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Business of the House
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Chris Grayling)
Mr Speaker, you will notice a degree of commonality in the business for next week:
Monday 23 May—Continuation of the debate on the Queen’s Speech on defending public services.
Tuesday 24 May—Continuation of the debate on the Queen’s Speech on Europe, human rights and keeping people safe at home and abroad.
Wednesday 25 May—Continuation of the debate on the Queen’s Speech on education, skills and training.
Thursday 26 May—Conclusion of the debate on the Queen’s Speech on economy and work.
Friday 27 May—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 6 June will include:
Monday 6 June—Remaining stages of a Bill. It will be one of the two main carry-over Bills, and we will confirm which one early next week.
I should also inform the House that the statement on Syria, which we unfortunately had to move at the last moment, just before Prorogation, will take place alongside the foreign affairs debate next Tuesday.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 6 June will be:
Monday 6 June—Debate on an e-petition relating to restricting the use of fireworks.
Chris Bryant
Mr Speaker, if only the rules allowed me to take some interventions.
I am sure the thoughts of the whole House will be with the families and friends of those on EgyptAir flight 804, which has disappeared over the Mediterranean. People will want to know what has happened, so I hope that the Leader of the House will be able to tell us and to ensure that the House is updated on any developments, not least because, as I understand it, there is at least one Briton on the flight.
I am delighted that the Leader of the House made a sort of apology for not giving us the statement on Syria which he went out of his way to promise the last time we were here. I note that he says that it will be alongside the foreign affairs debate, but will it be separate?
Chris Bryant
The Leader of the House has nodded, so we can move on.
Can we also have a statement—another statement—from the Foreign Secretary explaining why he wanted to have General Sir Richard Shirreff court-martialled? Leaving aside the Foreign Secretary’s incompetence for not realising that Shirreff reported to NATO and not to him, surely the general should have been congratulated, not threatened, for stating that slashing troop numbers was a “hell of a gamble”.
I love a bit of dressing up just as much as any other defrocked vicar—almost as much as you, in fact, Mr Speaker—but I did think that yesterday was a case of all fur coat and knickerbockers. There were so many ironies. Her Majesty announced that the Government will legislate for driverless cars and space ports—and arrived in a horse-drawn carriage. She announced that the Government intend to tackle poverty—to a room full of barons and countesses dressed in ermine and tiaras. Even the door handles on the royal coach were decorated with 24 diamonds and 130 sapphires.
The Government also announced that they will put the National Citizen Service, which operates just six weeks a year, on a statutory footing, while the nation’s youth service, which works all year round, has been slashed, losing more than 2,000 youth workers, closing 350 youth centres and cutting 41,000 youth service places between 2012 and 2014 alone. Why not put the youth service on a statutory footing too?
That really is what is so truly awful about yesterday’s Queen’s Speech. It was pretending to be a one nation speech; it was all dressed up as such. It was a candy-floss speech if ever there was one—all air and sugar, whipped up with just a hint of pink in an attempt to make us all believe that compassionate conservatism is still alive. But the truth is that the Chancellor puts a stake through the heart of compassionate conservatism every time he stands at the Dispatch Box.
Yes, let us reform the Prison Service, but we should not dare to pretend that the horrendous state of our prisons—with the rate of suicide, murder and other non-natural deaths at a record high; with daily acts of violence; and with drugs freely available throughout our prisons—has nothing to do with this Government’s assault on the Prison Service budget and the loss of 7,000 prison officers since 2010, largely on the right hon. Gentleman’s watch. Yes, let us improve adoption, but we should not pretend that social services budgets in the poorest local authorities in the land are not now so stretched that children are being put at further risk every single day of the week.
The Government can say until they are blue in the face that they want to tackle some of the deepest social problems in society, but when they have pared public services to the bone, inflicted the toughest cuts on the poorest communities and systematically undermined the very concept of public service, all their blandishments are nothing but a sugar coating for a cyanide pill.
I do not know what time you got up yesterday morning, Mr Speaker, so I am not sure whether you were up early enough to catch the Leader of the House on the “Today” programme, when he tried to defend the former Mayor of London. I particularly loved the assertion, repeated four times, that Boris is a historian and he was making a historian’s comment, as though that somehow meant that he could get away with saying anything he wanted. Where on earth do I start? The former Mayor has a habit of making up so-called historical facts. My favourite was his assertion that King Edward II enjoyed a reign of dissolution with his catamite, Piers Gaveston, at Edward’s recently discovered 14th century palace. I do not doubt that Gaveston liked a bit of royal rumpy-pumpy, but since he was beheaded fully 12 years before the palace was built, it is pretty unlikely that he did so there. My only explanation for that so-called fact from the former Mayor of London is that he was a member of the Piers Gaveston society at Oxford with the Prime Minister, where they got used to porkies.
Mr Speaker
Order. The short answer to the hon. Gentleman is that if the Leader of the House was doing his business on the “Today” programme between 6 and 7 am, I was almost certainly in the swimming pool at the time. Talking of beheading, the hon. Gentleman is in some danger of beheading himself, because he has already had five minutes. I think he is in his last sentence.
Chris Bryant
I am certainly in my last paragraph, Mr Speaker.
Finally, I gather that the Leader of the House is off to the United States of America next week. He is such a close friend and ally of Mr Trump that I am sure Trump tower is preparing the ticker-tape reception for him now. They have a habit in the United States of America of playing appropriate music when important politicians and international statesmen, such as the Leader of the House, appear on stage. The President always gets “Hail to the Chief”. I have had a word with the American ambassador, and I gather that they have got Yakety Sax from “The Benny Hill Show” ready for the Leader of the House.
Chris Grayling
First of all, on a very serious point, all our good wishes and sympathies go to the families of the passengers on the EgyptAir plane, who must be beside themselves with worry about what has happened. It is a deeply worrying situation. Clearly, if it turns out to be something more than an accident, we will want to discuss the matter in the House, but it is important that we await the outcome of the initial investigations and the search for the plane. All our hearts go out to everyone involved.
On the Syria statement, I reiterate that it will be a separate statement, but we have put it alongside the foreign affairs debate to ensure that those who are most concerned about the issue are likely to be present.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is such an old misery. Yesterday was Britain at its finest: strong institutions, great tradition—things that make this great city one of the finest, if not the finest, in the world—a monarch we should be proud of and a programme for government that fulfils the commitments we made to the electorate at last year’s election which, I remind Labour Members, they lost and we won. We set out 21 new Government Bills. The programme for government completes most of the manifesto on which we won the election. It helps us to achieve our financial targets to balance our nation’s books and complete the sorting out of the mess that we inherited from Labour. It includes measures on children in care and on prisons. It helps to boost our digital economy. It helps to strengthen our ability to combat terrorism.
The hon. Gentleman talks about compassionate conservatism. Let me remind him of three things. First, in the past 12 months we have introduced the national living wage. Secondly, in the past 12 months claimant count unemployment has been at its lowest level since the 1970s. Thirdly, there has been a fall of more than 750,000 in the number of workless households—a change that will make a transformational difference to many of our most deprived communities. Those achievements were made under a Conservative Government, sorting out the mess that we inherited.
The hon. Gentleman started by talking about taking interventions, and here I have some sympathy with him. He did better this morning than the leader of the Labour party did yesterday. I noticed that the shadow Leader of the House yesterday spent 41 minutes trying to look at the shoes of Conservative Members rather than looking at the leader of his party making such an awful speech.
I am not sure whether the shadow Leader of the House raised any other questions. I was grappling with trying to understand what on earth he was going on about in the middle of his contribution. Let me be clear that we are at the start of a Session in which we will deliver before the House measures that will make a transformational difference to this country; measures that will make a difference to our most deprived communities; and measures that will make this country more secure economically and more secure against the national threats that we face.
In the week that the YMCA has named its latest building the Chris Bryant centre—after the famous Chris Bryant, not this one—we should pause for a moment to praise the shadow Leader of the House. He is a great champion of equalities in this place, and he and I share the ambition of wanting more women to be elected to office. I am delighted to see that his constituency has done its bit by electing a woman to represent it in Cardiff, and who knows whether we will see a further step in that direction in this House in 2020. While we are on the subject of the shadow Leader of the House, may I congratulate him on stepping in to save the local calendar competition in Rhondda following the defeat of its founder, Leighton Andrews, in the Welsh elections? Who knows, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman will have his very own calendar girl for the month of May 2020 in the Rhondda—Leanne Wood.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
The controversial HS2 project has again been in the media, with talk of further cost overruns and potential cuts to the scope of the project. The announcement of the finalised route for phase 2 will not be made until at least this September—a year late—exacerbating the blight on my constituents. May we have a statement to update the House on the progress of HS2 so that we can know exactly how big the white elephant has grown?
Chris Grayling
I do understand my hon. Friend’s concerns. His constituency is one of those that faces challenges from HS2, but also in my view benefits from it in the way it will open up parts of our economy, improve infrastructure and make a difference to jobs and business prospects. I understand the concerns he has raised. We have a debate on transport today, but I will make sure that the Secretary of State for Transport is aware of the concerns that my hon. Friend has raised.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week. We, too, pass on our best wishes to all those caught up in the Egyptian airline event. Let us hope that there can be some sort of positive resolution to it all.
What a few weeks we are going to have. We will have to spend most of our time discussing the anaemic, tortured stuff in the Queen’s Speech, when all Government Members want to do is knock lumps out of each other over the EU referendum. The debate in the Tory party is hardly reaching Churchillian standards of discourse. According to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) on the radio this morning, it is apparently all about insults, personal attacks and tabloid smears.
My hon. Friends are already considering our amendments to the driverless cars Bill. Most of them involve locking this Tory Government into the said vehicle and heading it towards the nearest cliff edge. The Scotland bit in the Queen’s Speech yesterday got 22 words, which is actually quite good given what we usually get when we are included in all this. It may be a one nation Queen’s Speech, but one of those nations certainly is not Scotland.
We still have not secured from this Government a statement on all the now quite explosive evidence in the Conservative party submission to the Electoral Commission about the conflict between national and local spending during the last election campaign. Fourteen police forces are now investigating this alleged electoral fraud, yet we have not heard one peep from the Government. They know what they were up to, because a book has been serialised in The Daily Telegraph called, “Why the Tories Won: The Inside Story of the 2015 Election”, which says:
“The buses were critical to moving party troops from where they lived to where the swing voters could be found. The central party paid for all the buses and trains, as well as hotels and hostels.”
We must now have an urgent statement from the Government on what they will actually do about this.
Lastly, may we have a debate on world war two? It would allow senior Labour and Conservative Members to indulge their new passion of talking about Hitler. We could hear about all the dodgy histories and spurious examples, and it might take minds off the raging civil wars within the Labour party and within the Conservative party, which we are immensely enjoying.
Chris Grayling
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments about the EgyptAir plane. We are all waiting with hope, but also with trepidation, to hear what has happened.
I am really not sure that this is the week for Scottish National party Members to talk about stories in the tabloids. I have read the news, and I have to say that there must be something in the water in Scotland. As you will remember, Mr Speaker, I told the House a few months ago that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) had written to me about recess dates because he wanted to put the ram in with the ewes. At that time, I thought he was talking about sheep.
The Queen’s Speech was a powerful package for this country. It will deliver change for Scotland and the whole of the United Kingdom. It included important measures for our economy and our security. The SNP cannot have it both ways. It cannot, on the one hand, demand and secure far greater powers for the Government in Edinburgh and the nation of Scotland, and then turn around and complain that it has not got a huge range of measures in the Queen’s Speech. We will look at how the SNP uses those powers. Yesterday, its leader in Westminster said yet again that the SNP wanted more powers for Scotland. Perhaps it might like to use the powers it has in the first place.
On the subject of the Scottish Parliament and Administration, I congratulate the First Minister on her re-election. I also congratulate Ruth Davidson, our Scottish leader, on depriving the Scottish National party of its majority in the Scottish Parliament. We will be an effective Unionist opposition to the SNP, and we will hold it to account to use the powers it has been given wisely in the interests of Scotland. If it does not do so, we will then defeat it.
The hon. Gentleman raised election issues. Those are matters for the appropriate authorities: they are not matters for the Government.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
May we have a debate on the BBC and its relationship with the European Union, especially in relation to its coverage of the EU? It was revealed in Heat Street magazine this week that the BBC received £2.1 million from the European Union between April 2013 and September 2015. That is on top of at least £141 million in soft loans from the European Investment Bank. On the bank’s website, it says:
“The EIB is the European Union’s bank. We work closely with other EU institutions to implement EU policy.”
That is the only basis on which to get one of those loans. Surely those matters should be declared by the BBC whenever it covers the EU referendum. May we have a debate on that and perhaps the Leader of the House could tell us whether he agrees that the BBC should have to declare that interest during its EU referendum coverage?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend makes his point with his customary effectiveness. I have no doubt that the BBC will be listening carefully to his comments and, if nothing else, the view he has put forward will ensure that it goes even further out of its way to try to make sure that it is impartial in the referendum campaign.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
Can the Leader of the House explain the difference—perhaps we could have a statement—between the 1975 referendum, during which Ministers disagreed without bitterness, important arguments were made and personal attacks were not made, and the present campaign, in which Cabinet and other members of the Government and their supporters have such bitterness, strife and rancour between them over the question of remain or leave? It is not very civilised and totally unlike 1975.
Chris Grayling
Ironically, I wrote a short piece for City A.M. this morning about social reform, alongside my deputy from a different side of the argument. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are still best friends, unlike most people in the Labour party, who appear to be preparing to knife their leader in the back.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
May we have a debate on the important report on antimicrobial resistance that came out this morning? It was initiated by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, and it is vital. I know that my hon. Friends the Members for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) have spoken eloquently on the subject, but we need an opportunity to discuss the terrifying prospect of increasing antimicrobial resistance as soon as possible.
