rights with economic trade.
I pay tribute to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, on religious freedom in the Commonwealth. At last year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting the Commonwealth reaffirmed its commitment to promoting and protecting all human rights and fundamental freedoms, and to support the empowerment of women and girls. The leaders’ statement recognised the economic potential that can be unlocked by tackling discrimination and exclusion. What steps have the Government taken to raise with the Indian authorities the concerns highlighted in today’s debate about holding to the ideals of the Commonwealth, which, as we have heard, they were instrumental in setting? Despite the importance of the relationship with India, which I strongly respect, we must not shirk from raising human-rights issues if the country fails to adhere to domestic and international law.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Singh, for his thought-provoking question and for the debate this evening.
The noble Lord’s commitment to building inter- faith understanding reflects a key part of the deep ties between the United Kingdom and India. As other noble Lords remind us, these are the world’s biggest and the world’s oldest democracies, reinforcing their co-operation based on common traditions of tolerance and diversity. The noble Lord, Lord Singh, is a representative of a community that embodies the best of both countries, one that has made an impact in business, the professions and government, and which has much to teach the rest of us about our service and social obligations to help others. All noble Lords emphasised the point of wishing that this debate was drawn to the attention of a wider audience in the department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and I will ensure that it is made available to the relevant Minister in the department.
The noble Lord’s Question asked about the extent to which freedom of religious expression is being upheld. Article 25 of India’s constitution guarantees freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practise and propagate religion. Last November, when they discussed the importance of fostering tolerance, Prime Minister Modi reassured my right honourable friend the Prime Minister that he governed for all Indians. At their joint press conference, Mr Modi made a point of saying that he upheld India’s traditions of tolerance and freedom. He repeated this message in his address to Parliament, which some noble Lords were able to attend.
We must, therefore, take note of the passionate views held on this subject, not least those of the 1.5 million British citizens of Indian origin. We all deplore—as have many in India—the desecration of the sacred text of any religion and acts of violence against any human being on grounds of their faith. It is also natural that many will have worried about the effect on their own families of recent events in Haryana, Punjab and at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Many—again both here and in India—are rightly horrified at the crimes inflicted upon innocent women and girls going about their daily lives.
Let us also remember that India provides great examples of tolerance and a celebration of diversity. The Indian Government are acutely aware of the challenges they face, as was noted by my noble friend Lord Popat. We should acknowledge their efforts to address violence against women and girls and their reaffirmation of religious freedoms, while encouraging further steps.
India is not short of robust independent institutions. Many have rightly praised the freedoms and safeguards set out in India’s constitution. The police and judiciary in India are independent and they do investigate abuses. The courts have upheld complaints by NGOs against the Executive. India’s Electoral Commission has successfully upheld the fundamental rights of the world’s largest electorate for nearly seven decades. Recent state election results are a reminder that political pluralism is still very much alive. India’s vibrant media help to maintain accountability and ensure that concerns and abuses are reported in India and beyond. Social media have given millions of Indians a voice. They are increasingly important tools for maintaining freedom of expression and preserving the right to critical debate, which is such a rich part of India’s culture.
The United Kingdom’s relationship with India is deep and wide-ranging. It is right that we seek to strengthen that relationship further. This is why we invited Prime Minister Modi to visit the United Kingdom last autumn. We see India as a key partner in many areas. We face common challenges in combating terrorism and countering violent extremism—India’s people and Government have been the victims of some of the most notorious terrorist acts. Our defence ties are mutually beneficial and growing. There is no denying that trade and investment are important too. The United Kingdom is the largest G20 investor in India, helping to create jobs for the estimated 1 million young Indians entering India’s job market every month. Indian companies invest more in the United Kingdom than in the rest of the European Union put together; the largest private sector employer in this country is an Indian company.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, and other noble Lords drew attention to our own human rights policy. Much has been made of the perceived changes in British foreign policy, of a greater emphasis on trade and investment supposedly at the expense of upholding human rights. It is simply not true, either globally or within our relationships with India. I have referred to this on many occasions in the Chamber at the Dispatch Box. As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary noted in the Independent last December:
“Quiet and continued engagement behind the scenes, nurturing a relationship and not being afraid to raise testing issues in private can sometimes achieve surprising results”.
Lecturing people in public does not always work and can sometimes prove counterproductive.
The noble Lord, Lord Hussain, drew attention to Kashmir, as did other noble Lords. We recognise that there are human rights concerns in Kashmir. Any allegations of human rights abuses should be investigated thoroughly, promptly and transparently. We are also aware that in Indian-administered Kashmir the Public Safety Act and the Armed Forces Act provide for detention and house arrest without trial for up to two years. We are also aware of the concerns regarding allegations of immunity from prosecution for Indian Armed Forces personnel in Indian-administered Kashmir. There is also a mechanism which allows people to request that the Government of India investigate such concerns. We expect all states to ensure that their domestic laws are in line with international standards. Any allegations of human rights abuses must be investigated thoroughly, promptly and transparently.
The noble Lord, Lord Singh, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and my noble friend Lady Berridge drew attention to both attacks on Christians and human rights violations on Muslims. As I have said before, India’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion and belief. The attacks on churches in Delhi in 2015 have been investigated by Indian authorities. After the arson attacks, Prime Minister Modi stressed support for Article 25 of India’s constitution safeguarding freedom of expression.
As for the human rights attacks on Muslims recounted by the noble Lord, Lord Hussain, the United Kingdom engages on human rights matters with India, including religious freedom, both bilaterally and through EU-India human rights dialogue. The Indian authorities have investigated the murder of a Muslim man in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly eating beef in October 2015, and I understand that a number of arrests have been made.
The noble Lords, Lord Hussain and Lord Collins, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, also drew attention to NGOs. We are aware of the concerns that some Indian and international NGOs have about the use of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act by the Indian Government and are monitoring the situation closely. Greenpeace India has successfully challenged action taken against them under the FCRA in the Indian courts. This is the best way to address their concerns.
Returning to the issue of Kashmir, a number of noble Lords commented on the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. We are aware of those concerns and, as I said before, they were raised in the EU-India human rights dialogue.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and others mentioned the harassment of civil society. The courts have upheld cases brought by NGOs against government, and it is important to remember India’s independent judiciary and free press, as I mentioned before.
The relationship between the United Kingdom and India is a partnership of equals. As I emphasised earlier, I will ensure that I pass on the comments made by noble Lords to my colleagues in the Foreign Office. The ties between our Governments, our Parliaments and our people are rich and wide-ranging. These ties between the oldest and largest democracies are the best way in which to help each other reinforce the common values that bind us together.
House of Lords
Employment: Job Creation
(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Jenkin of Kennington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many net additional jobs have been created in the United Kingdom since 2010, and what assessment they have made, if any, of how that figure compares to those of the 19 nations of the Eurozone.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)
Since 2010, employment in the UK has risen by more than 2.3 million people. Comparable international figures for this period are not available, but over the last year the UK has seen the second largest rise in employment in the whole of the EU, after Spain.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
I thank my noble friend. Youth worklessness is still too high in this country. Will my noble friend tell us what the Government are doing to tackle it?
Lord Freud
We have had youth obligation programmes and we seem to have turned the corner here. The figure that I have consistently given to this House over the past nearly six years has concentrated on the workless number—those unemployed or inactive in the 16 to 24 age group. In recent months that figure has been at an all-time low. It is 14.3% of the population and has come down to just a shade over 1 million. It is very interesting that even through the boom years the figure was going up. There was a structural issue. We seem now to be getting at the roots of that structural problem and are beginning to see the figure come down, as I said, to an all-time low in recent months.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
Does the Minister recall, as I do, the dire consequences that were predicted by so many businesspeople, economists and politicians were we not to join the eurozone? In view of those predictions having been so spectacularly wrong, has the Minister heard any apologies from those people?
Lord Freud
It is not often that I warmly endorse the previous Prime Minister or Chancellor in the shape of Gordon Brown, but he seems to have done one signal service to the country in keeping us out of what has clearly been a major mistake by the European Union.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the rise in employment but I want to ask about the disability employment gap. I was pretty shocked on reading the Red Book to discover that the single biggest revenue raiser was the new decision by the Government to save £4.4 billion over five years by taking personal independence payments away from hundreds of thousands of people who need aids to get dressed or manage incontinence. That is on top of previous PIP cuts, lost Motability cars and ESA cuts. How will that help disabled people into work?
Lord Freud
There is a huge misapprehension about the cost of PIP, which has been going up rather than down. These are not cuts: on the present trajectory the figure is moving up to £12 billion, and when we discussed it during the passage of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill there was an expectation that in the key 2019-20 year it would be £9 billion. We are reducing a rapid growth and adjusting how to get PIP because clearly we are getting much higher figures than originally expected through the use of those aids and appliance measurements.
Lord Garel-Jones (Con)
Does my noble friend accept that, contrary to what the noble Lord opposite said, it was not Prime Minister Gordon Brown who kept us out of the single currency but Prime Minister John Major? Gordon Brown simply stuck wisely to that Conservative decision.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
As the Minister said, we do not have precise international comparisons on job creation, but we are doing okay on the number of jobs. However, is not productivity also very important? On average, we have lagged behind the French by 20% over the last 20 years. Does the Minister agree that the answer is to invest more in people and lifelong learning? If he agrees, can he tell me what the Government will do about it?
Lord Freud
An economist would reply that the way to get more productivity out of people is to put more capital in and raise the quality of people’s input. It is clearly a long-standing issue that we have lower productivity than other major countries; the comparisons are often with the US and Germany. However, there is something about the structure of our service-based economy that means the comparisons are not necessarily what they seem to be. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that one of the major challenges of this economy is to get our productivity up.
Lord Kilclooney (CB)
My Lords, of the 2.3 million jobs that the Minister states were created, how many were given to United Kingdom citizens?
Lord Freud
The bulk of people in the country are British citizens—as are 90% of those in the workplace. The majority of those extra jobs have gone to British citizens but a substantial proportion have gone to outsiders.
Lord Blunkett (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister reflect on the paradox that if more people are being assessed more rigorously as being eligible and fit for work, even with disabilities—he and I agree on that—there is a certain irony in using the increase in the volume cost of the personal independence payment as a reason for taking away that PIP from those who have been judged to be so disabled that they are entitled to additional support, some of which will eventually enable them to take work? Is it not therefore a completely cost-ineffective means of dealing with the challenge of increased PIP to reduce the number of people who are eligible for it?
Lord Freud
We carried out a survey of a representative sample of about 400 people, with, I think, 95% accuracy. We found that the vast bulk of people in the categories that we are talking about did not have extra costs apart from the aids and appliances they were using. Some of those aids and appliances were, for instance, a bed. We found that extra costs were not applied to these particular measures.
European Union: Single Market
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the Civitas publication, Myth and Paradox of the Single Market: How the trade benefits of EU Membership have been mis-sold, and what discussions they have had with the Governor of the Bank of England about that report.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)
My Lords, in order to inform policy-making, the Government review and note the wider evidence, including the Civitas publication, on an ongoing basis. The UK will be better off in a reformed Europe because British businesses will have full participation in the free trade single market, bringing jobs, investment, lower prices and financial security. The Government’s new settlement confirms that there will be a new focus on further extending the single market.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
I regret that the Government are so dismissive of this ground-breaking report, which shows that four smaller non-EU countries —Chile, Korea, Singapore and Switzerland—have been able to make vastly more free trade deals than has the EU, with its pretended clout, on our behalf. Can the Government tell us why, as the world’s fifth largest economy, we could not do as well or better if we left the EU? Secondly, do the Government accept that the single market would want to continue its free trade with us, because we are its largest client?
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
That is a fact, my Lords. Would Brexit be not so much a leap in the dark for our overseas trade as a leap into the light?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I think that I said in my opening reply that the Government took into account all evidence, although that does not mean to say that they agree with it. The Government’s view is clear. We believe that any other alternative to EU membership would leave Britain worse off. No free trade agreement, including the Canada-EU free trade agreement, is as successful in removing the non-tariff barriers to trade as a single market. This is particularly important for Britain, which relies less on goods, which are hindered by tariffs, and more on services, which are hindered by the non-tariff barriers. No country outside the EU has agreed full access to the single market without paying into the EU and accepting free movement. As far as the trade imbalance that the noble Lord mentioned—he is right about it—he talked of a leap in the dark, but he must also recognise the fact that, while half the goods that we exported went to the EU, when you look at it from the EU’s point of view, 7% of the EU’s goods came to the UK. I hardly think that that is a strong negotiating stance to get all 27 countries to agree unanimously to a new trade deal in two years.
Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)
My noble friend the Minister referred to a reformed European Union. There is no reformed European Union. Indeed, the European Union has proved itself to be unreformable. If the single market is such an economic miracle, why does he think that the European Union is widely recognised as being something close to an economic disaster zone at the present time? Why does he think that in the latest opinion poll in France, published in Le Monde a few days ago, 53% of the French people said that they would like a referendum so that they could leave the European Union?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, when the noble Lord says that the European Union is not reformed, he ignores the fact that we are out of the parts of the Union that do not work for us. We will not have to join the euro. That is agreed. We will not have to be part of eurozone bailouts. That is agreed. We will not be part of the European army. That is agreed. Importantly, we will not be part of a EU superstate. We have the best of both worlds—and the one thing that we have is a market of 500 million people on our doorstep without any trade barriers at all.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I have not assessed the Civitas report, but I have read quite a lot of it. I think that the former Business Minister, Edward Davey, might be a little surprised to see that he had been a catalyst for a whole 213-page document about the single market. We were told earlier that it was a ground-breaking document, but even the author of the Civitas paper says that,
“non-member countries pay nothing for exporting to the Single Market, other than the tariff and trade costs of individual exporters”.
Would the Minister not agree that that is the very reason that the United Kingdom needs to be in the single market, precisely so that our individual exporters are not subject to the tariffs that third countries are subject to? Can the Minister tell us—
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I agree. The question is whether a genuinely free trade area of 500 million people on our doorstep is a good thing to be part of.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord spoke of lower prices in the single market. However, since this organisation is a protectionist one, is it not clearly the case that consumers within the EU are paying higher prices than they would otherwise be paying?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I shall just give the example of flights, which have come down dramatically in price.
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, as we are on this subject, could my noble friend clear up a little matter of fact? Were those letters that were published over the names of distinguished former military personnel and leading industrialists drafted by people being paid by Her Majesty’s Government who subsequently importuned those gentlemen for their signatures?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I am afraid that my briefing did not cover that. What I can do is commend to the House the speech made in the debate on 2 March by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, who made it very clear why it is preferable to remain in the EU.
Apprenticeships
Baroness Wilcox
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many apprenticeships have been created since 2010 compared to the previous six years; and what they are doing to spread best practice amongst employers of apprentices.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, there have been 2.7 million apprenticeship starts in the last six years, and 1.2 million in the previous six years. We have introduced reforms to encourage employers to design high-quality apprenticeships; announced the new institute for apprenticeships; delivered National Apprenticeship Week, which is this week; and established a new Apprenticeship Delivery Board, which is encouraging more businesses to deliver high-quality apprenticeships.
Baroness Wilcox (Con)
I thank my noble friend for that Answer. I do not think she mentioned this but maybe I should: this is National Apprenticeship Week, which is why I am on my feet today. I almost brought in my father’s indentures with me, but I thought that would be showing off. For many young people taking the apprenticeship training route, it is important that they earn while they learn. By how much has the minimum wage for apprentices risen over the last year?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, all apprentices must earn while they train. It is a real job. In October 2015 the apprenticeship national minimum wage increased by 21% to £3.30 an hour, and this October we are increasing it again by 3% to £3.40 an hour. Of course, most apprentices are paid much more than the minimum wage.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, a number of key stakeholders, including colleges, training providers and small businesses, are not represented on the Apprenticeship Delivery Board, which the Minister has just mentioned. That being the case, how will the board be able effectively to ensure and promote best practice?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, consultation has been a key feature in all the work that we have been doing on apprenticeships. I certainly take the noble Baroness’s point that we need to ensure that those particular groups are properly consulted and helped with good practice. We will be publishing a lot more material on how the apprenticeship system will work in coming months.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, how many of the apprenticeships that the Minister has just set out would be recognised as real apprenticeships in Germany?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Not all of them, I suspect. This gives me the opportunity to say that I think we are doing the right thing and that the levy will help to correct two decades of underinvestment in apprenticeships and insufficient attention to quality. Our whole approach is to increase standards, make every apprenticeship last at least a year and generally change the whole basis of training in this country.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the growing number of apprenticeships, and I met some very impressive apprentices at a dinner in the House yesterday evening. To meet the Government’s target of 3 million by 2020, many more SMEs will need to be persuaded to offer apprenticeships. What are the Government doing to encourage SMEs and make it easier for them to offer apprenticeships?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
There are two things. First, we need a much greater level of awareness; I spoke about that in my first Answer. Secondly, we need incentives. Of course the levy will provide more funding that can be made available, and 98% of employers will not have to contribute to that levy at all. There is also the apprenticeship grant for employers, which provides £1,500 to small businesses taking on their first new apprentice aged 16 to 24.
Baroness Warsi (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the Government on the huge amount of work done on apprenticeships, especially the new progress on university apprenticeships. But is my noble friend aware of reports showing that female apprentices earn less than males, are likely to receive less training than males, and are more likely than males to be unemployed at the end of an apprenticeship? While I congratulate the Government on all the work they are doing, could they look at this area and ensure that the gender pay gap and other differences in the wider workplace do not start to play out between men and women in apprenticeships, too?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Apprenticeships are of course subject to the same equality duties as any other employment, and 53% of starts in 2014-15 were female. But my noble friend makes a good point: are females finding it more difficult to finish? That is an interesting contribution to the debate, which I will certainly reflect on.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister tell the House what proportion of black and minority ethnic people, including Gypsies and Travellers, have taken up apprenticeships?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, 10.6% of those starting an apprenticeship in 2014-15 had a BME background—an increase from 8% in 2009-10. We have set ourselves a target of increasing the proportion by 20% by 2020. I do not know whether those figures include Gypsies, but I will let the noble Baroness know.
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, will the Minister join me in paying tribute to the businessman David Meller and Nadhim Zahawi of the other place, who chair the new Apprenticeship Delivery Board? In the light of the Chancellor’s comments yesterday in the Budget on his commitment to extend further education loans to the over-19s, how many apprentices will benefit from this extension?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
To quote my noble friend’s response to a previous question, my briefing does not cover the answer to that question. The Chancellor made it clear that we are giving levy employers a 10% top-up to their monthly levy contributions—but I shall write to my noble friend about the education side.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, 96% of apprenticeships are restricted to levels 2 and 3; I am sure we would all like to see that extended. There is also a problem about age, as in recent years most apprenticeships have gone to those aged over 24, although the target age is much younger. Will the Minister also comment on how apprenticeship completions are going? According to the latest figures, they are down from 76% in 2010-11 to 68% in 2013-14—something that must be reversed.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
The noble Lord is right to be concerned about the decline in completion rates. What seems to be happening is that as we are raising standards, requiring the apprenticeship to last for a year and generally toughening up, completion rates are falling. We will publish an operating model in April and information on funding rates in June. In that work, and in the quality work that we are doing, we need to take into account the essential importance of ensuring that youngsters are able to end their apprenticeships as well as begin them.
Help to Save Scheme
Lord Young of Cookham
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following their announcement concerning the Help to Save scheme, how many people in work and receiving either Working Tax Credit or Universal Credit are expected to benefit from that scheme.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)
My Lords, 3.5 million people on the lowest incomes will be eligible to open a Help to Save account when the scheme is launched, which will be no later than April 2018.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply. As nearly half the adult population have savings of less than £500, it is clearly sensible to have a scheme like this to encourage them to put money on one side for a rainy day. As by definition these savers are on low incomes, can my noble friend give an assurance that these accounts will be easy to access and accessible without penalty?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My noble friend is correct. This is designed specifically for those on low incomes. In fact, we think that 95% of the eligible population from households will have total incomes of less than £30,000. The idea is that people will be able to withdraw at any time without penalty to cover urgent costs. The Government will consult shortly on how exactly the bonus should work. We want to avoid disincentivising people from making withdrawals when they need to. The whole point is to get households saving a bit so that they can cope with unexpected shocks.
Lord Sharkey (LD)
My Lords, Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert.com said that,
“there is a risk ‘Help to Save’ could substantially mis-prioritize people’s finances. Already, many people make the mistake of trying to save when they are in debt, and yet the cost of debt for most usually vastly outweighs the gain of saving”.
Can the Minister say what percentage of those eligible are in debt and what guidance in this area will accompany the scheme?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
To take the last bit of the noble Lord’s question first, there will be a consultation as I said, and these details will have to be gone into, not least with the providers of these accounts. This is to help prevent people getting into debt in the first place. I take the point the noble Lord raised. There are potential dangers, but at the same time I return the quote. The chief executive of StepChange Debt Charity said:
“We welcome Government recognition of the need for a savings scheme aimed at those on low incomes. Our research shows that if every household in the UK had £1,000 in rainy day savings, 500,000 would be protected from falling into problem debt”.
Lord Morgan (Lab)
Is this not a replication of the Labour Government’s excellent Saving Gateway scheme, which was so foolishly abolished by the coalition Government?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
The Saving Gateway, which had cross-party support, is similar. This scheme is improved. The fact is that at the time the Saving Gateway was unaffordable in the context of the financial position that the Government inherited. I do not think it matters whether this scheme is as successful or not as the Saving Gateway; the point is that it is achieving a good end.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I welcome the scheme, but is it not being paid for by the very workers at whom it is aimed—those on universal credit and tax credits? The Government are cutting £1,600 a year from the universal credit payments of these very low-paid workers. Perhaps if the Government had let them keep their universal credit they could have saved on their own. In reality, is it not, as my honourable friend Owen Smith put it,
“like stealing someone’s car and offering them a lift to the bus stop”?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
The difference in what the noble Baroness has said is that they would not have the 50% government bonus after two years.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, the New Economics Foundation report by Sarah Lyall notes that 15% of people in the UK—approximately 7.4 million people—have turned to debt for essential day-to-day spending. It also notes that 6% of people in the UK—approximately 3 million—use credit as a safety net on a weekly basis. Will the Minister please explain how those people will be able to save?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
We want to prevent people getting into debt. Half the people on low incomes do not have one week’s wages spare. If we get people into the habit of saving—in the scheme they have to save only £1 pound a month to start with; it can go up to £50 a month—it will prevent people getting into debt in the first place. The Government are subsidising that to incentivise people to do that.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
Notwithstanding that this is a good scheme, did the Minister hear the “Today” programme this morning, on which John Humphrys tore the Chancellor apart for failing to deliver on his promises? Does the Minister agree on the importance of the independence of the BBC—even though it may not be in his brief?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I did not hear the “Today” programme. The reason this is not in my brief is that the noble Lord’s question has nothing to do with the Question on the Order Paper.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, will the Minister affirm the importance, in addition to the Help to Save scheme, of the increasing number of credit unions which routinely go into schools to try and create a culture of saving from the very earliest age, to address the endemic problem of a presupposition of debt?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I agree with the right reverend Prelate. As I said, we want to increase saving, and we have taken measures to support credit unions.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, as one who did hear the “Today” programme, I ask if my noble friend agrees that interpretation is in the ear of the listener.
Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment (Amendment) Bill [HL]
Occupational Pension Schemes (Scheme Administration) (Amendment) Regulations 2016
(8 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Altmann
That the draft Order and Regulations laid before the House on 1 and 8 February be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 14 March.
Companies (Address of Registered Office) Regulations 2016
The Earl of Courtown
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 8 February be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 14 March.
Housing and Planning Bill
Lord Beecham
“(c) plots on which gypsies, travellers and travelling showpeople can have both residential accommodation and space for the storage of equipment.”
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, Section 225 of the Housing Act 2004 requires housing authorities to carry out an assessment of the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers who reside in or resort to their area, and Section 226 allows the Secretary of State to issue guidance on the carrying out of this responsibility. An order was subsequently made in 2007 about implementing the provisions of the 2004 Act.
The Bill seeks to change the situation. There are two ways of looking at its provisions in respect of Gypsy and Traveller sites. Either they will absolve councils of their responsibility for planning to meet the needs of these groups for sites, which will make a difference to the position laid down in the 2004 in terms of what will happen on the ground; or, as the impact assessment suggests, it will not. If the latter is indeed the case, the only reason for the Government to include Clause 115 in the Bill is to throw a bone to councils and some communities that wish to make as little provision as possible, preferably none, by implying that the Government are responding to opposition to such provision, which unfortunately is fairly widespread. Such would be the sort of clients who might be disposed to engage the assistance of an organisation called Planning Direct. This organisation’s comments on the relevant clause distastefully boast of a 100% success rate in stopping Traveller sites for parish councils, for which in its publication it helpfully supplies contact details. If the Bill makes or is intended to make little or no difference, why does it include the provision in the first place?
Another organisation, Planning Resource, which describes itself as providing independent intelligence for planning professionals, reports divided opinions among planners. The strategic planning convenor for the Planning Officers Society believes that it will have little impact, but also believes that there is some real concern over councils misinterpreting the rules and that the change is,
“almost like handing local authorities, which are reluctant to plan for travellers, an excuse not to do it”.
Others, in fairness, take a more positive view of the change, but Marc Willers QC declared that he has,
“no doubt that site provision will reduce and that the shortage of accommodation for Gypsies and travellers will increase if the requirement to assess their needs is subsumed into a more general housing needs assessment and the guidance on assessing their needs is swept away”—
that is to say, the problems will increase when an assessment of their needs is no longer required.
The all-party parliamentary group for Gypsies and Travellers echoes those concerns, describing the combination of the new Planning Policy for Traveller Sites, published last August, and the Bill as making for a “complex, confusing system”. It adds that the Traveller site planning policy leaves open questions as to the assessment of,
“the needs of Gypsies and Travellers within and outside the new planning definition”.
Moreover, most authorities will have completed their general housing needs assessment in any event and may not have included Gypsies and Travellers. It points to the potentially paradoxical outcome that the uncertainty may lead to more unauthorised encampments. The all-party group commended Leeds City Council, which conducted a full assessment of needs several years ago and provided a number of new pitches, thereby saving as much as £2,000 a week on services that it would otherwise have had to provide.
Concern over the provision is widespread. The Catholic Association for Racial Justice is deeply concerned about the latest planning policy for sites which it says is making it much harder for Gypsies and Travellers to obtain planning permission to live even on their own land. It concludes:
“The impact of these … changes could be very undermining for Gypsy and Traveller communities, increasing their already serious disadvantage and marginalisation”.
The chair of the Greater London Authority housing committee, Tom Copley, wrote in December to the Minister, Brandon Lewis, reporting that his committee had written to the Mayor of London in January 2015 with five recommendations that he thought would be undermined by the Bill. The committee considered that the Gypsy and Traveller community could be further marginalised by its provisions and that its suggestions for toleration sites would be undermined by removing the requirement for assessments of need. He called on the Minister to reconsider the changes. Can the Minister say whether her honourable friend Mr Lewis did so? Did he reply to the letter—and, if so, in what terms?
At the heart of the problem is the glossary appended to the planning guidance as to the definition of Gypsies and Travellers which lists three issues, among other unspecified matters, in determining whether people are Gypsies and Travellers: namely,
“whether they previously led a nomadic habit of life … the reasons for ceasing their nomadic habit … whether there is an intention of”,
renewing it,
“how soon, and in what circumstances”—
matters which noble Lords may think are rather difficult to establish.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 82H, which has broad support across this House. This is a simple probing amendment that would seek to retain Sections 225 and 226 of the Housing Act 2004 in legislation, requiring local authorities to undertake a direct assessment of Gypsy and Traveller needs. I shall also speak to Amendment 82GD, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, which may point towards an alternative way forward.
I start by welcoming the publication of the Government’s draft guidance on Clause 115, which makes clear the duty of local authorities to undertake a specific assessment of all those whose primary residence is in caravans or houseboats, including Gypsies, Travellers and showmen communities. The very presence of this draft guidance is reassuring, and I am glad that the Government are making progress. I recognise that in the rush to get this guidance out it may not have been possible for Ministers and officials to consult all stakeholders about the content but I am sure that the Minister will reassure the House that all the relevant parties—including representatives of the Gypsy and Traveller communities—will be consulted extensively before final guidance is published. I know that there are a number of concerns about the proposed guidance, not least the failure to define what is meant by a household —something which has led to a great deal of confusion and cross-authority discrepancies in the past, as authorities have defined it in different ways.
I understand that the Government’s stated intention behind Clause 115 is to remove a general perception that Gypsies and Travellers are given favourable treatment under planning law. I also recognise that under current legislation there is no requirement to perform a specific assessment of those residing in caravans and on waterways who are not part of the Gypsy and Traveller communities, and that this may result in such groups slipping through the net when local authorities assess housing needs. As such, I have no objection in principle to the expansion of the existing assessment requirements to cover all those residing in caravans and on waterways, as long as this is genuinely an expansion and does not threaten the current arrangements regarding assessment of specific Gypsy and Traveller needs.
With this in mind I will highlight two main concerns, which I hope the Government will address. The first is the total lack of mention of Gypsy and Traveller communities in Clause 115 and only the smallest mention of them in the draft guidance. It is important to bear in mind that some local authorities, often under pressure from the wider community to refrain from making land available for Gypsy and Traveller sites, are liable to seize on any excuse not to undertake a full and detailed assessment of Gypsy and Traveller needs. The Government’s own impact assessment seems to recognise that the failure to put reference to Gypsies and Travellers in primary legislation—relegating any mention to secondary guidance only—may give local authorities the impression that the importance of assessing those needs has been downgraded in the new legislation. Making it clear in primary legislation that any assessment requirements include a requirement to assess the needs of Gypsies, Travellers and showmen residing in or having recourse to a local authority is therefore essential to maintain the pressure on local authorities to carry out such an assessment.
The simplest way of ensuring that the Gypsy and Traveller communities are directly mentioned in primary legislation is to ensure that Sections 225 and 226 of the Housing Act 2004 remain in legislation, as my amendment proposes. I see no reason why the two pieces of legislation cannot stand side by side, with local authorities subsuming the Gypsy and Traveller assessment requirement within the broader assessment of caravans and waterways. There are, of course, alternative ways of maintaining reference to Gypsies and Travellers, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, being one of them. None of these amendments would in any way imperil the Government’s aim of expanding the assessment requirement and ensuring parity of treatment for all in the assessment process.
The second concern that I have centres on the categories of caravans and inland waterways that are proposed in Clause 115 and reflected in the draft guidance. The use of these simple categories fails to capture the nuanced differences in the needs of the groups for which this legislation is intended to provide assessment, and may result in an inadequate assessment process if these nuances are not made clear. The accommodation needs of those residing in static caravans, for example, may be very different from the needs of Gypsy communities that are constantly on the move, which will again be very different from the needs of travelling showmen, who often require extra space for vehicles and equipment. I hope the Minister can confirm that these distinctions will be made clear in the revised guidelines and that any assessment will be required to differentiate between them.
What these categories ignore altogether, however, is the requirement that local authorities include the needs of Gypsies and Travellers living in settled, bricks-and-mortar housing in their assessment, despite this being included in the guidance. Given that any guidance issued is guidance only, can the Minister explain to the House how the Government intend to ensure that local authorities assess vulnerable Gypsy and Traveller families who might be abiding in bricks-and-mortar housing, perhaps only temporarily, when under Clause 115 there will be no statutory duty on them to do so?
I hope that everyone across the House recognises the importance of ensuring that local authorities are equipped to provide properly for the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers in their communities. A failure to provide a proper, robust requirement on local authorities to assess the needs of Gypsies and Travellers will inevitably hinder the provision of accommodation sites and space, which is only likely to increase the number of illegal sites, stoke community tensions and endanger a cultural identity that has endured for hundreds of years.
If the Government are committed to expanding the assessment requirement, that expansion needs to be done very carefully, building on the good work that is already being done to foster stronger relationships between local authorities and vulnerable minority communities. Indeed, I hope the Government might use these legislative changes as an opportunity to work with the Gypsy and Traveller communities to improve the assessment process, not undermine it. I hope the Minister can provide assurance that this will be the case.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendment and draw your Lordships’ attention to my entry in the Register of Interests as a district councillor. I flagged up at Second Reading that I would be returning to this issue, and I support wholeheartedly the comments of the previous two speakers.
In 2004, while I was still the leader of Somerset County Council, the Government passed the Housing Act, of which Section 225 ensured that:
“Every housing authority must, when undertaking a review of housing needs in their district under section 8 of the Housing Act 1985 … carry out an assessment of the accommodation needs of gypsies and travellers residing in or resorting to their district”,
and prepare a strategy to meet those needs. Section 226 went on to provide guidance on how this was to be carried out. This significant step forward required councils to make assessments of the Travelling community’s needs. Of course, many councils had been doing this for a considerable time and making the necessary provision as a result; however, many were not—bowing to extremes of public opinion and abdicating their duty to provide accommodation for all types of people.
I am at a loss to understand why, apart from again bowing to pressure from certain quarters, the Government are now seeking to delete this requirement for local authorities to make provision in their housing needs assessments and local plans for sites for Travelling communities. The requirement is there now and is not arduous. Making it virtually impossible for Travelling communities to find permanent or temporary sites will only lead to an increase in what are known as illegal encampments. I will refer to this again later.
As we have heard, there are several groups of Travelling communities: Roma Gypsies, covered by the Race Equality Act; showpeople, including those in the circus trade, fairgrounds and historic seasonal fairs; and other Travellers, some of whom are called “new age” Travellers. The groups are distinct and have different requirements. I have long been an advocate of the need to provide permanent sites for individual Gypsy families, which will often include more than one generation. I have received a briefing from Friends, Families and Travellers and I have also met with representatives of the Showmen’s Guild and received a briefing from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Most of us will have seen at one time or another a group of caravans parked on a wide grass verge, in a lay-by, in a farmer’s field, or even in a town centre car park—the latter can be very disruptive to residents trying to park to do their shopping or visit the library. However, mostly the caravans are in the countryside and cause little problem. Sometimes the local landowner will allow them to stay, but more commonly legal action is taken to move them on. This is costly and, without legalised authorised sites to move them on to, only displaces them further down the road, or maybe over the neighbouring county boundary, where they become someone else’s problem.
In March 2015, guidance was produced by the DCLG, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice on Dealing with Illegal and Unauthorised Encampments. Most of this dealt with moving the problem on and said:
“Public bodies should not gold-plate human rights and equalities legislation”.
Did any of them ever actually do this? The document might just as well have said, “Ignore it altogether”. This is despite statistics from January 2015 showing there were 593 more caravans on authorised sites than the year before—so not illegally camped.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as president of Friends, Families and Travellers. I am proud to attach my name to Amendment 82H, not only because of the breadth and distinction of its support from the highest levels in this House—I know that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, very much regrets that he cannot be here. I also speak in memory of my friend Lord Avebury, whose amendment to the Housing Act 2004 the Government’s proposal in Clause 115 seeks to destroy. He was throughout his life a campaigner for justice and fairness and, when the Government of the day repealed his Caravan Sites Act 1968, which resulted in a few hundred more sites, he sought tirelessly to bring in replacement provisions, culminating in those in the 2004 legislation, in which I was honoured to join him.
Why is it necessary to oblige local authorities specifically to include Gypsies and Travellers in their housing needs assessments? It is because without this, as has been said, local authorities have an excuse to shirk even more their responsibility to provide sites for that small proportion of Travelling people—which, as has been said, includes showpeople—who need them. The DCLG’s published figures for the Traveller pitch fund are 533 sites for 2011 to 2015, but even that small number is misleading, because it is not a net figure: it omits the pitches lost to development. The real figure is in the region of 305 to 335, according to research done by Friends, Families and Travellers—that is 61 to 67 a year, which can barely respond to household formation, let alone repair the huge gap in provision.
Homelessness is now more acutely on the increase, particularly in the Midlands, because of the Government's new definition of Travellers, so well explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, which ignores their ethnicity as established in law. Clause 115 did not emerge from consultation, nor was it presaged in the Conservative manifesto. It is as if the Government want, stealthily, to do away with a culture and traditional way of life that is different from that of the settled majority. Instead of bringing in measures that could improve social cohesion and oppose the prejudice that has made this very small minority so often marginalised and deprived—to the severe detriment of its health and education opportunities, let alone ordinary peace of mind—they seek to deepen that deprivation.
Clause 115 did not go unchallenged in the other place. My honourable friend Teresa Pearce cited over 11 national and local organisations, including the Joseph Rowntree Trust and all the leading Gypsy, Traveller and showmen bodies, in her request to remove it. In his response, the Minister, Brandon Lewis, did offer welcome recognition of the duty to assess all housing need. His justification for removing the reference to Gypsies and Travellers was:
“Our clause emphasises that Gypsies and Travellers are not separate members of our communities”.—[Official Report, Commons, Housing and Planning Bill Committee, 26/11/15; col. 345]
It has long been recognised that identical treatment is not at all the same as equal treatment. Indeed, in this case it would result in manifest inequality. Mr Lewis may have realised that he was on sticky ground, because he then offered to incorporate,
“any necessary elements of the current ‘Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Needs Assessment Guidance’ in wider planning guidance”.—[Official Report, Commons, Housing and Planning Bill Committee, 26/11/15; col. 345]
Guidance has indeed just been published, but without the consultation which the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, had offered at her very helpful meeting with the all-party group. It would have benefited from that. What guarantee does it give Travellers, forcibly evicted at great cost to the evicting authority or continually refused planning permission, that their local authority will be obliged by law to ensure that their need for a site is accommodated? I emphasise again the small number concerned—perhaps 25,000 in the whole of England—but even that has proved too much for our majoritarian culture. Advisory guidance with no statutory backing, open to change without parliamentary intervention, will hardly do much when there is no political leadership.
The Government’s own impact assessment has the grace to recognise this, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, said. It says that,
“some local housing authorities may misinterpret the removal of a specific reference and therefore possibly fall short in their duties”.
However, it claims that this is balanced by the eight years’ experience of implementing the previous system and the reference to the provision of caravan sites and houseboats for canal workers. The problem is that the minimal provisions of those eight years needed strengthening, not eroding, to make enough of a difference.
The truth is that the studies which housing authorities carried out to assess need have been, at the best of times, insufficiently disaggregated to pick up small minority communities. Only specific Gypsy and Traveller assessments can ensure that a proper attempt can be made to provide sites which can preserve their way of life and allow them to live legally, in harmony with their settled neighbours. I hope that the Minister will take this on board and accept all the amendments in this group.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I will briefly intervene in this debate. It is quite important when considering this issue to bear in mind that some of the local authorities that have dealt with the situation as it currently applies in legislation have found that the legislation itself has given rise to difficulties for them and, in some circumstances, to abuse.
I will say another word about travelling show people. I very much appreciated what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, said about them, and I want, in a sense, to support what they said.
First, on local authorities, I remind your Lordships that I was Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire. That district has one of the largest numbers of sites for Travellers, relative to its population and area, of anywhere in the country. Contrary to some of the implications about the attitude of local authorities in the absence of statutory provisions requiring them to behave in certain ways, the local authorities in the district have always rigorously sought to assess the requirements of Travellers in our area and to provide for it. That is because it has historically been an area where Travellers have been welcome in order to support the industry in the county, not least because of the needs of the farming community. However, the issue is that the specific statutory provisions, which Clause 115 would in effect remove, have not enabled local authorities to make disinterested and even-handed assessments of housing needs for all the members of our community, but have given an opportunity—often not for the legitimate Travelling community, who have been coming to South Cambridgeshire over generations—frankly, for abuse.
I refer not least to Smithy Fen at Cottenham in my former constituency, where some come, assert that they are part of a Travelling community—even in circumstances where they already have established residential accommodation in other places—and use the requirement for an assessment of need, which they then assert has not been met, buying at agricultural prices property in a place where development land values are many orders of magnitude greater. They then take possession and seek planning permission over a period for those properties, giving themselves very large uncovenanted benefits and, in some cases, moving on and doing the same elsewhere. The statutory provisions give a sense that, contrary to what the settled community feels, there has to be a fair assessment and an even-handed effort to meet everybody’s housing needs. Those housing needs are being met in ways that would never be accommodated for the purposes of the settled community. The same piece of land would never be able to be developed by somebody from the settled community whose need for housing might be at least as great. Often, in villages, there are young people who would love to live in that village and would love to have that site available for development but, for material planning reasons, it is not available. Therefore, it is important to them that the local authority has the ability—and should be required—to look at housing need and to respond to it across the community. In many places in consideration of this Bill, many Members on all sides of the House have taken the view that we should trust local authorities, through the planning process, to assess planning need and to provide for it. Frankly, that is what we should do in this case.
Baroness Whitaker
Does the noble Lord accept that overall, nationally, there is a huge shortage of legitimate sites?
Lord Lansley
I shall not comment on that. I am simply commenting on South Cambridgeshire where there is evidence that we—the people of South Cambridgeshire, the local authority and Cambridge city—are trying our hardest persistently to increase the availability of sites and have done so successfully. However, with all that effort, at no point have we been able to satisfy the requirement on the basis simply of asking how many people are seeking sites in South Cambridgeshire. That is a different issue. The issue is—as is true for all housing need—that local authorities must be in a position to decide the balance between the requirement for housing and the availability of sites, consistent with the wider development framework.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, I am afraid my experience in the adjacent county of Bedfordshire is different from that of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. That is why I support the amendments of my noble friend Lord Beecham and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. I used to be responsible for Gypsy and Traveller health in north London. In my mid-40s I decided to reassess my career and to abandon London—he who is tired of London is not tired of life—to live in rural Bedfordshire.
I saw that the first parish council meeting in my new village was going to deal with Gypsy and Traveller assessment. That sounded like a place that I should be, being really keen having seen the huge mountain that Gypsy and Traveller communities have to climb in a wide variety of areas, not least housing, but also in health and equality generally. It gave me the biggest education I had ever had. It was like a bear pit. The amount of undiluted prejudice on both sides of the argument was so huge that it terrified me. I sat at the back of the parish council meeting—I should say that the parish council regularly attracts about three spectators but on this occasion we had 600—and kept my lip severely zipped. In integrating into the community, I had to recognise that there was huge prejudice surrounding the Gypsy and Traveller community. Ever since that night I have regretted not standing up and saying something.
Having followed the issue for over 25 years, I know that Bedfordshire’s assessment record has improved immensely, but in terms of achieving sites for the Travelling community it has not improved as significantly as I would like. Therefore, anything that allows the importance and prominence of this hugely difficult issue in rural communities to be diluted is a retrograde step. Given half a chance, local authorities faced with this horribly controversial issue will take the line of least resistance if they are allowed to. Therefore, the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans are absolutely required.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for missing the first two or three minutes of the introduction to the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham.
We need to recognise that the Gypsy community suffers multiple disadvantages, and not just in housing. It suffers some of the worst health outcomes in the country, as well as the worst rates of infant mortality and the poorest educational outcomes of any community in the country, and it has the least access to finance of any community in the country. If you do not have a settled existence, and particularly if you are constantly moved on from road verges, it is difficult to open a bank account or to enter the legitimate financial scene.
We also need to recognise that something like 75% or 80% of Gypsies have accommodation that is suitable; it is not a question of the whole community roaming around and looking for somewhere to stay. It is a marginal problem but it is very important and serious, and it is one where we ought to sustain the push with legislation to make sure that local communities face up to their responsibilities.
It is also interesting that many in the Gypsy community are strongly religious. For instance, I remember that when I was a Minister there was a huge row about an unauthorised encampment of Gypsies and fears about hundreds of caravans turning up, but it turned out that they were coming to a Pentecostal Christian event organised for Gypsies. That was counterintuitive, but maybe counterintuitive is what we need to be here. It is the last group in Britain that it is legitimate to slag off in the golf club bar, on the street corner or, indeed, at the parish council in a way that nobody would if those involved were Pakistani, Afro-Caribbean or Chinese people, because, apart from anything else, they would know that it was illegal to do so. They would know that it is something we do not do in Britain but you can still say these things about Gypsies. Unfortunately and sadly, that is the case, and I do not think we should give anybody an excuse to default on their duty.
However, I want to put this issue in a more positive light. We need to give those who want to take their duty seriously some legislative backbone in saying to their communities, “I know this is a tough one. I know it’s difficult, but you can see that the law requires us to do it”. I believe it would be a serious mistake to go backwards on this provision and I hope the Minister will take account of the views that have been expressed.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, in debating this clause, I am conscious of the absence of the late Lord Avebury, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. I was saddened, as were others, on hearing of his death. I know that he was a committed and forceful advocate for the rights of the Gypsy and Traveller community, and I hope that together we can do justice to his memory.
I thank all noble Lords for their amendments. I understand their reasoning, which seeks to ensure that local authorities have an explicit duty to assess the accommodation needs of Gypsies, Travellers and Travelling showpeople. I emphasise that this clause does not remove that duty.
I turn first to Amendment 82H, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. The Government’s intention is to ensure that the assessment of accommodation needs is seen to be fair to all. We know that some feel that a specific mention of Gypsies and Travellers in legislation relating to such assessments somehow accords them more favourable treatment. We want to combat that impression which, as my noble friend Lord Lansley mentioned, only adds to misunderstanding between the Traveller and settled communities, not to remove the duty to assess the needs of Gypsies and Travellers. Their needs will be assessed, but in a way that is seen to be fair to all.
The aim therefore is to simplify legislation to ensure that the housing and accommodation needs of all the residents and those who resort to an area are considered without specific reference to particular ethnic groups. The clause makes it clear that the needs of those persons who reside in or resort to an area with respect to the provision of caravan sites and moorings for houseboats are considered as part of the review of housing needs. This would include all those who are assessed at present and potentially those who simply choose to live in a caravan, irrespective of their cultural traditions or whether they have ever had a nomadic habit of life. We recognise that for many, but for Travelling showpeople in particular, this assessment needs to include consideration of not only residential accommodation but also space for the storage of equipment—I am speaking particularly about Amendments 82GD and 82GE. That is why we have published draft guidance that makes this explicit.
The definition in Planning Policy for Traveller Sites relates to the provision of sites and is relevant for those seeking planning permission for Traveller sites. The definition is based on proof of nomadism and ensures that planning provision relates to specific land use requirements. The duty in the Housing Act is about assessing the housing and accommodation needs of all in the community and those who resort to it, including those with or without an existing nomadic way of life and those who wish to resort to caravan and houseboat dwelling. We would not wish to align the housing definition with the planning definition as it would limit the scope of the assessment to those who proved an existing nomadic lifestyle. I hope that this reassures the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, who raised these points.
Noble Lords and others have rightly raised concerns about human rights, and we are ever mindful of our obligations under both domestic and international law regarding the treatment of protected groups. Therefore, before proposing this clause Ministers gave very careful consideration to their public sector equality duties and the need to ensure that local authorities understand their duty to assess the needs of those living in houseboats and caravans. This includes those with protected characteristics such as Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers, for whom it is recognised that caravan-dwelling is a cultural part of their identity. We have therefore published draft guidance explaining how the needs of such groups should be considered under this revised legislation. We want local authorities to assess the needs of everyone in their communities, and our clause emphasises that Gypsies, Travellers and Travelling showpeople are not separate members of our communities. I hope Lord Avebury would have agreed with me that they should be treated fairly.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked whether my honourable friend the Housing Minister in the other place had responded to a letter from the London Assembly Group. I can reassure him that the Minister responded and explained that the changes in the Bill would not impact on how local authorities assess their needs. Local plans need to be found sound before they are adopted. This means that they should be positively prepared, based on a strategy that seeks to meet objectively assessed development and infrastructure requirements.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked whether any change led to more unauthorised encampments. I can reassure them that the change in legislation is about local housing authorities assessing accommodation needs. It for local planning authorities to ensure that their local plans address the needs of all types of housing and the needs of different groups in the community.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans raised concerns about local authorities ignoring needs. If a public authority does not comply with the general duty under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010—the public sector equality duty—its actions or failure to act can be challenged by judicial review. He also asked what consultation was undertaken on the draft guidance. Officials in the department and my noble friend the Minister, who is in her place on the Front Bench, have engaged with the Gypsy and Traveller communities through liaison groups, which meet every few months. The guidance is published in draft, so we are continuing to engage with representatives from the Travelling communities. I hope that reassures noble Lords on that point.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
Will the Minister say a bit more about whether he sees this as a watering-down of the provisions? Clause 115(2) seeks to remove Sections 225 and 226 of the Housing Act, which state that a “housing authority must”—it is a very clear duty. This clause would replace that with a “duty to consider”. My noble friend Lady Whitaker said that this would allow authorities to shirk their responsibilities and, as my noble friend Lady Young said, take the line of least resistance. How are we to avoid that?
Before I conclude, many noble Lords have mentioned Lord Avebury. He was a very good man and we all miss him very much. I know which side of the debate he would be on if he were in his place today. It is worth noting that just a couple of days ago, on 15 March, it was the anniversary of his famous by-election win in Orpington.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I understand the thinking behind the noble Lord’s question, but I might put it another way. He used the word “watering-down”, but it could also be said that it might lead to local authorities underestimating the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers. Again, as I hope I have made clear, that is absolutely not the case: the proposed changes to primary legislation make it clear that the needs of all those, including Gypsies and Travellers, who reside in or resort to a district are considered in the same way as before in respect of the provision of caravans, sites and moorings.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
If so, why is the change needed? Will the Minister tell us why things are not being left as they are?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I made it clear at the beginning that this is to do with simplifying the legislation.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, by the standards of Committee stage on the Bill, this has been a relatively short debate, and I will not prolong it too much. But I find myself slightly puzzled at the position that we end up in.
First, I thank those who participated. Most have supported the amendments. One of the most telling phrases was that of the right reverend Prelate, who said that the provisions in the Bill failed to capture the nuances of the needs of Gypsies and Travellers. I think that that is right. I particularly welcomed the participation of my noble friend Lady Whitaker, who is a tireless campaigner for the groups that are the subject of this amendment.
I was, however, slightly puzzled by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I very much welcomed the rare degree of agreement between us, which we did occasionally experience in his ministerial past, but the notion that somehow it was the system that created the problem in his constituency where, as he put it, a particular group took possession of land and developed it, strikes me as a little odd. This is not the Wild West. Presumably they did not just walk on to somebody else’s land and erect fencing around it. They must have acquired the land and they must, presumably, have got planning permission for building on it. The implication was that they had developed it and sold it and moved on. The noble Lord is shaking his head. Perhaps I have misunderstood him.
Lord Lansley
To be clear, yes, they acquired it, but at agricultural values. Then the utilities were provided because the utility companies were required to do so. Then, of course, they subsequently made retrospective planning applications. Often in particular circumstances, when they were refused planning permission, they based the essence of their argument to the inspectors that they had a housing need as Travellers in the area, that the local authority was not providing collectively for all the housing needs of Travellers, and that therefore their particular application should be granted.
Lord Beecham
Then that is a failure of the planning system, not of the particular requirements of this group. However, let us go back a little. Section 8 of the 1985 Housing Act required every local housing authority to,
“consider housing conditions in their district and the needs of the district with respect to the provision of further housing accommodation”.
That clause was effectively amended by the 2004 Act. It was amended because insufficient provision was being made for this group and because very often it was not made because of pressure from people who feared or, at any rate, opposed provision for the categories of would-be residents that we were talking about.
If the 2004 Act was in response to the failure by then of authorities to make provision—and that clearly is the case—what sort of message does it send to remove that duty under the 2004 Act and then say, “Well, it’s all right because they have a duty to consider everything”? They had that duty under the 1985 Act and it was clearly not being fulfilled.
There is a special case here and I hope that the Minister will, with his colleagues, think again about a clause which in my view is specifically designed to buy off support for those who do not want to see provision being made for this vulnerable group. At this stage, I will not test the opinion of the House, but it is a matter to which we may well return on Report, unless the Government reconsider. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“(c) has a current entry on the database of rogue landlords and property agents as set out in Part 2 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, as this is my first proper intervention in today's proceedings, notwithstanding the questions I asked in the previous debate, I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests and also declare that I am a councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham.
I should also say in this opening contribution, as I have voiced in previous debates, that our proper consideration of this Bill and all its clauses and schedules is made all the more difficult because of the poor handling of the Bill through Parliament by the Government. I do not feel that it is going to be any better today. It is a scandal how poorly prepared the Government are. At every session we are either highlighting new problems or discovering new issues that will make the implementation of the measures in the Bill even more difficult to deliver.
This Bill should have been proposed in the Queen’s Speech in May this year, having had proper pre-legislative scrutiny in this Session of Parliament. I should further add that running three days of Committee in a row next week is not, in my opinion, ensuring that we get the best out of these debates. It makes preparation for debates difficult and the scrutiny process very difficult.
With today’s Committee day and then three days next week—and, I understand, proposals for two of the first three days when we return after Easter being reserved for Report, it means that, including today’s debate, the main business in six of the next seven days in your Lordships’ House will be the Housing and Planning Bill. It is not a good way to proceed; not a good way to make legislation; not a good way to treat Parliament; not a good way to treat local authorities which are trying to understand what is happening and interject with their views; not a good way to treat the voluntary sector which is trying to keep up with what is going on and give its views; and not a good way for the Government to be seen to be taking on board the views expressed to them, and hopefully responding to them. It is all unsatisfactory and all of the Government’s own making.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I agree entirely. It is not good for the Minister or indeed for all Members of your Lordships’ House; there are many Members who have been here all the time for these debates.
Amendment 83 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Beecham is quite simple in its intention and, hopefully, will cause the Government no problems at all. That said, I often think that my amendments will help the Government and improve the legislation and should be of no concern at all, but so far I have not been able to persuade them of that fact. Still, we carry on in the hope that on Report the issues and concerns that we have raised will be responded to, because, although we do not like the Bill, we fully understand our role as a revising Chamber in seeking to improve the Bill before it becomes an Act of Parliament.
The amendment seeks to add, in an additional clause, that those with an entry on the database of rogue landlords and letting agents cannot be granted an HMO licence. A house in multiple occupation is a property rented by at least three people who are not from one family but who share facilities such as the bathroom and the kitchen. A licence is required if the property is rented out to five or more people who are from more than one family, the property is at least three storeys high and tenants share facilities such as the toilet, the bathroom or the kitchen. It is important that people identified as rogue landlords should be specifically unable to rent out properties as houses in multiple occupation and should be prevented from obtaining a licence to rent out such properties. My amendment is clear, straightforward and simple. I look forward to the Government’s response, and I beg to move.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, Amendment 83, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham, would require a local authority to have regard to the fact that a landlord had been included in the database of rogue landlords and property agents when considering an application from that landlord for a licence to operate a house in multiple occupation or selective licensing. A local authority is already required to have regard to a range of factors when deciding whether to grant a licence under the Housing Act 2004. These include whether the applicant has committed any offence involving fraud or other dishonesty, or violence or drugs, or certain serious sexual offences; practised unlawful discrimination; or contravened any provision of the law relating to housing, or of landlord and tenant law. These factors would be likely to include all the offences leading to inclusion in the database. The database will be a key source of information for local authorities when taking decisions on whether to grant a licence.
These safeguards are very important as it is essential that a local authority can be confident that a licence is granted to a landlord or agent only if they can demonstrate that they are a fit and proper person to operate a house in multiple occupation or a property subject to selective licensing, and will not pose a risk to the health and safety of their tenants, many of whom may be vulnerable. Clause 116 includes two further safeguards by providing that a local authority will also be required to have regard to whether the landlord has leave to remain in the UK, is an undischarged bankrupt or is insolvent.
The aim of Amendment 83 is to ensure that local authorities fully consider the past behaviour of landlords and agents who are applying for a licence. The Government are extremely sympathetic to this aim. To do this, local authorities need access to information about the previous activities of a landlord and to share that information across local authority boundaries. The database will be an important step forward in sharing information about convictions recorded against residential landlords and property agents. It is extremely unlikely that a local authority would be unaware of a matter leading to an entry on the database of rogue landlords and property agents when deciding if an applicant was a fit and proper person. I trust that with this explanation, the noble Lord will agree to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that explanation, which was very helpful. I will happily withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I suspect that this will be another very brief discussion. Schedule 9 amends the Housing Act 2004 to provide that any financial penalty should be an alternative to prosecuting a rogue landlord for an offence. The Explanatory Notes give no justification for this change, and, given what we know about some of the appalling conditions that rogue landlords create or tolerate, I see no reason why they should be immune from a criminal prosecution.
It is perfectly legitimate that a financial penalty should be imposed, but it is a matter of good sense to ensure that totally unacceptable behaviour is treated as a crime, in the hope of deterring others from committing the same offence and behaving disgracefully towards their tenants, rather than their simply being able to pay a financial penalty without any publicity. The deterrent effect of prosecution ought to be invoked.
Indeed, even leaving aside deterrence, conduct of the kind that we regularly read about is simply appalling, and society’s rejection of such an approach by landlords should be made clear by retaining the possibility of prosecuting them. In the absence of any explanation of why the change should be made, I hope that the House will express a view and the Government will reconsider this strange provision. I beg to move.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, Amendment 84, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham, would make a change to Clause 117 so that a local housing authority could impose a civil penalty in addition to, rather than as an alternative to, prosecuting a landlord. The Bill as drafted provides local housing authorities with a choice on whether they want to go down the civil penalty route or the prosecution route, depending on the seriousness of the offence. We have looked at this carefully and come to the conclusion that it would be disproportionate to use both regimes in relation to the same conduct.
Local authorities will benefit from other measures proposed in the Bill. For instance, they can apply for a rent repayment order where the rent has been paid from housing benefit or universal credit where certain housing offences have been committed, as set out in Part 2 of the Bill. This is in addition to the powers already available through the Housing Act 2004 whereby magistrates can impose unlimited fines on conviction for the most serious housing offences. I hope that after this brief explanation the noble Lord will agree to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
The Minister referred to reasonable fines. What scale of fines are we talking about here?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I do not have details of the fines, but I shall be more than happy to write to the noble Lord with them.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
Could the Minister comment on whether this would cover the instances that I have spoken about of invisible rogue landlords who give their tenants no rent books, nor anything of any sort? Would a criminal offence not have a bit more impact on them, and encourage them to be fair to the people living in their properties?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I was answering the points raised by noble Lords, and the main point is that we think it disproportionate to use both regimes. I hope that that answers the noble Baroness’s question. I am now able to answer the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, about fines. The answer is: up to £30,000.
Lord Campbell-Savours
The Minister says that it is up to £30,000. There has been an interesting series of programmes recently, I think on BBC on weekday mornings, in which a team has been going out and looking at properties, particularly in east London, where invariably ethnic minority landlords are exploiting illegal entrants to the United Kingdom, or indeed other people from within the ethnic minority. I have made a point of watching some of these programmes and have begun to realise that these landlords are dancing round local authority officials. The local authority officials seem almost unwilling to exercise real responsibility to bring these people to court. When we talk about up to £30,000, we may end up with little fines of a few hundred pounds for what appear to me to be major offences. Huge breaches are going on in London in properties that come under Sections 64 to 67 of the 2004 Act.
The law seems quite clear. You would imagine that the law would work, but the reality is that it is not working. These people are not being pursued. My noble friend used the phrase “in addition” and I think that it is important that those words are introduced. These rogue landlords need to know that they will not only be taken to court—where they can hire smart-backsided lawyers who can manage to get the fines reduced to whatever level they think is acceptable by simply acting in the interests of their clients—but will be pursued by the authorities, which, I understand, have the right to use that money to do up the property.