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend makes a very important point indeed. We spar on political matters, but this issue affects all of us and should be of great concern to our country and to the world as whole. It is a serious issue. Of course, we will have a debate on Monday on public services and that might be an opportunity for my hon. Friend to discuss the matter in the House with the Secretary of State. If not, it is an issue that we should certainly look to return to.
Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
In the past month, there have been 11 serious stabbings involving young people in my borough. There have been 114 incidents of serious youth violence in Lambeth and more than 2,300 across London. This is a crisis situation and it is nationwide. It has been occurring for several months now, yet it did not merit a single mention by the Prime Minister in his remarks in this House yesterday on the forthcoming agenda of this Government. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement on whether the Government will agree to what I and many Members of this House, on both sides, have been calling for—a proper, independent, cross-party commission on this issue—because right now, to many of my constituents, it does not look like this Government care about what is happening on our streets?
Chris Grayling
First, I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman about the seriousness of the issue. I disagree with him that we have not taken it seriously. We have sought both to tighten the law—I did some of that when I was Justice Secretary—and to engage young people. Yesterday’s Queen’s Speech included our plans to extend and solidify the National Citizen Service, which we believe will help to engage young people who might otherwise find themselves in the wrong place in our society. I pay tribute to the work done by the voluntary sector; some fantastic projects in London seek to engage young people and take them away from this. We will come back to this issue, and I will make sure the Home Secretary is aware of the request the hon. Gentleman has made. I can assure him that we take it very seriously indeed.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
As you know, Mr Speaker, I am the chairman of the all-party group on south west rail. Earlier this month, the Peninsula Rail Task Force published its initial proposals, which are open for public consultation until 27 May. After that, may we have a debate so that south-west Members of Parliament can make sure that the Department for Transport understands exactly what we want in the south-west?
Chris Grayling
Obviously, I am well aware of the challenge we face with rail in the south-west. We had the difficult experience a couple of years ago of the line being washed away and having an extended period when it was closed. I know that the Department for Transport takes this enormously seriously, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he is doing to make sure it is kept firmly on the desks of Ministers. I remind him that after this morning’s statement there will be an opportunity for him to raise the issue in the debate on transport, and I advise him to do just that.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Last Thursday, after Parliament had been prorogued, the Government published the peer review reports on the deaths of 49 social security claimants who had died between 2012 and 2014—this was after Ministers had denied that they had any records on people whose deaths had been linked to the social security system. Given the gravity of this matter and given that this is the second time data have been released on the deaths of social security claimants while Parliament has been in recess, when will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement to this House on what action has been taken to address the recommendations in these reports?
Chris Grayling
The hon. Lady will have the opportunity to raise this issue next Thursday, when there will be a debate on work and welfare matters in this House. I am sure she will take the opportunity to do that.
Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)
I was pleased to see a higher education Bill announced in yesterday’s Gracious Speech. It will enable more universities to be built, increase the participation of those from deprived families, and increase diversity reporting. Can my right hon. Friend update the House as to when the technical consultation on the teaching excellence framework will be announced, particularly for the universities sector? What will be the timescales for the debate, aside from on Wednesday of next week?
Chris Grayling
I do not know the dates of the technical consultation, but I can tell my hon. Friend that the higher education Bill will be brought before this House very shortly. It will be one of the earliest Bills to be debated in this Session, and I have no doubt that he will want to make his points in that discussion.
Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)
May we have a statement from the Home Secretary next week on the plight of the Brain family from Dingwall, who are ably represented in this House by my hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) and who are threatened with deportation? This young family came to Scotland five years ago under the fresh talent initiative. They have contributed massively, of their money and their efforts, to the community. They are self-supporting and contribute to community efforts—I include in that their young, seven-year-old son Lachlan, who has known no other home but Dingwall and whose first language is Scots Gaelic. Does the Leader of the House feel no shame at all that his party’s narrow obsession with immigration statistics could result in a huge injustice being perpetrated against this young family and a huge disservice being committed against the people of Scotland?
Chris Grayling
First, I do not know the circumstance of the case, but I will draw the right hon. Gentleman’s comments to the attention of the Home Secretary this morning, after the end of this session. However, it is important to remember that, if people come here for a temporary period, it does not automatically mean that they will have the right to stay here at the end of that period. That is important to remember when we are dealing with these cases.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I wish urgently to raise the case of Gloria Calib, a 38-year-old student from Lahore, who proposes to leave her family to do her viva and complete her PhD at the London School of Theology. Her visa has been turned down despite the backing of a former bishop in this country. Will the Leader of the House make time for a statement on visa processes for genuine academic candidates, so that these issues can be resolved? There seems to be a pattern of middle east Christians being put into bad circumstances and not evaluated very well.
Chris Grayling
Again, I cannot comment on the individual case because I do not know the circumstance. What I can say is that we do not have Home Office questions for a little while yet, because we had them relatively recently, so the best thing for me to do is to draw the attention of the Home Secretary to the case that my hon. Friend has raised and ask the Home Office to deal with him directly on it.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
The Leader of the House has said that the Government’s intention is to make the UK more economically secure. In the light of that, can we have a debate in this House on farm-gate prices, particularly in relation to the regional differentials between farm-gate prices in Northern Ireland and those in Britain, because farmers in Northern Ireland are being placed at a severe financial disadvantage?
Chris Grayling
Again, I do not know enough about the detail of the case. Perhaps the hon. Lady could write to me, and I will ensure that she gets a proper response, but I do not have detailed knowledge of the farm-gate price situation in Northern Ireland.
Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
On the frontline of the security of this nation are our armed police officers, who are often put in very dangerous circumstances and have to make a decision in a split second. If they are forced to make that decision, they then face months of scrutiny over whether that decision, taken in a split second, was right or wrong. Can we have a debate on the process of analysing those decisions and the scrutiny under which those officers are put?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We are in the process of recruiting more than 1,000 new armed officers as an essential part of the strategy that we now have to combat the risk of terrorism in this country. If an incident does take place involving an armed officer, it is important to ensure that, for the protection of that officer as much as anything else, it is properly checked and investigated. We must not get ourselves into a position where people do not want to be armed officers and are not willing to act because they are concerned about the consequences for themselves.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
The Department of Health is due to publish soon the NHS health action plan on hearing loss. Does the Leader of the House know whether there is a date for when that might happen, and whether it will be in the form of a written or an oral statement? A number of us will be bidding for Adjournment debate time to discuss the matter. It is a good news story for the 3 million hard of hearing and deaf people in the UK. A lot of great work is being done in the Department and by the NHS, and it would be really good to see the Government leading from the front on this.
Chris Grayling
I know that the Government are working on that. I do not have an exact date yet, but I am sure that they will want to update the House fully. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman an undertaking that there will be an oral statement, but I suspect that, when it happens, there will be a desire by the Department of Health to inform the House as widely as possible. I am sure that it is the kind of issue that may well end up being debated either in an Adjournment debate or in a Backbench Business Committee debate once the new Chair is elected. Let me pass on my commiserations to the former—and potentially future—Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), for the events of the past couple of weeks. Who knows, he might bounce back quickly.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The humanitarian crisis in north-east Syria is becoming worse, with international aid unable to reach the region. Food prices have increased severalfold. A kilo of tomatoes is 800 Syrian pounds and a kilo of sugar is 1,000 Syrian pounds. The average wage is a 10th of what is needed to buy food for a family of five people. Although ISIS, or Daesh, is on the back foot, it still controls the only road access to the region. Will the Leader of the House agree to a debate or a statement on this vital issue?
Mr Speaker
Order. Before the Leader of the House responds, may I say to the former Chair of the Backbench Business Committee that I was cheering for Newcastle on Sunday, and how magnificent it was to see them beat Tottenham 5-1, therefore ensuring that Arsenal finished above Tottenham on the last day of the season.
Chris Grayling
Mr Speaker, I think you have just made yourself enormously popular with a large part of north London and enormously unpopular with another part of north London, but I suspect you knew that anyway.
We will have a statement on the situation in Syria on Tuesday. If in the eyes of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) certain issues have not been covered satisfactorily, he will be able to raise them in the foreign affairs debate that follows. There will be an opportunity for him to raise these immensely serious issues. They are often difficult for us to address from here, but I remind him that we are the second largest international donor to the different groups that are trying to provide humanitarian and other support to those who have been affected by the Syrian war.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
As football seems to be the theme, I am sure that the Leader of the House will want to congratulate Partick Thistle on its 140th anniversary, as noted in early-day motion 001 of this Session.
[That this House congratulates Partick Thistle Football Club on its 140th anniversary; notes that the team’s first recorded match was played at Overnewton Park, Partick, on 19 February 1876, and that since 1909 the club has been based at Firhill Stadium in the Maryhill area of Glasgow; welcomes the economic, social and cultural contribution the club has made to the city throughout its history; further notes, in particular, its commitment to promoting a family-friendly atmosphere at its games and its outreach work to develop new generations of players and fans; commends the team for securing a fourth successive year in the top flight of Scottish football; notes the popularity of the team's distinctive mascot Kingsley, designed by Turner Prize-nominated artist David Shrigley; recognises that 2016 also marks 95 years since the team won the Scottish Cup in 1921, and 45 years since the club's famous League Cup victory in 1971; and is nevertheless confident that the mighty Jags will not keep its supporters waiting too much longer for more silverware.]
When will the Government publish their response to the Procedure Committee’s report on private Members’ Bills, and when will we have a debate and a vote on the recommendations in that report?
Chris Grayling
I am happy to congratulate Partick Thistle on their anniversary. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is looking forward to a successful season next season, and will probably be in the stands on many Saturdays.
We will respond to the Procedure Committee’s report on private Members’ Bills in the appropriate timeframe, which I think is by 12 June.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
According to the Samaritans, 4,722 people took their life in England in 2015. While this trend is in a 30-year decline, in recent years it has worryingly been rising again to the highest level since 2004. May we have a debate on the implementation of the Government’s suicide prevention strategy for England and how the Government might assist further the prevention of suicides?
Chris Grayling
This is, of course, a serious issue. We have seen an upward trend in recent times, particularly among young men. Suicide prevention is a focus for the Government. It is one reason why we are trying to put more resource into providing proper mental health support. Mental health is a crucial area of our health service, and something that we must do as well as we can. The Health Secretary will be here on Monday for the public services debate, and I would encourage the hon. Gentleman to bring up the subject of mental health then so that it remains very much in the sights of the Department of Health.
Bob Blackman
I was, shall we say, answering a call of nature, Mr Speaker. Forgive me, but I was not here. I am tempted to rise because I was at St James Park on Sunday for the calamity.
Bob Blackman
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can we find time for a debate about garden waste collection? In the borough of Harrow, the council has decided to charge residents £40 for six months of collections, and the collections are not even being made. I am receiving complaints on a daily basis about this, and it is time that we raised the issue in the House so that hon. Members on both sides can comment on the calamity of some of the rubbish collections across this country.
Chris Grayling
I can well understand how frustrating it is for my hon. Friend and his constituents, but with his experience as deputy Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, he is better placed than almost anyone to introduce such a debate, and I am sure that he will do so.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
British soldiers are concerned about the safety of the new Virtus body armour they have been issued with. If they fall to the ground, they cannot get up, and they cannot get their armour on in the dark. This is incredibly dangerous. The Ministry of Defence says that it is working with the supplier to make improvements, but why issue kit in the first place that puts soldiers’ safety in jeopardy? May we have a statement on how MOD systems have failed and, more important, how the procurement systems can be changed to stop this happening again?
Chris Grayling
The hon. Lady raises an obviously serious matter. As I said earlier, apart from the Syria statement, there will be a debate on defence matters on Tuesday afternoon and she may wish to bring the issue to the attention of Ministers then.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
I find myself in the curious position of echoing the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), but I assure the House that it is entirely coincidental. May I ask the Leader of the House for a debate in Government time on the BBC White Paper? The urgent question and the statement took place before publication last week and there remains considerable public disquiet about the Government’s ideological motives, as well as the Government’s ability to pack the unitary board with friends and placemen who could have a direct influence on the editorial policy of the BBC.
Chris Grayling
Let us be clear: the proposed unitary board of the BBC is not responsible for editorial policy; the director-general remains responsible for editorial policy. The influence of the board is after broadcast, not before it, which is the way it has been in the past with the BBC Trust and the way it should continue. The elements of the White Paper that require legislation will be debated in this House and there will be plenty of opportunities to question the Secretary of State before we get anywhere near the formal charter renewal.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
My local authority, Cheshire West and Chester Council, with Warrington Borough Council and Cheshire East Council, is locked in talks with the Department for Communities and Local Government about a devolution deal for the area. I welcome devolution in principle, but there seems to be a strange insistence on elected mayors. The area I am talking about is so broad and large, bordered by north Wales on one side and Greater Manchester on the other, that I question the suitability of an elected mayor. May we have a debate on the necessity of elected mayors in areas outside city regions?
Chris Grayling
The whole point of the devolution package is that we are offering additional powers to local communities, but we need them to come to use with a credible governance structure for managing those additional powers. A variety of deals are being done across the country. Not all are identical and not all involve the same structures for local government; the one thing they have in common is that to go ahead, we have to have confidence that they can deliver what is necessary. I am sure that is no different in Cheshire.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
I have a constituent, Elaine, who has an hereditary muscle-wasting paraplegia condition. Despite being on disability living allowance since she was five years old, Elaine, now in her early 20s, did not qualify for a personal independence payment. That in itself is outrageous, but on looking into the wider issue we find that half of all PIP awards are for three years or less, meaning that people with degenerative muscle diseases undergo continual reassessments, which is not only cruel but a waste of money. Can we have a proper debate on the impact of PIP and the medical assessments in the roll-out of the system?
Chris Grayling
Clearly cases involving such diseases are immensely serious and immensely problematic for those affected, but I remind the hon. Gentleman that in Scotland these are devolved matters, so perhaps this is the wrong forum for such a debate.