The Government are taking a very weak-handed view in dealing with this matter. HMO properties in London are at the bottom end of the market in terms of the treatment of tenants by landlords. The law needs to be tightened up in this area. I hope that when we get to Report we can table amendments that everyone will support to bring home the lesson to the Government that this area is not being dealt with in a good enough way.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I wanted to expand on my previous answer to say that prosecution fines are unlimited civil penalties of, as I mentioned, up to a figure of £30,000. It may give the noble Lord some reassurance to say that we have the power to provide guidance to local authorities on what to use and when in terms of fines. We intend to consult local authorities on the guidance on this matter.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Perhaps I can pursue this a little further. How many people have actually been charged, nationally and in London, over the last 12 months, say? Does the brief tell us the number of people who have been through the courts or do the lawyers manage somehow to deflect the legal actions? If the Minister does not have the reply, perhaps he can indicate to the Box that the information might be made available to us during discussion of a subsequent amendment.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I can certainly offer a reply to the noble Lord. I hope that with the explanation that I have given, and in answering the questions, the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I confess that I am not at all satisfied with the Minister’s reply. We are seeing a change in the law to put a financial penalty as an alternative to prosecution. As my noble friend rightly said, we are talking about some appalling examples, which would make the likes of Rachman blush, if he were still around, of abuse of tenants and appalling housing conditions. What is effectively being said in the legislation is: you can buy out of the consequences of that appalling behaviour by an unspecified fine—unspecified in the Bill; I appreciate that there is scope.
The behaviour is worse, in many respects, than many of the offences that are routinely dealt with in the courts in terms of the impact on citizens. It is simply not good enough to allow rogue landlords to escape with a financial penalty but without the stigma of being convicted of a criminal offence. I urge the noble Lord to consult again his ministerial colleagues, because I agree with my noble friend that we should seek on Report to reverse the current position. It will not take long, but my goodness it is important. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Overcrowding in shared residential buildings
(1) Local authorities may set limits for the number of residents that may lawfully reside in each rented property in a shared residential building.(2) Local authorities may set limits under subsection (1) for each relevant rented property whenever the contract for renting the property changes at any point after the day on which this section is brought into effect.(3) If a complaint is made to a local authority about overcrowding in a rented property for which a limit has been set under subsection (1), the local authority may investigate whether the limit is being exceeded and, if so, order the landlord of the property to take action to end the overcrowding.(4) Where the local authority orders a landlord to take action under subsection (3), the local authority may charge the landlord a fee to cover the reasonable costs of the investigation and action undertaken by the local authority.”
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, my commercial interest is on the register. I have also owned a flat for 29 years, which has mainly been lived in by family or let. I pay tribute to the Public Bill Office, which has been very helpful in preparing amendments—something much more complicated than it seems—and the Library, which has been invaluable in coming up with information.
We have all seen overcrowding on television in the sordid garages in Acton where there is no water or anything else. But the problem is the same at the top end of the market because the Deregulation Act took away the right of councils to go into properties in London —it was only effected in London—and find out who was living there. The Government said at the time that new regulations would be required but we have heard nothing more about this. It is very important that we do.
I asked a Question for Written Answer on this and was told that councils have the power to determine how many people should be in a property and to inspect it. The difficulty is that before the Deregulation Act some authorities, such as Westminster, had six full-time officers checking on who was in a property, if it was overcrowded, and how long people were staying there, but unfortunately they no longer do. Other boroughs have always found checks costly and have not bothered. But we need to know how many people are in these properties.
I think I mentioned that, in the block in which my flat is, 10 Airbnb guests are often in a one-bedroom flat. That means 10 times more people using hot water than the 90-something year-old lady who is paying for half that water. It is therefore very unsatisfactory to have not seen hide nor hair of the new regulations. This has to be investigated, as set out in Amendment 84A. The issue is also addressed in Amendment 84B so I will speak to that as well.
This is about the right to manage. At last after all these years we now have the right to manage the block I am in but it turns out that, although you need only a 50% vote to get the right to manage, you need 100% to do pretty much anything else significant to improve things. You get to the point where fire doors are being left open and anyone can come in from the street. People in these blocks are abusing long-term residents, including the 90 year-old I have spoken about. There has to be some way of assessing these issues, so Amendment 84B seeks to change the percentage needed on the right to manage. It should be possible to have all these people known, so that if they cannot be there and are not aware of what is happening, they can appoint a proxy or authorise someone else to speak for them. It is very unsatisfactory to be in a position where you can see the overcrowding and the dangers, yet nothing can be done about it. I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, is excellent. As usual she understands the issues about how people in the rented sector can be exploited, as well as the problems that can be caused to others living nearby. This proposed new clause suggests a practical solution.
The amendment would give powers to local authorities to take action when necessary on the number of people who may lawfully reside in each rented property in a shared residential building. We have all seen reports of severe overcrowding, usually of vulnerable people, in conditions that are truly unacceptable. The amendment would give local authorities a power to do something about that by setting numbers straightaway. I can recall a situation where workers in east London were in effect hotbedding. People would be able to sleep in a bed for a period of time and then it was the turn of the next person, so that at least two if not three people were using the bed in shifts. For such practices to be happening in modern Britain is an absolute disgrace, although I accept entirely what the noble Baroness said about this cutting across society. It does not affect only people living in sheds in east London.
The proposed new clause would give local authorities powers to set limits, investigate complaints, and the ability to charge reasonable costs for investigation and any necessary action that has to be taken. I hope that the amendment will receive a positive response from the Government, and I may intervene later in Committee once I have heard the Minister’s response.
Lord Campbell-Savours
On Amendment 84B, what would happen? It talks about the information being made available to members of the right-to-manage company but, once they have that information, what will they do about it? I do not quite understand how the amendment deals with the problem in terms of providing a solution.
I go back to Amendment 84A in the same group. One problem when local authorities get involved in dealing with blocks of flats in multiple occupation is that sometimes they hesitate to do so because they know that, if the property is overcrowded and someone has to leave, they are then responsible for sorting out the problem for that tenant. Certainly I get the feeling when watching those programmes that local authorities are a little careful in this area because they simply do not have any properties for people to move into. That is why in general we need to give local authorities far more substantial powers to deal with these properties. They cannot simply become the receptacle into which people in difficulties are put. They cannot just be passed on to the local authority, which is then responsible for housing them when it does not have any accommodation available. I say that against the background of other provisions in the Bill which are going to remove particularly vital property in London from the market.
All these things interconnect. I simply say to the Minister in terms of the previous provision, Amendment 84A, that the Government should write a new clause themselves that would put together a far more substantial package to deal with the problem, and perhaps taking evidence from organisations outside. It might be that they should consider introducing a separate Bill to deal specifically with this problem because it is one that has to be resolved.
To help me understand these matters, perhaps the noble Baroness could explain what would happen once the leaseholders have acquired the information. They must be given some sort of power to actually deal with the problem. We will be dealing with management committees in later amendments. Their members often have little power unless it is enshrined in the original lease, signed by every leaseholder, that there are responsibilities to be met.
Lord Swinfen (Con)
My Lords, are there not already regulations about the overcrowding of buildings? I am sure that there are also regulations covering the sharing of bedrooms, particularly between young people. I think I am right in saying that under the age of 12, children of opposite sexes can share the same bedroom, but it is deemed undesirable beyond that age. In certain dwellings it is sometimes impractical to change that. Do we not already have regulations in place? I agree entirely with what my noble friend is trying to do, but I wonder whether the regulations we already have are being enforced as well as they might be.
Lord Campbell-Savours
If there are such regulations in place, of which I am totally unaware, how many prosecutions have been brought? I would bet that there has not been one anywhere in the United Kingdom. The reason for that is because there are probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people living in homes where those regulations are being defaulted upon.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, there are regulations about all these things. There are fire regulations, regulations on overcrowding, spatial regulations and so on. The difficulty arises if you have a room in the sort of flat that one of my children rented at one stage. Changes can be made without the local planning authority or anyone else knowing about them. In that particular instance, what had been a two-bedroom property with a fairly large kitchen and dining area was converted into a three-bedroom property when part of that area was hived off, thus creating another bedroom. It meant that, in effect, three couples—six people—were sharing one bathroom, which was a trial in its own right. However, the third bedroom which had been hived off the kitchen and dining area had no direct access to the safe environment protected by a fire door, which meant that the people occupying that room were not safe, given that a kitchen is a potent area for fires to start because of cooking, electrical equipment and so on. I felt that the property was at risk and I told my offspring that, if they had to rent in that flat, for heaven’s sake not to rent the room off the kitchen but to take a room off the lobby.
A local authority has no real way of catching up on this kind of thing, particularly if the properties are relatively temporary lets. Often these are places which are let to students for a year or nine months at a time for the academic year. The tenants may not be registered at the property as electors because their university might have registered them, so there is no real audit trail to enable the authority to look into the issues.
I think that there is a real problem here. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, doughty campaigner as she is for getting these things sorted out—I support her in her intentions behind her amendments—should note that, nevertheless, to use a West Country phrase, we are a bale short of a stack on catching up with these issues in practical terms. That is the conundrum. Also, landlords might not be particularly interested in enforcing such a provision. It might be possible to deal with these issues through a body other than the local authority, but I do not know. However, there is a problem here which is creating situations that are hazardous and prejudicial to some of the people who are occupying these properties. I certainly therefore support the gist of what the noble Baroness has said.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Is there not great irony in the fact that, to get around this problem, we need more bedrooms? In London, the flats with the most bedrooms—the three-bedroom flats—are the very high-value flats that are going to be sold off under this Bill. It shows what a mockery this Bill makes of housing problems.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes for her amendments, which seek to address overcrowding and unlawful subletting in flats in residential blocks. For reasons that I shall come to shortly, however, I do not think that they are necessary, since both local authorities and managers of residential blocks have sufficient powers to tackle overcrowding and associated problems. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and my noble friend Lord Swinfen, alluded to this. I will explain further.
I will respond first to Amendment 84A. Part X of the Housing Act 1985 already deals with statutory overcrowding, which it defines by reference to a room standard and a space standard. If either of these is contravened, an occupier or landlord may be guilty of an offence. Statutory overcrowding results if two or more people of the opposite sex aged over 10—I have a figure of 10, not 12—and not being part of a couple have to share a room. This is defined as the room standard. Statutory overcrowding also results if the permitted number of persons who can sleep in a dwelling is exceeded. This is the space standard, which is calculated by reference to the number of rooms available as sleeping accommodation and their floor-spaces.
Local housing authorities can use their existing powers to gain entry to a dwelling in order to measure rooms to work out the permitted number. They also have powers to require information about the number of people sleeping in a dwelling and to inspect, report and prepare proposals on overcrowding generally in all or part of a district.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, where a local authority considers that a property is overcrowded to the extent that it is hazardous to the health and safety of the occupiers, it may—and must, in the case of a category 1 hazard—serve a prohibition order under Part 1 of the Housing Act 2004 on the dwelling. This prohibits the use of all or part of a dwelling for residential purposes, limiting the number of persons who can occupy it. Whether the overcrowding is actionable will be determined by applying the housing health and safety rating system, which provides a numerical score of the severity of the potential hazard. Those scoring highest are category 1 hazards, and the authority is required to take action. Hazards with lower scores are category 2 hazards and the authority may take action. In any case, if the local authority serves a prohibition order limiting the number of persons who can occupy a dwelling, it is a criminal offence to contravene the order by permitting more persons than specified in the order to occupy it. A local authority can recover from the landlord its expenses in preparing and serving a prohibition notice.
On the interesting point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, about how one would find out about such overcrowding, it is subject to intelligence from local residents and the immediate area. It is fair to say that it works; no doubt on occasions it is hit and miss, but that is where we stand at the moment.
In deciding whether a dwelling is overcrowded, a local authority must apply an objective test and not its own perceptions or those of others. My noble friend’s amendment would enable local authorities to set standards in individual cases in addition to the national standards and existing hazard rating systems. This would cause confusion and uncertainty.
While I appreciate that flats that appear to be overcrowded can cause problems for other residents of the block, local authorities and managers of the blocks have powers to address them. For example, a local authority can serve a noise abatement notice if noise is coming from a flat, and the landlord or manager of the block can take action against the long leaseholder for such a nuisance if there is a condition or covenant relating to it in the lease. I am pleased to report that Kensington and Chelsea, where, I understand, my noble friend Lady Gardner is a leaseholder, was this year awarded £91,000 from a £5.3 million fund to tackle rogue landlords. This funding will work alongside the measures in Parts 2 and 5 of this Bill to ensure that local authorities have the resources and incentives to tackle rogue landlords.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Can the Minister put it on record that, when people buy their leases and turn them into a share of the freehold, they have the opportunity at that point to redraft the lease documents? That is the point at which they could input the restrictions required to cover many of the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Parkes.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I note the noble Lord’s point but point out that the lease is a matter between the leaseholder and the landlord.
I hope, however, that my responses have reassured my noble friend that landlords of residential blocks and local authorities can take action to tackle overcrowding and problems associated with flats. With these assurances, I ask my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I thank those who have contributed to this debate, but I do not think that anyone has any idea what goes on under the surface. In the particular block that I am speaking about, the head lease should have been made available to all leaseholders in the block. However, a loophole in the law allows someone to set up a sister company with the same directors and, after two years, to sell it to any outsider. This is what happened—the head lease was sold over our heads to an outsider. The outsider then has to decide whether or not they are going to be a good landlord. The tenants and residents tend to believe that the intention is to make the place so uninhabitable that we will all happily sell our bit of it, because it is a post-war block built in the 1950s, when building materials were scarce. It is not a glamour block, but next door three tiny houses have been demolished and a fabulous block has been built. It is nothing to do with the man who owns ours, but it is a private enterprise venture, and the cheapest apartment was £6 million. So the site must be hugely valuable. To the people living in the place it is no more valuable than when we bought it for, by comparison, pretty well nothing, but it changed our thinking completely: it is why we have gone for the right to manage, so that we can upgrade the conditions and protect the block.
I do not know whether that answers the point that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, made. Would he like to respond on that?
Lord Campbell-Savours
The holder of the freehold to whom those leases are transferred must comply with the original leasehold agreement between the original freeholder and the leaseholders. You cannot simply arbitrarily change the lease. There must be, in the original lease provided by the freeholder when the block was originally purchased, provision to do the things that the noble Baroness is now objecting to. Maybe no one has read the original lease.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I thank the noble Lord for that remark. I do not want to prolong the debate on this but I am certainly pinning my faith on the right to manage. If we can get a more realistic percentage of how many people are required to do things under that right, then I have hopes on that point, too—and I have an amendment tabled later on it. Meanwhile, I note what has been said but the difficulty with local authorities is that they do not have the money to do any enforcement. That is their one complaint to me. Kensington and Chelsea was mentioned. Westminster had a team of six and sacrificed other things to have its properties checked, but Kensington and Chelsea does it only if there is real pressure and the situation becomes impossible, because it is short of funds for enforcement and very limited in what it can do.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
On that very point, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, said that councils can recover their expenses. It would be quite useful to know what he meant by expenses. Are we talking about reasonable costs or full costs? If necessary he can obviously write to me on what he meant by expenses, but the point the noble Baroness makes is absolutely right: councils do not have the resources to undertake this work.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
As we are not getting a reply on that point, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Young of Cookham
“Administrative costs
(1) A tenant may make an application for an order that all or any of the costs incurred, or to be incurred, by the landlord in connection with proceedings before a court, residential property tribunal, leasehold valuation tribunal, or First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal, or in connection with arbitration proceedings, are not to be regarded as costs to be taken into account in calculating the amount of any administration charge, within the meaning of paragraph 1(1)(d) of Schedule 11 to the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, payable by the tenant.(2) The application shall be made—(a) in the case of court proceedings, to the court before which the proceedings are taking place, or, if the application is made after the proceedings are concluded, to a county court;(b) in the case of proceedings before a residential property tribunal, to a leasehold valuation tribunal;(c) in the case of proceedings before a leasehold valuation tribunal, to a tribunal before which the proceedings are taking place, or, if the application is made after the proceedings are concluded, to any leasehold valuation tribunal;(d) in the case of proceedings before the First-tier Tribunal, to the tribunal;(e) in the case of proceedings before the Upper Tribunal, to the tribunal;(f) in the case of arbitration proceedings, to the arbitral tribunal, or, if the application is made after the proceedings are concluded, to a county court.(3) The court or tribunal to which the application is made may make such order on the application as it considers just and equitable in the circumstances.”
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 84BA, which is in my name, and to Amendment 84G. These are, I hope, noncontroversial amendments which would level the playing field—which is currently tilted in favour of freeholders—for leaseholders.
Amendment 84BA addresses an irregularity concerning the consideration of recovery of a landlord’s costs from leaseholders as administrative charges. At the moment, a landlord can recover their costs for appearing before a tribunal or court as an administration charge where a covenant exists in the lease, without the leaseholder being able to ask the tribunal or court to consider the reasonableness of the costs, which they are able to do when the costs are recovered via the service charge. This is potentially unfair and can discourage leaseholders from exercising their rights to seek a determination that service charges or other payments are payable and reasonable, where they are aware that the landlord can recover his costs in this way through this loophole. The proposed amendment would enable the court or tribunal to consider on application whether it is reasonable for a landlord to recover all or part of the costs of appearing before it as an administration charge, where the lease allows this. At the moment, that cannot be done.
This amendment would therefore be similar to the existing legislation which enables tribunals and courts, on application by a tenant or leaseholder, to limit a landlord’s costs of appearing before a court or tribunal where they seek to recover them through service charges. This is not to say that a landlord should not be able to recover his costs, but rather that a tribunal or court should be able to consider whether it is reasonable so to do.
Amendment 84G would give leaseholders the right to obtain from their landlord contact information for other leaseholders in a shared block, for the purposes of obtaining statutory recognition of a tenants’ association. This may be relevant to some of the issues raised by my noble friend Lady Gardner. To put this in context, the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 allows a tenants’ association made up of qualifying tenants to seek statutory recognition. Such recognition provides the association with additional rights to those enjoyed by individual leaseholders. Because this is a collective right, the relevant guidance suggests that a specific proportion of qualifying tenants should support the application before recognition of the tenants’ association can be sought, which means that leaseholders have to contact other leaseholders to get the necessary proportion.
However, it is apparent that leaseholders are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain the numbers needed to seek recognition, particularly where they require contact information about absent leaseholders. This will not surprise my noble friends, given the well-documented increase in absent leaseholders and the growth of subletting. Putting a note through a letterbox, for example, is not a satisfactory way of achieving contact because there are no guarantees that the subtenant will pass the note on to the landlord. There is also no obligation on the landlord to pass on information. This means that a number of qualifying tenants are not given the opportunity to take part in the formation of an association, which is frustrating and potentially weakens the ability of leaseholders to exercise their statutory right.
This amendment to legislation which I fear I put on the statute book myself some 30 years ago—I clearly omitted to make it absolutely perfect—would address the problems outlined by requiring a landlord to supply relevant information with individual leaseholders’ consent within a given timeframe, thus helping those tenants seeking to exert their collective rights. I beg to move my first amendment.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I shall be very brief: this amendment answers many of the points that I have raised and I strongly support it.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, has raised one of the legacy issues derived from the way in which leaseholds are set up. I have a possible reservation about the impact of leaseholders exercising their right to manage, but the point he made highlights a particular mismatch here.
Landlords of landlord-managed blocks tend to have rather blurred lines when it comes to dealing with what exactly constitutes a legitimate service charge item. It is all very well if they are pursuing something that will clearly protect the service charge payers in the block—if it is a block—generally; it is quite different if the landlord is using the service charge to finance his pursuit of a particular tenant on a landlord/tenant issue, as opposed to a service charge issue. That is where the muddle starts to creep in. The way in which the service charge provision and its recoverability are set out in many old leases simply has not kept pace with the passage of time. We are stuck legally where we are because of how these things were done historically, perhaps during the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s, when we did not have the same sort of concentration on ensuring that the rights of tenants, as the payers of service charges, were as adequately protected as they might be under modern drafting.
This does raise an issue, and the only thing on which I would counsel a bit of caution is long leaseholders who have exercised their right to manage. Would they get caught for part of the administrative costs of pursuing a non-paying long leaseholder in a block on a service charge item? Would they then suffer the same fate? Otherwise, it puts them in an exposed position. However, the basic premise raised by the noble Lord, Lord Young, is to me unassailable. Why should the generality of long leasehold service charge payers in a multi-unit building foot the bill for the landlord pursuing a particular tenant on a landlord/tenant issue? On that point, he is absolutely spot on.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I would like to bring a little experience to this debate. I was involved in an enfranchisement over getting a share of a freehold from leasehold. Although it was an enfranchisement, if I remember rightly, the costs were not payable by the tenant in the enfranchisement proceeding before the tribunal. Notwithstanding that, it is interesting to know what can happen in these tribunals. In the tribunal in which my residents’ association was involved, we were paying £3,000 a day for a lawyer. I remember sitting there one day during the inquiry. There had been a gentle chat in the morning and at lunchtime the chairman of the tribunal looked up at the clock and said, “I think we’ve had an interesting day and I suggest that we adjourn until tomorrow morning”. In the event that the bill had been payable, the residents would have had to share out the £1,500 costs. In fact it was not payable, because, as I said, it was an enfranchisement. In circumstances where the liability did fall on the tenants, the bill would have fallen on the residents. Ministers have to have in mind the fact that complications such as those can arise in a tribunal, where the chairman might not be fully aware of the costs of the lawyers representing the residents.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 84D, which has been put in this group. I have no problem with that. In my research for what I shall say, I also discovered quite a lot of involvement of the noble Lord, Lord Young, from a long time ago, which I shall come to in a few minutes.
The purpose of the amendment is to bring the tenants of the Duchy of Cornwall in line with other tenants of other landlords and their rights to buy. First, it repeals Section 33(2)(c) of the Leasehold Reform Act 1967. Secondly, it repeals Section 94(11)(c) of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, concerning Crown land. I could read out the relevant clauses, but I expect noble Lords can understand what they are all about and if they want to read them, they can.
The amendment is also part of a Private Member’s Bill that I put in for the ballot last May. It did not come very high, so I thought it would be useful to raise the subject today, because it is relevant. The purpose is to examine the exemptions and immunities from certain Acts of Parliament which do not extend to the Duchy of Cornwall. Individuals who hold leases from the Duchy do not, unlike other persons who hold leases from private estates, have the right to enfranchisement. The purpose of the amendment is to give them the same rights as if they were leaseholders in England and Wales.
The first thing to discuss is whether the Duchy is a private estate or not. There has been an awful lot of debate about this. The Government, in many Written Answers over the years, have said that it is a private estate. On 9 June 2009, Bridget Prentice MP said:
“In general terms, the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster are private estates in that they belong to the heir apparent and the monarch respectively in their private capacities”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/6/09; col. 528W.]
In a Written Answer to Andrew George MP, on the same date, Harriet Harman said:
“The Duchy of Cornwall is a private estate that funds the public, charitable and private activities of the Prince Of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William and Prince Harry”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/6/09; col. 528W.]
There seems to be little debate about that. In a case brought by Michael Bruton on the Helford river, which I think is still being debated in a tribunal, having been to the European Court of Justice and back, the argument was that the Duchy of Cornwall did not have to do an environmental impact assessment on an SSSI over installing cages in which to grow oysters because it was a private estate. Michael Bruton argued that it was a public estate and the case has still not been resolved. While all this is going on, a large number of tenants are not able to buy their own houses, in contrast to those who are tenants of somebody else.
I will now give some examples from the island of St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly, which I think apply elsewhere. They go back to the origins of the 1967 Leasehold Reform Act, which said that the Crown was exempt from this particular clause, but a voluntary undertaking was given to Parliament through a Written Answer by Mr Fred Willey, who was Secretary of State for Land and Resources, in 1967. My noble friend probably remembers that. The Answer does not mention the Duchy of Cornwall but refers to Crown leases. It stated that the Crown authorities will agree to enfranchisement,
“except that enfranchisement will be refused where the house is of special architectural or historic interest … or adjoins such houses and is important in safeguarding them and their surroundings”.—[Official Report, Commons, 31/6/1967; col. 42W.]
In 1992, during of the passage of what became the 1993 Act, a further Written Statement was made to Parliament, by Sir George Young, as the noble Lord then was, which was materially different from the 1967 Answer. He stated that, regardless of the exemption under the Act, the Crown authorities would agree, subject to specified conditions and exceptions, to the enfranchisement under the same qualifications and terms which applied by virtue of the 1967 Act and the 1993 Act to lessees held from other landlords. The relevant exception affecting the Isles of Scilly states that,
“where the property or area in which it is situated has a long, historic, or particular association with the Crown … the areas referred to in paragraph 3(iii) include the Off Islands within the Isles … the Garrison on St Mary’s and parts of central Dartmoor”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/11/1992; col. 19WS.]
This indicated that the 1967 test had been materially changed. There appears to have been no consultation about this and no debate in Parliament. Perhaps other noble Lords who were in the House of Commons at the time can correct me on this. It is not even very clear whether Members of Parliament voting on the Bill were aware that there had been a material variation to the Crown undertaking. It is not clear whether it was drawn to the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Young—maybe he will have views or maybe he cannot remember it. For the Crown to claim that it was entitled to refuse enfranchisement, the Crown no longer had to show that the property was of special architectural or historic merit. It now became clear that if it was in an area which had a long historic or particular association with the Crown, that was good enough.
There is an awful lot more in this story, which I will not bore the Committee with now except to say that the situation is rather confused. We can sit or stand here to debate this and say, “It doesn’t really matter because there are many other things going on to do with the Crown and the Duchy which need careful discussion”, but we have to remember that people who have bought a lease are affected by this: if the lease has come from one particular landlord, they cannot buy it, whereas if it has come from another landlord, they can. That is very unfair.
As I think I have demonstrated—there are many other documents that we can use to demonstrate it—the Duchy in this case is a private landlord, so the argument that its tenants should have an exemption from the right to buy seems to me very unfair. We know that leaseholds are a diminishing asset—that is the whole point of them—but just because somebody owns a house on the Isles of Scilly, in Cornwall or somewhere else of no particular architectural merit, why should they be exempt? The only safe way is to remove this exemption, which is why I tabled this amendment.
Lord Beecham
I thank the noble Viscount for giving way. I entirely endorse the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley. I sympathise with the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, who is temporarily not in her place, although I have some difficulties with the wording. Amendment 84E would insert a clause about sinking funds which states:
“The buyer of a leasehold … is required to make periodic deposits”.
She refers again to the buyer of a leasehold in proposed new subsection (4), but of course the leaseholder need not have purchased—
Lord Beecham
I am so sorry, I thought it was in this group. Has it been degrouped?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
Perhaps I could clarify for the noble Lord that we are speaking to Amendments 84BA, 84D and 84G.
Lord Beecham
I apologise to the Committee. The group that I have includes the noble Baroness’s amendments. But if the groups were changed only this morning, perhaps I should withdraw my apology and confirm merely that I support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Young, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and my noble friend Lord Young for their amendments. I welcome the consideration of issues around the operation of leasehold, which I know are of interest to many in the House.
Amendment 84BA seeks a right for a leaseholder to obtain an order restricting a landlord’s ability to recover the costs of appearing before a court or tribunal as an administration charge. My noble friend Lord Young has raised an important issue, which others have also expressed concern about today, including the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. As the Committee will be aware, legislation already allows tribunals and courts to make this type of order where a landlord is seeking recovery of costs through a service charge. I should like to consider this further and I hope, with that assurance, that my noble friend will agree to withdraw his amendment.
I will now address changes proposed in Amendment 84D, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I listened carefully to what the noble Lord said. As noble Lords will know, the Crown is not bound by legislation except where that is specifically provided for. The underlying exceptions to the Leasehold Reform Act 1967 and the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 apply to Crown land, which for the purposes of those Acts is defined as including the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Lancaster, the Duchy of Cornwall and the interests of any government department. There are no plans to change the exemptions set out in statute.
However, the Crown authorities covered by this exemption have committed, through a voluntary undertaking renegotiated in 2001, that the Crown would, as landlord and subject to specified exemptions described in the undertaking, agree to the enfranchisement or extension of residential long leases under the same qualifications and terms which apply by virtue of the 1967 Act and the 1993 Act. These specified exemptions include property that stands on land held inalienably by the Crown, and where there are security considerations. They also include where properties, or the areas in which they are situated, have a long historic or particular association with the Crown.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Going by my own experience, if a statutory requirement was placed on the management company to forward correspondence requesting that information to the people who own the leases, particularly if they were abroad—in other words, if the responsibility was on the management company—following a request from the residents association, we would indeed get the names.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
That is a possibility, and I will bring that into the considerations that we will undertake prior to Report. I thank the noble Lord for his point. I hope that my noble friend will agree to withdraw his amendment and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will not press his later.
Lord Berkeley
I am very grateful to the Minister for his answer, but in the exception mentioned—when properties are of special architectural or historic interest or adjoin such houses and it is important to safeguard them and their surroundings—the definition of whether a lease could be given up is very wide. Many of the buildings which I believe are the subject of this debate are in fact 1960s houses. They are probably very nice houses but they are not in the same category as the Garrison or the off islands or anything like that. It seems that there is no appeal in this process. The Duchy’s decision is final and that is that—you like it or lump it. Can nothing be done about it?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I would not put it in quite that way. There are no plans to make changes, but the noble Lord will know that we are talking about properties that are considered to have a long historical association with the Crown. I will investigate further and if I can furnish the noble Lord with more information, I will certainly do so in the form of a letter.
Lord Young of Cookham
My Lords, I am grateful to everybody who took part in this debate. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, let me say that, indeed, I do not remember the background to a Written Parliamentary Question that I answered in 1992. My general impression was that the Duchy agreed voluntarily to abide by what was in the legislation. That was the background, which I think was broadly confirmed in the exchange, although there might be some minor amendments more recently. I am grateful to my noble friend for his benign response to my two amendments: the teams of Young and Younger seem to be on the same wavelength here. Against the background of the assurances that he has given, I am more than happy to beg leave to withdraw Amendment 84BA.
“Client money protection for lettings agents
(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, a person may not accept money from another person (“T”) in the course of lettings agency work unless there are in force authorised arrangements under which, in the event of his or her failing to account for that money to the person entitled to it, his or her liability will be made good by another. (2) In this section “T” is any person who seeks residential accommodation which is to let, or who has a tenancy of, or other right or permission to occupy, residential premises; and a “relevant payment” means any sum of money which is received from T in the circumstances described in subsection (1).(3) In this section “lettings agency work” has the same meaning as in section 83 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (redress schemes: lettings agency work) and a “lettings agent” is a person who engages in lettings agency work.(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument—(a) specify any persons or classes of persons to whom subsection (1) does not apply;(b) specify arrangements which are authorised for the purposes of this section including arrangements to which an enforcement authority nominated for the purpose by the Secretary of State or any other person so nominated is a party;(c) specify the terms and conditions upon which any payment is to be made under such arrangements and any circumstances in which the right to any such payment may be excluded or modified;(d) provide that any limit on the amount of any such payment is to be not less than a specified amount; and(e) require a person providing authorised arrangements covering any person carrying on lettings agency work to issue a certificate in a form specified in the regulations certifying that arrangements complying with the regulations have been made with respect to that person.(5) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (4) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.(6) Every guarantee entered into by a person who provides authorised arrangements covering a lettings agent shall tenure for the benefit of every person from whom the lettings agent has received a relevant payment as if the guarantee were contained in a contract made by the insurer with every such person.”
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 84C is about client money protection. It would require every letting agent to have the money that they hold—belonging either to a tenant by way of advance rent or to a landlord as rent received or funds for repair or insurance—to be protected. In this way, even if a letting agent disappeared or went bankrupt, such money would be safe and available to the landlord. This client money protection is required of solicitors, other professionals, estate agents and, indeed, anyone else holding client money that belongs to others. It is what is needed for rents collected by letting agents on behalf of landlords. It is not the agent’s money and it should be held separately in a protected client account.
This is a big issue: there are hundreds of cases of letting agents taking money from tenants as holding fees, deposits, rent, service charges or even tax, but then pocketing the money. Sometimes, the long arm of the law catches up with them. Tim Glasson was jailed for 21 years for unlawfully and dishonestly keeping rent and deposits; Roy Jackson of Suffolk Letting stole £70,000 from landlords and Keiran Farrer stole £17,000 in rents and deposits, repaying neither the tenant nor the landlord. Similarly, Shirley Player was jailed for stealing £400,000 and Russell Baker was accused of taking £150,000 in deposits but not handing them on to either a tenant deposit scheme or the landlord.
This money is not going into the housing market. It deprives landlords of their income and tenants of their security. About 60% of landlords use letting agents to help to manage their property. Thus money for repairs and insurance, in addition to rents, is channelled through the agent’s bank account. This is not money for the agent’s services; it is due to be handed on to someone else.
The amendment would require the funds to be in a ring-fenced protected client account, in the same way as happens with solicitors. It is strongly supported by landlords as much as by tenants. It is backed by the National Landlords Association, RICS, the British Property Federation, the Association of Residential Managing Agents, the Association of Residential Letting Agents, the Property Ombudsman, Ombudsman Services, Crisis and Shelter. It was recommended by the CLG Select Committee in the other place.
Reputable letting agents strongly support the amendment. As David Cox, who leads their professional association ARLA, said, client money protection is,
“fundamental for tenants and landlords to ensure they have peace of mind should an agent go bust or take off with their funds”.
A director of a large firm, Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward, which protects landlords’ and tenants’ money under a client money protection scheme, said that,
“all too often, rogue agents who do not subscribe”,
to such a scheme,
“misappropriate landlord and tenant funds … It should be compulsory for all agents to subscribe to a client money protection scheme”.
Savills—well-known to everyone in this House—urges the Government,
“to make it compulsory for all letting agents to have client money protection”.
We are talking about vast amounts of money handled, but not owned, by letting agents: probably £2.7 billion at any one time, perhaps £700 million of which is unprotected. In deposits alone, renters typically hand over £600 each, with no guarantee of its safety.
Amendment 84C, which would require all letting and managing agents to have client money protection, is based on similar provisions in the Estate Agents Act 1979. Agents would have to maintain a segregated bank account for clients’ money, with written confirmation from the bank that all the money in that account belonged to the clients. It would mean, importantly, that the bank was not entitled to combine that client account with another account or to offset the money in that client account for any sum owed to the bank by the letting agent.
We tabled a similar amendment to the Consumer Rights Bill and it seemed that the Government were almost persuaded. They came up with a compromise amendment of their own, which required letting agents to display whether they had client money protection. However, it has not worked and it was never going to work. As far as tenants go, they cannot choose which letting agent to use; it is the landlord who chooses. For a tenant, if a particular letting agent is handling the property that they already rent, or which they want to rent, they cannot shop around to find another agent. Their only choice is not to rent that property. They have no consumer power to change behaviour in the market. It hardly works for the landlord either. Many are small and non-professional and do not really appreciate the importance of client money protection until, of course, it is too late.
The Government’s transparency amendment, which became part of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, is fairly useless because, even before that change, every letting agent who had client money protection already proudly boasted about it, but that did not drive the rogues to follow suit. As we predicted, the amendment made little difference. It did not help tenants, who could not shop around, and it did not help landlords, who could only check at the beginning, and not later, whether there was client money protection in place. The other problem is that even the law that was put through is being flouted. We have numerous examples of letting agents failing to display their charges and whether they have client money protection.
When we dealt with this before, the Minister for BIS, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, claimed that client money protection could,
“make it difficult to encourage landlords to invest in properties”.—[Official Report, 3/11/14; col. GC 600.]
How wrong could she be? It is exactly the security given to landlords by client money protection that will encourage them to invest, knowing that the rents paid over to the letting agent are safe and sound. This amendment is wanted by tenants and is particularly wanted by landlords; it is also strongly supported by reliable letting agents. I beg to move.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendment, to which my name is attached. I declare my interest as chairman of the advisory board of the Property Redress Scheme, which has been mentioned in passing.
It seems very little to ask, in legislating for housing, to require letting agents to have a protection scheme in place for moneys received by them in their course of business from tenants, prospective tenants and anyone who is renting or seeking a place to rent. It has been estimated—I always wonder how these estimates are arrived at—that letting agents hold about £2.7 billion in client funds, yet if the agent has not elected voluntarily to obtain cover, landlord and tenant can lose their money. If disaster strikes in the form of an agent going bust or running off with the loot, under this amendment the landlord and tenant would be covered. The amendment does not require government underwriting, so the Chancellor does not need to amend the Budget. The cover could be provided by the users; this would supplement any award under any one of the redress schemes. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has said, we are not asking for reinvention of the wheel. Section 16 of the Estate Agents Act 1979 already provides protection in the course of sale and purchase transactions.
Client money protection is of course operated by the travel industry. Travel agents in the UK are required by law to be a member of an independent client money protection scheme that uses ABTA or ATOL. Many of us may have had to use these in the past—I certainly have. When you pay for your travel, your payment to the agent is protected by ABTA or ATOL against the agent going bust or going walkabout with your holiday money. You claim against ABTA or ATOL rather than against the travel agent. This amendment asks that what is the norm for the travel industry, just for going on holiday, is also used for letting agents—for most people, the property that they own or seek to let is much more important—and that there should be compulsory protection for rents, deposits or moneys held, even moneys for repairs.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendment in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and my noble friend Lord Palmer. I hope that noble Lords will not read anything into my very brief appearance here on the Front Bench.
We have heard a little about some of the figures. Back in 2012, Reading University carried out a survey that showed that some £23 billion a year was paid in rent and that in a year some £6 billion to £10 billion was held by agents after being collected by them on behalf of landlords. However, as my noble friend Lord Palmer points out, a more recent survey shows that, at any one time, some £2.7 billion is held by letting agents. The amendment is about the protection of that money.
It is worth reflecting on what eminent people have said about this issue. In July 2013, the Property Ombudsman felt moved to say something about client money protection under the heading:
“Client Money Protection Is a Necessity for the UK Lettings Market”.
He said:
“'We need an even playing field for lettings. All agents are required to hold client money in a separate Clients Account but there is no current requirement to have those funds insured against unlawful use or fraud, which is why”,
client money protection,
“is crucial for landlords and tenants”.
He went on to say that client money protection,
“is not a duplication of any deposit scheme or professional indemnity cover. It goes beyond that and provides landlords with the peace of mind they need to know that the rent collected by an agent is protected”.
As we know, many good agents and trade bodies, such as the Association of Residential Letting Agents and the UK Association of Letting Agents, recognise the importance of this and provide necessary protection for their members. Sadly, however, some do not.
Back in 2013, the Property Ombudsman surveyed some 8,000 lettings branches and discovered that, while 80% had client money protection, 20% did not. The ombudsman concluded:
“My personal viewpoint would be to question why a letting agent would not support CMP. In the absence of any regulation … agents themselves need to take proactive steps to show landlords and tenants that they have taken out the necessary cover to protect rental income”.
However, it is very difficult indeed for the vast majority of agents—those who provide client money protection—to persuade the others to do so. It is also difficult for them to run the necessary publicity campaign to warn landlords or would-be landlords and the public of the need to choose an agent who provides that protection.
Of course, agents are helped to some extent by the new transparency rules, which are being enforced by local authorities; I have no doubt that the Minister will refer to that in his response. These require the publication of the breakdown of the fees that agents charge to tenants and landlords, the redress scheme that they belong to and a statement of whether they are a member of a client money protection scheme. I recognise that there are many such schemes—again, no doubt, the Minister will refer to schemes such as SAFEagent and CM Protect. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, points out, there is no evidence to suggest—and the vast majority of agents agree with her—that those schemes alone will provide the level of protection that is needed.
Earlier in our deliberations on this legislation, during our discussion of zero-carbon homes, the Government said that by opposing the introduction of tighter energy efficiency standards they were protecting housebuilding businesses; they said that they were stopping the overregulation of housebuilders. I was able to point out at the time that the housebuilders themselves supported the introduction of the regulation. We have a similar case here. It is instructive to learn what Mr Brandon Lewis said in response to such an amendment when this matter was discussed in another place. He said:
“We want to ensure that we have a strong and thriving private rented sector that is not tied up in excessive regulation. Requiring agents to pay to belong to a client money protection scheme would force honest agents to buy insurance against the risk that they themselves were fraudulent, when, as the hon. Lady said, the vast majority of agencies are not. Introducing a mandatory client money protection scheme at this point would be a step too far and would overburden a market that is perfectly capable of self-regulation”.
That is slightly odd, coming from a Minister who is imposing a large number of regulations in the Bill. However, it is much more bizarre that in this case, just as with zero-carbon homes, the industry itself is pressing the Government to introduce regulation.
It was the Association of Residential Letting Agents that drafted the amendment before us today to protect money received from clients and held by agents, such as rent due to landlords. The Government claim that the only reason for rejecting the amendment is that it would overburden the industry, but given that the industry wants it imposed on itself, I hope that the Government will drop their opposition. I hope that when the Minster responds he will reflect on the other thing that Mr Brandon Lewis said during his response to a similar amendment in another place. He went on to say, rather indicating that even he is a bit worried about the situation:
“However, in May 2016 we will review the impact of the transparency measures that were put in place only recently. At that stage, I will take due consideration of whether any further action is needed”.—[Official Report, Commons, Housing and Planning Bill Committee, 10/12/15; col. 719.]
We see yet again another example of the Government being prepared to consider something after we have finished our deliberations on this legislation. I urge the Minister to reflect on the fact that the agents themselves want to see an amendment such as this in place. I hope that the Minister will support, if not the precise wording of the amendment, something along these lines.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, it gives me considerable pleasure to be responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, who will probably remember only too well that not so long ago we debated a number of Bills with some vigour. This amendment would introduce provisions under which cover for money received or held by lettings agents in the course of business, generally known as client money protection, would be mandatory. I hope that at the end of my remarks I can offer a little light at the end of the respective tunnels for particular Lords, if I may put it that way.
I am aware of some support within the housing sector for this measure. That has been reflected in interventions from the noble Lords, Lord Palmer and Lord Foster. But I am concerned that requiring lettings agents to belong to a client money protection scheme will introduce burdens and costs into the sector that could have implications for rent levels. Instead, this Government’s approach is to encourage lettings agents to adopt client money protection without the need for regulations. I shall explain.
We have already legislated through the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to require lettings agents to be transparent about whether they offer client money protection. Transparency raises consumer awareness and encourages landlords and tenants to shop around and choose an agent based on the level of service that it provides. I recognise the importance of client money protection. This is why in our guide on how to rent we champion the SAFEagent scheme—a kitemark scheme, in effect. This helps landlords and tenants easily to identify agents that offer this protection by the display of the SAFEagent mark. I accept that participation is voluntary but estimate that at least two-thirds of agents already offer client money protection. At the moment, to introduce mandatory client money protection would be a step too far and overburden a market that is perfectly capable of self-regulation. The balance of regulation for lettings agents is now about right. We need to allow time for the transparency measures to which the noble Lord, Lord Foster, alluded to bed in.
We shall review the impact of the transparency measures later this year. I reassure all noble Lords, and in particular the noble Lord, Lord Foster, that this review will be taken seriously and that we intend to work closely with our industry partners and representative groups to develop this review. I hope that this explanation reassures noble Lords and that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
What is the Government’s logic? The Minster has said how good money protection schemes are, how everyone feels reassured by them and how many people—landlords and others, lettings agents in particular—subscribe to them. So, as the Minister said, they are good. If it is good to be voluntary, why is it not even better to be compulsory? The compulsory element sweeps up the bad landlords. The Minister is talking about the good landlords who use lettings agents. The idea of compulsion would be to deal with those who are not at the moment helping protect tenants and landlords. The logic in not making a successful voluntary scheme compulsory is lacking.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I appreciate that the noble Lord feels strongly about this, but as explained earlier, at the moment we feel that we have got the balance right. I have explained that the review will aid us further by providing greater intelligence. Further regulation could deter lettings agents and make it difficult to encourage landlords to invest in properties. This is what this Bill is about—freeing up the market to ensure that the supply of housing for rent helps to meet the country’s urgent housing needs and demand.
Lord Foster of Bath
The Minister is suggesting that the introduction of measures proposed in this amendment would increase costs on letting agents. That is true. I have looked at the costs of such insurance schemes as are currently available. We know that the Minister says three-quarters of lettings agents have already entered such schemes. I believe that it is almost 80%. Will the Minister share with the House, either from figures in his brief or by writing subsequently, the Government’s estimate of the cost of the introduction of the scheme, not to the 80% that have taken it up but to 100%, and of its impact on rent levels?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
Yes, indeed. I shall make two points arising from the noble Lord’s question. We believe that the balance is right also because we want to encourage a market whereby customers or people who wish to rent have the opportunity to shop around and to go to those agents where there is a kitemark scheme and reassurance in terms of their level of service. We believe that the market will weed out those without that. To answer the question on the money involved, agents typically pay an annual levy of around £300 to join a scheme. The noble Lord probably has these figures himself. This forms part of a central pot of money that can be used to pay successful claims by landlords and tenants.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I thank the Government Front Bench for allowing us to take this amendment at this stage and apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, and my noble friend Lord Rosser. The reason is that between 2 pm and 3 pm this afternoon I am completing my house purchase and I will have the keys at 3 pm. That is utterly relevant to this debate because the money was certainly in my solicitor’s account at 2 pm. I am hoping that by 3 pm it will be in the account of the seller and I am completely confident that that money in the solicitor’s account is safe.
It will not go through estate agents—estate agents hold very little in client accounts. You pay almost nothing to the estate agent. The seller will have to give them a percentage of the sale, but it is very small. But the amount that tenants pay to lettings agents is enormous. So under an earlier Act, client money protection is essential for estate agents, who hardly handle any client money, but not obligatory for lettings agents who handle an enormous amount. The noble Viscount, Lord Younger, again says that tenants can shop around. They cannot. In London, you are lucky to find anywhere to live. The idea that as a tenant you would shop around for your lettings agent, let alone the property, is, I am afraid, unrealistic.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, for his intervention. I have to confess that when I went on holiday I had not realised that my money was protected, but there it is. We make it essential for holiday firms and estate agents, but somehow for lettings agents this £300 to safeguard tenants’ and landlords’ money is a step too far.
I hope that the Minister was not saying that he wants even more lettings agents coming in—lettings agents who would not protect their clients’ money. I think that that is what he is saying. He is saying that he wants more people to come in as lettings agents, but without requiring them to protect their clients’ money. That sounds to me like a charter for more rogue “set up today, take the clients’ money tomorrow” lettings agents.
Despite the Minister’s firm response, I hope that the Government will think about this again. We will clearly bring it back on Report. I am not threatening anything but I think he knows how much support it will have. Instead of having to go down that route, I ask the Minister whether he will be willing to meet me, the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, and perhaps some other noble Lords to talk about this, as I do not feel that the Government are taking the right position here. For the record, I saw a very healthy nod from the Minister there. So I thank him for that and apologise to the Committee for having to get my new key at 3 pm. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2016
(8 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bates
That the draft Order laid before the House on 22 February be approved.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, the International Sikh Youth Federation, which I shall refer to as the ISYF, is a separatist movement committed to the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh state in the Punjab region of south Asia, and was established in the 1980s. The ISYF’s attacks have, in the past, included assassinations, bombings and kidnappings, mainly directed against Indian officials and Indian interests. The ISYF has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK since March 2001. The decision to proscribe it was taken after extensive consideration and in the light of a full assessment of available information, and it was approved by Parliament. It is clear that the ISYF was concerned in terrorism at that time.
Having reviewed with other countries what information is available about the current activities of the ISYF, after careful consideration the Home Secretary has concluded that there is now not sufficient evidence to support a reasonable belief that the ISYF is currently concerned in terrorism as defined by Section 3(5) of the Terrorism Act 2000. Under that section, the Home Secretary has the power to remove an organisation from the list of proscribed organisations if she believes that it no longer meets the statutory test for proscription. Accordingly, the Home Secretary has brought this order before the House and, if it is approved, it will mean that being a member of, or providing support to, this organisation will cease to be a criminal offence on the day that the order comes into force.
The decision to deproscribe the ISYF was taken after extensive consideration and in the light of a full assessment of available information. As noble Lords will appreciate, it would not be appropriate for us to discuss any specific intelligence that informed the decision-making process.
The Government do not condone any terrorist activity, and deproscription of a proscribed group should not be interpreted as condoning any previous activities of this group. The British Government were always clear that the ISYF was a brutal terrorist organisation. Groups that do not meet the threshold for proscription are not free to spread hatred, fund terrorist activity or incite violence as they please, and the police have comprehensive powers to take action against individuals under the criminal law.
We are determined to detect and disrupt all terrorist threats, whether home-grown or international. Proscription is just one tool in the considerable armoury at the disposal of the Government, the police and the Security Service to disrupt terrorist activity.
The Government continue to exercise the proscription power in a proportionate manner, in accordance with the law. We recognise that proscription potentially interferes with an individual’s rights—in particular, the rights protected by Article 10 on freedom of expression and Article 11 on freedom of association in the European Convention on Human Rights—and so should be exercised only where absolutely necessary. A decision to deproscribe is taken only after great care and consideration of a case, and it is appropriate that it must be approved by both Houses. If agreed, the order will come into force on 18 March. I beg to move.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his explanation of the background to, and purpose of, the order. As he said, it amends the Terrorism Act 2000 by removing the International Sikh Youth Federation from the list of proscribed organisations, meaning that, if the order is passed, it will no longer be proscribed as an organisation concerned in terrorism within the meaning of Section 3(5) of the Act.
As the Minister said, the international Sikh Youth Federation was added to the list of proscribed organisations under an order in 2001. Proscription has a number of consequences. These include it becoming a criminal offence to belong to or invite support for the organisation, or to arrange a meeting in support of the organisation. It also means that the financial assets of the organisation become terrorist property and can be subject to freezing and seizure.
Under the terms of the Terrorism Act 2000, a proscribed organisation, or any person affected by the proscription of the organisation, can apply to the Secretary of State for deproscription. If the application is refused, the applicant may appeal to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission. According to the Explanatory Memorandum, the Secretary of State has received such an application for the deproscription of the International Sikh Youth Federation and has now decided that there is insufficient information to conclude that the group remains concerned in terrorism.
The application was made by three members of the Sikh community in early February last year. It should have been dealt with within 90 days, but was not since the response was not made until the end of July last year. The response was to the effect that the Secretary of State still had a reasonable belief that the International Sikh Youth Federation was concerned in terrorism, but no reasons were given.
The applicants appealed on the basis that the Government had not given any reasons for the refusal to deproscribe, contrary to the rule of law, and that the ISYF was not concerned in terrorism. The Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission directed the Home Secretary to provide reasons to support her position. However, on the day that the reasons and evidence were due, the commission was told that the Home Secretary would not now defend her decision but would lay an order for deproscription, which is what we have in front of us today.
Of course, the inevitable question that has been asked is what new information had come to light between the end of July, when the Home Secretary declined the application for deproscription, and the decision at the door of the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission some six months later not to defend that decision—new information that could not have been known or found out at the time of the decision at the end of July, over which the Home Secretary said there had been extensive consideration and a full assessment of the available information.
There is a feeling in some quarters that being required to provide reasons for the decision not to deproscribe may have been a not insignificant factor behind the very different decision then made by the Home Secretary to lay an order for deproscription. I have no doubt that the Minister will wish to respond to that point. Perhaps he could also say, without disclosing its nature or content, whether significant new information became available for the first time between the end of July 2015 and December 2015 which proved a key factor in reaching the very different conclusion from that reached in July: that the International Sikh Youth Federation should no longer be proscribed.
The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation has previously suggested that once an organisation has been proscribed, there should be a review of that decision within specified time limits to ensure that it continues to be justified and necessary. Since proscription is currently for an indefinite time, are the Government now looking at adopting a procedure and process along the lines suggested by the independent reviewer, and to which I have just referred?
Lord Bates
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his questions. I will try to respond to them in the order in which they were asked.
The noble Lord’s first question was about the changes that occurred between July, when the application was considered, and December when it was about to be presented to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission. Following careful consideration of the available evidence, the Home Secretary decided to maintain proscription of the group in July on the basis that she considered that the evidence demonstrated that the group remained concerned in terrorism. However, in December 2015, having further reviewed with other countries the available information about the current activities of the ISYF, after careful consideration the Home Secretary concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to support a reasonable belief that the ISYF was currently concerned in terrorism, as defined by Section 3(5) of the Act.
The Home Secretary considers various pieces of open-source material—the noble Lord asked about the nature and content of the material—when determining whether a group is engaged in terrorism, but she also considers material obtained via the intelligence agencies. Of course, as the noble Lord suggested, it would not be appropriate to discuss the specific material that informed the decision-making process, particularly details of the information reviewed and how this altered the assessment of the IYSF’s current activities. We always seek to present as much information as we can, but I cannot comment on matters relating to intelligence.
The noble Lord asked about David Anderson’s concerns. Clearly, David Anderson is a very well-respected adviser to the Government on terrorism legislation and in fact we are dealing with a lot of his recommendations in another context on other legislation. We look very closely at his proposals. David Anderson had stated that,
“the Home Secretary had … agreed to a process for deproscribing groups that no longer met the statutory test, and that a preliminary analysis had unearthed 14 groups that may be in this category”.
While it is not government policy to provide a running commentary on any proscribed organisation, I can confirm that officials did not recommend that the ISYF should be deproscribed at that time.
Under the current regime, the organisation or any person affected by proscription can submit a written application to the Home Secretary requesting that she considers whether a specified organisation should be removed from the list of proscribed organisations. We believe that addresses the noble Lord’s concern as to whether there should be a sunset clause in relation to proscription matters.
In respect of the possible impact of proscription and the points raised by the Sikh Federation in relation to visa and citizenship applications, the Home Secretary has to be satisfied that an individual seeking citizenship meets the statutory requirement for citizenship and is of good character. A range of issues is considered when determining whether an applicant meets this test and an individual’s current or former membership of a proscribed organisation may well be a factor as well as the individual’s specific activities.
The noble Lord raised an important point about the nature of the relationship with the Sikh community within the UK. This is, of course, extremely important. In relation to the point about India, I can say without hesitation that diplomatic pressure did not lead to the ban on the ISYF having been maintained since 2001. Proscription of a group can remain only if there is compelling evidence to support a reasonable belief that it is currently concerned in terrorism as required under Section 3(5) of the Act.
Regarding engagement with the Sikh community, I do not want at this stage to expand the deproscription debate into a broader one on engagement with other organisations. The focus of our discussion should be deproscription, which is quite distinct from other areas of government engagement.
The noble Lord asked whether we intended to engage with other countries. We engage with other countries in considering whether an organisation should be proscribed or deproscribed. It is an important part of the process and we will inform other countries with an interest in this deproscription of our decision.
In relation to the point about relations with the wider Sikh community, we have some distinguished members of the Sikh community in this House and of course recognise the immense contribution they make to the wider community. We hope that any misunderstanding that may have occurred in the past can be removed and that we can have a more positive relationship going forward if this deproscription has been a barrier.
I do not want to convey in any sense that we did not believe that there was just cause for the then Labour Government to proscribe this organisation in 2001. There was clear evidence then that it should be proscribed, but we have now looked at it again and arrived at a different conclusion.
Proscription is not targeted at any particular faith or social grouping but is based on clear evidence that an organisation is concerned in terrorism. It is the Home Secretary’s firm opinion that, on the basis of the available evidence, the ISYF no longer meets the statutory test for proscription and it is appropriate that it is removed from the list of proscribed organisations in accordance with the deproscription process set out in law. I thank the noble Lord for his questions and commend the order to the House.
Housing and Planning Bill
“Sinking funds for repairs: leaseholds
(1) The buyer of a leasehold in a shared residential building with common parts is required to make periodic deposits of sums into a fund to be maintained and used for the purpose of making repairs to the building in which the leasehold property is situated.(2) The fund shall be held and administered by the person designated to fulfil that role by the leaseholders.(3) The sums to be deposited and the timetable for their deposit shall be determined by those holding rights in the shared building, and the collection of those sums may be incorporated into the building’s service charge arrangements.(4) The requirement provided for by subsection (1) applies to any buyer of a leasehold who completes the purchase of that leasehold at any point after the day on which this section is brought into effect.”
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, this amendment is self-explanatory, and people in this House have heard me speak before on the issue of sinking funds. It was drawn to my attention particularly by people who bought their council flats in the days of Margaret Thatcher. No sinking funds were set aside at all and, if you are a tenant in a local authority block, you do not have to pay for sudden repairs. However, the case I quote to the House is of a woman who has an income of £10,000 a year and received a bill, this year, for £12,000 for her part of the roof repairs. When I followed this up with the housing association that owns the property, it said the problem is that there are 26 people in exactly the same position. To avoid this, from the day that you own a leasehold, you should really be part of a sinking fund so that you do not suddenly find yourself threatened with losing your home altogether because you cannot find the money. What happens if she does lose her home? The local authority has to pick it up again, so it seems that the fund is necessary.
It is also very necessary and important that a sinking fund exists in private blocks. We do not have one in the block that I own a flat in and, some years ago, someone suggested that we have a voluntary scheme. The scheme came into force and we all put our money in, and it was great because it paid for all the repairs for the year—some minor and some less minor. Then, a new tenant bought a leasehold in the block and said, “I don’t want to pay a sinking fund; there is nothing in the lease about it”. They had to give us all back our money, whereupon, years later, we will be faced with another giant bill for a new boiler system or new central heating or something.
It really is so much better if people have a sinking fund for repairs, and it is important that this should be a possibility for people in local authority housing and people who have a right to manage, even if their lease does not have provision for a sinking fund. My aim is to put in a clause that would enable people to decide that by a majority. If a majority want it, it should come into force, and it should not be the case that it can be withdrawn at a later date, which was what threw our system into complete chaos, it having been done on a voluntary basis. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I sometimes think that the noble Baroness’s title is not really adequate: “Baroness Gardner of Leaseholds” would have been better than Baroness Gardner of Parks. She is an expert in these matters and deeply committed to improving the situation of leaseholders, and on that she is to be congratulated. It is fair to say that the aspirations in these amendments are to be welcomed. However, I have some difficulties with the drafting.
In Amendment 84E there is a reference to:
“The buyer of a leasehold in a shared residential building”.
However, not every owner is a buyer—they may inherit or be given the property, and so “buyer” is not the right term. That also applies to subsection (4) of the amendment’s proposed new clause. It is also not clear in proposed new subsection (1) how the requirement is to be made. Normally, of course, provision is made within the lease. The implication here is that, somehow, legislation should overtake the provisions in an existing lease, which I think is a somewhat difficult concept. Furthermore, proposed new subsection (3) says that:
“The sums to be deposited and the timetable for their deposit shall be determined by those holding rights in the shared building”,
but it does not indicate how many of the leaseholders would be required—I suspect that a majority is what is intended, as it is in subsection (1) of the new clause proposed in Amendment 84F. That needs to be tidied up.