Term-time Holidays
(8 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education if she will make a statement on the recent decision by the High Court on the right of parents to take their children on holiday during term time.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
The High Court oral judgment represents a significant threat to one of the Government’s most important achievements in education in the past six years: improving school attendance. For this reason, the Government will do everything in their power to ensure that headteachers are able to keep children in school.
There is abundant academic evidence showing that time spent in school is one of the single strongest determinants of a pupil’s academic success. At secondary school, even a week off can have a significant impact on a pupil’s GCSE grades. This is unfair to children and potentially damaging to their life chances. That is why we have unashamedly pursued a zero-tolerance policy on unauthorised absence. We have increased the fines issued to parents of pupils with persistent unauthorised absence, placed greater emphasis on school attendance levels in inspection outcomes and, crucially, we have clamped down on the practice of taking term-time holidays. Those measures have been strikingly successful: the number of persistent absentees in this country’s schools has dropped by over 40%, from 433,000 in 2010 to 246,000 in 2015, and some 4 million fewer days are lost due to unauthorised absence compared with 2012-2013. Overall absence rates have followed a significant downward trend from 6.5% in the academic year ending in 2007 to 4.6% in the academic year ending in 2015.
These are not just statistics. They mean that pupils are spending many more hours in school, being taught the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life. It is for this reason that we amended the 2006 attendance regulations in 2013. Previously headteachers were permitted to grant a family holiday during term time for “special circumstances” of up to 10 days per school year. Of course, the need to take time off school in exceptional circumstances is important, but there are no special circumstances where a 10-day family holiday to Disney World should be allowed to trump the importance of school. The rules must apply to everyone as a matter of social justice. When parents with the income available to take their children out of school go to Florida, it sends a message to everyone that school attendance is not important.
The measure has been welcomed by teachers and schools. Unauthorised absences do not affect just the child who is absent; they damage everyone’s education as teachers find themselves having to play catch-up. Because learning is cumulative, pupils cannot understand the division of fractions if they have not first understood their multiplication. Pupils cannot understand why world war one ended if they do not know why it started, and they cannot enjoy the second half of a novel if they have not read the first half. If a vital block of prerequisite knowledge is missed in April, a pupil’s understanding of the subject will be harmed in May.
The Government understand, however, that many school holidays being taken at roughly the same time leads to a hike in prices. That is precisely the reason that we have given academies the power to set their own term dates in a way that works for their parents and their local communities. Already schools such as Hatcham College in London and the David Young Community Academy in Leeds are doing just that. In areas of the country such as the south-west, where a large number of the local population are employed in the tourist industry, there is nothing to stop schools clubbing together and collectively changing or extending the dates of their summer holidays or doing so as part of a multi-academy trust. In fact, this Government would encourage them to do so.
Mr Gibb
I am about to conclude, Mr Speaker.
We are awaiting the written judgment from the High Court and will outline our next steps in due course. The House should be assured that we will seek to take whatever measures are necessary to give schools and local authorities the power and clarity to ensure that children attend school when they should.
Steve Double
I thank the Minister for his answer. However, there is another aspect to the policy which, sadly, has been ignored up till now—the economic impact of the policy on tourist areas, particularly in Cornwall. In 2014 a published report indicated that the tourist industry in Cornwall had lost £50 million as a result.
With respect to the Minister, there is no prospect of social mobility for a family if the parents lose their job or have their hours cut because of the downturn in the tourism industry and the way that that affects their jobs. Is it not the case that only 8% of school absenteeism is a result of family holidays? There is no drop-off in the attainment of those children. Family holidays are good for children. They widen their knowledge of the world and expose them to new experiences, and children whose family take them on a holiday often perform better as a direct result.
Will the Minister please look at the matter again? If he is going to bring forward measures to tighten the rules or strengthen them, can he assure the House that there will be a full debate in this Chamber, that the changes to the rules will not be made through secondary legislation, that this time a full impact assessment will be carried out that includes the economic impact on tourism-related industries, that the family test will be applied to the measures, and that a full public consultation will take place that considers the impact on all stakeholders—not just education, but the wider society and families especially?
Mr Gibb
Before 2013 authorised family holidays made up between 5% and 6% of pupil absences. That figure dropped to 2.3% in 2013-14 and to 1.2% in 2014-15. With the greatest respect to my hon. Friend, I do not believe that we should be returning to the Dickensian world where the needs of industry and commerce take precedence over the education of children. His constituency of St Austell and Newquay, in the beautiful county of Cornwall, has a hugely successful and thriving tourism industry that generates about £2 billion of income for the UK economy. I doubt that the Cornish tourism industry will be best pleased by his assertion that tourism in Cornwall is dependent on truanting children for its survival.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Another week, another crisis for the Department for Education: Ministers really do need to get a grip. Their obsession with school structures means that they focus on the wrong issues and fail to deal with the bread-and-butter issues that matter to parents.
All the evidence shows that regular attendance at school is crucial to ensuring that children fulfil their potential, and 100% attendance records should be the ambition of all children in all schools. However, this problem is of the Government’s own making. When changing the guidance to headteachers back in 2013, they should have carried out a full impact assessment much earlier and acted to address concerns. Back in the autumn, the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) led a Westminster Hall debate on the 50,000-strong petition on this subject. The Government said then that they would look at the concerns raised, so they have known that this ruling was coming for a long time—they could have clarified the law and they have not.
This ruling is the worst of both worlds. It puts parents and headteachers in a very difficult position and is not in the best interests of children. By and large, the system up to 2012, with heads having a small amount of discretion, was working well. Parents and headteachers had a clear signal that children should be in school. It is right that headteachers who know their parents and school community well, and are accountable for their children and school, should have appropriate discretion. Will the Minister pledge to work with all interested parties across this House and outside this House to clarify the law in the interests of pupils, schools and parents? We pledge to work with him on that.
The reality is that Ministers have been asleep at the wheel, focusing on the wrong issues when we have teacher shortages and problems in primary assessment. It is time for them to take their head out of the sand and deal with these fundamental issues rather than fixating on school types at the expense of raising school standards. Will the Minister do that now?
Mr Gibb
I listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman, but I do feel that he is not on the same side as us with regard to raising school standards. Improving school attendance is absolutely key to raising academic standards. Under the previous Labour Government, it became accepted wisdom that parents could take their children out of school for term-time holidays for up to 10 days a year. Those numbers were causing an issue for us. We had to address the problem that we inherited from the previous Labour Government—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The Minister of State is going about his duty in the conscientious way that we have come to expect. A significant number of young children are observing our proceedings this morning, and I rather doubt they will be greatly impressed by the Front-Bench deputies on each side of the House conducting a kind of verbal tug of war from which each of them should desist, partly in consideration of the children and partly out of respect for the Minister of State, from whom we should hear.
Mr Gibb
I am most grateful to you, Mr Speaker.
Under the previous Labour Government it had become accepted wisdom that parents could take their children out of school for term-time holidays for up to 10 days a year. We had to address that popular perception, and that is why the regulations were changed in 2013. In 2012, 32.7 million pupil days were lost owing to authorised absences. That figure has fallen to 28.6 million in 2014-15—that is, some 4 million fewer pupil school days lost as a consequence of the changes to the 2013 regulations. That is a huge success, and I wish that the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) would support the change.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that taking children out of school to come to the mother of all Parliaments to learn about our democracy is one thing, but taking them to Orlando, Florida is another? I welcome the rigour that he has brought to the subject of education, moving away from the “playways” type of Labour approach. Does he agree that if this country is going to succeed, it needs to take education seriously?
Mr Gibb
My hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. This is about social justice. When parents with income take their children out of school to go to Florida, that sends a message to everyone that school attendance is not important. There is no circumstance in which a trip to Disney World can be regarded as educational.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I am very fond of the Minister and have always thought that he has a touch of the Dickens novel about him. Is it not a very serious and fundamental problem that we still squeeze the summer holidays into a six-week period, during which British Airways charges the earth to go anywhere and Center Parcs trebles its rates? We need to tackle that very serious problem, for everyone’s benefit. I have constituents who face great pressure from the Muslim community, especially from Pakistan, to take their children out, and they are the very children who have been suffering. I am on the side of being tough, but let us look at the issue in a more fundamental way.
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman, for whom I have huge admiration for his work as the former chair of the Education Committee, is right. We need to look at these issues in a more fundamental way. That is why we have given academies the freedom to set their term dates. I say to the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, to my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) that they should be helping to co-ordinate schools so that they set different term dates that help their own tourism industries.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that educational attainment is directly correlated to attendance and that narrowing the attainment gap and raising standards must be a priority for any Government who care about the future of our children?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is ample evidence that even taking a few days off school can have a serious effect on a child’s education, particularly in those secondary school years leading up to GCSE, but also in primary education, where the pattern of attendance is set. Charlie Taylor, our behavioural expert in the last Parliament, took the view that it is more important to set the precedent in primary school, so that when children enter secondary school they are already in the habit of attending school every day.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
The Government underline the importance of giving heads autonomy, which I support in almost all cases, perhaps with the exception of the unacceptable opt-outs in relation to sex education. On term-time absences, does the Minister agree that some holidays or attendance at, for instance, family funerals abroad can be informative, educational or necessary, and that heads should have the autonomy and discretion to decide whether, in those exceptional circumstances, children should be allowed term-time absences? Should not the law reflect that?
Mr Gibb
The right hon. Gentleman accurately reflects the law as it stands: headteachers do have the discretion to grant term-time absence in exceptional circumstances, including funerals, which he cited. However, a term-time holiday to take advantage of lower prices would not be regarded as an exceptional circumstance.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Following on the same theme, the Government have been consistent in saying that they believe that schools should have more freedom from the state in making decisions. Does the Minister believe that schools should not have such freedoms in this particular case, or have the schools asked him to relieve them of them? Whatever the rights and wrongs of the particular issue, it is clearly inconsistent with the Government’s belief in giving school’s greater freedoms.
Mr Gibb
The schools themselves will have increased freedoms if they adopt academy status, including over term dates and the curriculum, but there are rules that apply to individuals. There is no freedom for an individual not to educate their children: they either have to attend school or obtain education otherwise. That is the law. This is about the law that applies to parents. We want a society where education is compulsory for all children in our country.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
But the Minister must acknowledge the limbo that schools now find themselves in. Headteachers know precisely what the regulations say, but they also know what the High Court ruling was. Will he clarify for the benefit of the headteachers who might be listening what he thinks should take precedent—the High Court judgment or the regulations as they stand? If it is the High Court judgment, how quickly will the Government come back to the House to assert what they want to happen?
William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
It is irrefutable that good school attendance is essential for both progress and achievement. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the High Court judgment used a 90% attendance threshold, whereas Ofsted criticises and penalises schools with attendance below 95%?
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
We have heard a lot from the Minister about tackling the symptoms of the problem, but I do not believe enough is being done to tackle the cause, which is companies getting away with charging astronomical prices in holiday time and ordinary prices in term time. When will the Government do something to tackle the rip-off culture that pervades our society?
Mr Gibb
That issue was examined some years ago, and it was determined that it is not a case of the holiday companies ripping off their consumers. Hotels around the world and in this country simply charge higher rates during the summer months and the peak seasons than they do out of peak, which is a matter of market economics.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Mr Platt is a resident of my island, and it is Isle of Wight Council’s unfathomable decision to take him to court that has brought about the current situation. It seems to me that the legislation is quite clear: it is for the headteacher to decide what constitutes exceptional circumstances. The head is undoubtedly in the best position to take account of the full picture of any request for absence. It is hard to envisage legislation, or even guidance, devised here or in Whitehall, that could properly take account of all possible exceptional circumstances. Do the Government intend to take the decision away from the person who is ultimately responsible for the performance of their school?
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
The situation obviously lacks clarity after this judgment, and I was concerned that there was a lack of clarity even before the judgment, which I hoped the Minister might turn his attention to. I had a constituency case in which children were denied the opportunity to go to Spain for the funeral of their Spanish grandmother. Will he consider providing headteachers with greater clarity to ensure that such travel is considered an exceptional circumstance?
Mr Gibb
I think the situation before the High Court judgment was clear—the headteacher has discretion on whether to grant authorised absence, and can do so only in exceptional circumstances. The National Association of Head Teachers has helpfully produced a two-page guidance note setting out what it believes its members should consider when determining whether an absence should be authorised. It makes it clear that funerals should be regarded as an exceptional circumstance.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
People in land-based employment feel frustrated by term times and holidays based in an agrarian past. Does my hon. Friend agree that communities in rural locations often have small village schools that stand to suffer disproportionately in the event of disruption in the classroom due to absences such as he has described?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend makes a very valid point. This is about not just pupils’ education but the challenge presented to teachers as they seek to deliver catch-up lessons for pupils who have been absent. In a small school with small class sizes, that is doubly difficult for teachers.
Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
What assistance and education can the Minister give parents who are deciding whether to take their children out of school? It seems that a minority of parents are making the wrong decision, so can he supply them with any more information on the impact of removing those children from school at the time they choose?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and we must emphasise evidence that suggests that even small absences from school will have a long-term impact on a child’s education. As I set out in my opening remarks, a lot of education is linear, and children must learn one thing before they learn another. If a teacher is not able to provide a catch-up lesson for that child, they will permanently miss out on a crucial part of their education.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government have taken positive steps to reduce the cost of family holidays, and therefore the financial incentive to take term-time absence? By reducing air passenger duty for children’s tickets to zero, last year 4.5 million children under 12 flew tax free, and this year more than 7.5 million of those under 16 will fly tax free.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Although I agree with the thrust of the Government’s response and their determination to raise standards, I have some sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). When a number of schools have a high concentration of parents who work in the tourism industry and on relatively low pay, and when there has not been a significant enough change in the cost of holidays and there is no momentum around changes to term times, a number of factors come together. I urge the Minister to enter into more constructive dialogue about what can be done for regional economies where this issue will have a significant effect.