Having said that, there will be a chance, if I may say so respectfully, to improve the wording of the amendment before we get to Report. I hope that the Government will be sympathetic to this and possibly work with the noble Baroness in coming to an agreed position. She has highlighted a significant issue that is having adverse consequences for many occupiers of leasehold properties; at any rate, those with common parts. Perhaps the Minister will undertake to look at that with her and others to see whether the Government might bring forward an amendment to meet the objectives set out here but, as I said, unfortunately with drafting that may not achieve them.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, I do not like either of these amendments. I want to make it quite clear that I think they are wrong in principle. For a start, Amendment 84E states that the buyer of a leasehold “is required”—in other words, it would be mandatory. There are blocks of flats—particularly where there is self-management, as in the case of my arrangement in Maidenhead—where resident committees agree that a sinking fund is not needed. We simply agree to turn up the money when a large expenditure is required. A couple of years ago, we had to spend £80,000 on a roof repair, but we agreed in advance that we would not levy for it until the expenditure needed to be incurred. It should be left to people in blocks of flats to decide whether there is a sinking fund, because there are varying views. Therefore, I am against that provision.
I am also opposed to Amendment 84F, and I will explain why. It is being suggested here that a majority—51%—of leaseholders could change the terms of the lease. If the terms of a lease were changed in such a way whereby a minority objected, and that objection was so strong that they just become awkward, which is what happens, they would simply default on the payment of their service charges. You cannot divide leaseholders in that way. In the case of the block in Maidenhead, where we have shared freehold interest, every time we enter into major works—indeed, any works—we agree in the resident committee. Because we are also the management company running the organisation, in which I take a very active part, we make sure that everybody agrees. Indeed, we get letters or emails from them confirming that they agree to any change that we wish to make. The reason is very simple. We have people that live both within and without the United Kingdom. In the event that we were to take an action which in any way they found unacceptable, I know that people would say, “Well, I’m sorry. I just do not agree with what you’ve done. I know I was invited. I know it said that in the event that I was unable to be there I would be deemed to be in favour of the proposal”, but irrespective of that they would feel that they were being manipulated into taking a decision to which they object.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I would like to respond to the point made. I think it is very interesting.
First, I should have spoken to Amendment 84F as well as Amendment 84E, because the two are linked on the groupings list, which I had not realised. The situation as described sounds entirely different from my own personal experience. My experience is that people who do not live in these places at all—except maybe for a few weeks in the summer when they come from somewhere overseas—do not respond to any attempt to contact them whatever. If you end up with a sufficient majority of those people, you cannot get anything done. There is no money to put forward even for emergency repairs. In each case you are asked to pay your money in advance, before the work can go ahead. Often legal action has to be taken against someone who says, “No, I’m not paying until I’m sure you’re doing the work”. An instance in hand was that, as the building was old, we wanted to have all new windows at the front. We all paid our money for them. People came and put up the scaffolding and the windows were delivered. The council arrived and said, “Have you got permission for that?” “Oh no, we phoned up and they said you don’t need it.” “Oh yes, you do. This is a conservation area”—the building itself is not worth conserving, but it is a conservation area. So the windows were all taken down, taken away and thrown away. We paid for them but we never got them, which was pretty disastrous for everyone.
Other times when someone needs emergency work done on the boiler or heating systems, again the money is needed up front—and people often have to be taken to court to get it. They might claim that they had not been justifiably contacted, but with the right to manage there could be a contact address or a proxy for every single resident or owner in the block.
I went to a meeting with Peter Bottomley, who is in the other place, and someone stood up from the department there. They said that the department was seriously considering the idea that if you fail to respond in any way you would be deemed to be not opposed to whatever was suggested. I then came back to this House and tabled a Question on that and I was told, no, that was not being thought about. Now again I am told that maybe it is being thought about. I find it extremely confusing, but I am looking for some way whereby you can deal with non-resident, uninterested parties who would allow places to fall apart.
Lord Campbell-Savours
The answer is actually in the original deed. If on acquisition of the property and purchase, the original deed specified that a suitable majority was sufficient to take a decision and the purchasers signed up to that, they are bound by that. The resident association, or the management company if it is run by the resident association, would have that in mind when it took decisions. Both these amendments could be dealt with in terms of the original lease. In the event that a lease change is required, then you would need—to be fair, in my view—a 100% majority turnout, or proxy or whatever, of all the residents to take that decision to introduce these provisions into the lease. If that is done then it is fair, but to impose it on people who may be reluctant to accept it is quite wrong.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
The second to last point the noble Lord made was that you have to have 100%. The problem is getting the 100%. I have asked Questions in this House—I had the Library look them up and there must be at least six—and each time the Government have answered that it is impossible to get 100%, or that it is very easy to avoid getting 100%. All you need is a landlord who has a different interest to pay one person or own one flat in the block himself and he can prevent any action of any sort to improve or maintain it.
Lord Campbell-Savours
When the noble Baroness purchased her apartment, she would have done well to ask her lawyer to read the lease and explain to her what was in that lease; it would have precluded her doing what she is suggesting now.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
We have gone into this legally in great detail over many years, but the answer is no, you cannot amend anyone’s lease unless everyone agrees to that. That is why I would be quite happy with the 100% if one could be sure of replies from 100%. However, if the replies do not come one way or another, it is very fair that the action should be deemed to be not opposed. They would be given ample time. They would be able to produce—this happens in Australia and everywhere; it is very simple management—a contact or someone who could attend any meeting as a proxy. They can authorise a party. There is no reason why they should not be able to reply in some way. They either deliberately wish to be obstructive or they are uninterested. Either way, it can have a disastrous effect on everyone else in the block. You need only one person to be obstructive.
In the description I gave, the landlord himself—the head lessee—has now bought one. He is happy to take on every flat that comes up if anyone wants to leave. He is always offering to buy mine. The point is that to get that 100% is acknowledged to be impossible. Certainly it is very difficult. Even when you agree on the works to be done and everyone is prepared to pay their money, there are always a few who have to be taken to court and works never start until all the money is available to pay the contractor. This means that terrible deterioration can happen during that period. Of all the points that are in these two amendments, to me, that concerning the leaseholder who fails to participate in the vote is the most important. In that instance you are being deliberately manipulated or controlled by people who do not have enough interest to bother expressing their views.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Gardner for her amendments. I agree that, as indicated in Amendment 84E, it is important to ensure that sufficient funds are available for the repair and maintenance of leasehold blocks, and that sinking funds built up over time can indeed play an important role in mitigating large one-off service charge demands. However, while well-intentioned, the amendment is unnecessary. It would cause conflict and confusion with the existing requirements and responsibilities under the terms of the lease, and does not address a range of important issues covered by the existing legislation. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, with his great knowledge, for being helpful in this regard.
The existing legal contract between the freeholder and leaseholder, which, as we all know, is called the lease, already provides for the collection of service charges for the upkeep and maintenance of a block. In a growing number of cases, provision is also made for an amount to be collected called a sinking fund. Importantly, where a lease does not already provide for a sinking fund, legislation makes it possible to seek a variation of the lease to do so.
It is sensible, clear and workable for the person responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the building to also be the person responsible for any sinking fund. To require the creation of a separately held and managed sinking fund administered by someone other than the person with legal responsibility for maintaining the block would create conflict and confusion with the existing lease, as would trying to dovetail it with the existing arrangements. For instance, if major work were required to the roof of the block, how would responsibility for the work be determined and how would any shortfall in the funds needed to carry out the work be dealt with? Who would be responsible for arranging the repairs? The current arrangements keep responsibilities and accountabilities clear, and do not fall foul of any legal obligations and responsibilities.
Importantly, legislation enables the freeholder to be held to account on service charges, including any sinking fund. Leaseholders have the right to challenge the reasonableness of service charge amounts being sought, whether for day-to-day use or towards a sinking fund. Existing legislation governing service charges also provides for a wide range of important issues, including the protection for service charges by deeming them to be held in a statutory trust, and that the money may be deposited only at a financial institution specified by the regulations. Under the amendment, it is unclear how the leaseholders would determine who held and administered the sinking fund, or how contributions would be determined and spent. The existing arrangements, in contrast, provide protection and a route to challenge the freeholder.
I say again that I recognise the important role that sinking funds can play, and that where the lease does not already provide for a sinking fund it is possible for either leaseholders or the freeholder to seek a variation of the lease to do so. This is the most appropriate route for creating sinking funds, avoiding unnecessary confusion and ensuring that appropriate protections remain in place. I hope that with this explanation my noble friend will agree to withdraw her amendment.
I turn to Amendment 84F. The leasehold right to manage is a right for leaseholders to take on specific responsibility for the management of their individual block from the landlord, by which I mean the freeholder, where they meet the qualifying criteria. That right can be exercised where a majority of qualifying tenants agree. It does not require or allow variations to leases. I understand my noble friend’s concern that once a right-to-manage company has been set up, the company needs 100% agreement from the members of the right-to-manage company before anything can be done. However, I am pleased to reassure her that this is not the case. In taking over responsibility from the freeholder for the management of the block, the right-to-manage company is required to carry out the repairing obligations under the lease, for the benefit of the leaseholders and the freeholder. This is the same as the freeholder would be required to do where they are responsible. Failing to do so could result in a breach of the lease. There is a requirement to consult on major works, but there are no particular restrictions that require 100% agreement before the right-to-manage company can carry out their obligations.
On top of this, the company is subject to company law in general, and the decision-making process, voting arrangements and appointment or termination of directors are set out in the prescribed articles of association. These are the RTM Companies (Model Articles) (England) Regulations 2009, which set out the objects of the Company. These generally require a quorum and a majority, but certainly do not require 100% agreement. I hope that this somewhat protracted explanation allays my noble friend’s concerns.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Despite the provision that the Minister has referred to, unless you secure the agreement of everyone involved, people often go into arrears and default. That creates problems within an association.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
That is true, but there are restrictions in place to allow for that. It still works.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that the wording might be defective. The purpose of Committee stage, however, is that it is the topic that you are really discussing and you can always go back and correct the wording. So that is not really the issue but I appreciate his point, though I thought the Public Bill Office had done jolly well even to get it as clear as it is, because I found it impossible.
The Minister has not looked at the entire situation. He keeps talking about the freeholder and the leaseholder, but what about the head lessee—the person between the freeholder and the leaseholder? This is where most of the problems come in. The head lessee should not even exist because the head lease should have been offered to all the people in the block, but because of that company law loophole it was not. That therefore creates an extra intermediate tier. Where that happens, you are in quite a degree of difficulty. Our freeholder seems quite benign and willing to go along with things, except where he evidently agreed to set up this sister company and floated it off to an outsider as a leaseholder —the head lessee. It becomes very complicated when you get these extra layers in management, and it means that each process has to go to each person.
I cannot remember the detail, but something meant that until we got to the door of the court the head lessee would agree to nothing. We were applying to the court to deal with it without his consent because he refused to respond to any correspondence, making it very difficult for everyone. Right at the last moment, there was a message from his solicitors saying, “We agree”. What was at issue was nothing terribly major, but it was hard to believe that we had to go through those legal procedures to get a simple agreement about something.
Lord Campbell-Savours
May I make a suggestion to the Minister? There is a reform that would be helpful. Some freeholders require 50% of the residents to agree to the formation of a residents’ association that they are prepared to recognise, but unless they get 50% the freeholder will not recognise it. I would like to see, in law, some requirement for a lesser percentage. Particularly in blocks of flats in London, where you have large numbers of residents living abroad—despite the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham—the fact is that you cannot get their addresses and therefore you are often limited in the number of people you have access to in order to meet that 50% threshold. Perhaps the Minister might ask officials to look at that. A nice little amendment to that effect on Report would be very helpful.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
That sounds like a good and constructive suggestion. Perhaps we can work on that idea. Certainly we are looking for some answer to this. I went this week to a meeting on the private rented sector at which the person speaking was the present Housing Minister. The one thing on which he agreed with me was that we need a property consolidation Act. I have been involved in Act after Act since 1981, when I took my seat in this House, and the way that each law amends the previous one and goes on to change something else is such a hotchpotch. We really should have a comprehensive consolidation Act. The problem is that the Law Commission does not do these any more, but if the Government were prepared to pay then it certainly would. That would save a huge amount of bother for ordinary people. If ordinary people cannot understand the law, it is very difficult to implement it and for people to feel satisfied with it. That is why I am all for a consolidation Act.
Meanwhile, I think that we have aired this subject fairly well. I am grateful for the comments from those who have made them, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, we move at last to Part 6 of the Bill, headed “Planning in England”. Some of us thought we might never get here—but here we are. First, I thank the government time managers for giving us some extra time at the end of this Committee stage, so that we can have a bash at dealing with Part 6 properly. I understand that a lot of the housing stuff that has gone before is extremely important. Nevertheless, we had feared that it would take over completely, and we would not be able to deal with planning in any sensible way. So I thank the Government for providing the time—even if that time will not, by and large, be conveniently arranged for a lot of us. Never mind.
As well as moving Amendment 85 I will speak to the other amendments in the group that are in my name. The planning clauses as a whole raise some important principles, and I am sure that we shall have some clashes of views on those principles as we go through Part 6. They also raise a series of the kind of issues that that House of Lords is, at least in part, here to look at—to try to understand what the legislation actually means, how it might work, and whether it will work. It is important that we look particularly at some of the clauses in Part 6 that were put into the Bill right at the end of its progress through the Commons, and have not been properly scrutinised at all. So I hope that we shall do that.
There are a lot of concerned people working in the planning system around the country who, on the basis both of my experience and of information provided by colleagues, do not understand how this is going to work either. The Government have been organising meetings, seminars and so on, but many people believe that the legislation needs looking at thoroughly before it leaves your Lordships’ House.
The amendments in the group are about neighbourhood planning. We are starting off in a fairly benign way on this subject, because there is probably more agreement on what is proposed in this part of Part 6 than there is on some other areas. The amendments relate to Clause 125, which is called “Designation of neighbourhood areas”, and Clause 126, which is called “Timetable in relation to neighbourhood development orders and plans”.
I have no doubt that all noble Lords in the Committee are fully up to speed on neighbourhood planning and what all this means, but it may be helpful to put on record at the beginning the fact that neighbourhood planning is one of the success stories from the Localism Act, which some of us here spent a lot of time working on five years ago. Neighbourhood plans are the main part of neighbourhood planning, and about 1,800 of them are at some stage from the initial inquiry through to adoption. That is a lot: the system is a success. We should be looking to build on that success, and where successful neighbourhood planning has taken place, to move it to other parts of England where so far it has not taken hold.
This is a complicated process. Five years ago some of us spent a lot of time trying to understand how it, and the legislation, were going to work. It is not easy to understand, because the legislation appears in a number of different planning Acts. Basically, the process has to start with a relevant body, which is either a parish council or, if there is no parish council, a neighbourhood forum. If there is no parish council, the neighbourhood forum has to be approved by the local planning authority—the main council. There must be a neighbourhood area, which the parish council or neighbourhood forum operates in, which is the basis for the local neighbourhood plan. In many cases, obviously, that is the parish, but if there is no parish, that is a source of discussion and delay.
Then, within that neighbourhood area, a neighbourhood plan is put together. This is the part of it that is very interesting, and sometimes quite exciting, involving residents and the local groups. The body that is responsible for the neighbourhood plan is the parish council or the neighbourhood forum. According to the rules, the plan must be submitted to the local planning authority for approval. Then there has to be a referendum involving everybody who lives in the neighbourhood area. That, again, is organised by the main local authority. Then, if the referendum vote is to approve—so far, in almost all cases it has been—the local authority has to adopt the neighbourhood plan as part of its overall local development plan.
If that sounds complicated, it is actually quite complicated, so there are within the system a number of points at which the local planning authority can, if it wishes—or just if it is not all that efficient—slow the whole process down. As I understand it, the purpose of these two clauses is to remove those impediments, or at least to speed up the process.
I drafted these amendments some time ago. I did it for two reasons. The first was a natural protest against the degree of prescription in the two clauses: effectively, they say that, in different ways and at different times, with all the usual specifications, the Secretary of State can do whatever he or she wants to do. That seems to me unnecessary. If the Government know what they want to do in changing the system, they should simply put that on the face of the Bill. Then, at least, it would be less complicated for people trying to understand it.
The second reason, of course, was to probe what the Government are intending to do—what time limits they propose, and so on. So I put some of that in the amendments. Since then I have seen a more recent document called Technical Consultation on Implementation of Planning Changes. It is an extremely interesting document, which has been circulated to local planning authorities and elsewhere, and it contains the proposed timetables for neighbourhood planning. I do not agree with everything in it—as the Committee will discover in due course over the next day or so—but the proposed timetables for neighbourhood planning are fine. Indeed, they are rather better than those I put in my probing amendments. The Government are doing better than me on this one, so good for them.
I hope that this afternoon the Minister will be able to put that timetable on the public record in the Committee. We understand that it is subject to the consultation process, so there might be changes, but it would be helpful to set it out so that at least it is there in Hansard and people can see what it is.
The reason why I raised the question of whether Clause 127 should stand part of the Bill was to protest against what seem to many of us to be two pages of unnecessary intervention powers for the Secretary of State. I know that there have been some problems over neighbourhood planning with some local planning authorities, but I do not think that the way to deal with them is to have two pages of detailed legislation setting out what will become umpteen pages of even more detailed legislation when the regulations provided for in almost every other line in these two pages are agreed. That is just a statement of opposition to doing it in that way. The important thing is: we need to get a better and clearer timetable for the neighbourhood plan-making process, set out and agreed in legislation, and then let us all get behind the whole neighbourhood planning process wherever any of us has any influence. I beg to move.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 87A in this group. Since I have been silent a great deal throughout this Committee—I must say that such silence, unlike at a wedding, does not always indicate assent, but it certainly does indicate consent—I should remind the Committee that I am leader of a London borough council which is a planning authority. It wishes to remain a planning authority and it maintains vigorously that local authorities, as the arbiters of local communities, should be respected fully at every level as legitimate public authorities. One does not always hear that language, sadly, from whatever Government are in power.
I well remember the lengthy debates that we had on the Localism Act, in which my then noble friend Lord Greaves was a very active participant. I also played a part. I am a very strong believer in localism and I did play a part in that Act. One of the points that I made repeatedly at that time, often unavailingly, I fear, was that localism can be delivered in many forms. My own council was a pioneer in 2010 in inviting local people to define their own communities—a process in which about 13,000 people took part—rather than simply following ward or parish boundaries. Since then we have established with local people 14 village and town areas within our borough, with very active community engagement in discussing and setting local priorities. It so happens that only one neighbourhood forum has been set up because that has been the will of local people. They appear to have been satisfied with the process that we have taken forward.
We have now begun incorporating and adopting detailed supplementary planning documents—we call them village plans—within our local plan, which reflect that dialogue with the local community following question times, walkabouts, open meetings, post-its, as well as formal consultations. It has been a successful and popular process in which thousands of people have been involved. Indeed, I had to leave your Lordships’ Committee last Thursday early to go to a public meeting in one part of my borough, which was launching the latest village plan. Some 150 to 200 people attended the meeting in a public hall; that is unusual, as I think anybody involved in local politics would say. So, there is enthusiasm.
I was very grateful to have the opportunity to discuss my amendment with my noble friend Lady Williams on the Front Bench. I entirely except her from the many strictures that I may have made at the start of my speech about Ministers over the last 20 to 30 years, since I have been involved in local politics. My main concern and reason for tabling the amendment is that the Bill, and specifically the intervention powers of the Secretary of State, are locked in to this existing single body of statute which is about a neighbourhood forum and a neighbourhood plan, as enacted under the Localism Act. That is one method of getting people involved—a very good and successful method, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, rightly said—which is what we want to do. However, it is not necessarily the only method or in every circumstance the best method.
I freely admit that my amendment is not necessarily the best way. It may not be in the right form or in the right place. However, before statute and practice totally ossify and case law proliferates, establishing that there is just this one way of doing it—as laid down by departmental officials and enforced by the Secretary of State from above—and that everything else is inferior, I would like to see some protection for local authorities, and there are many. I do not claim any exceptional skill on behalf of my own, although I think it is been a principle applied by both Liberal Democrat and Conservative Administrations in my authority. Where local authorities have local planning documents in full, after full consultation, they should not find themselves snagged up on artificial challenge as a result of not complying with the specifics of statute in relation to neighbourhood planning envisaged in this single way.
All I am really asking for is some reassurance. Ideally, I would like to have it in law because ultimately, these things will be tested and challenged in law—I suspect by people who perhaps want to make mischief and do not have the overall interests of local people in mind. If it cannot be made clear in law, we need some assurance that this Government, at least—we cannot bind future Governments—recognise that there may be under heaven ways of doing good local planning and involving the public other than as laid out in the Bill before your Lordships’ House.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, I very much welcome the opportunity raised by this group of amendments to discuss this business of neighbourhood plans. Perhaps I should declare an immediate past interest as the previous president of the National Association of Local Councils, now occupied very ably by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor.
The noble Lord, Lord True, rightly pointed to the primacy of what I, as a private sector operator, know as the principal authority for planning purposes. We should never forget that, fundamentally, that principal authority is the one that ultimately has to make the decision. It is informed by a series of neighbourhood plans where those have been prepared.
Localism is a great thing, but it has come in with something of a great rush into a world in which the neighbourhood construct—by that I particularly mean parish, town and community councils—has for a very long time been neglected in terms of resources, powers, authority and ability to do things. Here, we come to the issue of neighbourhood plans. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, pointed out, their administration is quite complex, as are the philosophical constructs behind them. Too often, I still meet people who say, “We have tried to do this neighbourhood plan but really what everybody’s concentrating on is making sure that we don’t get too many housing developments in our area”, so it is seen as a defensive strategy, which is perhaps regrettable. Because it comes with so much of the baggage of what is known as development control, which is essentially a rather negative turn of phrase, that is the inherent direction of travel and it is seen as the received wisdom.
It is not a quick process to turn this round so that people see this as an opportunity to take things forward and to generate a resource they could not otherwise have. This question of resources is one that troubles both the neighbourhood sector—if I can call it that—and the principal authorities. One thing that the noble Lord, Lord True, did not mention is that as soon as you try to step in and make good efficiencies at neighbourhood level, that has resource implications. It also requires officers’ time, which would otherwise be devoted to other things, and almost certainly requires cash outlay on things like mailing, drawing up and making documents available and so on.
The test that needs to be applied was in a question I put to one of the heads of our rural community council. I asked what he thought the main ingredient of a good local plan was. He said that first, people must be properly canvassed: rather than teasing out what they do not want, we must ask what really turns them on and gives them a buzz about their area. At that stage, you can start to peel back the skin of the onion in order to get at the truth. Unfortunately, because of what might be called the inherited philosophical direction of travel, that question is often not asked properly. As a result, we do not candidly canvass the views of the old, young, shopkeepers and businesspeople, and—maybe—the farmers, mums with children and all who would otherwise remain silent. One of the main problems with neighbourhood plans being declared unsound is that it cannot be demonstrated that that process has been gone through with rigour and care. This is an important set of amendments enabling us to discuss this principle.
I am in favour of communities determining their own situation, but if in a particular area they say the equivalent of what I believe is the current acronym— BANANA: ban anything near anyone anywhere—then the principal authority’s executive is going to have to come with a red pen and make themselves deeply unpopular, because there are certain Government imperatives. While these are particularly to do with housebuilding, they also concern the associated infrastructure such as schools, clinics, road improvements —never mind fire services and things like that.
These things are complicated and a community often does not have the voluntary resources. How many would have a private sector town planner, for instance, who had time to attend meetings and guide that process? How many would have people available to deal with the financial mechanics, so that the community can clearly state what benefits it expects and set this out in a constructive manner? These are highly complicated issues, which often require expensive professionals—I stand guilty as charged in that respect. Parishes and town councils do not have those sorts of resources.
It is all very well having a provision whereby the principal authority steps in, but there are still the issues of covering resource implications and achieving a candid representation of the community’s views to take the process forward. Those seem to be sticking points whatever is done. I hope the Minister will be able to throw some light on that.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, neighbourhood planning has been a success since its introduction in 2011. For the first time, communities have been able to prepare plans that have real statutory weight: neighbourhood plans have the same weight in law as the local authority’s local plan, and must be the starting point for decisions on planning applications. As the noble Lord also said, more than 1,800 communities have started neighbourhood planning, representing more than 9 million people, and planning applications are being approved and refused according to neighbourhood plans. The Government made a manifesto commitment to support communities who have embarked on the process and to encourage more to start.
Under Clause 125, the Secretary of State would be able to use regulations to prescribe the circumstances in which local planning authorities must designate the neighbourhood area applied for. In the prescribed circumstances, the authority would no longer need to advertise, and consult on, the proposed neighbourhood planning areas. This will allow communities to start planning more quickly and will significantly reduce the burdens on local authorities.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I am sorry to intervene, but surely the noble Baroness is moving on to other groups. She seems to be responding to the ninth group. Perhaps I am making a mistake. If it is the right group, I beg noble Lords’ pardon.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I apologise if I repeat myself as I find my place again.
As I have said, this would apply only in rare cases. These cases would be when a local planning authority has failed to decide what action to take in response to the recommendations of the independent examiner or where the authority disagrees with an examiner’s recommendations and wants to modify the plan or order proposal against the wishes of the neighbourhood planning group, unless the modifications are to ensure compliance with EU or human rights obligations, or to correct errors. We anticipate that this power would be used only in exceptional circumstances. We have been very clear that communities and local planning authorities should be working very closely on the neighbourhood plan or order proposal throughout the process. However, we are aware, as the noble Lord suggested, that in a small number of cases there have been disagreements between groups and authorities. There is currently no mechanism to resolve these disagreements. In extreme cases those disagreements have blocked the progress of a proposal by more than a year, even though it is supported by the community and has been approved by an independent examiner. We do not believe that that is an acceptable situation. Regulations would set out the procedure to be followed when a request to intervene is made and the proposals for these are also the subject of public consultation. While this power to intervene would remove some responsibility from the local level, we believe that it is necessary in the rare cases that I have outlined.
Although I fully understand the good intentions behind my noble friend Lord True’s amendment, unfortunately we believe that it would diminish the ability of the Government to meet their manifesto commitment of speeding up and simplifying the neighbourhood planning process. The amendment would unnecessarily restrict and potentially even nullify the proposed power and would mean that some plans or orders could be indefinitely blocked by an authority or amended without the support of the community. However, I can assure my noble friend that we very much support and encourage local planning authorities such as Richmond-upon-Thames, which works proactively with communities to prepare other types of community plans. Indeed I congratulate Richmond-upon-Thames on taking such a comprehensive approach to delivering community-led planning through its series of village plans.
Neighbourhood plans are a powerful tool, because they become part of the statutory development plan, which is the starting point for planning decisions. They are subject to two consultations and must pass an independent examination and a local referendum before becoming part of the development plan. We believe that every community that passes the independent examination stage should have the right to request that the Secretary of State intervenes if that plan is blocked by a local planning authority, or amended in a way that the examiner did not recommend. It would not be right to restrict this power where an authority has adopted in the past, or says it will be adopting in the future, other kinds of supplementary planning document, and there is no guarantee that other types of documents are up to date or have the same level of genuine support as a neighbourhood plan.
We have learned from the experience of communities undertaking neighbourhood planning and believe that the proposed new power in the Bill is already limited to the right set of very specific circumstances. Indeed, the Government have further explained, in our recently published consultation document, that the Secretary of State will, in considering a request, consider the plan or order plans positively for local development needs, taking account of the latest evidence. Let me reassure my noble friend that the proposed power does not affect a local planning authority’s ability to progress other types of planning document where it is already working with its communities. I also assure the noble Lord that the proposed power does not enable the Secretary of State to intervene in any other stage of the neighbourhood planning process. For these reasons, I hope that noble Lords will withdraw or not move their amendments, and ask that Clauses 125, 126 and 127 stand part of the Bill.
Lord True
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will probably get the final say, because he heads the group. Having heard such kind words, however, it would be extremely churlish of me not to say how grateful I am to my noble friend on the Front Bench. I will make sure that the officers who have been involved in that process see what she has said. I am of course slightly disappointed, because as time goes by circumstances could arise whereby diversity gets snagged on legalism, and a single approach is in the end fraught with difficulty.
My only other comment—I do not expect a reply, although it would be interesting to get a comment in writing—is that a number of things that have been said relate to parishes and areas where there are clearly defined communities. For me, the really interesting challenge in neighbourhood planning—one which we are seeking to address—is in local urban communities, where it is much more important to get people involved and engaged. In urban communities boundaries overlap.
I will not detain the House long but I have an interesting example of this which I urge the Government and Committee to reflect on. There is a stretch of river in my borough—the only one which lies on both sides of the Thames—that has a lovely green area in it. We would like the many institutions in this area to work together in what we call a river park concept; that is part of our local plan approach. One part of that area, the Ham community, wishes to become a neighbourhood forum. There was a nascent dispute—I had no interest in disputing a neighbourhood forum—over where the boundaries were. In those green lands, not only did Ham have an interest but so did Petersham, Richmond and Twickenham. Yet the Ham neighbourhood forum was effectively saying, “We want exclusive control of this territory”. In the end, we agreed to the boundaries. One of the problems, however, with the legislation as explained in the Explanatory Notes, is that if the Secretary of State says that wherever there is a designation —particularly in an urban area—the whole area asked for must be designated, there may well be overlapping interests. Parallel communities, different villages and communities may have an interest in the same land. That is why sometimes it may be legitimate for the principal planning authority to say that they might withhold that land from the neighbourhood plan because there are communities and neighbourhoods that have an interest in it. As I say, I do not expect a response. It is quite a detailed point but a fundamental one, because real human communities do not have red lines around them: they have fuzzy lines.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am grateful for the care and detail that the Minister has put into her reply. In most cases, when I read it in Hansard it will turn out to be satisfactory.