Mr Gibb
I am happy to enter into a constructive dialogue with my hon. Friend, and with my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). We have given academies discretion to set their own term dates, and I urge all hon. Members who represent areas with high levels of tourism to work with their schools, the local authority, and other local authorities, to find a way to set term dates that reflect the needs of their local communities.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
My hon. Friend will know that when children are absent from school, it is disruptive to the child who misses school but also to the class when they try to catch up. One experiment currently being tried is to extend the school day by 30 minutes, and extend half term from one week to two weeks in certain areas, to allow parents to take their children on holiday for two weeks. What does the Minister think of that idea?
Junior Doctors Contract
(8 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on the junior doctors contract.
For the last three years there have been repeated attempts to reform the junior doctors contract to support better patient care seven days a week, culminating in a damaging industrial relations dispute that lasted for more than 10 months. I am pleased to inform the House that after 10 days of intensive discussion under the auspices of ACAS, the dispute was resolved yesterday with a historic agreement between the Government, NHS Employers—acting on behalf of the employers of junior doctors—and the British Medical Association that will modernise the contract by making it better for both doctors and patients. The new contract meets all the Government’s red lines for delivering a seven-day NHS, and remains within the existing pay envelope. We will publish an equalities analysis of the new terms alongside a revised contract at the end of the month, and it will be put to a ballot of the BMA membership next month, with the support of its leader, the chair of the junior doctors committee of the BMA, Johann Malawana.
I express my thanks to the BMA for the leadership it has shown in returning to talks, negotiating in good faith, and making an agreement possible. I also put on record my thanks to Sir Brendan Barber, the chair of ACAS, for his excellent stewardship of the process, and to Sir David Dalton for his wisdom and insight in conducting discussions on behalf of employers and the Government, both this time and earlier in the year. The agreement will facilitate the biggest changes to the junior doctors contract since 1999. It will allow the Government to deliver a seven-day NHS, improve patient safety and support much needed productivity improvements, as well as strengthening the morale and quality of life of junior doctors with a modern contract fit for a modern health service.
The contract inherited by the Government had a number of features badly in need of reform, including low levels of basic pay as a proportion of total income, which made doctors rely too heavily on unpredictable unsocial hours supplements to boost their income; automatic annual pay rises even when people took prolonged periods of leave from the NHS; an unfair banding system that triggered payment of premium rates to every team member even if only one person had worked extra hours; high premium rates payable for weekend work that made it difficult to roster staff in line with patient need; and risks to patient safety, with doctors sometimes required to work seven full days or seven full nights in a row without proper rest periods.
The Government have always been determined that our NHS should offer the safest, highest quality of care possible, which means a consistent standard of care for patients admitted across all seven days of the week. The new contract agreed yesterday makes the biggest set of changes to the junior doctors contract for 17 years, including by establishing the principle that any doctor who works less than an average of one weekend day a month—Saturday or Sunday—should receive no additional premium pay, compensated for by an increase in basic pay of between 10% and 11%; by reducing the marginal cost of employing additional doctors at the weekend by about a third; by supporting all hospitals to meet the four clinical standards most important for reducing mortality rates for weekend admissions by establishing a new role for experienced junior doctors as senior clinical decision makers able to make expert assessments of vulnerable patients admitted to or staying in hospital over weekends; and by removing the disincentive to roster enough doctors at weekends by replacing an inflexible banding system with a fairer system that values weekend work by paying people for actual unsocial hours worked, with more pay for those who work the most.
The Government also recognise that safer care for patients is more likely to be provided by well-motivated doctors who have sufficient rest between shifts and work in a family-friendly system. The new contract and ACAS agreement will improve the wellbeing of our critical junior doctor workforce by reducing the maximum hours a doctor can be asked to work in any one week from 91 to 72; reducing the number of nights a doctor can be asked to work consecutively to four, and the number of long days a doctor can be asked to work to five; introducing a new post, a guardian of safe working, in every trust to guard against doctors being asked to work excessive hours; introducing a new catch-up programme for doctors who take maternity leave or time off for other caring responsibilities; establishing a review by Health Education England to consider how best to allow couples to apply to train in the same area and to offer training placements for those with caring responsibilities close to their home; giving pay protection to doctors who switch specialties because of caring responsibilities; and establishing a review to inform a new requirement for trusts to consider caring and other family responsibilities when designing rotas.
Taken together, these changes show both the Government’s commitment to safe care for patients and the value we attach to the role of junior doctors. While they do not remove every bugbear or frustration, they will significantly improve flexibility and work-life balance for doctors, leading, we hope, to improved retention rates, higher morale and better care for patients.
Whatever the progress made with today’s landmark changes, however, it will always be a matter of great regret that it was necessary to go through such disruptive industrial action to get there. We may welcome the destination, but no one could have wanted the journey, so today I say to all junior doctors, whatever our disagreements about the contract may have been, that the Government have heard and understood the wider frustrations they feel about the way they are valued and treated in the NHS. Our priority will always be the safety of patients, but we also recognise that to deliver high-quality care we need a well-motivated and happy junior doctor workforce. Putting a new modern contract in place is not the end of the story. We will continue to engage constructively to try to resolve outstanding issues, as we proceed on our journey to tackle head on the challenges the NHS faces, and make it the safest, highest-quality healthcare system anywhere in the world. Today’s agreement shows we can make common cause on that journey with a contract that is better for patients, better for doctors and better for the NHS. I commend my statement to the House.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I start by putting on record our thanks to Sir Brendan Barber and ACAS for the role they have played in finding agreement between the two sides in this dispute. I also pay tribute to the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which proposed these further talks and encouraged both the Government and the BMA to pause and think about patients.
I have not been shy in telling the Health Secretary what I think about his handling of this dispute, but today is not the day to repeat those criticisms. I am pleased and relieved that an agreement has been reached, but I am sad that it took an all-out strike of junior doctors to get the Government back to the table. What is now clear, if it was not already, is that a negotiated agreement was possible all along. I have to ask the Health Secretary why this deal could not have been struck in February. Why did he allow his pride back then to come before sensible compromise and constructive talks?
When he stands up to reply, he may try to blame the BMA for the breakdown in the negotiations, but he failed to say what options he was prepared to consider in order to ensure that the junior doctors who work the most unsociable hours are fairly rewarded. It was a “computer says no” attitude, and that is no way to run the NHS.
Why did the Health Secretary ignore my letter to him of 7 February, in which I asked him to make an explicit and public commitment to further concessions on the issue of unsociable hours? I was clear that if he had done that then, I would have encouraged the BMA to return to talks. Why did he insist instead on trying to bulldoze an imposed contract through, when virtually everyone told him not to, and the consequences of doing so were obvious for all to see—protracted industrial action, destroyed morale and a complete breakdown in trust?
On the detail of the new contract, will the Health Secretary say a little more about the agreed changes that will undo the discriminatory effect on women of the last contract he published? Does he now accept that the previous contract discriminated against women? Will he be clear for the record that he now understands this was never “just about pay”? Can he confirm that concessions have been made not only in respect of the mechanism for enforcing hours worked and breaks taken, but in ensuring that the specialties with the biggest recruitment problems have decent incentives built into the contract?
Moving on to what happens next, can the Health Secretary tell us what he will do if junior doctors vote against this offer? Will he still impose a contract, and which version of the contract will he impose—his preferred version or this compromised one? Can he say whether the possibility of losing a case in the High Court about his power to impose a contract had anything to do with his recently discovered eagerness to return to talks? We all know that the High Court told him he had acted above the law when he tried to take the axe to my local hospital, so I can understand why he does not want that embarrassment again.
Finally, let me caution the Health Secretary on his use of language both in this Chamber and in the media. His loose words and implied criticism of junior doctors is partly the reason why this has ended up being such an almighty mess. May I suggest that a degree of humility on the part of the Secretary of State would not go amiss? May I recommend a period of radio silence from him to allow junior doctors to consider the new contract with clear minds, and without his spin echoing in their ears? I remind him that he still needs to persuade a majority of junior doctors to vote in favour of the contract for the dispute to be finally over.
I hope with all my heart that yesterday’s agreement may offer a way forward. Junior doctors will want to consider it; trust needs to be repaired, and that will take time. I hope for the sake of everyone, patients and doctors, that we may now see an end to this very sorry episode in NHS history.
Mr Hunt
The hon. Lady is wrong today, as she has been wrong throughout this dispute. In the last 10 months, she has spent a great deal of time criticising the way in which the Government have sought to change the contract. What she has not dwelt on, however, is the reason it needed to be changed in the first place, namely the flawed contract for junior doctors that was introduced in 1999.
We have many disagreements with the BMA, but we agree on one thing: Labour’s contract was not fit for purpose. Criticising the Government for trying to put that contract right is like criticising a mechanic for mending the car that you just crashed. It is time that the hon. Lady acknowledged that those contract changes 17 years ago have led to a number of the five-day care problems that we are now trying to sort out.
The hon. Lady was wrong to say that an all-out strike was necessary to resolve the dispute. The meaningful talks that we have had have worked in the last 10 days because the BMA bravely changed its position, and agreed to negotiate on weekend pay. The hon. Lady told the House four times before that change of heart that we should not impose a new contract. What would have happened if we had followed her advice? Quite simply, we would not have seen the biggest single step towards a seven-day NHS for a generation, the biggest reforms of unsocial hours for 17 years, and the extra cost of employing a doctor at weekends going down by a third. We would not have seen the reductions in maximum working hours. We would not have seen many, many other changes that have improved the safety of patients and the quality of life of doctors.
The hon. Lady was also wrong to say that the previous contract discriminated against women. In fact, it removed discrimination. Does that mean that there are not more things that we can do to support women who work as junior doctors? No, it does not. The new deal that was announced yesterday provides for an important new catch-up clause for women who take maternity leave, which means that they can return to the position in which they would have been if they had not had to take time off to have children.
The hon. Lady asked what would happen if the ballot went the wrong way. What she failed to say was whether she was encouraging junior doctors to vote for the deal. Let me remind her that on 28 October, she told the House that she supported the principle of seven-day services. As Tony Blair once said, however, one cannot will the end without willing the means. The hon. Lady has refused to say whether she supported the withdrawal of emergency care, she has refused to say whether she supports contentious changes to reform premium pay, and now she will not even say whether doctors should vote for the new agreement.
Leadership means facing up to difficult decisions, not ducking them. I say to the hon. Lady that this Government are prepared to make difficult decisions and fight battles that improve the quality and safety of care in the NHS. If she is not willing to fight those battles, that is fine, but she should not stand at the Dispatch Box and claim that Labour stands up for NHS patients. If she does not want to listen to me, perhaps she should listen to former Labour Minister Tom Harris, who said:
“Strategically Labour should be on the side of the patients and we aren’t.”
Well, if Labour is not, the Conservatives are.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
I congratulate both sides on returning to constructive negotiations and on reaching an agreement. I pay particular tribute to Professor Sue Bailey and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges for their role in bringing both sides together. I welcome the particular focus, alongside the negotiations around weekend pay, on all the other aspects that are blighting the lives of junior doctors. I welcome the recognition that we need to focus on those specialties that it is hard to recruit to and on those junior doctors who are working the longest hours, as well as the focus on patient safety.
However, we are not out of the woods yet. We need junior doctors across the country to vote for this agreement in a referendum. May I add my voice to that of the Opposition spokesman on health to say that what is needed now is a period of calm reflection? We need to build relationships with junior doctors into the future. Will the Secretary of State comment on his plans for building those relationships with our core workforce?
Mr Hunt
First, I very much agree with my hon. Friend in her thanks to Professor Dame Sue Bailey for the leadership that the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has shown in the initiative that, in the end, made these talks and this agreement possible. I know it has been a very difficult and challenging time for the royal colleges, but Professor Bailey has shown real leadership in her initiative.
I also very much agree with my hon. Friend about the need to sort out some of the issues that have been frustrations for junior doctors—not just in the last few years, but going back decades—in terms of the way their training works and the flexibility of the system of six-month rotations that they work in. This is an opportunity to look at those wider issues. We started to look at some of them yesterday. I think there is more that we can do.
It is important that this is seen not as one side winning and the other side losing, but as a win-win. What the last 10 days show is that if we sit round the table, we can make real progress, with a better deal for patients and a better deal for doctors. That is the spirit that we want to go forward in.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
I absolutely welcome this agreement, and I pay tribute to the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges for bringing it about. I do wish there had been some response to the letter that I and other Members sent before the all-out strike, because it was a genuine attempt to create a space that both sides could step into. However, I am glad that we have got to that stage now.
I welcome the recognition of the equality issues, which, to us and to many junior doctors, appeared to have been dismissed in the impact assessment. On the idea of flexible training champions in each trust, I myself was a flexible training senior surgeon—indeed, the first one in Scotland—and the idea of accelerated training is important. However, one concern I have is about childcare. If women junior doctors are going to be working longer, more antisocial shifts—I remember what I had to fork out for childcare—I would like to know whether the NHS will respond to that. Will that be in the form of crèche hours or support?
I welcome the fact that the hours guardian will be linked to the director of medical education and that there will be an elected junior doctors forum. One concern of junior doctors was that they would have no voice in relation to the guardian.
I also welcome the idea of using modern technology in rota-ing. At the moment, rotas are sheets of paper, and often no one looks at the shoulder from one rota to the next, so people can end up with the very long periods on call. However, one concern that remains is rota gaps. We do not have enough junior doctors, and we do not have enough junior doctors in the most acute specialties. How is the Secretary of State planning to re-establish a relationship? How is he going to recruit people to fill that gap? That was the core fear of junior doctors: a lack of doctors, with doctors simply being spread further. How are we going to recruit and retain doctors after the painful clash that has been going on for the last year?