One issue that the Minister might respond to now, or perhaps afterwards, is that of designation. For which kinds of areas will there not be automatic designation? I understand that in most cases, particularly parishes—most cases are parishes at the moment—the application is for the whole parish, and that is very clear. What will the position be if the application is for only part of the parish, and not the rest of it? What will the position be if more than one parish applies together for designation as a neighbourhood area? What will the position be if—the obvious further complication—one whole parish is part of the neighbourhood area together with part of another parish? I should say that that is exactly the position in the area where I live. Anyway, that is a straightforward question and I will move on from it.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
The questions raised by the noble Lord are subject to the consultation and bring up a number of issues. I will certainly write to him with the detail, if that would be helpful.
Lord Greaves
That would be extremely helpful. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 85.
Lord Greaves
“Promotion of neighbourhood planning in unparished areas
(1) A local planning authority which includes unparished areas which have not been designated as neighbourhood areas must, from time to time and by such means as it considers appropriate, take active steps to bring to the attention of persons living or working in those areas the opportunities for neighbourhood planning (a “neighbourhood planning promotion”).(2) A neighbourhood planning promotion must include appropriate means to promote and explain neighbourhood planning on a range of local media, including the authority’s website. (3) The authority must carry out a neighbourhood planning promotion if it has not done so within the previous three years.(4) In addition to the steps required by subsections (1) to (3), the authority must maintain at all times a section on its website explaining neighbourhood planning and in particular how to identify or set up a relevant body in order to make an application for the designation of a neighbourhood area.(5) In this section “unparished area” has the same meaning as in section 87(3) of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 (constitution of new parish).”
Lord Greaves
My Lords, this little group of amendments—in moving Amendment 87, I shall also speak to Amendments 88 and 88B—is about the promotion of neighbourhood planning in unparished areas and a general duty on local authorities and particularly the Government to promote neighbourhood planning.
Amendment 88 is a way of sneaking on to the agenda, with the assistance of the Public Bill Office, which was extremely helpful as usual when it rejected my first efforts, the question of setting up new parish councils in unparished areas. We are talking about urban areas more than any others. Most rural areas, villages and a lot of small towns now have parish councils or town councils, whatever they call them. However, huge swathes of urban England do not have any form of parish council. The amendments are based on the view that parish councils ought to be pushed and promoted more rigorously in those areas.
The link to neighbourhood plans is that, although neighbourhood plans can be put through by two different kinds of qualifying bodies—a parish council or a neighbourhood forum, which has been set up and approved by the local planning authority in an unparished area for the purpose—almost all the neighbourhood plans which have been adopted are in parished areas. I am not sure exactly how many are not, but I think they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Of the 1,800 which are under way, the great majority are in parished areas.
The reason for this is quite clear. Parish councils exist. They are a body of people with links, networks and systems of knowing what is happening in the world outside. They have understood that neighbourhood planning is possible and, as an existing body, they have taken it on board. If there is no such body in an area, or if there are only community groups or community associations which are not linked to these sorts of systems, it is going to take a lot longer. However, it is fairly clear that neighbourhood planning can be as beneficial in unparished areas as in parished areas. In many of them, where development is being proposed in urban areas, neighbourhood planning could be very valuable.
The amendments raise the issue of what the Government are doing, first, to promote neighbourhood planning in unparished areas and, secondly, to get parish councils going in unparished areas. Do the Government know how many of the 1,800 are in parished areas and how many in unparished areas? Is there a way of finding out? As I say, I think there is a handful of adopted plans in unparished areas.
Since tabling these amendments, I was asked to attend a meeting with many of the civil servants involved in this part of the Bill—who I think were a bit curious to find out what all these amendments put down by Lord Greaves were all about—and I was certainly curious to find out what they had to tell me. A great deal of it was extremely helpful and I thank them very much for that meeting.
Since then, I have had a letter from, I think, the head of neighbourhood planning at the Department for Communities and Local Government. The letter has some very interesting and extremely helpful information which I did not previously know, particularly about neighbourhood planning in deprived areas and the efforts which the department and the Government are making to promote this. I will not read it all out, as it would take too long—and perhaps the Minister is going to tell me some of it anyway—but it refers to,
“Building capacity and take up in deprived urban areas by training community organisations to be able to lead neighbourhood planning in their neighbourhoods … Working with Community Organisers to use neighbourhood planning to tackle issues faced by communities in deprived urban areas”,
and so on. This all looks very good. I have not had time to look into it any further since receiving the letter this morning, but I shall be doing so.
The letter also talks about having,
“More powers for neighbourhood forums to become parish councils”.
It also sets out the legislative changes which have already been made—which are, in my view, not sufficient but are welcome—and talks about, in particular, speeding up the process by shortening the amount of time a local authority can take to complete a governance review. A local governance review happens when the authority receives a petition from the necessary number of electors and has to conduct a review as to whether to set up a parish council, more parish councils or whatever it may be.
The letter then goes on to the encouraging part:
“The next phase of work on making it easier to set up new parish councils will be to publish the updated DCLG Local Government and Boundary Commission … Guidance on Community Governance Reviews. This will set out the new legislation and establish the working principles to ensure the guidance becomes a living document reflecting the evolving devolution landscape”.
That sounds good, but does the Minister know when that guidance will be issued? This is taking us a little bit away from the heart of the Bill, so I will not say anything more about it, but I thank the department for this information.
Some of us will be urging the Government on in the hope that they will proceed with all due speed on this. Local democracy is extremely important and local neighbourhood planning is a way of developing genuine grass-roots local democracy and they will have our support in everything they do and we will continue urging them to do more. I beg to move.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, this is my first chance to speak on the planning aspects of the Bill today, so I declare again my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association.
Like, I think, noble Lords across all parts of the House, we are strongly supportive of the concept of neighbourhood planning. We had many discussions around it as part of the Localism Bill, and I have been deeply impressed by the commitment of so many communities to get involved in the process. This has been a success story from the last Government.
My noble friend Lord Greaves said earlier that there have been some 1,800 neighbourhood plans at some stage of development. Of course, many fewer have actually held referendums, and it is quite a task to move from initial expressions of interest through to actually having a neighbourhood plan in place. We want to encourage the process, and this group of amendments is about how we can do that.
Amendments 87 and 88 do just that, and Amendment 88B asks the Government to do a little bit more by looking at ways in which they might provide an additional contribution to the work of communities in developing their neighbourhood plans, because not having the necessary resources is clearly an impediment.
Lord True
My Lords, I follow a very great deal of what has been said by noble Lords opposite. It is absolutely fundamental that it must be right that you get more development and housing by a process of consent than by a process from outside. That is one of my objections to some of the other policies that are around and appear to be more developer-led than development-led, so I agree with that. I think that I should quit while I am ahead in this part of the Bill because, with my authority having been praised by my noble friend on the Front Bench, the kind words of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and even some from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, I might risk getting some kind words from the Front Bench opposite.
I have a slight difficulty with the amendment, because it gets into the prescriptive area and slightly snags on the point that I was making on the previous amendment on the Government’s one-club approach. If we put this in statute, it will relate just to the process under the existing legislation. All local authorities should have a duty to involve communities, to put out publicity and to get engagement. My slight worry with these amendments is that, if they fall into the hands of a department of state, we will get regulations that say, “Just publish what we want to do, not what you want to do”. So I support the spirit of the amendments, but I think that it is a duty on local authorities. In our case, we might find ourselves running two parallel publicity arrangements, although we obviously publicise the opportunity to have a neighbourhood forum. For that reason, I could not go along with it, but I fully support the spirit of where the noble Lords opposite are coming from.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord in what he said, and I hope that in my very brief remarks about neighbourhood planning I can reassure him that in this area there is so much enthusiasm at the local level that central government prescription is not really going to hold sway. That is what is so exciting about what happened with the Localism Act. It really has liberated local communities in so many different ways to take on and run local assets, to take on and run local services and, of course—as we have heard—to introduce neighbourhood planning. I intervene merely to express my huge enthusiasm for neighbourhood planning, to share a couple of experiences and then to ask one simple question of the Minister, which may help provide information to the House that may help us move forward on these issues.
It is worth recording, notwithstanding what my noble friend said a few minutes ago, that we have already seen 126 successful referendums; interestingly, in every single referendum that has taken place the plan has always been passed, which is huge testimony to the work that local communities have done to engage the local community before the plan is finalised and brought to the referendum stage. I acknowledge of course the 10% figure we have heard which relates to the way in which those plans have often led to developments of housing, for instance, far greater than they were in the local plan. I have had the opportunity to see first-hand a number of examples where, as a result of local involvement, things that were perhaps initially not very acceptable to the local community have suddenly been embraced because the community has been involved and engaged in the detailed decision-making process.
In one case there was a plan to have a supermarket in a relatively small town. There was huge opposition to it and a neighbourhood planning group was brought together. Residents discussed what they wanted in the neighbourhood plan and eventually decided that it might be a good idea to have a supermarket after all if they could determine its location, the routes people would use to get to it, the parking arrangements, and so on. Eventually, a supermarket was included in the neighbourhood plan. It has been to a referendum and been accepted, and the supermarket is being built.
Back in February 2013, when I had the opportunity to engage with neighbourhood planning, I and the other Minister involved, Mr Nick Boles, went to a windswept Upper Eden in Cumbria a few days before the first referendum on the first neighbourhood plan was due to take place, when we had an opportunity to talk to councillors and members of the local community. We were under strict instructions from the civil servants that in no way were we to express a view on whether we were for or against the neighbourhood plan, which proved rather difficult for two Ministers who are passionately supportive of the principle. But we more or less stuck by that, although we both left wearing “Yes” badges on our lapels on the way out. It was exciting to see the first plan going through.
The crucial bit, which relates to Amendment 88B, was that only a few weeks following that visit I was able to announce a £9.5 million fund for a two-year period to provide more financial support to communities that wanted to develop a neighbourhood plan. To reflect the point in my noble friend Lord Greaves’s amendment, further money was then made available to give local councils financial support for their work in supporting and dealing with various aspects of neighbourhood planning.
We were also able to announce the establishment of the My Community website, which has subsequently been a very good source of information for people looking to develop their own neighbourhood plan, and after that there was also a scheme to introduce 40 neighbourhood planning champions, many of whom operate up and down the country; they are people who have led their own neighbourhood plan, local councillors, planning officers and so on. Members of your Lordships’ House who are interested in this matter may like to have a look at the recently established website, where these neighbourhood planning champions now share their own experiences and so on.
The reason I intervened, apart from perhaps to show my enthusiasm for neighbourhood planning, was to ask the Minister a very specific question in regard to my noble friend’s Amendment 88. As various pots of money have been made available—initially, for instance, £7,000, now £8,000, potentially with a further addition of £6,000 in difficult areas to support neighbourhood planning development—the Government announced an additional pot of money for pilots for councils to look at best ways of helping to promote neighbourhood planning in their areas. They made £600,000 available and various bids were sought.
Since then, I have been unable to find any further information as to what has happened to that particular pilot scheme. It was designed to help us identify the best way of moving forward in promoting and supporting neighbourhood planning, which is the thrust of my noble friend’s amendment. So I think that the House would be delighted to hear from the Minister details of how the money has been spent, what sort of projects have been brought forward and what lessons have been learned from which we can all benefit.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in welcoming the concept of neighbourhood planning, particularly where it takes a positive attitude to development in the area. I acknowledge that there is real potential both in urban and in rural areas. The noble Lord, Lord True, is right that we need to be a little cautious about the implications within urban areas. I can best illustrate that from the ward that I represent in Newcastle. It has 18 or 19 discernible communities within it and I think now nine residents associations, each with its own particular perspective on what is going on.
It is not just a question of planning; it is a question of involving the community in a whole range of issues, be it social care, policing or other matters. It is important to involve local people, but your Lordships must bear in mind the constraint these days on the capacity of planning departments to cope with their ordinary business. It is well known that the number of planning officers is being reduced substantially as a function of the cutbacks that are being suffered. That does not make it any easier, to put it no higher, to support the valuable process of neighbourhood planning. In this context, I recall the words of one of our most famous poets, John Donne:
“No man is an island, entire of itself”.
In my judgment, no neighbourhood is an island entire unto itself unless it happens to be physically remote from others.
The experience of planning generally is that often planning applications evoke a negative response rather than a positive engagement. I recall particularly some occasions of that close to my heart. One was over 20 years ago when the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I were opposing one another. I was leader of the council and he was the leader of the opposition. He will recall that there was a proposal for building on greenfield rather than green-belt land towards the north of the city. This was part of a major plan that we were bringing forward as a council. It was opposed by the noble Lord and some of his more vociferous colleagues, as he will recall, on the grounds that it was unnecessary and so on. In fairness to them, they were reflecting the views of at any rate some of the people living in private housing estates which themselves had been built on green fields perhaps 20 to 30 years beforehand. These people would not contemplate the possibility of housing on the green fields that were in the vicinity of their estate.
More recently I encountered a similar and disturbing attitude while canvassing in a ward—not my ward—on the edge of the city. Again there were proposals about potentially building on greenfield sites. Here the houses from which we were somewhat vainly endeavouring to elicit support were part of a housing estate built within the last few years. I felt almost constrained to nominate myself for the Nobel Prize for self-restraint when one woman on whose door I knocked said that it was bad enough having any sort of housing built on the fields behind her, which of course a few years before would have encompassed her house, but at least there was not going to be social housing there. We have to take cognisance of the fact that there will be tensions and priorities to be assessed by local authorities which will perhaps transcend the immediate interests or concerns of local communities expressed through their neighbourhood planning or otherwise.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that he has in fact made a very good case for the neighbourhood planning process? It is a process that engages people in decision-making rather than huge numbers of houses being proposed from a centralised planning function in a civic centre and not commanding the support of local people because it has not been discussed with them. Does he further agree that the concept of permission in principle could well make things worse rather than better?
Lord Beecham
I think that we will shortly be spending a good deal of time on permission in principle and, judging by what the noble Lord has just said, there may be a degree of agreement. I repeat that people have to look beyond their immediate circumstances and geography. They have to acknowledge that there are needs beyond that immediate locality which have to be reflected in an overall plan. There needs to be a significant contribution from localities to the overall plan but not one that is limited purely by locality in the narrower sense; otherwise, particularly in the present circumstances, we will not get, for example, the required number of houses, although that is not the only issue that needs to be considered in terms of development.
However, there are housing shortages and physical constraints in some areas. One immediately thinks of London in that context, but other areas also have restrictions. My noble friend Lady Hollis may well say that Norwich, for example, is tightly constrained, and other urban authorities would say the same about their areas. One thinks of Stevenage, for example, which is built to its limits and has no option but to seek—unavailingly, as it turns out—collaboration on development from its neighbouring authorities. There is a balance to be struck, so up to a point I agree with the noble Lord. However, I notice that the noble Lord’s former colleagues are effectively trying to resurrect Gosforth Urban District Council, promoting the concept of the parish council there, which, of course, is entirely unrelated to the fact that they may feel a little under pressure politically.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, the noble Lord is very keen to talk about a place other than your Lordships’ House. It would be part and parcel of successful neighbourhood planning. It is very difficult to organise neighbourhood planning without a formal structure to enable it to happen. Therefore, I entirely subscribe to promoting town councils in the north of Newcastle upon Tyne and I sincerely hope that he will too.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I was not proposing to speak on this, but I want to support strongly the point made by my noble friend Lord Beecham and, to some extent, by the noble Lord, Lord True.
My home city is Norwich, which has tight boundaries. It is not parished. It has wards—obviously—and a strong network of community groups, such as housing associations, residents associations and so on. Part of that is because all the people of Norwich own the city centre as well as the community in which they live. That is fine, but in over 25 years in local government I had, I think, three ombudsman’s rulings against me and possibly one or two JRs. I won the JRs. All of them involved planning. All the cases—certainly those involving the ombudsman, which was why I was aggrieved—were seen as an issue of the individual in their own home being against the nasty local authority stopping them doing something.
Actually, it was the local authority wearing a planning hat trying to hold the ring permanently between the local particularised interest and the wider city interest. Sometimes it might be elderly folk against having a children’s play area near them which would produce noise and possibly ball games. It might be that residents wanted a road closure, nice culs-de-sac or chicanes in the road to keep traffic out or slow it down, against the need to have through roads, otherwise the roads down which the traffic went became intolerable for other residents—it just pushed the problem along.
I remember being involved in building a site for Travellers and the outrage associated with that. I put it down near an allotments area because it was in an outer area of the city, but all the allotments were raided and that produced quite a lot of problems for me. The biggest problem was trying to get social housing, particularly sheltered housing for the elderly, in owner-occupied areas where owner-occupiers believed that they had bought not only an owner-occupied house but an owner-occupied street, park, church and school.
On another occasion I was trying to put halfway houses across the city. I reckoned that no street could take more than about two halfway houses. Some of the houses were for people who were overcrowded or were desperate or suffering from domestic violence; some were for people coming out of Nacro homes and care homes. There was one home for anorexic young women and the residents fought it tooth and nail and would go to the ombudsman if they could. I was having to say that there was a wider community interest involved. I would meet them, talk to them and try to persuade them. On other occasions we were having to demolish something—whether for city widening or because the housing was unfit—and the residents, owners, perfectly reasonably did not want this to happen in their area.
While I hope that I have never gone ahead bulldozing my way through, in a mental sense, none the less you cannot always expect people to have the wider community interest at heart when their own personal interest will be affected by a decision. I probably would not. I am not trying to be superior about it. That is how it is. We had three ombudsman decisions. I think that we won two and lost one and in all cases the ombudsman was wrong in that they saw it as a bipartite city council versus the individual issue, rather than the city council trying to be the umpire in planning disputes.
I just hope that we do not believe in neighbourhood planning without this understanding that the whole city owns the city centre, the city’s traffic network and the city’s housing development and that the whole city owns the community pressures for halfway houses for disadvantaged and vulnerable people and that you must try to scatter them fairly across the community and so on. If we accept that there is always going to be tension, the one thing that I would not want, at any stage, is to devolve decision-making to a body that, by virtue of being a parish with formal electoral position, had extra leverage in this over and beyond that of appropriate, proper and decent discussion, debate, communication and consultation. I have seen in rural Norfolk the implications of nimbyism. I fought that off in my city and I do not want to see nimbyism come in through the back door due to any proposals like this.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
My Lords, a number of amendments have been proposed to give additional rights and powers to neighbourhood planning groups and communities, and requiring the promotion of neighbourhood planning. I support the intention of the two amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Shipley, aimed at increasing the promotion of and support for neighbourhood planning, particularly in urban areas. In relation to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about how many of the 1,800 communities are not parishes, we do not have exact figures but estimate that around 90% are and, therefore, that about 10% are unparished. That 10% is rising, but obviously it reinforces the points that have been made.
A legal duty to promote neighbourhood planning, either on local authorities or the Secretary of State, is unnecessary and can be achieved by other means—we need to maintain a balance. We recently launched a £1.5 million mobilisation programme to promote neighbourhood planning nationally. This includes capacity-building projects to train community organisations and community organisers in urban and deprived areas. These organisations and individuals will lead and promote neighbourhood planning in areas of lower take-up. This summer we will launch our first-ever national advertising campaign to raise awareness of neighbourhood planning and its benefits through local newspapers, posters and social media. These activities are in addition to our £22 million My Community support programme for neighbourhood planning.
This three-year programme confirms that the Government are financially committed to supporting neighbourhood planning and also recognises that urban or unparished communities face additional challenges in producing a plan and provides additional support to them. Forums in unparished areas can apply for up to £15,000 in grant, compared to the £9,000 available to parishes, as well as specialist technical support from planning consultants. It is up to the community how they use the grant to progress their neighbourhood plan, and we have seen lots of innovative community engagement as a result. Online resources, examples and case studies are also available on the support programme website that highlight the benefits of community planning to help inspire further communities and equip them with the necessary information and skills.
It is important, however, that we do not compel local authorities to duplicate existing work or bind them into promoting neighbourhood planning in perpetuity where members of a community may have decided that it is not for them. Furthermore, local authorities already have a legal duty to give such advice or assistance as they consider appropriate to facilitate neighbourhood planning. Our planning guidance underlines:
“A local planning authority should … be proactive in providing information to communities about neighbourhood planning”.
Therefore, Amendment 87 would duplicate this existing legal requirement.
It should also be recognised that a number of other organisations also promote neighbourhood planning and are well placed to provide advice and information to communities, such as the Royal Town Planning Institute and Planning Aid, the Prince’s Foundation, the CPRE, the NALC and ACRE. Plus, as the noble Lord, Lord Foster, said, we have established a network of over 120 neighbourhood planning champions who voluntarily promote and support neighbourhood planning across the country. These are enthusiastic and experienced individuals, and we are supporting them with resources and training in order for them to share their expertise widely. A statutory duty, either on local authorities or on the Secretary of State, to promote, inform and finance neighbourhood planning is therefore unnecessary as it is already our policy and practice.
The noble Lord, Lord Foster, asked about the 23 pilots. They are currently under way and are due to completer this summer. They include Horsham Council, which is exploring opportunities for the devolution of planning functions to town and parish councils; Cotswold Council, which is piloting an approach to involving communities in setting infrastructure requirements; and Milton Keynes Council, which is pioneering an approach to involving communities in strategic housing land assessments. We will be sharing the learning from these pilots when they complete later in the year. I hope that with these reassurances the noble Lord will be content to withdraw his amendment.
I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for raising the issue of making it easier for neighbourhood forums to become parish councils through Amendment 88. We are keen to enable more forums to become parish councils where they wish, so that local people can play an even stronger role in serving the community. However, we do not feel that the amendment is necessary. As he will know, last March the then Government introduced new measures that made it easier for communities to set up new town and parish councils. We believe that it is important for these measures to bed in before any further review is considered.
These changes followed two public consultations.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)
The Minister explained that resources were needed for these welcome developments. She gave examples of consultants and communities—which is fine—but where is the support for local authority planning departments? This is a very big additional load for them. Will there be more resources? The resources for planning departments are going down. One sees this all across the UK. These planning issues are not getting adequate support. The expertise in the departments is going down and this will make it more difficult for departments in future.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I think I have an answer, but I just need to check it, so if I could carry on I will try to come back to the noble Lord before I finish on this group.
These changes followed two public consultations which found that the legislation required in setting up a parish or town council was too burdensome and bureaucratic —and that it discouraged local campaigners from establishing one. The subsequent amendments made a number of important changes. The threshold of signatures required to trigger a review of governance was lowered from 10% to 7.5% of residents. The amount of time the local authority can take to complete a governance review was shortened to 12 months from receipt of a valid petition. This is speeding up the process and creating greater certainty for local campaigners. Importantly, the changes allow neighbourhood forums, which have a neighbourhood plan passed at referendum to trigger a community governance review for a new parish council without requiring them to submit a petition. The next phase of work will be to publish guidance on community governance reviews to establish the working principles and to reflect the evolving devolution landscape.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was correct in his figures. Early evidence indeed shows that the first neighbourhood plans are proposing around 10% more houses than the local plans. Applications are coming forward more quickly. Also, neighbourhood plans are helping to improve the acceptability of housebuilding among the public, which has also doubled.
In relation to the noble Lord’s question, the Government have provided £12 million to local authorities to support neighbourhood planning. I hope that with these reassurances noble Lords will withdraw or not move their amendments.
Lord Foster of Bath
To avoid anyone who may be listening to our debate being put off neighbourhood planning by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, could the Minister just confirm that a neighbourhood plan must conform to the thrust of a local authority’s strategic plan, such as its core strategy? Therefore, some of the concerns the noble Baroness has raised are not a reality. Indeed, if the noble Baroness would go to Exeter and see the excellent work between the community of St James and Exeter Council—a similar-sized authority—she would see that such problems simply did not exist because the two work together.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I thank the noble Lord. Yes, I can confirm that what he said is absolutely right.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Just to be clear, my Lords, I have no problems at all where a city has a tradition or a history of having parish councils and wants to use those as the vehicles for neighbourhood planning. All I am saying is that where this is not part of that authentic, organic texture of a city, but where there is a network of other forms of civic groups, community groups and so on—particularly where you have cities with very tight boundaries and very constrained lines—there can be tensions. If Exeter has overcome those, that is great. All I can say from my experience of 25 years of local government is that some of the most difficult decisions concerned precisely those tensions. Obviously one would work with them, and I agree that the neighbourhood planning councils would have to have planning proposals that conformed to the city-wide ones. I accept that, but one should not underestimate the locality—ward councillors and so on, as many of us have been—when it comes to how those tensions can occur. All I am saying is: by all means encourage local authorities to go down this road where there is already a history of parishes of this sort, but do not assume that this is the answer to the deeper problems of keeping a city alive, vibrant and able to respond confidently to new challenges. That is why I have some reservations about trying to suggest that it should apply across the board and that we should be actively encouraging it where people do not want it.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
I am a councillor in Lewisham and Crofton Park. At the moment we are in the process of setting up our own neighbourhood plan, which is very good and I welcome it. Equally, though, it has not answered all the problems. We have some challenges in our area, such as ensuring that there is proper retail provision. We have sites of multiple occupation with no building taking place, and so on. So the plan is all very good and I am supportive of it, but my noble friend has raised some genuine points.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am trying to think what on earth has ever existed or exists now that is the answer to all the problems. There are people in the world who think they have an answer to all the problems but they are usually—I am trying to think of a word I can use in your Lordships’ House—on the extremist fringe of ideas.
I thank everyone who has taken part in this debate, which has been extremely interesting. I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath for all the work he did in getting some oomph behind neighbourhood planning when he was a Minister in the DCLG. I also thank my noble friend Lord Stunell, who is in his place but has not spoken today, who was closely involved in the promotion of the Localism Act in the first place. I am not saying that it was all their work and no one else’s, but from these Benches it is quite stimulating and daunting in different ways to have them sitting behind me, ready to shoot me down when I say things that are not quite right.
I was fascinated by what became at one stage a mini-debate about the future of local governance in the former urban district of Gosforth in the north of what is now the city of Newcastle. I have to say that the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, reminded me of debates in my own authority in Pendle perhaps 30 years ago, when we were looking hard at what had been five former urban districts and at whether they should have parish councils. They now have town councils. The arguments that the noble Lord is putting forward are very similar to those put forward by members of this party in Pendle 30 years ago. We set up the town councils in the former urban districts, with the support and assistance of referendums and local people, and they have been an astonishing success. I have to say that they are now one of the reasons why we are able to preserve some of our local services, which the borough council can no longer afford to run. So I say, “Good on you, Gosforth—get on with it”.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said that there would always be tensions. Local decision-making, however democratic or political it is and whoever is making the decisions, is always full of all kinds of local tensions. That is what it is all about. No one believes that neighbourhood planning is some miracle cure and that it is a perfect system that will take away all the differences of opinion among residents and other people in different parts of an area. Clearly it is not, but it is a means of involving a lot more people in the debates, the arguments and the issues. We will not necessarily get any more agreement at the end, although this process does tend to achieve more agreement than exists if it is not carried out.
I have recently been involved in huge planning applications—at least, huge by our standards; one of them involves 500 houses—over which there have been enormous disputes. A system of neighbourhood planning in that part of the borough, which is now being set up as a consequence of the decisions that have been made, would have helped to achieve sensible, even if still quite angry, engagement between people, instead of people just standing a long way apart and shouting at each other.
The system is not perfect—but nothing is perfect, and it is better than what happens if it is not there. On these Benches we are absolutely certain that that is the case. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is right to say that the people who most strongly oppose a new housing development are always those who are in the previous housing development. But that is just life, and part of life’s tensions. We have to bring people in and get them to talk about it. I am grateful for the Minister’s comments and the helpful information that she has provided, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Parminter
“Neighbourhood right of appeal
(1) After section 78 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (“the 1990 Act”) insert—“78ZA Neighbourhood right of appeal(1) Where—(a) a planning authority grants an application for planning permission,(b) the application does not accord with policies in an emerging or made neighbourhood plan in which the land to which the application relates is situated, and(c) the neighbourhood plan in paragraph (b) contains proposals for the provision of housing development,certain persons as specified in subsection (2) may by notice appeal to the Secretary of State.(2) Persons who may by notice appeal to the Secretary of State against the approval of planning permission in the circumstances specified in subsection (1) are any parish council or neighbourhood forum, as defined in section 61F of the 1990 Act (authorisation to act in relation to neighbourhood areas), whose made or emerging neighbourhood plan includes all or part of the area of land to which the application relates, by two-thirds majority voting.(3) In this section an “emerging” neighbourhood plan means a neighbourhood plan that—(a) has been examined,(b) is being examined, or(c) is due to be examined, having met the public consultation requirements necessary to proceed to this stage.”(2) Section 79 of the 1990 Act is amended as follows—(a) in subsection (2), omit “either” and after “planning authority” insert “or the applicant (where different from the appellant)”;(b) in subsection (6), after “the determination” insert “(except for appeals as defined in section 78ZA (as inserted by section (Neighbourhood right of appeal) of the Housing and Planning Act 2016) and where the appellant is as defined in subsection (2) of that section)”.”
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, like a number of other noble Lords, I welcome the initiatives by the coalition Government to devolve power to local communities, particularly the introduction of neighbourhood planning. Given that the Government accept the importance of local people having a direct say in the planning of their communities and their environment, how can it be right for local people to have no redress when a planning application is approved that drives a coach and horses through everything that has been agreed? The amendment would create a limited neighbourhood right of appeal for neighbourhood planning bodies. It would enable them to appeal against the granting of permission for new housing that conflicts with the policies of a made, or well-advanced, neighbourhood plan.
We have heard figures given this afternoon—my noble friend Lord Greaves made it clear—that there are about 1,800 neighbourhood plans in the early stages of development. The Minister will correct me in her summing up if I am wrong, but I think that only about 140 of those—140 out of a potential 9,000—have gone right through the referendum process and been created. The Government are rightly keen to increase that number. Is it not a powerful disincentive to neighbourhood groups thinking of putting together the neighbourhood planning processes if they do not have a right of appeal? Why should they make the effort of producing a neighbourhood plan if such plans can easily be ignored when councils decide on planning applications, and the only opportunity to challenge such decisions is through costly judicial reviews, which are limited in scope to largely procedural matters?
The right that I am arguing for would apply only to parish councils and neighbourhood forums whose neighbourhood plans had progressed at least to the point of formal submission to the local authority for examination. Last month, the House of Lords Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment —which is chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, who is not in her place at the moment, and on which I serve—came out strongly in favour of a limited right of appeal. We did so after hearing the evidence from a number of organisations and stakeholders, including particularly powerful evidence from former chief planning inspectors, who supported a community right of appeal in certain circumstances. That support is important.
This amendment will support the Government’s commitment to get more neighbourhood planning and, as has been mentioned and confirmed by the Minister herself, neighbourhood planning delivers more homes, which is the overall purpose of the Bill. If we get that, we will need a whole raft of approaches to get more communities involved in neighbourhood planning. It is very encouraging today to hear more about how the Government are taking special steps to encourage more neighbourhood plans to come forward.
If I may say so as an aside, as a former councillor of Horsham District Council I was delighted to hear the Minister mention that Horsham is a member of the pilot. We will need all those initiatives to get more councils involved. I firmly believe that a limited community right of appeal will be one more means to get more neighbourhood plans that will help us to get more people involved in the planning process, help deliver more consensus and deliver homes we all know we need. I beg to move.
Lord Best (CB)
I support the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on Amendment 88A, which would give parish councils and neighbourhood forums rights of appeal if permission was given for a development that failed to accord with a neighbourhood plan that had been prepared but was not yet finalised. I note that this proposal was debated in the other place, where Nick Herbert MP commended neighbourhood planning. I echo his views and agree with noble Lords who have congratulated the Government and the coalition Government on the neighbourhood planning initiative, which has now reached this number of 1,800 neighbourhoods—I think that well over 200 have now been concluded, but we will probably hear about that from the Minister.
During the passage of the Localism Bill through this House, I supported the idea of neighbourhood plans, but I opposed the idea that after the plan had been approved by the parish council, the district council, the county council, and by an independent examiner, it would then need to be approved through a referendum. I was worried that all the people who had not participated in any of the public meetings, consultation sessions and the rest after years of hard work by the local volunteers, who had nobly got together to prepare their neighbourhood plan, would come out of the woodwork and vote against the plan on principle because they opposed anything happening in their area. I was wrong. The referenda have all so far been in favour of the local plans, and this has not been a negative barrier to getting the plans through.
Returning to the debate in the other place, I note that Mr Nick Herbert went on to say that,
“support is undermined when speculative developers try to get in applications ahead of the completion of neighbourhood plans or even after they have been completed. They bang in their applications, and either they are upheld by the local authority, which is fearful of losing an appeal, or the developer makes an appeal that is upheld by the planning inspector. The development is then allowed to go ahead, which leads people, including groups of volunteers, to ask, ‘Why have we spent literally years working on this neighbourhood plan for where developments should go—a power that was given to us, the community—only for it to be overturned by a developer?’”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/1/16; col. 222.]
Nick Herbert’s views were echoed by Sir Oliver Heald MP, who thought it was wrong that a neighbourhood plan,
“can then be trashed by an application by a speculative developer.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/1/16; col. 222.]
Andrew Bingham MP said this was happening in Chapel-en-le-Frith, a village in his constituency. These sentiments from Conservative MPs were echoed by those of Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods MP for the Opposition.
I have followed the progress of the production of an excellent neighbourhood plan for the Cerne Valley in Dorset, covering the village whose name, Godmanstone, is in my title—I declare an interest in this as an owner of land within the area covered by the plan. In the case of the Cerne Valley, local volunteers formed a neighbourhood forum in the summer of 2011. Consultative meetings were held with fierce debates, and after huge efforts the group—a vanguard for neighbourhood forums, brilliantly led by a local farmer, Fred Horsington, who is now a neighbourhood planning champion—obtained the approval of the relevant parish councils for their plan. In December 2013, it was submitted to the council. It was then subject to independent examination and the examiner’s report came out in August 2014. Then, in December 2014, a referendum was held. To the considerable credit of all the volunteer workers, the plan was approved by a huge majority. Finally, on 8 January 2015, three and a half years from the beginning, the plan was approved by the local authority.
During this lengthy period, all the hard work of those engaged in this exercise was at risk from a developer putting in an application which did not accord with the emerging plan. Had this happened, the parish council and the neighbourhood forum would have had no way of appealing, and the council would have had to be hesitant about using the submitted plan in determining the planning application. Until the referendum was done and dusted, it was a nerve-wracking time. This amendment would overcome the problem and ensure that, even where a neighbourhood plan had not reached its final stage, it would make its mark as it should. I support the amendment.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I tabled an amendment in this group which covers similar ground but is not about neighbourhood planning. I tabled it at the behest of a different set of interest groups from those that my noble friend Lady Parminter has worked with, but it seems sensible for it to be in this group because the principle is the same.
This is an interesting issue, which has been around for quite a while. One of the interesting political aspects is that political parties tend to be in favour of some form of community right of appeal against the granting of planning permission when they are in opposition, but when they are in government they find all sorts of reasons why it is not practical. I think this has happened with all three parties, although I think my noble friend is complaining that we continued to be in favour of it during the coalition but were stopped by our big-brother partner—at least I think that is what she is saying; she may have been closer to it than I was.
I have no doubt whatsoever that, for major applications which are against policy, there is a very good argument in favour of the right of appeal. It is also true that nobody has come up with workable legislation. I am not claiming that my amendment, which covers the principle generally rather than just neighbourhood planning, is the answer. But we have to accept that the right of appeal has to be restricted to a considerable degree: it cannot be for any old planning application that comes along, even if it is against policy. If, for example, an extension to next-door’s kitchen is against council policy but the council has passed it, then—rightly or wrongly—it is not a matter for appeal. That right has to be reserved for a major planning application defined in some way or another. I have suggested,
“a major planning application or an application for permission in principle”—
no doubt we will be calling it a “PIP” before we have finished with this part of the Bill.
The legislation will have to clearly define who can object and carry out an appeal—whether this be a body, person or group of people—and will have to strictly limit the right to appeals which are clearly against policy. I believe that workable legislation can be drawn up to cater for those cases, but it has to be tightly drawn and not something that is going to generate loads of appeals, because that would totally undermine the planning system and would certainly undermine the Government’s wish to build many more houses.
I am in favour of this with the restrictions I have outlined. I would ask the Government to look at it seriously and ask an expert to come up with a scheme which we can then decide whether to go ahead with or not; otherwise, we will simply continue as we are. If the Conservatives lose the next election and someone else takes over, at the election after that the Conservatives will be doing what they did on platforms with me in 2010—saying what a good idea this is and promising to bring it in if they get into government. I am not blaming them, because everyone does that and everyone changes their mind.
Lord True
My Lords, the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is very wide, albeit that it is limited to major applications, however they are defined. Of course it goes to the heart of an important point of principle in planning legislation, which is where the right of appeal does and does not lie. We all know that that is a giant question and I do not think that it can particularly be addressed in this group of amendments. However, there is no doubt that we all have electors, groups and campaigners who ask the question: how is it that we are rendered powerless after a decision? But it would mean making such a radical change in planning law that I do not think that we can address it properly at this point. However, I take it fully that the noble Lord has raised a vital issue.
On the more limited Amendment 88A, I understand the kind of case being put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and indeed the good intentions behind the amendment. The trouble is that we are writing law here, and you could look at it the other way round if it was put into statute. Let us say that this became law and someone wished to frustrate a development by a city council like Norwich, with which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is associated. If Norwich wanted to do something and had granted a planning application, we would have this provision on the statute book which potentially provides an opportunity for it to be subjected to an appeal to the Secretary of State—I guess that that means the inspector. It could be a mechanism not for promoting a community interest but for campaigning against a difficult decision which a planning authority had taken. That would be my concern with the proposed new clause as drafted because local authorities have to take difficult decisions.
There is theoretically a defence in proposed new subsection (1)(c), which states that the neighbourhood plan should contain,
“proposals for the provision of housing development”—
that is, the objectors could not be complete nimbys, but they might have a proposal for two or perhaps 10 houses whereas the local authority plan had just given consent for the construction of 150 affordable houses. In the hands of the wrong sort of people—I am sure not those of the party opposite—it could be a mechanism through which campaigners could operate to challenge embedded and accepted local authority proposals. I see also that proposed new subsection (2) states that the objectors could cover only,
“part of the area of land to which the application relates”.
So there could be a situation where a site brief had been drawn up for an inner-city plot, perhaps with community participation, running across two wards. Let us say that it had been agreed to construct housing, a school and so on, but then up pops a group in part of the site area—these things take a long time to process—which then says, “Oh no, we object to that and we will go to the Secretary of State”. You will end up with the whole of the worked-out site brief being potentially frustrated. I am sure that that is not what is intended by noble Lords opposite.
There is a further defence, in that the emerging plan —however it emerges—has to have reached a certain point, such as public consultation, though that can be pushed along relatively quickly. In the wrong hands, this power, which is intended to be benign, could be used to frustrate, challenge and delay difficult decisions taken in the broader interest by the principal authority. Indeed, it is an interesting reversal—
Baroness Parminter
Does the noble Lord not accept that, were one of these neighbourhood groups to bring forward an appeal, they could face costs against them if it was thought to be vexatious or went against them? That would be a powerful disincentive for some of the groups which, as the noble Lord says, might use this process for reasons that none of us would support.
Lord True
As the noble Baroness knows, the question of costs is very much in the hands of the inspector at the end of the day. Sometimes they are awarded and sometimes not. In my experience, a very lenient view is often—quite rightly—taken where community bodies are involved. I am, therefore, nervous about this amendment, as drafted, because although well intentioned it could very easily be exploited to create agitation where none existed before, to frustrate needed community development.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, as I have told the House many times before, I am a local councillor in Lewisham. I represent the ward of Crofton Park.
As I have mentioned before, we are in the process of developing our own neighbourhood plan by setting up a neighbourhood forum and taking a much more proactive role in how our local community develops. We are doing this using the powers in the Localism Act 2011. I agree with the comments made previously and in this debate about how that has been a very useful exercise and has certainly engaged with the local community. I am very supportive of that. We are seeking to produce a local script. We will get our documents together for our local community and we hope to have a referendum to get it approved within the next 18 months.
The amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, allows for an appeal by a parish council or a neighbourhood forum to the Secretary of State if the local authority’s decision goes against the policies in the approved local plan. Amendment 101BGA seeks to do something similar but wider. I am interested in the Government’s response, because there is a conflict between what the Government are doing in this Bill and what the Localism Act says. Can the Minister deal with that? We need a proper balance; in that regard, I agree with the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord True. We have to move on, not continue to go backwards and forwards. Something needs to happen here. I will leave my remarks there, but when the Minister responds I may ask one or two questions.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
My Lords, Amendments 88A and 101BGA propose a community right to appeal in various circumstances. The existing right of appeal recognises that, in practice, the planning system acts as a control on how an individual may use their land. As a result, the Government believe it is right that an applicant has the option of an impartial appeal against the refusal of planning permission. This existing right of appeal compensates for the removal of the individual’s right to develop.
The planning system, however, already provides ample opportunity where the community wishes to express a view on a planning matter, and the Government place great importance on community involvement in the planning system at every stage of the process. Communities have statutory rights to become involved in the preparation of the local plan for their area, through which they can influence development. As we have heard, the local community can also come together to produce a neighbourhood plan, which sets out how the community wants to see its neighbourhood develop. On the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, about progress, out of the 1,800 communities that have started, 400 draft plans have been published for consultation and of these 300 have been submitted for examination and more than 120 have been “made”—that is, brought into force.
These plans form the basis for decisions on planning applications. We are also proposing more powers for neighbourhood forums in the Bill: first, by allowing them to request that they are notified of applications in their area and, secondly, through existing powers to make neighbourhood forums statutory consultees on the local plan for the area. In addition, communities are able to make representations on individual planning applications, including major planning applications. Our proposals for “permission in principle”, which are contained in the Bill, include community consultation before a decision is made, upholding our principle of community involvement. We believe that the views of the community are considered at every stage in the decision-making process.
The Government do not believe that a community right of appeal is necessary as there are already plenty of opportunities to have a say on local planning issues, as the amendments acknowledge. It would be wrong for development to be delayed and uncertainty created at the last minute with a community right of appeal. These amendments would serve only to repeat issues that were raised and addressed during the planning application process. The law is very clear that decisions on planning applications must be made in accordance with the development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. A made neighbourhood plan is therefore a powerful tool that must be the starting point for authorities’ decisions on applications.
To ensure that the significance of neighbourhood plans is absolutely clear, we issued further guidance on decision-making last month. This highlights national policy that states,
“where a planning application conflicts with a neighbourhood plan that has been brought into force, planning permission should not normally be granted”.
We also have clear national policy on the weight that can be given to emerging neighbourhood plans. This weight can be significant. The National Planning Policy Framework explains that the weight will vary depending on the stage of preparation that the plan has reached, any unresolved objections to it, and consistency within the framework.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, raised the issue of developers being able to intervene in the neighbourhood planning process by putting in applications throughout. We do not believe that it would be right to stop development programmes coming forward at any time, as this would impact on local businesses, which need to invest, and local people, who need homes. However, throughout the rest of the Bill we are seeking to speed up and simplify the neighbourhood planning process so that the plans will have full weight as quickly as possible.
It is somewhat inevitable in a planning system that aims to balance competing demands for growth and environmental protection that development proposals may lead to limited conflict with one objective in a plan in order to deliver another. In these cases, we must allow decision-takers to balance these competing considerations, without the risk that every decision to approve an application could be taken to appeal. If, in rare cases, a community believes that the local planning authority is minded to approve an application that clearly conflicts with a local plan or an emerging or made neighbourhood plan, it can ask the Secretary of State to intervene and call in the application for his or her own determination.
We also announced in January that, for a further six months, the Secretary of State’s criteria on recovering and deciding planning appeals would continue to include housing proposals in those areas where there is a made or submitted neighbourhood plan. This reflects the Government’s clear policy intention for neighbourhood planning.
Baroness Parminter
I thank the Minister for that point but, with regard to recovering planning appeals, can she confirm that that would not apply where permission has been granted by the local authority contrary to a neighbourhood plan? It could be recovered if the local authority has refused the planning permission and subsequently been taken to appeal, but it could not be taken forward if the local authority has granted permission to something contrary to the neighbourhood plan.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I believe that that is correct, yes.
We already have a system which ensures that the views of communities are heard, understood and taken into account in reaching a decision. The best way for communities to engage in the planning system is for them to become involved in the development of local and neighbourhood plans, and make representations on applications as they arise. I hope that the noble Baroness will consider withdrawing her amendment.
Baroness Parminter
I thank the Minister for her reply and I thank all the people who have spoken in this debate. I am disappointed, since I hoped that the Government would think that my amendment was trying to deliver on their objectives of not only delivering more homes but encouraging more people to get involved in neighbourhood planning, which we all agree is an important and welcome new part of the planning process. Of course, planning is about balancing competing demands. I still feel that the balance is not correct but in the light of where we are today and the speed at which we need to go forward, I will withdraw the amendment at this point.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Power to direct
The Secretary of State shall by regulations define powers for local planning authorities to direct the use of underused, un-used or otherwise available publicly owned land in a local area to support redevelopment or regeneration as outlined in a local development plan.”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I will be relatively brief. Amendment 89 seeks to empower the Secretary of State by regulation to enable a local planning authority to direct the use of underused public land to support development and regeneration. The amendment seeks to make speedier use of public land that is not in use or underused. We have all talked about the housing crisis in many debates in this House, particularly during the course of the Bill. We all know we need to build more houses. Although we may disagree on what sorts of houses we need to build and how to build them, we all accept we need to build more.
The amendment requires local planning authorities to designate land for housing co-ops—something I am very supportive of, and I know that Members on the Government Benches have also expressed support for housing co-operatives in the past. I declare that I am a member of the Co-operative Party, which puts forward policies for a variety of solutions to the problems we face. I beg to move.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I need to make it clear that Amendment 89 is not Labour Party policy; it is my view and I believe it is supported by millions of people in the country. Despite my repeated interventions, this is the only amendment I have moved in my name and I therefore need to take a little more time in dealing with it. I think you will find that my previous interventions have been very brief.
Amendment 89 offers us the opportunity to debate the cost of land—the real cost before the profiteers move in. It concerns the impact of land cost on the property market, speculation in land by the land banks and property speculators and hoarders, house price inflation and capital gains tax on developing land. It is about the compulsory purchase of agricultural land for housing development.
I recognise that exception is already made in law for exceptional rural housing development. However, while on occasion that land is offered free or at marginal cost by landowners, it is often offered in return for planning permission on land which is sold at market prices. I argue for the need to go much further, and have done so in interventions on a number of occasions during the course of the Bill.
When we want to build an airport, roadway, motorway, bypass, bridge, railway line, reservoir or development in the public interest, under present arrangements we use powers under various pieces of legislation, in particular the land compensation Acts. Compulsory purchase orders are issued, signed off by the Secretary of State, and the land is acquired at its then market rate, plus an uplift. The uplift can include an occupant’s loss payment, a basic loss, an allowance for the replacement of land to include fees and taxes paid, disturbance costs and an allowance to cover the cost of land unreasonably affected by adjacent development. These additional costs are usually but not always marginal compared to the costs of the original CPO land in question.
The process applies where agricultural, pastoral or arable land is the subject of compulsory purchase. By my reading, the justification for the CPO is set out in Section 226 of the Land Compensation Act 1965, as amended by Section 99 of the 2004 Act where it states that a local authority must not seek a CPO unless it feels that the development of the land will,
“promote improvement of the economic well-being of the area … and promote the improvement of the social well-being of the area”.
Denning, in his judgment in Prest v Secretary of State for Wales, opined on the justification for compulsory purchase, saying that,
“Parliament only grants it, or should only grant it, when it is necessary in the public interest”.
He then went on to set out the safeguards.
Lord True
My Lords, I, too, have an amendment in this group, which I suggested should be moved up in the interests of making progress, because it touches on similar territory to the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. I will not follow the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in his very interesting remarks. Of course land is a huge conundrum. Heaven knows, as leader of an authority with some of the highest embedded land values in the country, one knows that that is an immensely complicating factor. But, again, a bit like the challenge laid down by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about rights of appeal across the planning system, it is perhaps a little big for this Committee at this stage and at this time—although it would certainly merit a debate in your Lordships’ House.
On the question of co-ops: 148709 was my old mum’s co-op number. She was also a member of the party—I found her card after she died. She hid it very well in her later years as a Conservative voter but she always loved the idea of the co-op. Housing co-operatives are very welcome. I was brought up to believe to some degree in the co-operative principle.
I want to go back to the origin of where I am coming from, and the other amendment is coming from, which is the poor old local authority. We take so much incoming fire—I hear it time and again, and I have sat through and followed a bit of the Bill. We see these other people, these public undertakings, sitting on land and—I will not use the demotic but noble Lords know what I am thinking. Yet the local authorities get the blame for not developing it. Time and again I hear it: they are the cause and the obstacle and they are the people who do not do it. Some of us are getting beyond the extremes of tolerance for this strand of argument.
I put down an amendment to Clause 137, which is this longfalutin thing about local authorities having to compile registers of land, which would take a few officers a lot of time to do. If that is what the Government want us to do, I suppose that we will have to do it and I suppose we probably will not get any money for it—but can we not do something with these registers? So I suggested that maybe if local authorities have these registers, we could use them and start to challenge some of the registered people in our area who are not doing anything to do something about the land.
Frustrated local authorities in my borough are watching Network Rail, which has a planning application granted in 2011 that is still not fully executed and in fact scarcely begun. It is a disgrace. Well over 100 houses there should be developed. Meanwhile, the private sector is getting on with it across the road. I could name many others.
I do not want to anticipate remarks on what will come up later in the Bill. I see that in Clause 183 there is all this worthy stuff about how public authorities are going to be encouraged to engage with local authorities on proposals to dispose of land. That would be a nice thing, would it not? Why do they not just do it now? They do not need an Act of Parliament to get on with it.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, it is appropriate to speak after the noble Lord, Lord True, because earlier on in our previous Committee discussions I referred to the point to which the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, referred earlier, namely the deliberations of the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment. I say again what I said previously: one of the great things that really stuck out for me is the deficit in housebuilding and the concurrent fall-off in local government building on its own account.
There are all sorts of reasons for that, but I would definitely side with the noble Lord, Lord True, on the point that he made about there being a clear case for local authorities to take a hand in the development process. I really do not think that the Government’s objectives will be met unless that can be harnessed in some shape or form.
I give the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, great credit for his consistency and persistence. Earlier in Committee he made clear his view on the problem of excessive house prices linked to excessive land price. He is probably aware that I have a somewhat different take on this, and I hope that he will forgive me for that, but I realise that there is an issue here.
In introducing his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, made reference to agricultural land, but the amendment itself does not seem to necessarily make it clear that it is referring to acquisitions of agricultural land as opposed to acquisitions of land generally at an agricultural value. My next point follows from that because the land may well have been used previously for some other purpose that may have no relationship to its agricultural heritage of 100 or so years previously in either physical or valuation terms. I just flag that up. So it depends on the origins of the land, and it also depends on whether it is serviced or unserviced, because of course there can be an awful lot of infrastructure, particularly if it is land that was previously developed, which adds a lot to its value.
The noble Lord’s proposal is, on the face of it, expropriatory, although he outlined a provision for a way in which there could be a clawback from that. But as it stands, it would require the effective rewriting of current compulsory purchase and land compensation legislation. I fear that it will be seen as departing from a principle of fair compensation, particularly where land is acquired for a purpose for which there is an obvious general market value—unlike, say, a piece of infrastructure such as a road or a school or something which is only ever going to be produced for a public purpose, and, in the case of a road, probably only by a public authority or in pursuit of a public authority’s powers.
But I remind your Lordships that this has been tried before. During my university years, we still had the Land Commission Act, which had something called the betterment levy attached to it. It was scrapped either the year before or during the year in which I took my finals. It was replaced in due course by something called development land tax. This was levied at about 80% of the uplift and it simply caused the land supply to dry up. So little land came forward that one of the first things that the Thatcher Government did when they came in was to scrap it to try to free the thing up. So if you are not careful, you can completely reverse the process where land is voluntarily brought forward and you will have to predict and provide as a public authority and acquire the land, presumably by compulsory means at a low value.
At the moment, the development gains generate some pretty large funds for landowners. However, earlier I sent the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, an email based on the experience of one of my colleagues, who found that the profit made by a developer was substantially—by a matter of 50%—over and above what the landowner got for the land. We should bear in mind that what he got for the land presumably included its current-use value—for example, as agricultural land—plus any increment that he was paid for the development. But the process funds an awful lot of things under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act, the community infrastructure levy and other community and societal benefits. We already have a tax regime that taxes its share of those things, through capital gains tax, corporation tax or whatever.
Unless the noble Lord’s proposal resulted in a wholesale fall in property values—which, as I said earlier, would be a brave new world of an entirely different scale and nature and might have some very undesirable consequences—it would not reduce values. New homes are typically less in any given year—probably substantially less—than 1% of the existing total housing stock. It is a bit of a scratch on the surface, I fear.
That said, I have a lot of sympathy with the noble Lord. There is no question that housing is very expensive. But it would pay to look at a number of other things. The noble Lord, Lord True, mentioned one of them: vacant land that is suitable and is not being used. I remember—and I think the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, will know what I am talking about—a site in the middle of Horsham which the landowner refused to sell or allow to be brought forward for development. It became a sort of island of industrial activity in the middle of the town. I can well relate to local authority concern about that sort of situation.
I also point to some of the restrictive practices operated by a number of the major housebuilders and the way they achieve their profit margins. I certainly think that would warrant looking at. Then there are the costs, risks, drawn-out timeframes—if you like, the costs of democratic input into the planning situation, but I do not complain about that—and the uncertainty of bringing land forward for development and getting consent, as well as the necessary sustainability studies that have to go in beforehand. They have to go in before the local authority will even consider that the thing is relevant. That might be for known, important ecological reasons but might also be without there being any shred of evidence that there is any ecological value of any sort. That hugely adds to the up-front costs.
I now point to the manner in which some utility companies exercise their powers to try and get an additional share of the action—if I can term it thus—notwithstanding their obligation to connect and supply. I am afraid that it arises because, to a large extent, they are monopoly suppliers. They really do not have to do anything other than say, “Well, if you want a connection it is going to involve such and such and by the way we need a 50% increase in the size of the sewage treatment works” or whatever. I have come across situations where the local sewerage utility company said it would not put anything in its advance plan until it was included in the local plan produced by the local planning authority and the local planning authority saying that it would not put it in unless it knew it was in the forward plan for the utility company—so complete gridlock. This game is being played up and down the country. For all the development sites that actually come to fruition, there are others where there have been significant expenses but it has all been left on the cutting-room floor and does not happen.
Then I point to the inability of small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly builders and developers, to get finance, other than on the security of the land itself —and even that can be extremely difficult. I know of situations like that professionally and through other sources.
The tax advantages of home ownership make it a most desirable form of financial security. There are good reasons for this, but it does not help exit prices if it has that sort of advantage. This Bill is all about fundamentally making more land available for development in total, which means everybody realising that their year-on-year incremental increase in home value comes at a cost to society—at the same time, of course, as benefiting the economy. We need to be quite ruthless in our analysis of that.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, this group of amendments deals with matters relating to land. I have been left in no doubt of the strength of feeling on this subject, as expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and others. I will take a little time later on addressing the points that he has raised in speaking to Amendment 89L.
Amendments 89 and 89M, proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham, would, first, by regulations give local planning authorities the power to direct the use of underused, unused or otherwise available publicly owned land in their area, where they support redevelopment or regeneration opportunities outlined in a local development plan. Secondly, they would require local planning authorities to designate land for use by housing co-operatives.
Amendment 98C, in the name of my noble friend Lord True allows local planning authorities to challenge the owner of the land to present planning proposals to the local planning authority within six months in conformity with the local plan, where, first, it has compiled a register, which he mentioned, under Clause 137; secondly, the owner of the land is a government department, Mayor of London or other public authority, transport undertaker or other statutory undertaker; thirdly, the land is unused or underused previously developed land; and, finally, the body concerned has not prepared or declines to prepare a plan for its development. Again I listened carefully to the points raised by my noble friend.
Where the owner declines to present such a plan it must publish within the six-month period a response showing good reason why the land should not be developed. If the local planning authority considers that the response fails to show good reason, it may present its own proposals for development, compulsorily purchase the land and exercise any planning consent that is then granted.
Amendments 89 and 98C share some common features, in that they seek to give local authorities new powers to control the development of land held by other public bodies. A power for the Secretary of State to direct public bodies to take steps to dispose of their interests in land was created by the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980. The 1980 Act provides an important constraint in the use of the power: where the Secretary of State proposes to exercise the power, if the body makes representations to the Secretary of State regarding the proposed direction then the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the land can be disposed of without serious detriment to the performance of the body’s functions before ordering disposal.
Because of the geographical limitations of their interests, local planning authorities will not usually be in a position to make judgments about the potential impact of a direction to dispose on other public bodies with wider, and in many cases national, interests. Government departments, for example, often have functions critical to the national interest, such as the provision of transport infrastructure, healthcare and defence. It would not be right for local planning authorities to make judgments about how the local interests of other public bodies interacted with their wider functions.
The Government have already committed to dispose of any land that is surplus to requirements, and have announced an ambitious target to release sufficient land for 160,000 homes over the course of this Parliament. Moreover, to ensure that people are able to challenge the Government in the use of their land, the Government have introduced the right to contest. This gives anyone the ability to challenge the Government to sell land or property where they believe it is not needed and could be put to better economic use.
However, I support the principle that local planning authorities should have a greater role when government departments are planning to release land. That is why Clause 183 creates a new duty on Ministers of the Crown to engage with local authorities when planning to dispose of land. This will enable local authorities to raise their views with the landowning body as it is developing its disposal strategy.
I turn to Amendment 89M. The Government want to see new homes and places that communities can be proud of and that stand the test of time, and we recognise the important contribution that community-led housing schemes, including those by housing co-operatives and community land trusts, make to this important agenda. While I recognise the good intention behind the amendment, it is not necessary to place a new requirement on local planning authorities to allocate land specifically for housing co-operatives. National planning policy requires local planning authorities to plan proactively to meet all housing needs in the area, based on the needs of different groups in the community.
The noble Lord will also wish to be aware that neighbourhood planning already gives communities several routes to allocate land in their area to meet local housing needs. Communities can use a neighbourhood plan to allocate land for housing development, including land put forward by a housing co-operative. Our early evidence indicates that neighbourhood plans are allocating 10% more homes than the local plan. Furthermore, community right-to-build orders allow communities to give planning permission for a particular development without the need for a traditional planning application. Neighbourhood plans and community right-to-build orders are subject to a local referendum, so proposals benefit from having genuine local support.
Last year we launched a £22.5 million support programme for neighbourhood planning and a £3.5 million programme for community buildings. These fund communities with up to £15,000 to prepare a neighbourhood plan or neighbourhood development order, and up to £50,000 to prepare a community right-to-build order or a community-led planning application for housing. Over 1,800 communities have started neighbourhood planning, and there have been over 1,000 applications to the programmes this year.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I see the point that the Minister makes about public bodies and land, but I can also think of lots of scruffy plots of land all over the place that are clearly not of any strategic importance to the public body they belong to—for example, Network Rail—but are just sitting there looking pretty tatty. I can think of loads of them very close to here, and we could easily build a few houses on them. They are the type of land that we are talking about, and they should be dealt with.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
The noble Lord makes a good point but I draw his attention again to the national planning policy, in which there is a requirement for local planning authorities to look at these areas and plan proactively. There is of course now the brownfield register as well. With that, I hope there is some reassurance that progress can be made.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Not really, no. If the land is owned by Network Rail and Network Rail has no intention of doing anything with it, that is part of the problem.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
It is fair to say that we continue to work hard to press Network Rail to pick up that specific point. I believe that we have made more progress than ever before in addressing those issues. It is important that we look at all areas of land that are not being used, and that is exactly what this planning process aims to do.