Mr Hunt
I welcome the tone of the hon. Lady’s comments; we might have wished for a similar tone from the shadow Health Secretary. Let me address the comments of the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) as constructively as she made them to me. She is right about flexible training. We have to recognise that the junior doctor workforce is now majority female, and that a number of family and caring pressures need to be taken account of. We need to do that for the NHS not only because it is the right thing to do, but because we will lose people if we do not. Those people will simply leave medicine, even though they have been through very extensive and expensive training.
We have to look particularly at the responsibilities of doctors with young children. One of the things that we announced yesterday was an obligation on trusts to take account of caring responsibilities. If, for example, a doctor wanted to work fewer hours in school holidays and more hours in term time, we cannot guarantee that a hospital would always be able meet those needs—the needs of patients always have to come first—but they could at least be taken account of, in the same way as they are in many other industries that operate 24/7. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that modern technology is key to that. An air steward or a pilot who works for British Airways can go on to an electronic system and choose the shifts and hours that they want to work. Because we have failed to modernise the NHS, we have seen a huge growth in agency and locum work, which is partly driven by the fact that it offers precisely the flexibilities that people need. These are important changes, and we intend to take them forward.
Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
My right hon. Friend’s actions and those of the Department and the BMA in reaching an agreement will be warmly welcomed and met with a sigh of relief. Does he accept that the fact that the BMA was prepared to think again on crucial issues, such as overtime at weekends, should be seen as a sign not of weakness but of maturity, in working with the Government to ensure that we have a seven-day NHS that is for the benefit of patients and patient safety?
Mr Hunt
I absolutely agree with that wise comment, and it befits someone who is experienced in working in the Department of Health. We always get further if we sit around the table and talk about such issues. The Government are determined to improve the quality and safety of care for patients, and it is important to recognise that if the Government are successful, it will be better for the morale of doctors. The happiest, most motivated doctors work in the hospitals that are giving the best care to patients. That is why it is a win-win.
I say to Labour Members that it was the refusal of the BMA for many years to talk about the issue that my right hon. Friend referred to that meant we reached a deadlock. The fact that the Government were willing to proceed with important reforms on our own if we had to meant that, in the end, everyone came together and had a sensible negotiation. We got to the right place. I am sure everyone wishes that we had not had to go on the journey we went on to get there, but now that we have got there, I think it is the time for being constructive on all sides.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I also thank the Minister and the BMA for coming to an agreement. The Minister said that it was a win-win for everyone, and so it is. It is always good to talk, and dialogue brings results. That happened in Northern Ireland, and it has happened with the conclusion of this process as well. A good deal has been reached, and some 45,000 junior doctor BMA members will now be asked to vote on it.
We have had eight days of strikes since January, and some 40,000 planned non-urgent operations and 100,000 out-patient appointments have been cancelled. May I ask the Minister what will be done to catch those up, and what discussions he has had with the Northern Ireland Assembly about the agreement?
Mr Hunt
I reassure the hon. Gentleman that we are in constant touch with the devolved regions and countries to make sure that they know the changes that we are making, and to share any learning that we have from the processes that we have been through, so we will certainly do that. Across the country, we are doing everything we can to catch up with the backlog of operations, procedures and out-patient appointments—all the things that have been affected by the industrial relations dispute. Trusts will always prioritise the areas where clinical need is the greatest, but I know that that work is ongoing across the country.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
I very much welcome the agreement that has been reached. We know that the Secretary of State recognises the importance of having a happy and well-motivated workforce, and this contract addresses many of the causes of unhappiness for junior doctors. It is particularly good to hear the points made today about addressing the problems of couples who are both junior doctors. However, there is clearly more to do, as has been acknowledged, especially on the reasons why junior doctors feel unsupported and often not valued by their employers. My right hon. Friend commissioned Professor Sue Bailey to carry out a review of the underlying problems experienced by junior doctors during training. Will he advise us whether the review will now proceed?
Mr Hunt
The request from the BMA was to find a new way of proceeding with that very important work, and that is what we will do. We will do so with the input of Professor Bailey, because she has a very important contribution to make. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that, as well as more flexible working for people with family commitments, the big issue for many junior doctors is the way in which the training process happens. In particular, the issue is about the way that continuity of training has been undermined by the new shift system—we need that system for reasons of patient safety—and that often means that someone is given advice by a different consultant on different aspects of care from one day to the next, which is frustrating. We will look at all those issues with Professor Bailey, Health Education England and the BMA to see whether we can find a better way forward.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Is the Secretary of State aware that even my constituents struggling with the possible closure of their A&E at the hospital in Huddersfield nevertheless welcome this announcement and thank anyone and everyone who has brought it about? That includes, I must say, leaders from the Opposition parties—our health spokespeople—who have done so much to help maintain a positive spirit. Will the Secretary of State just not gloat about this, but keep a period of silence? This is part of the phenomenon of people’s deep unhappiness about the NHS. Problems will arise again because so many people working in the NHS know it is being privatised by the back door and know that the clinical commissioning system is not working. Those problems will come back again and again unless he confronts that issue.
Mr Hunt
That would have been a constructive contribution to this morning’s discussion if the hon. Gentleman had not descended into totally false slurs about this Government’s commitment to our NHS. I would just say to him that if people support and are passionate about the NHS, as this Government are, then they put in the money—we are putting in £5.5 billion more than his party promised at the last election—and make the difficult reforms necessary to ensure that NHS care is as good as or better than anything that can be provided in the private sector. That is what this Government are doing: we believe in our NHS, and we are backing it to provide the best care available anywhere in the world.
Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)
I strongly welcome this important statement and the Secretary of State’s leadership, and I congratulate all those involved in the discussions. On Tuesday, I spoke at my advice surgery in Eastleigh to a constituent, a new mum who is a junior doctor and is married to a senior nurse. She is unable to fast-track into working as a GP, and part of her concerns about the negotiations involve the future childcare arrangements for her four-month-old baby. Such concerns weigh heavily on her family, particularly in relation to on-call working. May I ask that agile working and family first issues are truly taken into account for nurses and doctors who are trying to bring up families together?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend gives one example, but there are thousands of such examples. Such people are totally committed to the NHS, have a bright future in it and can make a huge contribution to its success by doing a good job in looking after patients, but they also have home responsibilities that are difficult to fulfil when there are very inflexible rostering systems. One of the big wins from yesterday’s agreement is that we will be able to look at the way the rostering system works to try to bring in such flexibility. If we do not do so, more and more doctors will want to be locums or to work for an agency and we will lose the continuity of care for patients, which is one of the best things about our GP system. That is why there is an urgent need—from the perspective of patients, as well as from that of doctors—to address that issue.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I am interested in the Secretary of State’s thoughts about the serious impact on morale that the dispute has had. I was talking to a junior doctor in Sheffield the other day who said that before the dispute he had never looked at his contract, he had simply got on and done what was needed, whenever it was needed. Does the Secretary of State realise that even if the dispute is now settled, as we hope, it has had a serious impact on good will in the health service, which could affect service delivery in the future?
Mr Hunt
If the hon. Gentleman looks at the latest NHS staff survey, it shows higher staff motivation, better communication and more staff recommending their organisation as a place to work or be treated. But I accept that when big changes are made to a contract such as the junior doctors contract, they can be contentious and have a short-term impact on morale. In the long run, morale goes up when doctors are able to give better care to patients, and that is what this agreement will allow.
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)
The Secretary of State has done a good job of explaining today, but let us look at this in the cold light of day. The BMA caused a problem that should have been resolved a long time ago. It decided it would make a political point. That is fair enough, and I know we want reflection. The Opposition should have been big enough to say, “We want to cause political trouble on this.” A lot of this has been caused by political shenanigans that should not have been allowed to get to this stage, and the failure means that the junior doctors have lost prestige throughout the United Kingdom because they have been used as political pawns by two organisations. Does the Secretary of State agree?
Mr Hunt
It is a great tragedy that the dispute unfolded in the way that it did, and I am sure that people with different agendas have not played constructive roles at various points. Given that we now have an agreement, I want to move forward positively and say that the lesson of the last 10 days is that when people sit down and negotiate about all the outstanding issues with a Government who are trying to make care safer and better for patients, we get a result that is good for everyone.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
It is not the time to claim victory: this negotiated agreement now has to be put to the members of the British Medical Association. Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that his own refusal to negotiate exacerbated this crisis? Will he cease referring to the British Medical Association as a militant trade union, and will he heed the call from my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for a period of silence in order to avoid antagonising the junior doctors still further?
Mr Hunt
Let us be absolutely clear: there was never a refusal to negotiate on the Government’s side. We have now developed a lot of trust between the Government and the BMA leadership, but until that point it balloted for industrial action without even sitting down and talking to the Government, and it refused to discuss the issue of weekend pay premiums, which was the crucial change we needed for a seven-day NHS. It was when the BMA changed its position in those areas that we were able to have constructive talks, and that is why it deserves great credit for coming to the table and negotiating—something it had not wanted to do previously—and that led to the solution.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for working so hard to bring about this resolution and for always putting users of the NHS at the heart of everything he does. Will he join me in urging junior doctors to consider the new contract with an open mind when voting, and to strip out some of the politics that we have heard? Let us consider what is best for patients, what is best for the NHS and then what is best for junior doctors.
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend speaks wisely. I understand that in a contentious industrial relations dispute junior doctors will not necessarily look to me for advice on which way they should vote, but it was not just me doing the agreement. It was a negotiated agreement and the leader of the junior doctors committee says that it is a good agreement. He will encourage people to support it in the ballot and he thinks it is a good way forward for doctors as well as for patients. The people who have been closest to the detail of the negotiations think that it is the right step forward for junior doctors, and that is something that they will want to take account of.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
I do not wish to invite the Secretary of State to provoke or pre-empt by presumption, but if the agreement changes the shape of services, it will have implications for other health professionals. Is he prepared to have the further conversations that will need to be had, and the wider conversations that will be needed with his ministerial counterparts across these islands on workforce planning, professional education and training?
Mr Hunt
We are, of course, willing to have those discussions with colleagues in other parts of the UK. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that having a seven-day service does not just involve junior doctors; it involves widespread changes across the service. I should say that nurses, healthcare assistants, porters, cleaners—other people who work in hospitals—already operate on 24/7 shifts, so the changes necessary to those contracts are much less profound than they are to some of the doctors contracts, which is why it is important that we change not just the junior doctors contract, but the consultants contract. The fact that we have been able to reach a negotiated agreement with the junior doctors bodes well for the consultants contract, which is the next step.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
I congratulate both my right hon. Friend and the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) on their hard work in dealing with this protracted dispute with the BMA. Patients up and down the country, including those in my constituency, were somewhat concerned about the cancellation of operations, and I am delighted that the Department is going to try to ensure that we catch up on that. One thing that came out of this dispute was that some senior consultants ended up getting on to the front line for the first time in a long time. What can be done to try to make sure that that happens on a regular basis, so that they are getting experience on the front line, too?
Mr Hunt
If I answer that question directly, I will dig myself into rather a deep hole. I echo my hon. Friend’s thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich, who has done an outstanding job by my side at every stage throughout this difficult period. I can certainly say that we would not have had yesterday’s agreement without his strong help and support at every stage. It is true that there are A&E departments across the country that, in having to plan for the two-day withdrawal of emergency care, found that having consultants more visible to patients had some positive impacts. I know that studies are going on to see what lessons can be learned from that going forward.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
I, too, welcome the opportunity for a negotiated settlement, but let us take just a moment to reflect on one of the fundamental principles of our NHS—providing high-quality patient care. Will the Secretary of State take the opportunity today to offer a heartfelt and sincere apology for the significant and severe distress caused to patients as a result of this prolonged dispute?
Mr Hunt
With the greatest of respect to the hon. Lady, it was not my decision to take industrial action—to ballot for industrial action without even being prepared to sit around the table and talk to the Government. We are seeing dramatic improvements in patient safety under this Government, as we face up to the many problems in care that we inherited, not just at Mid Staffs, but at many other places. I know that she cares about patient safety, so she should welcome the difficult changes we have made, one of which is to have a seven-day NHS.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
Like many colleagues in the House, I wrote to the Secretary of State on numerous occasions over the past six months to express the concerns of local junior doctors. May I therefore congratulate him and the BMA on reaching this deal? I hope that junior doctors in Wimbledon will wholeheartedly support it. He spoke in his statement about the role of the guardian and the ability to ensure safe working hours, on behalf of both patients and doctors. Will he give a few more details about how he expects that to work?
Mr Hunt
Yes, I am happy to do that, and I thank my hon. Friend for a lot of his correspondence. The principle here is that junior doctors want to know that there is someone independent they can appeal to if they think they are being asked to work hours that are unsafe and which mean that they cannot look after patients in the way that they would want to because they are physically or mentally too exhausted. We would all want to make that possible, but it means that they need to have someone who is not their line manager. They will go to their line manager in the first instance, but they need to have someone independent and separate. One area where we have made the most progress during the past few months, even before the past 10 days of talks, is on establishing how these guardians can work in a way that has the trust of both the hospitals and the doctors working in them.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is absolutely right that we can always get further if we get round the table, so why, in response to the cross-party initiative back in February to get everybody around the table, did he not do exactly that and save us all this trouble, rather than trying to impose the contract?
Mr Hunt
The cross-party initiative was not to have a new contract, but to abandon plans for a new contract and to have pilots in a few limited places. If we had followed that advice, we would not now have agreed with the BMA the biggest changes in the junior doctors contract for 17 years. Our goal was to get the agreement that we secured yesterday—safer care for the NHS and a better deal for doctors. That was what we achieved, and we would not have got there if we had listened to that advice.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
May I join the welcome for the agreement and the persistence and patience that eventually paid off? In previous statements, I have raised with the Secretary of State the problem involving married couples who are both doctors. There are difficulties with training when they are sent to different areas and with rosters that clash. Will he say a word about the progress that has been made in this important area of making work a bit more family-friendly?
Mr Hunt
I am happy to do that for my hon. and learned Friend. It is not an easy problem to solve, because junior doctor training placements operate on six-month rotations, and they are a competitive process. We get many more applicants for a number of posts than there are posts available. We must find a way of balancing the need to respect family responsibilities, which is something that we all want to do, with the need to have a fair process for the most competitive positions. We do not have the balance right yet, so we have said that Health Education England, which decides where people are to go on rotations, will now have a duty to consider family responsibilities when it makes decisions about those rotations.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the potential resolution of this dispute and thank the Government for negotiating it. We should also thank junior doctors for having the courage to go on strike, which no one does lightly, to get a better deal for the NHS. I ask the Secretary of State to reflect on this breakthrough, to take further steps to build on his difficult relationship with NHS staff and, crucially, to stop presenting NHS policy as a false dichotomy between the interests of patients and the interests of NHS staff.
Mr Hunt
If the hon. Gentleman had listened to some of the things that I have said, he would have heard me say repeatedly that I do not think that that dichotomy exists. As he says, it is a false dichotomy because, in the end, what is right for patients is also right for doctors. The thing that demoralises doctors, nurses and everyone working in our hospitals in different parts of the NHS is when they are not able to give the care that they want or that they think is appropriate to the patients in front of them. That is why hospitals that have moved closest towards seven-day services are also some of the hospitals with the highest levels of morale in the NHS. He is right that it is a false dichotomy and that we need to do both together.
Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)
As the Secretary of State knows, my brother and his wife were junior doctors when they made the decision to move to New Zealand a long while ago because of the long-standing cultural problems within the NHS. They will be very pleased indeed about the announcement yesterday about couples potentially being able to work together in hospitals. I have a question for the Secretary of State from my mother. She wants to know what he can do now to encourage my brother, his wife and their friends back into the NHS.
Mr Hunt
Let me say to my hon. Friend’s mother that I hope that the message of this new agreement will go right the way around the world. Any doctors who have moved to New Zealand and Australia are always welcome to come back. The thing that must unite this Government and the good doctors who work, or have worked, in the NHS is our commitment to make NHS care the safest and the best in the world. We had a terrible shock with what happened at Mid Staffs, but we are using that as a moment of decisive change in the NHS, and we are well on our way to higher standards of care than are available in many other countries.
Mr Speaker
Let’s hope that Mummy Howlett is satisfied. If not, I dare say that we shall hear about it.
Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)
I congratulate the Government and everyone involved on getting this deal in place. It will have a knock-on effect in my constituency in Northern Ireland. When I went around Antrim Area hospital, the concern was to do with the number of doctors, which we have heard about from other Members, and how to get seven-days-a-week cover from everything else that needs to go into the health service. Will the Secretary of State comment on how we will deal with that, and how we will work with the devolved Parliaments?
Mr Hunt
I agree. We need more doctors and we need more nurses. By the end of this Parliament, we will have over a million more over-70s in England alone, and I know that the demographic effects in Northern Ireland will be equivalent. We have a global shortage of about 7 million doctors, so we need to train more. We are training an extra 11,420 doctors over this Parliament as part of the spending review. The training is done on a UK-wide basis, so we will need to work closely with all the devolved regions on it.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
I warmly welcome this draft agreement, which will be met with some relief in Cheltenham. Whatever our deeply held concerns about the behaviour of the BMA in the past, does the Secretary of State agree that it should be our ambition that the agreement will mark the beginning of a more constructive future? Will he join me in congratulating BMA negotiators, including Dr Malawana, for being prepared to address constructively issues such as Saturday pay?
Mr Hunt
I am happy to do that. I recognise that this was not easy for those people, because it involved changing a position that they had held for more than three years. When we looked at the details, the result that we got to was not difficult for them to sign up to because they could see that it really was better for their members, as well as better for patients. The lesson here is that the NHS faces huge challenges, and it can only be right to deal with them by sitting round the table and negotiating constructively.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
I, too, warmly welcome the news of the agreement, and I hope that it leads to a settlement. If it is the Secretary of State’s intention to create a seven-day NHS, that will require the participation of more than the junior doctors, so does he intend to bring forward a new contract for consultants, hospital lab workers, ambulance workers, nurses or indeed ancillary workers and catering staff?
Mr Hunt
The hon. Gentleman is right. A seven-day NHS is not just, or not even mainly, about junior doctors, although they are a very important part of the equation. We will need a new contract for consultants and we are having constructive negotiations with them. Many other people working in the NHS are already on seven-day contracts, so there will not necessarily be a contractual change, but the hon. Gentleman is right to say that we will need, for example, diagnostic services operating across seven days so that the junior doctor who works at the weekend will be able to get the result of a test back at the weekend. Those are all part of the changes that we will introduce to make the NHS safer for patients.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I warmly congratulate both sides on reaching this agreement. Our NHS is different at weekends, and my right hon. Friend is right to inculcate Sir Bruce Keogh’s four key clinical standards on a Sunday and a Saturday. Does he agree that it is important not simply to rely on mortality data, which are often difficult to interpret, to underpin the case for a seven-day NHS? Will he look closely at other metrics based on clinical standards for things like routine lists for upper gastrointestinal endoscopy on a Saturday and Sunday? Will he also look at palliative care, which of course does not feature in any hospital mortality data?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend speaks, as ever, very wisely on medical matters. I particularly agree when he talks about palliative care; it has got better, but there is a long way to go. We have recent evidence that it is particularly in need of improvement where we are not able to offer seven-day palliative support.
Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)
I welcome this settlement and thank everyone involved for securing it. However, many junior doctors remain concerned that, as the hours worked at the weekend increase, cover is inevitably reduced during the week, unless more junior doctors are employed to bridge that gap. With many rotas already left unfilled around the country during the week, how can the Secretary of State guarantee that we will not make the situation worse during the week, thereby impacting on patient safety?
Mr Hunt
I understand the concern. The short answer is that we need to increase the NHS workforce, which we are doing. We will see more doctors going into training during this Parliament, as indeed we did during the previous Parliament. More doctors in the workforce will be an important part of the solution.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
It appears that at the start of the recent negotiations the payment for Saturday working was the main sticking point for the BMA, but now the issue of weekend pay has been resolved. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, now, the doctors who work extended hours over the weekend can get extra pay, and patients can get the seven-days-a-week NHS we all want?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is not just a safer deal for patients, but a system that is much fairer for doctors than the current one. We are giving a pay rise of between 10% and 11%, for which we say that people are expected to work one weekend day a month, but doctors who work more than that get more, and it goes up, so more weekends worked means more extra pay. I think that is one of the reasons why the BMA was prepared to sign up to the agreement: it values the people who give up the most weekends.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I was contacted by a constituent who told me how his four-year-old daughter fell through a pane of glass, severely cutting her face. Unfortunately, the accident happened on a Friday evening, and because insufficient doctors were working over the weekend, she could not have an operation to remove any remaining glass from the wound until Monday, by which time the wound had started to heal and was misaligned. That four-year-old girl will suffer severe facial scarring for the rest of her life. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is why we need a seven-day NHS?
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I must confess to being rather puzzled. The BMA said all along that the strike and dispute had nothing to do with weekend pay and terms, yet after negotiations limited simply to weekend pay and terms, the BMA has come to a deal and advised against strike action. Can we take it that, despite much huffing and puffing from the BMA that this was about the future of the NHS and all the rest of it, at the end of the day it was all about weekend pay and terms?
Mr Hunt
I think my hon. Friend is right that that was the big sticking point. It was the BMA’s willingness to be flexible and negotiate on that that ultimately made an agreement possible, but it is also fair to say that the Government recognise that there are many other non-contractual issues in the way that junior doctors are trained and treated by the NHS, and we want to use this opportunity to put them right.
Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on putting patients first, but does he recognise that there are still people out there whose operations were cancelled due to industrial action? Will he look to the future and consider whether front-line medical staff should have the right to strike and so put people’s health on the backburner or postpone their medical care?
Mr Hunt
I know that that is a view that some colleagues share. Doctors have obligations even now under the Medical Act 1983 not to take action that would harm patients, and under their responsibilities to the General Medical Council; they have to be aware of those. What I hope is that that question simply does not arise again. We are now having constructive discussions with the BMA; I think that is the way forward and I hope that neither I nor any future Health Secretary has to go through what has happened in the past 10 months.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I applaud the tone and content of the Secretary of State’s remarks. I think this agreement will go down as a breakthrough in the NHS. It has been very uncomfortable to engage in dialogue with constituents who are junior doctors, who have felt aggrieved, so I particularly welcome the way my right hon. Friend has been able to look at non-contractual issues. I urge him to give serious consideration to the outcome of the Bailey review so that progress can be made on morale and the wider issues that have been raised.
Mr Hunt
I finish by saying that I completely agree with my hon. Friend. It has been a very sad dispute for all of us, because we all recognise that junior doctors are the backbone of the NHS; they work extremely hard and they often work the most weekends already. That we now have an agreement is a brilliant step forward. We all have constituents who work hard for the NHS. They are people we value, so dialogue, negotiation and constructive discussion must always be the way forward.
Speaker’s Statement
Thursday 19th May 2016
(8 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: CWH Notices of Amendments as at 13 April 2016 - (14 Apr 2016)
Mr Speaker
In accordance with Standing Order No. 122D, I must announce the arrangements for the election of the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee for the new Session. If there is more than one candidate, the ballot will be held in Committee Room 16 from 11 am to 1.30 pm on Wednesday 25 May. Nominations must be submitted in the Table Office between 10 am and 5 pm on the day before the ballot, Tuesday 24 May. In accordance with the Standing Order, only Members who do not belong to a party represented in Her Majesty’s Government may be candidates in this election. A briefing note with more details about the election will be made available to Members and published on the intranet.
Bills Presented
Higher Education and Research Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary Sajid Javid, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Theresa May, Secretary Nicky Morgan, Secretary Greg Clark, Matthew Hancock and Joseph Johnson, presented a Bill to make provision about higher education and research; and to make provision about alternative payments to students in higher or further education.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 4) with explanatory notes (Bill 4-EN).
Finance Bill
Presentation and resumption of proceedings (Standing Order No. 80B)
Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary Sajid Javid, Secretary Nicky Morgan, Secretary Greg Clark, Greg Hands, Mr David Gauke, Damian Hinds and Harriett Baldwin, presented a Bill to grant certain duties, to alter other duties, and to amend the law relating to the National Debt and the Public Revenue, and to make further provision in connection with finance.
Bill read the First and Second time without Question put, and stood committed to a Committee of the whole House in respect of clauses 7 to 18, 41 to 44, 65 to 81, 129, 132 to 136 and 144 to 154 and schedules 2, 3, 11 to 14 and 18 to 22, and to a Public Bill Committee in respect of the remainder (Standing Order No. 80B and Order, 11 April); to be printed (Bill 1) with explanatory notes (Bill 1-EN).
Investigatory Powers Bill
Presentation and resumption of proceedings (Standing Order No. 80A)
Secretary Theresa May, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary Philip Hammond, Secretary Michael Fallon, Secretary David Mundell, Secretary Theresa Villiers, the Attorney General, Robert Buckland and Mr John Hayes, presented a Bill to make provision about the interception of communications, equipment interference and the acquisition and retention of communications data, bulk personal datasets and other information; to make provision about the treatment of material held as a result of such interception, equipment interference or acquisition or retention; to establish the Investigatory Powers Commissioner and other Judicial Commissioners and make provision about them and other oversight arrangements; to make further provision about investigatory powers and national security; to amend sections 3 and 5 of the Intelligence Services Act 1994; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First and Second time without Question put (Standing Order No. 80A and Order, 15 March); to be considered tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 2) with explanatory notes (Bill 2-EN).
Policing and Crime Bill
Presentation and resumption of proceedings (Standing Order No. 80A)
Secretary Theresa May, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Michael Gove, Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Secretary Greg Clark, the Attorney General and Mike Penning, presented a Bill to make provision for collaboration between the emergency services; to make provision about the handling of police complaints and other matters relating to police conduct and to make further provision about the Independent Police Complaints Commission; to make provision for super-complaints about policing; to make provision for the investigation of concerns about policing raised by whistle-blowers; to make provision about police discipline; to make provision about police inspection; to make provision about the powers of police civilian staff and police volunteers; to remove the powers of the police to appoint traffic wardens; to enable provision to be made to alter police ranks; to make provision about the Police Federation; to make provision in connection with the replacement of the Association of Chief Police Officers with the National Police Chiefs’ Council; to make provision about the system for bail after arrest but before charge; to make provision to enable greater use of modern technology at police stations; to make other amendments to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984; to amend the powers of the police under the Mental Health Act 1983; to extend the powers of the police in relation to maritime enforcement; to make provision about deputy police and crime commissioners; to make provision to enable changes to the names of police areas; to make provision about the regulation of firearms; to make provision about the licensing of alcohol; to make provision about the implementation and enforcement of financial sanctions; to amend the Police Act 1996 to make further provision about police collaboration; to make provision about the powers of the National Crime Agency; to make provision for requiring arrested persons to provide details of nationality; to make provision for requiring defendants in criminal proceedings to provide details of nationality and other information; to make provision to combat the sexual exploitation of children; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First and Second time without Question put (Standing Order No. 80A and Order, 7 March); to be further considered tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 3) with explanatory notes (Bill 3-EN).
Debate on the Address
Transport and Local Infrastructure
(8 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)
With permission, before I introduce the debate I would like to make a brief statement about the loss of EgyptAir flight MS804. The aircraft, an Airbus 320, carrying 56 passengers and 10 members of crew between Paris and Cairo, disappeared from radar at approximately 1.30 am UK time, over the waters of the eastern Mediterranean. We understand that one of the passengers on board is a UK national and that consular staff are in contact with the family and are providing support. I know that the House will want to join me in saying that our thoughts are with the family and friends of all those on board. The Government are in touch with the Egyptian and French authorities and have offered full assistance. The air accidents investigation branch has offered to assist with the investigation in any way it can.
Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)
As chairman of the all-party Egypt group, I thank my right hon. Friend for the measures that he is seeking to take and associate myself and the group with the condolences that he has expressed. Will the Government seek to discuss with the French authorities in particular whether they are satisfied that the measures that they are taking to screen passengers and luggage at Paris meet the requirements that we in the United Kingdom feel are necessary, bearing in mind that, I believe, a number of people airside in Paris have had their authorisation revoked because of their association with Islamic extremism?
Mr McLoughlin
It is far too early to make any assumptions about what has happened, but of course we will want to look at all the issues and discuss them with the French authorities and others. I can assure my hon. Friend that we will take that further forward.
It is a pleasure to open this debate on Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech. I very much welcome the opportunity to talk about our plans for transport and infrastructure. Yesterday’s speech was all about building a stronger, more resilient, more modern economy that provides security for all people and opportunity at every stage of life—a country fit for the future, no matter the challenges it faces. If we have learned anything from the past decade, it is that we need to be better prepared and more responsible during the times of plenty so that we can weather the more difficult times.
In the previous Parliament, we had to take some tough economic decisions, but they were the right economic decisions. We earned a hard-fought recovery from recession and the financial crisis. In 2014, Britain was the fastest growing major advanced economy in the world. In 2015, we were the second fastest growing after the United States. In 2016, the employment rate has hit yet another record high. More families are benefiting from the security of regular wages, and unemployment has fallen once again. The deficit is down by two thirds as a share of GDP on 2010, and the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that it will be eliminated by 2019-20. That recovery is still going on today, and with the global economy slowing, it is even more vital that we stick to our long-term economic plan.
However, we do not just need a responsible fiscal strategy; we also need to invest for Britain’s future to create the capacity and space we need to grow. For decades, we have been slipping down the global infrastructure league tables. To take an example from recent history, let me pluck two years out of thin air—say, between 1997 and 2010. In those 13 years that I take at random, Britain slipped from seventh to 33rd in the world infrastructure league tables. As a result, we watched our roads grow increasingly congested, our railways become overcrowded, and our town centres choke with traffic. If we cannot move people or goods efficiently from one place to another, how can we expect businesses to invest in Britain? Building the infrastructure that Britain needs to compete is one of the defining political challenges of the age, so we have spent the past six years in government turning things around.
Mr McLoughlin
I could take a lesson from the Leader of the Opposition from yesterday, but I hope my speech will not be quite as bad as that, so I certainly give way to my hon. Friend.
Mark Spencer
I am grateful to the Secretary of State. Does he recognise that one of the barriers to gaining employment is sometimes the infrastructure needed to get from where one lives to where one wants to work? In that vein, does he recall standing on the platform at the former Edwinstowe railway station, and will he bring forward plans to fund the extension of the Robin Hood line in the very near future?
Mr McLoughlin
I well remember visiting my hon. Friend’s constituency with him just over 12 months ago, although I cannot remember what was happening at the time. I also well remember the fantastic result that he had at the subsequent general election and the way in which he has always pushed for more infrastructure in his area. I want us to work with him, the local authority and the local enterprise partnership to see what other systems of transport we can provide. I have to say that Nottingham has not done too badly in relation to infrastructure investment. We have seen a huge amount of investment in the new station and the dualling of the A457—[Interruption]—and I am very grateful that the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) was able to join me for its opening. [Interruption.] She says, “Thanks to a Labour county council.” Actually, those plans were progressed by a Conservative county council when it was in office and had not been progressed before at all, as she well knows.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
I suspect that the Secretary of State knows exactly what I am going to raise with him. He picked the years of 1997 to 2010 at random, and I will go along the same vein. In ’97, my predecessor said that the Mottram-Tintwistle bypass would definitely get built; in 2010, there was still no spade in the ground. We promised before the last election that we would build the Mottram relief road and the Glossop spur, and we are looking at extending that to deal with the Mottram and Tintwistle problem. Can he confirm to me and my residents that we are still determined to press on with that as fast as possible? We talk about growing the economy and growing jobs, and that project is vital for Glossop and the surrounding area.
Mr McLoughlin
My hon. Friend is my parliamentary neighbour: our constituencies share a border. He has made his case and I am pleased to confirm our road investment strategy, which reflects the points he has made. In fact, we want to go further. We have commissioned a report by Colin Matthews on better connectivity between Manchester and Sheffield, which would have a huge beneficial effect for my hon. Friend’s constituency.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr McLoughlin
I am slightly worried about the amount of time I am going to take and the number of Members who are seeking to intervene on me, but I cannot resist the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley).
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
I hope that the Secretary of State will comment on the woeful transport situation in Salford in my constituency. There are no plans to improve our key road network and the three motorways in my constituency, or for any substantial upgrades to our rail services through Eccles, Walkden and Patricroft. Our bus services are completely woeful. Traffic in Salford has increased by 3.6%—three times the Greater Manchester average. On Monday I will meet the Royal Horticultural Society to discuss the building of its fifth garden, which will bring 1 million visitors to Salford every year. How are they going to be brought in?
Mr McLoughlin
I will come on to say more about the work we are doing on road infrastructure and devolution to local authorities. Salford should be in a strong position to take advantage of some of those measures.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
May I also pick two years out of thin air, namely 2010 to 2020, which will mark a decade of absolutely zero investment in the M56 in Chester? The Government are refusing not only to upgrade it to a smart motorway, but to install police and Highways Agency cameras so that we may know what the problems are. What can my constituents look forward to in respect of the M56 upgrade?
Mr McLoughlin
I join the hon. Gentleman in saying that we need to spend more money on infrastructure, but we also have to make sure that we spend it properly and in a planned manner. As well as the extra investment—I will talk more about that—we will also look at those areas that we have not been able to cover, provided that we get the other sides of the economy in good order.
In the past six years, we have turned things around as far as infrastructure is concerned. We have climbed up the global infrastructure investment league table and are now in the top 10, ahead of France, Japan and Germany. Action is under way, with new wider roads, new faster trains and better urban transport. In the south-west there is the widening of the A30 and the A303, and there are brand new trains on order. In the north-west, Manchester Victoria station has been transformed, there are electric trains on the northern hub and motorways have been widened. In East Anglia, the A11 has opened and the Norwich northern distributor road is under construction. We are finally taking action on the A47, which is of great interest to my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning, who will wind up the debate, and on the A14. In the midlands, there has been a transformation at Birmingham New Street station, and the M1 has been partly converted to four-lane running. I could go on and mention Crossrail in London and other action right around the country, but time will not allow me to continue reciting my list of improvements.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for mentioning the south-west. The key issues for us are ensuring that we have an alternative railway line to that down to Dawlish and getting the dualling of the A303 so that we can have better transport and therefore deliver productivity, which is lamentable at present.
Mr McLoughlin
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The Labour party manifesto said that it would cancel some of our road programmes in the south-west. It mentioned them specifically and we will remind Labour of that time and again.
A Treasury report last year revealed that more than £400 billion-worth of infrastructure work is planned across the country. The biggest slice of that is for transport. Overall, transport infrastructure spending will rise by 50% during this Parliament. That means that we can invest £15 billion to maintain and improve our roads—the largest figure for a generation. There will be £6 billion for local highways maintenance, which is double the spending of the last Labour Government. We are also giving local authorities a multi-year funding settlement for the first time ever, with an additional £250 million to address local potholes.
We can contrast that with the last Labour Government’s record. Between 2001 and 2010, just 574 lane miles were added to our motorways; we are adding more than 1,300 miles. Labour electrified only 10 miles of rails of railway track; we have already electrified five times that amount, and anybody who goes on the Great Western line can see that there are many more to come very soon.
We are delivering the most ambitious rail modernisation programme since the Victorian era—a £40 billion investment. We have Crossrail, Thameslink, electrification and the intercity express programme. Hitachi—a company that has now moved its global headquarters to Britain—is building new carriages in new factories in the north-east, opened by the Prime Minister. Of course, there is High Speed 2, for which construction will start next year. This is a new start for infrastructure that will make Britain one of the leading transport investors.
The Gracious Speech also includes legislation to back the National Infrastructure Commission, whose influence is already being felt. Following its recommendations, we have invested an extra £300 million to improve northern transport connectivity, on top of the record £13 billion already committed across the north. We have given the green light to High Speed 3 between Leeds and Manchester and allocated an extra £80 million to help fund the development of Crossrail 2.
I am pleased to say that by the end of this Parliament, Crossrail 1—or, as we can now call it, the Elizabeth line—will be operating. It is the most significant investment in transport in London for many a generation, and it will make a welcome addition to the capital’s infrastructure.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I am a bit worried about Sheffield’s position in that list of schemes. The Secretary of State referred to HS3 as going from Manchester to Leeds, not connecting to Sheffield. Has that connection disappeared off the Government’s radar? Will he confirm that there is no truth in the stories that consideration is being given to abandoning the HS2 station in Sheffield, and that wherever that station might be, there will be one? Are we going to get HS3 as well?
Mr McLoughlin
I am coming on to HS2, and if the hon. Gentleman does not feel that I have answered his question after that, I will give way to him a little later. I hope he will be reassured by what I am about to say.
What I have described adds up to an ambitious pipeline of schemes that will not only free up capacity, boost freight and improve travel but help us to attract jobs, rebalance the economy and make us a more prosperous country. Of course, there will be disruption and inconvenience while some of that is happening, but when the work is done we will get the benefits, as at Reading station, the new Wakefield station or Nottingham station—infrastructure that will prepare Britain for the future.
That is what is behind the modern transport Bill, which will pave the way for the technologies and transport of tomorrow. We are already developing the charging infrastructure for electric and hybrid vehicles. Driverless cars and commercial space flights may seem like science fiction to some, but the economic potential of those new technologies is vast, and we are determined that Britain will benefit by helping to lead their development. Driverless cars will come under new legislation so that they can be insured under ordinary policies. The new laws will help autonomous and driverless vehicles become a real option for private buyers and fleets. The UK is already established as one of the best places in the world to research and develop those vehicles, just as we are leading the way on real-world testing to ensure that cars meet emissions standards, to clean up the air quality in our cities. Through the Bill we will strengthen our position as a leader in the intelligent mobility sector, which is growing by an estimated 16% a year and which some experts have said could be worth up to £900 billion worldwide by 2020.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Despite the initial gloom that descended on me when I heard my right hon. Friend mention HS2, may I say how delighted I am to hear about the growth in autonomous drive technology? I congratulate him and the Government on promoting it, because there is no question but that the United Kingdom leads the way in that area, working alongside Japan. Autonomous drive will potentially increase the density of traffic on our motorways fourfold, so let us stick with it. I will resist the temptation to say that we would not need HS2 if we had autonomous drive cars—that would be the wrong thing to say, I think.
Mr McLoughlin
Whenever my hon. Friend intervenes I am never sure whether I regard it as helpful or not— I think on that one the jury is still out.
The Bill will also allow for the construction of the first commercial spaceport. A full range of viable options have been put forward, and we support those bids. The Bill will create the right framework for the market to select what the best location will be. We will legislate to encourage British entrepreneurs to make the most of the commercial opportunities of space. That will form part of the Government’s wider support for the UK space sector, and is aimed at raising revenues from almost £12 billion to £40 billion by 2030—around 10% of the global space economy.
We are also preparing for HS2, which is the biggest infrastructure scheme that this country has seen for a generation. The transformation of rail travel across Britain will free up capacity on the rest of the network, and rebalance our economy and economic geography. Before a single track has been laid, the HS2 factor is already having an impact. Blue-chip companies such as Burberry have chosen to move to Leeds, and HSBC has relocated its retail banking headquarters from London to Birmingham, citing HS2 as a significant factor in that decision. We have seen ambitious regeneration plans around places such as Curzon Street in Birmingham and Old Oak Common. Cities such as Leeds, Manchester, Crewe and Sheffield are preparing for phase 2.
Michael Fabricant
My right hon. Friend mentioned Curzon Street, and given that I fear there will be HS2, may I put down a marker? He will know that there is a cross-city line from Lichfield Trent Valley to Redditch. If HS2 eventually links up directly with the continent and does not go via St Pancras, it would be hugely advantageous if there were a halt at Curzon Street on the cross-city line, because that rail line runs immediately adjacent to the HS2 terminus.
Mr McLoughlin
Although my hon. Friend was against HS2, I am pleased that he is already thinking about how it can benefit his area and region. I join him in his partial conversion, and I will take that as a helpful intervention.
HS2 means that businesses will be able to access new markets, drawing their employees from much wider catchment areas, and perhaps for the first time they will consider moving offices away from London. When HS2 construction begins next year, we will be building something much bigger than a new railway; we will be investing in the economic prosperity of the next half century or more, training a new generation of engineers, developing new skills for a new generation of apprentices, and rebalancing growth that for far too long has been concentrated in London and the south-east.
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
I am delighted to hear the right hon. Gentleman speak of such great plans for England, but what progress has he made with electrification to my constituency of Swansea East?
Mr McLoughlin
I am glad to say that I have made a lot more progress than was made in 13 years of the last Labour Government. To get to Swansea we must first get to Cardiff. We will get to Cardiff, and then we will get to Swansea, as has been promised—that work is on the way. The hon. Lady will travel on the Great Western line, and she will have seen all the work that has been going on. She will be a regular traveller through Reading, and she will have seen where £800 million has been spent on that scheme. We are doing a fair job in ensuring that her constituents, and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Byron Davies), who has often made the case for electrification to Swansea, will benefit from that.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Lilian Greenwood
Would the Transport Secretary like to confirm that electrification of the Great Western main line was set out by a former Transport Secretary in 2009, and will he also confirm exactly how delayed and over budget it is?