I shall now, if I may, make some progress and turn to Amendment 89L and compulsory acquisition. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has argued—and I accept his passion on this subject—that the imperative for house building is so great that land acquired for that purpose should be acquired as cheaply as possible. There is no doubt that more houses should be built, and that cheap land would help towards that end: he makes a very fair point.
The need for housing is not, however, the only imperative in play when land is acquired by compulsion. The acquiring authority is acting in the public interest, but in return the claimants, whose land and property is being taken from them, must be treated fairly. It may help the Committee if I briefly outline the principles of compensation for land taken by compulsion.
The compensation code is underpinned by the principle of equivalence. This means that the owner should be paid neither less nor more than his loss. The code provides that land shall be purchased at its open market value, disregarding the effect of the scheme underlying the compulsory purchase. The land is valued in a construct called the “no-scheme world”, whereby any increase or decrease in value which is due to the scheme is disregarded. Land will always have its existing use value, but market value also takes into account the effect of any planning permissions that have already been granted, and also the prospect of future planning permissions. This is generally known, as I am sure the noble Lord will know, as “hope value”. In the context of compensation for compulsory purchase, all this is assessed according to the planning assumptions in the Land Compensation Act 1961, which require the valuer to assume the scheme underlying the acquisition is cancelled. Your Lordships’ House may recall that these were reformed in the Localism Act 2011.
In some situations there will be no hope value, because the individual claimant could not have obtained planning permission for some more valuable use. For example, the land might be in an isolated rural location where permission for development would have been unlikely to be granted in the absence of a comprehensive scheme requiring compulsory purchase powers. In other situations, perhaps where land is acquired near an existing settlement, there will be pre-existing prospects for development on the land—in other words, development potential which existed prior to the scheme—and the strength of those prospects will be reflected in the market value of the land.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Why should hope value be transformed into reality on the basis of a planner’s pen? The planner decides, “I recommend to my local authority that that land should be used for housing”, and in an instant transforms the value of that land from £20,000 a hectare to maybe £5 million a hectare. Why? How can we possibly justify that?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I think that I explained that earlier, by saying that we needed to look at both sides, and to use the principle of fairness. The fact of the matter is that unless we intervene and there is a status approach, the value of land is what it is. I believe that the existing regulations are fair. Land will always have its existing value, but the hope value needs to be taken account of as well.
As I said, in some situations there will be no hope value, because the individual claimant could not have obtained planning permission for some more valuable use. For instance, the land might be in an isolated rural location where permission for development would have been unlikely to be granted. Therefore, compensation under the code is paid at the open market value of the land in the “no-scheme world”. This provides a fair level of compensation. I hope that these explanations have reassured noble Lords. I have spent a bit of time expanding on the arguments raised, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and I hope that noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank everyone who has spoken in the debate today. I know that my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours said that this was the first amendment he had tabled, but he has played a really crucial role in our discussion of the Bill, and we welcome that very much. All his points should be carefully considered. As the noble Lord, Lord True, said, there should be a wider debate rather than just here tonight.
I can say to the noble Lord, Lord True, that I still have my RACS card somewhere—my first one, which I have kept for many years. Like him, I think that housing co-ops are wonderful things. In the ward I represent in Crofton Park, which I have mentioned before, we have the Ewart Road Housing Co-op, which is a fantastic place. It is clean, well run, well managed and there is a long waiting list of people trying to get in there. It is real credit to the people who live there, and what a great place Crofton Park in Lewisham is.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord True, about the plots of public land. We are going after strategic sites, but there are loads of scruffy plots of land that blight our communities and which need to be dealt with. I say to the Government that we could even build a few starter homes on them if we got our hands on them. They need to be dealt with, and it is not good enough if they do not do that.
Public bodies, clearly, like private sector companies, can sit there and speculate on the land, see its value going up and do nothing with it. That may not be what is going on but the issue needs to be dealt with. It is not good enough for that land just to sit there. The Government should be doing more. I heard the comments of the noble Lord, Lord True, and hope that the Government were listening. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Shipley
“(6B) The powers outlined in subsection (6A) will not apply where a local planning authority has already complied with subsection (2).”
Lord Shipley
My Lords, in moving Amendment 89ZA I will also speak to Amendments 89AZA, 89AZB and 89AZE. I will do so briefly.
Amendment 89ZA would ensure that where a local authority has complied with the relevant requirements in Section 20(2) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004—that is, it has complied with the relevant requirements to submit its planning document for independent examination, and believes it is ready for it—the examination of its development plan can continue. This is important because the powers given to the Secretary of State under Clause 130 are excessive, given that the local authorities may well have done what it was required to do. This amendment would simply mean that the powers of the Secretary of State in Clause 130(6A) would not apply where the local planning authority had already complied with Section 20(2) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.
Amendments 89AZA and 89AZB would do two things. The former would make it clear that where the Secretary of State chooses to intervene in local development documents or schemes under Section 15 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, any expenditure incurred would be met by the Secretary of State and not by the local authorities as currently indicated in the Bill.
Amendment 89AZB would ensure that development documents prepared by local planning authorities have effect in decision-making until an intervention under Section 21 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 is actually made. In other words, it attempts to restrict some of the additional powers being granted to the Secretary of State to intervene when it is not necessary to do so.
There is a small drafting error in Amendment 89AZE. Three lines were missed out, so that the amendment simply states, “leave out lines 43 and 44”. In a sense, the meaning is the same. The amendment says that when the Secretary of State chooses to use default powers under Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, any expenditure incurred should be met by the Secretary of State and not by local authorities.
I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say about all four of these amendments, which address the concerning issue of centralising power over the planning process as opposed to devolving it. I beg to move.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his amendments. Before addressing them, I would like to make some introductory remarks about the importance of the policy and our proposed approach to ensuring that all communities benefit from the certainty that a local plan can provide. I hope that this will provide some helpful context for our discussions.
Communities deserve to know where new homes will be built. That is why we are committed to a plan-led system with local plans at its heart. Throughout the progress of this Bill, we have heard again and again from various organisations about the importance of local plans that set the vision for an area and provide the framework for how housing and other essential development needs will be met.
Since the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, local planning authorities have had more than a decade to produce a plan. The majority—70%—have done so. However, not every local authority has made the same progress towards getting its local plan in place. We have made clear our expectation that all local planning authorities should have a plan in place. We have also been clear that plans should be kept up to date to ensure the policies in them remain relevant. If this is not happening, it is right that we take action.
Before I go on to explain our specific proposals, I also want to assure the Committee that, contrary to what some may have come to understand, our proposals do not seek to centralise plan-making. Perhaps I may remind noble Lords of the current position and then set out the reforms that we are proposing.
Parliament has already given the Secretary of State the power to intervene in local plan-making. The existing legislation enables the Secretary of State to direct that a plan or any part of it be submitted to him for approval. He can also already intervene if he thinks that a local planning authority is failing or omitting to do anything that is necessary for it to progress a local plan. He can also recover his costs in this situation, and the action we are proposing is not new. But currently where he intervenes, the Secretary of State commonly finds that his only option is to take over responsibility for the entire progress, and we want to change that. In cases where authorities are not making progress on their local plan, I can assure noble Lords that wherever possible we want to work with those authorities to bring plans forward. The provisions we are discussing today support this approach. We would retain our ability to intervene where it is necessary to do so, but the Secretary of State could also target his intervention and return responsibility for plan-making to an authority for decisions to be made locally wherever possible.
I shall now turn briefly to the specific amendments that have been laid. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his comments on Amendment 89ZA. I was not in my place for part of them, but I did hear some of his speech. I shall respond on the understanding that the proposition is that, where a local planning authority considers that it has complied with Section 22 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004—that it has complied with the requirements in the relevant regulations and it considers that its plan is ready for independent examination—the powers in Clause 130 allowing the Secretary of State to give directions to an examiner would not apply. This would be at odds with the very purpose of the clause, which is intended to ensure that authorities are given every opportunity to address any shortcomings identified at examination as an alternative to withdrawing a plan. The Noble Lord’s amendment would disapply the proposed powers in many cases.
The clause enables the Secretary of State to take a view and, where he considers it appropriate, to direct an inspector. He could, for example, direct that an examination be suspended, thus giving an authority the opportunity to undertake further work to address the shortcomings identified at examination. I should make it clear that the measures limit the directions that the Secretary of State could make only to matters of procedure.
I hope that my response has explained briefly to the noble Lord and the Committee why the Government cannot accept the thrust of his arguments on this matter, and I ask him to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply, which I will read carefully in Hansard. I hope that he will have resolved these matters, but if not we may ask to have a further discussion on the issues involved. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Use class for affordable housing
(1) Part C of the Schedule to the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 is amended as follows.(2) In Class C3 (dwellinghouses), at end insert “,but not for a use within Class C3A.”(3) After Class C3 insert—“Class C3A. Affordable housingUse for the provision of affordable housing.””
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I rise to move this amendment tabled in the names of my noble friends Lord Shipley and Lord Tope. Much discussion has taken place on the need for affordable housing, but it is unclear what will actually happen. This amendment would create a new clause for housing which is affordable by granting to local authorities the power to protect defined sites for affordable housing.
For the past decade, local authorities have had to carry out strategic housing market assessments without which their housing and planning decisions would not be informed by evidence. Thus they know, or should know, the level and nature of demand in their areas for housing which is genuinely affordable. In addition, they are able to obtain evidence on desired tenures, size of homes and their location. They are, however, restrained in delivering the housing they know is needed from the evidence base they have obtained because the market lags behind changes in needs and demand. So a local authority can identify a need for a particular site to have homes which are affordable built on it, but currently it cannot specify that. This is not about creating mono-tenure estates since the parcels of land could be quite small.
A crucial consideration in this proposal is that it would help with the viability gap for affordable housing: if affordable housing was detached from the C3 use class, land prices would fall when a site was defined as being for affordable housing. I beg to move.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his Amendment 89A, which was spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. It seeks to introduce a new use class for affordable housing, and I acknowledge that it is important that affordable housing is maintained for present and future generations. I believe that our reforms will achieve this.
Use classes are an important deregulatory tool that group together uses with very similar land-use impacts. They remove the need for planning permission for change within the use class. While I understand the intent of the noble Lord and the noble Baroness in proposing this amendment, introducing a new use class for affordable housing would add unnecessary bureaucracy and cost to the planning process and added burdens on local planning authorities.
For example, when a property changes from affordable to private, a planning application would be required. Tenants who exercised their right to buy their property would be required to submit a planning application before being able to do so, slowing down the application process and adding burdens on local authorities and unfair restrictions on tenants. Where someone is staircasing to full ownership of a shared-ownership property, the same would apply.
We believe, therefore, that our approach to affordable housing will help those who aspire to home ownership to realise their ambitions, and strikes the right balance—it is a balance—between maintaining the affordable housing stock and providing opportunities for those who want to access or move up the property ladder. Our reforms will help to ensure that affordable housing continues to be provided in the future. Substantial further funding will go into the system from right-to-buy receipts and the sale of vacant high-value assets and will generate additional homes for every one sold, thereby increasing the overall supply of housing.
With this brief assurance, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
I thank the Minister for his response and I agree that there is a balance to be struck between maintaining housing in the affordable sector and the right to buy. I will read Hansard and we may return to this matter at a later stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 89AZC and shall speak to the rest of the amendments in this group.
This is about the Secretary of State’s default powers as part of the plan-making process. The Bill introduces a new Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. New subsection (1) explains that this section applies if the Secretary of State,
“thinks that a local authority are failing or omitting to do anything it is necessary for them to do in connection with the preparation, revision or adoption of a development plan document”.
The rest of it sets out what the Secretary of State can do, basically by taking over the process and doing it himself or herself. This amendment is about new subsection (5), which says that when this development plan document has been produced and published, either by the Secretary of State or the local planning authority, the Secretary of State has the choice of doing three things: first, to approve the document, or approve it with modifications; secondly, to,
“direct the authority to consider adopting the document by resolution of the authority as a local development document”,
which is the normal process that would take place if the authority was producing the document; or, thirdly, to reject it.
The purpose of the amendment is to put the decision as to what to do with the document—adopt it, adopt it with modifications as allowed or reject it—firmly in the hands of elected local councillors. The purpose of this clause is to say what happens when the authority, as a corporate body, is not doing what it should through its staff and so on. Surely the decision on whether to adopt ought to revert in the end to elected local councillors, even if the Secretary of State has taken the process of producing the document out of the authority’s hands because it has not been doing it right. It is as simple as that: a matter of local democracy.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, superficially sounds extremely attractive but I have done this job and I say to him that it really does not work like that. The truth is that the Secretary of State will use these powers only when they are utterly necessary. The last thing that he or she will want to do is to get into the mixture of arguments and local issues which this amendment is bound to cause. But there has been such a history of difference in the willingness, or indeed the ability, of local authorities to get on with the business that it is necessary to have this intervention power. After doing all the work and getting it sorted out the idea that you could then hand it back to the local authority, which you have intervened on only because of its incompetence, uselessness or sheer downright intention not to act, seems a bit loopy, to be honest. It would mean going back to the very same people and telling them that they had the opportunity to decide whether the Secretary of State had done the right thing. The answer is that you would use this power only in very extreme cases, and in those cases the last lot of people who you would want to come back to are in that sort of local authority.
Lord Greaves
Perhaps I can answer that before the Minister replies; I know that he may agree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, seems not to understand that there is often a considerable difference between, on the one hand, the bureaucratic competence—I use that word in all its uses as there may be a lack of resources, a lack of professional ability or whatever—and, on the other, the ability of elected councillors to make a decision on the basis of a report and the evidence put in front of them. They are two quite separate things.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for his comments. While I do not wish to repeat my earlier comments or those made by my noble friend Lady Evans on this important issue of planning, whether neighbourhood or local, to reassure the noble Lord I reiterate that we are committed to a plan-led system with local plans at its heart.
Throughout the progression of the Bill we have heard again and again, from various organisations, of the importance of local plans that set the vision for an area and provide the framework for how housing and other essential development needs will be met. However, not every local authority has made the same progress towards getting its local plan in place. We have made clear our expectation that all local planning authorities should have a local plan in place and that the policies in those plans should be kept up to date.
I shall focus on Amendments 89AZC and 89AZD, as tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, which collectively seek to limit the Secretary of State’s power to take decisions on whether a local plan should be adopted where the Secretary of State intervenes under Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. I hope that my response can, in a moment, provide reassurance to the noble Lord that the Government are committed to working with local planning authorities to get the plans in place. At the same time, I will explain why we cannot support amendments that would in effect remove from the Secretary of State powers that he currently holds or powers that we consider necessary should the Secretary of State not be satisfied with a plan produced by a local planning authority following his direction. The Secretary of State can currently intervene under Section 27 if he thinks that a local planning authority is failing or omitting to do anything necessary to progress a development plan document—that is, the documents which comprise the local plan.
Clause 132 substitutes a new Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. This is to enable more targeted intervention in plan-making by the Secretary of State. These measures lie at the heart of our ambition to work pragmatically with local authorities to get plans in place that help to deliver the homes and jobs we need.
The amendments we propose are intended to enable the Secretary of State to return appropriate decision-making on a development plan document to a local planning authority. The noble Lord’s amendments go further in such a way that they would remove the ability of the Secretary of State to approve a local plan or to reject the document. In other words, his only action would be to direct an authority to consider adopting the document. Although I am aware of the experience that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has in local matters and local planning, I also very much take account of the comments made by my noble friend Lord Deben and the experience he has had in senior office on these matters.
I reiterate that it remains a balance and we believe that the balance is right. We want to work with authorities to get plans in place. Our proposals give the Secretary of State new options for doing this, without being too prescriptive. However, I remind the noble Lord that the Government may arrange for another body to prepare a local plan only where the local planning authority has failed to do so, despite being given every opportunity. It is a last resort.
The measures we propose provide the necessary assurance to communities and others that where an authority has not put a plan in place or ensured that a plan remains effective, we are able to take the necessary action. Not to do so would risk delaying or even preventing the growth and jobs which are so urgently needed. This action must include taking decisions on whether that plan should or should not form part of the development plan and the starting point for determining planning applications. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
May I ask the Minister a question before he sits down? I agree with the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Deben. We want local authorities to read these things, but equally we have to have a mechanism to move things forward if they are not being moved forward. Will the Minister say a little more about what will happen? How far will an authority go? What will the Secretary of State be looking for? At what point will he intervene? It would be useful to have more information.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I think that it would be wise to furnish the noble Lord with some more detail. For example, I have some charts in my left hand. Perhaps I can reassure him by saying that there is a flowchart and a process in place. I reiterate that this is meant to be light touch. This is what is behind it—light touch, but with a programme and a plan.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the noble Viscount. For a moment, I thought that he was going to mention regulation again.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am grateful to everybody who has taken part in this short debate. One of the differences in the system in new Section 27 of the 2004 Act compared with the earlier legislation is that it will allow the Secretary of State to intervene on particular documents or in specific ways, rather than on the plan as a whole. As the Minister said, it might be more targeted.
I have not been able to get my mind around whether that will make the position more or less alarming—better or worse. However, the experience of some of us of the planning system is that actions taken by the Secretary of State or on behalf of the Secretary of State are not necessarily quicker or more efficient than actions taken by local planning authorities. We only have to look at the whole system of appeals, which, in the case of major appeals on the evidence that I have, is threatening to be snarled up. That is an indication that the Secretary of State may not have a huge resource available to him to step in and do things. I will just leave that.
I am aware that the whole plan-making system, of which this is just a part, needs review and I have tabled an amendment relating to that, which we will come to later in Committee. I was sent a document this morning that was issued yesterday by the Local Plans Expert Group, Report to the Communities Secretary and to the Minister of Housing and Planning. I look forward to having time to have a good look at it, because I believe that what we are talking about now is a detail and the sooner the Government can look at the local planning system as a whole and at ways of making it more streamlined, more effective and more efficient, the better. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves
My Lords, Clause 133 allows the Mayor of London to step in and carry out default actions on plan-making when local authorities in London—London boroughs, presumably—are failing in some aspect of it. It also includes combined authorities, which is a new proposal that requires a little thought. I can understand that in combined authorities that have mayors the mayor may be thinking of becoming a sort of regional version of the Mayor of London, but in practice the position will be quite different, even when the mayors are elected. In combined authorities where there is not going to be a mayor, the position will be even more different.
The Greater London Authority is set up clearly by Act of Parliament as a freestanding authority and that is how it operates. Combined authorities were initially formed from the bottom up through a number of local authorities coming together and asking permission of the Secretary of State to set up the combined authority and to take on particular powers that they had negotiated between them. The situation is a little different now following the most recent legislation, the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act, which gives the Secretary of State more powers over the formation of combined authorities and their functions. It extends their possible functions beyond those that they originally could have had under the 2008 Act. However, despite that, the whole ethos and idea of combined authorities is expressed by the words “combined authorities”—they come together voluntarily to do things that they can do better together than separately. This proposal seems to suggest that, because they exist, the Secretary of State in future can use them as a convenient place to put in extra powers at will.
My question is as follows. There may well be an authority that is part of a combined authority and which is not carrying out its plan-making functions very well, and the Secretary of State wants to intervene. The implications of using that combined authority to carry out those plan-making functions—in relation to a development plan document or whatever—against the wish of the authority concerned need careful thought.
Combined authorities in most parts of England are not going to work unless they work on a voluntary basis in relation to the members of those combined authorities. I speak as a member of an authority that, in about an hour’s time, will be voting to join a combined authority or to join an application for a combined authority, so we have been looking at this carefully. The whole principle has to be of authorities coming together voluntarily, pooling powers in particular areas and doing so in a way that has consensus and agreement around the combined authority. If it allows some bureaucracy or some other council in the combined authority or a majority vote on the combined authority—whatever it is—to overrule a particular authority on something like this, I am not saying that it is going to destroy the combined authority, but it is going to make life much more difficult and change the whole culture and idea of coming together voluntarily as a combined authority.
That is the point that I am making. I do not know whether the Minister is going to be able to give me a coherent answer to that this evening because it is a slightly obscure and complicated issue, but I ask the Ministers to go away and ask their civil servants to think about it and come back with an answer to these genuine problems. I am not trying to be awkward at all on this; I understand the need to find ways of doing things in default in a sensible way if it is necessary. I beg to move.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the words of my noble friend Lord Greaves on these amendments. I reside in one of the combined authorities. In fact, it is perhaps the flagship combined authority: Greater Manchester. It consists of 10 planning authorities: 10 local authorities, all of which are planning authorities. I had regarded the introduction of this power of the Secretary of State to intervene as very much an attempt to make sure that the missing 30% of planning authorities caught up. I thought that it was more of a time-limited provision; that once all 100% of local planning authorities had got their plans properly approved, this particular provision would lapse, because they would, after all, from then onwards, be able to keep up.
Therefore, it is worth looking at the starting point. I do not know, without research that I have not done, whether any of the 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester has failed to register its plans. It is a small number of local authorities working in very close concert, notwithstanding the considerable political divisions between the leadership of the different councils. I do not simply mean party divisions: long-standing rivalries, even in local authorities run by the same party, have been overcome to a remarkable extent in setting up the combined authority. As I said at the start, it is very much a flagship combination that has come together.
I very much support what my noble friend Lord Greaves said about the disruptive effect of basically giving them statutory powers to discipline each other for being naughty boys and girls. I ask the Minister to take that point away and consider whether this is the right vehicle. It might be perfectly in order for the Mayor of London to discipline one or other of the 33 boroughs in London—I am not aware of what their situation is—but I am sure that the Minister can imagine the noise that would be created if the current mayor were to step in on a borough of a different political persuasion. And after the mayoral election, the inverse situation might easily arise. So this is not without trouble ahead, when what the Minister actually wants to achieve is valid local plans as quickly as possible. That is an aim which I support, but he might have a mechanism that is more self-destructive than he realises.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Stunell, for their comments on this group of amendments. I note that the content of this group is not too dissimilar to the previous group. However, I do not believe that Amendments 89AA to 89KJ are necessary. Given the similarity of the amendments, I hope noble Lords will not mind if I respond to them collectively.
I hope noble Lords will bear with me just for a moment if I begin by explaining the purpose of Clauses 132 and 133 and Schedule 11, which provide the context for these amendments. Where the Secretary of State thinks that a local planning authority is failing or omitting to do anything necessary for them to do in connection with preparing, revising or adopting a development plan document—that is, the documents which comprise the local plan—the Secretary of State has existing powers under Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 to intervene to prepare the document. However, where he does this, he is unable to hand back decision-making powers to the local authority if he wishes.
Clauses 132 and 133 and Schedule 11 are intended to address this by allowing for intervention by the Secretary of State in this scenario to be more targeted and proportionate. These measures give him options that enable more decisions to be made locally whenever possible—which I hope will be of some reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. Clause 133 and Schedule 11 would enable the Secretary of State to invite the Mayor of London or a combined authority, where applicable, to prepare, revise or approve a local plan as an alternative to the Secretary of State doing so. The mayor or combined authority could not do this unilaterally but only when invited to by the Secretary of State, and only where he considers that the local planning authority has not taken action despite having every opportunity to do so. The mayor and combined authorities provide strong and directly accountable city-region governance. This makes them an appropriate body to ensure that plans are in place across their areas.
The noble Lord’s amendments remove provisions set out in Clause 133 and Schedule 11 for a combined authority to prepare, revise and approve a development plan document where they are invited to do so by the Secretary of State. We have made it clear that we want authorities to take action themselves to get their plans in place. Authorities have had over a decade since the introduction in 2004 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act to produce a local plan, and the majority have done so.
However, I reiterate the points I made earlier—we need to take action where there is clear evidence that an authority is not producing a plan in a timely manner or keeping that plan up to date. We cannot stand by and allow failure to happen, especially given the importance of planning for supporting growth. We have made it clear that a combined authority will only prepare or revise a plan where an authority has failed or omitted to progress a plan and where the Secretary of State invites them to do so. Therefore, in those instances where a local plan needs to be put in place and the authority is failing to do so, it is right that a combined authority can be invited both to prepare a plan and to bring that plan into force.
I therefore hope that my responses provide reassurance to the noble Lords that the Government want to see authorities take action themselves to get local plans in place in the first instance. However, where authorities are failing to do this, it is right that we take action to get plans in place. I am aware that that summary and conclusion is very similar to that for the previous group of amendments.
Lord Greaves
Yes, my Lords—I am very clear about that as well. Having heard the Minister reply to the previous group of amendments and to the Clause 132 stuff on the changes to Section 27 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, I am prepared to come to the view that the new Section 27 will be better than the old one, for the reasons the Minister set out previously. I understand those arguments; I am really saying that I would rather that it was not there at all. However, given that it is replacing the previous one, I can understand that having a more targeted approach may be better. I am concerned that it may result in more interventions, because being more specific they will be easier to make, but we will find that out in due course.
As far as this group of amendments is concerned, I do not think that the Minister addressed my concerns. If the Secretary of State is going to intervene and take over the production of whatever it is—the local plan as a whole or particular parts of it—then he has to find a way of doing so. One can imagine a number of different ways that he might find. He will have to find some people to do it. I do not believe that the Secretary of State has the personal resources or the ministerial resources to do it himself. He could use the Planning Inspectorate to do it. I do not believe that it has any spare capacity. Using another local authority might be an answer.
Lord True
My Lords, at this hour I shall not venture on the patience of the Committee. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak very briefly. On the subject of the mayor intervening, I accept the answer given by my noble friend on Clause 133. If I have understood correctly, the mayor will not be encouraged to intervene except where there is manifest failure on the part of a local authority—and all he has to do is assent.
I suggested amendments simply to probe on the question of revision. Many London boroughs are well ahead with, or already revising, their plans. I do not think that we would particularly welcome much intervention from the mayor. Personally, I do not have great confidence in the GLA planning department. The Government seem rather more starry-eyed about its abilities than I am.
I hope that some caution will be exercised here. The mayor already has extremely extensive powers to intervene, although the current mayor has not used them. A number of very fruitful discussions are currently going on between London councils on housing—for example, Mayor Bullock is actively engaged with the GLA and with the Government. It would perhaps be preferable to let some of those discussions reach a conclusion before enacting even more powers for the mayor.
Clause 135 directly concerns the planning powers of the Mayor of London. My borough has one of the views in London that is protected by an Act of Parliament. I am very comfortable with the present arrangements whereby the sight lines in London are protected in the way they are. Given that there seems to be a bit of a mania in the GLA planning department at the moment for erecting tall buildings wherever possible—I do not know whether that will continue with the next mayor—I would like to see some caution exercised in this change, perhaps until we see where the land lies.
So although these are probing amendments, while these discussions are going forward, while the mayor has extensive powers and while there is the issue of sight lines, I ask the Government to reflect on whether it is necessary to proceed with these extra powers.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord True for his interest in improving the Bill, and I recognise his years of experience in local government. His amendments relate to clauses regarding the Mayor of London. I have spoken today about the importance of supporting growth through the planning system, and the Mayor of London plays a key role in harnessing this growth. I have also spoken about the importance of decisions being made at the local level wherever possible, and I believe my noble friend and I agree on that. I thank him for his comments on these clauses, but I do not believe that Amendments 89B to 89K are necessary, and I hope that I can provide some reassurance to noble Lords about the purpose of Clause 135.
Amendments 89B to 89E would remove the ability of the Mayor of London to revise a development plan document when invited to do so by the Secretary of State. First, I should like to clarify that Clauses 132 and 133 are concerned only with documents that comprise the local plan for an area; they are not concerned with the spatial development strategy for London—the so-called London Plan. I will also seek to clarify what is meant by “revise”, as I believe that these amendments may be based on a misinterpretation of its definition. At this late hour, perhaps I may write to my noble friend with the details of that definition.
I turn to Amendment 89F, for which I will again start with some context. For a development plan document to be adopted or approved, regardless of whether it has been prepared by a local authority or the Secretary of State, it must be submitted for examination. Following the examination, the local planning authority must publish the recommendations of the person appointed to examine the plan and their reasoning. The amendment would remove the ability of the Mayor of London to require a local planning authority to help ensure that local people are made aware of the recommendations of the person appointed to examine the plan.
Amendments 89G and 89H would disable the mayor’s ability to approve a development plan document. Approval is a necessary step if a plan is to come into force. Not doing so would fail to provide the community and others with the benefits and certainty that come from having a plan. Only once it is approved does a plan become part of the development plan for an area and the starting point for determining planning applications. I hope I have been clear that the Mayor of London may prepare or revise a plan only for a London borough that has failed to progress its own plan and only where the Secretary of State invites him to do so.
That brings me to my noble friend’s Amendment 89J. I suspect that this amendment does not fulfil the purpose that my noble friend intended. As currently drafted, where the Mayor of London has been invited to prepare a plan and the plan has been examined, he may direct an authority to consider adopting a document as an alternative to the mayor approving it himself. The change proposed by Amendment 89J does not alter the practical effect of the provision and the outcome would still put the authority under no obligation to adopt the plan where the mayor decides not to approve it himself.
I hope that I have given some brief reassurance to my noble friend and that he will agree to withdraw his amendment.
Lord True
My Lords, I accept that and look forward with interest to the letter. I leave on the record the comments I made about the ongoing discussions with the GLA and the future way we should operate. I did not get a specific reply on Clause 135 but, again, we can pursue that. I am happy to have discussions with my noble friend between now and Report and, on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.