Mr McLoughlin
The hon. Lady says that electrification was set out in 2009. It might have been. [Hon. Members: “It was!”] One has to wonder why the Labour Government waited 12 years, until they knew they were about to lose office—in 2010—before coming out with plans. We are the ones who have carried them though. Yes, the costs have gone up—I very much regret that—but overall it is still a worthwhile project. Had it been started 15 or 20 years ago, it would not be costing what it is today. Anybody can lay out plans. In fact, Labour is sometimes very good at it, but it always fails on delivery and leaves it to us.
As I said, we will be firing up the north and the midlands to take advantage of this transformational project. After overwhelming support in the House, the Bill has now moved to another place, and I look forward to the Lords Select Committee. I am a strong supporter of remaining in the EU, but I am glad that I will no longer be able to get a high-speed train only from London to Paris or Brussels but that soon they will run to Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield. No matter how big the scheme, it is now vital for Britain’s national infrastructure. We will always remember that the vast majority of journeys are local, which means that local transport and infrastructure are no less crucial to preparing Britain for the future. In that regard, we back safer routes for more cycling and better buses.
We are devolving power to our cities and regions to give communities a much bigger stake in local planning. Transport is just one aspect of that. As we heard yesterday, the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill will give communities a much stronger voice and make the local planning process clearer, easier and quicker so as to deliver local infrastructure and support our ambition to build 1 million new homes, while protecting the areas we value the most, such as the green belt. Our reforms have already resulted in councils granting planning applications for more than 250,000 homes in the past year.
But our plans go much further. We want to become a country where everybody who works hard can have their own home, so the Gracious Speech also featured the local jobs and growth Bill, which will allow local authorities to retain 100% of local taxes to spend on local services by the end of the Parliament. That will be worth an extra £13 billion from business rates. Councils have called for more fiscal autonomy; now they are getting it—a real commitment from central Government, real devolution and real self-sufficiency for regions across England. It is arguably the biggest change to local government finance for a generation. The Bill will give authorities the power to cut business rates, boost enterprise and grow their local economies. As announced in the Budget, we will pilot the new system in Greater Manchester and Liverpool and increase the share retained in London.
It is little wonder that Labour Members are giving up on opposition and seeking new roles in life. I offer the shadow Home Secretary my best wishes for his mayoral nomination bid. He obviously does not think he is going to be Home Secretary after the next general election, and nor do I.
Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)
I am proud of this Conservative majority Government for looking at whole issues when it comes to serving our local communities, such as on infrastructure and business rates retention. Where we have no local plans, the Government are giving communities an opportunity to intervene and draw more up. Almost 50% of commuting in my area is out of Eastleigh, and standing traffic and air pollution are a big problem.
Mr McLoughlin
I know how important transport infrastructure and connectivity are in my hon. Friend’s constituency—we have discussed them many times—and I hope that our transport policies, such as those I have set out today, will help bring about some of the changes she wants.
Yesterday illustrated just how we are devolving power for local transport services. The bus services Bill will provide new powers for local authorities to improve bus services and increase passenger numbers. It will deliver for passengers, local authorities and bus companies, all working in partnership together to improve services. We will replace the disastrous quality contract scheme pioneered when Labour was in office—a failed theory that has never been successfully applied over the past 16 years.
Stronger partnerships will allow local authorities to agree a new set of standards for bus services, including branding, ticketing and how often buses run. Passengers want to know when their next bus is going to turn up and how much it is going to cost, so the Bill will mandate the release of fares, punctuality, routes and real-time bus location information. This will help the development of more transport apps, as it has already done in London, right across the country. There will be new journey planners and other innovative products to help passengers get the most out of their buses. This is about delivering for customers and empowering local communities.
Ben Howlett
My right hon. Friend is incredibly generous in giving way. Will he confirm that the buses Bill will enable communities in devolved areas such as mine in the west of England to integrate smartcard ticketing, which will end up encouraging more people to use buses for less?
Mr McLoughlin
I certainly want to see more use of smart ticketing, and I think the bus companies are now addressing the issue. There will be criteria on whether local authorities can apply for the franchising. We will need to see whether my hon. Friend’s area lives up to those priorities.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Andrew Gwynne
In one direction only! I would also quite like to have a train service that goes into Manchester, but my question is about smart ticketing. Will the right hon. Gentleman knock some common sense into the transport planners who are trying to reinvent the wheel? We have had a bit of a farce in Greater Manchester, where many millions of pounds have been spent on trying to develop the technology of the “get me there” card, when we all already have some technology for that in our own pockets. It is called a contactless card. Why do we have to reinvent the wheel? Why can we not just use the technology that exists?
Mr McLoughlin
The hon. Gentleman talks about the contactless card, and I agree with him that there are such new technologies. That is a fairly new technology, and people in London see it used regularly nowadays. These are the areas on which we should be moving further forward, and I hope we will be able to make that happen.
This is all about delivering for customers and empowering local communities. New powers to franchise services will be available to combined authorities with directly elected mayors, just as they are in London, and private operators will be able to compete through the franchising system. Together, these measures demonstrate the Government’s ambition to deliver transport that helps the public to get around and get about.
The coalition Government and this one nation Conservative Government have a record to be proud of: investment up; projects under way; journeys getting easier; backing growth, jobs and new technology; helping local people get the homes and the infrastructure they need; striking a fairer deal for local government; giving devolution to local regions; and making Britain a leader. A stronger economy is at the heart of the Gracious Speech, and transport infrastructure is playing its part.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I echo the sentiments of the Transport Secretary on the loss of air flight MS804 to Egypt. Our thoughts are with the family and friends of the passengers and crew while we await the outcome of the investigations that are now under way.
Although we are not debating the Queen’s Speech that I would have wanted, it is fitting to start these debates on transport. The challenges facing this country’s transport networks are profound, and there are some important cross-party points of agreement for meeting them. I welcome the Transport Secretary to his place, but I must point out that his speech was a timely reminder of the need for Ministers to mind the gap between their rhetoric and reality.
The Secretary of State said that the Government were delivering investment, but let us look at the real Conservative record. We see bus and rail fares up by a quarter, billions cancelled from road investment schemes, new projects under threat, the hard shoulder stripped from the motorways, the wheels falling off the “cycling revolution”, a £12 billion maintenance backlog on our local roads, and rail punctuality at its worst for a decade—and, of course, the Government promised a northern powerhouse but inflicted a northern power cut instead.
That said, we welcome the Government’s stated intention to introduce new local transport powers, extending to the entire country the ability to introduce the successful models employed in the capital. I am sure that the whole House will want to extend its congratulations to Sadiq Khan, the former Member of Parliament for Tooting, who is now the Labour Mayor of London. It is, perhaps, a little-known fact that the new Mayor is the son of a bus driver. The proposal in the bus services Bill to extend London-style bus powers to the rest of the country is long overdue, and it is possibly no coincidence that the Transport Secretary did not even mention buses until 27 minutes into his speech. These plans could, of course, have been made in the last Parliament, but Ministers consistently opposed any proposals for the tendering of bus services to reverse the disastrous consequences of the Transport Act 1985.
Mr McLoughlin
I join the hon. Lady in congratulating Sadiq Khan on his election. May I ask whether she agrees with what he said in 2009, when he was a Transport Minister? He said then:
“one reason we are able to invest record sums in our railway service is the revenues that the franchises bring in and the premiums that they pay”.—[Official Report, 1 July 2009; Vol. 495, c. 430.]
Lilian Greenwood
I was very pleased that there was record investment in our railways under the last Labour Government. There are so many things that the Transport Secretary forgets to talk about. Every week I travel up to the midlands on the midland main line via St Pancras railway station; it has been transformed, and was transformed under a Labour Government, but he never mentions that.
I welcome the Transport Secretary’s damascene conversion to the cause of bus regulation, which might be described as a screeching U-turn. However, as always with this Government, the devil will be in the detail. We have yet to see the text of the bus services Bill, and it is a shame that it was not published in time for today’s debate. I remind Conservative Members that last year’s Queen’s Speech also promised a buses Bill. Madam Deputy Speaker, you wait five years for a Conservative Queen’s Speech that mentions buses, and then two come along at once—even if they are running late. We will subject the Bill to close scrutiny. It is vital for it to provide a legal framework that protects local authorities from eye-watering compensation claims, and to safeguard working conditions.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend has mentioned local authorities. If she listened carefully to the Queen’s Speech, she will know that Her Majesty said that the powers in the buses Bill would be extended only to parts of England with directly elected mayors. Does she think that the powers in the Bill, which we expect to be published soon, should extend to all parts of England, whether or not they have mayoral models?
Lilian Greenwood
The Bill must address the decline in rural bus services, which have suffered some of the worst cuts and highest fare rises in the country, but, as my hon. Friend says, we also need to ensure that those powers are available to any area that wants them. I welcome the concession the Transport Secretary has made. According to the Queen’s Speech briefing, which was published yesterday, the Bill will allow communities without directly elected mayors to apply for contracting powers. It is, however, unclear why those powers should remain in the gift of the Department. Both the Transport Secretary and I represent areas that have, so far, not agreed a devolution deal. Perhaps the right hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (Mr McLoughlin) can explain why those powers are good enough for Manchester, but might not be good enough for Matlock.
The Queen’s Speech also contained the announcement of what the Government call their modern transport Bill, although, given that the Minister of State—who, sadly, is not present today—drives a 126-year-old car and is a noted steam engine enthusiast, perhaps we should check their definition of “modern transport”.
As ever, the Government’s announcement is long on statements of intent, but short on details. The Queen’s Speech briefing said that the law on drones would be reformed, but, in answers to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), the Government have consistently said that the EU is leading in the area. It is unacceptable that Ministers seem to be waiting for a serious drone strike to occur before taking action: it is vital that we do not wait for an accident to happen.
Electric cars will play a crucial role in driving down emissions, but we are playing catch-up, because the Government failed to deliver their promise in the coalition agreement to establish a national charging network. We welcome the development of personal autonomous vehicles. They could prove to be a boon for our car manufacturing industry, and I know that they are eagerly anticipated by many disabled people. However, given that insurance premiums have risen by 20% over the last year, the Government’s proposal to insure driverless cars on the same basis as existing policies may not offer much reassurance to prospective buyers. That said, the focus on driverless cars is, perhaps, understandable, given the Government’s tendency to run on autopilot.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
As my hon. Friend is talking about developments in technology, may I ask whether she agrees that the bus services Bill provides an opportunity for all new buses to be made accessible to people with sight loss? Two million people would greatly appreciate talking buses, with “next stop” and “final destination” announcements.
Lilian Greenwood
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the lack of accessibility on buses. A number of London buses provide audio-visual announcements, but there are very few examples outside London, and that should be addressed.
The Minister of State has said that the United Kingdom should adopt a “light touch” approach to driverless car development, but we need to ensure that the risks have been fully analysed. It is important that Ministers do not move—to coin a phrase—too far and too fast. It should also be said, however, that that is just about the only area in which the Government could be accused of acting too quickly.
Michael Fabricant
Does the hon. Lady not accept that Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes and BMW have all welcomed the Government’s initiatives to ensure that driverless, or autonomous, cars are tested on British roads? They see Britain as a leader.
Lilian Greenwood
As I have said, I believe that the proposal offers a great opportunity to our excellent automotive industry. However, we need to be aware of potential technological difficulties, and of the safety implications.
The Transport Secretary referred to supporting the growing space industry by constructing the UK’s first space port. I should say, in fairness to the right hon. Gentleman, that it is impressive that he can put a rocket into space, although he cannot fix our pothole-ridden roads.
We also need to consider the Bills that were not announced yesterday. The Department has had two years in which to respond to the Law Commission’s report on taxis and private hire vehicles. The rise of Uber and other app-based services makes the need for reform all the more urgent. During yesterday’s debate, the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) said that personal safety on transport services was women’s highest priority, and there can be no excuse for the delay in reforming licensing and regulation in that regard.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend will know that, on 4 May, I led an Adjournment debate on precisely that issue. Is she as concerned as I am that some taxi licensing authorities are effectively handing out licences to taxi drivers throughout the country who have been legitimately refused licences by their own local authorities?
Lilian Greenwood
As my hon. Friend will know, there are real concerns about taxi licensing and regulation, which were carefully addressed in the Law Commission’s report. That is why it is so disappointing that the Government have yet to respond properly to the report, and to take action.
Ministers have also had nearly three years in which to respond to the Law Commission’s recommendations on reforming level crossings, which are the single greatest cause of risk on the railways. In the Department’s level crossing reform action plan—I will refrain from using its acronym—legislation was planned for this year, but that, too, failed to make the Queen’s Speech. It is extremely disappointing that such safety-critical legislation is not being treated as a priority by the Government.
Turning to the wider Conservative record on transport, time and time again promises are broken, investment is delayed and the interests of passengers and road users are not put first. Of course, there was a line to please the Chancellor in the Queen’s Speech, which was that the
“Government will continue to support the development of a Northern Powerhouse.”
We can tell that the Chancellor is a wallpaper salesman—these days, he spends most of his time papering over the cracks.
Let us look at the Government’s real record on transport in the north. Rail spending in the north-west has fallen from £97 to £93 per head. In the north-east, it has fallen from £59 to £52 per head—less than half the national average. Funding for bus services in Yorkshire and Humber is down 31%. Traffic police numbers have fallen by over 10% across the north. Shamefully, Ministers hiked rail fares on northern commuter routes by up to 162%. They also allowed modern trans-Pennine trains to be transferred from the north to the south, costing taxpayers £20 million.
The Transport Secretary initially wanted to call his railway pledges the “rail investment plan”, until a civil servant pointed out that that would be shortened to RIP. Delays to electrification were shamefully covered up before the election and confessed to only once the ballot boxes had closed.
There are real concerns that promised road investment could suffer the same fate. Highways England has publicly discussed
“Challenges on the current RIS”—
the road investment strategy—
“construction programme, including the level of uncertainty about projects due to begin in the final year and the potential knock on effect on funding for RIS2”.
Those plans include the trans-Pennine road tunnel and spending on the existing A66 and A69 trans-Pennine links and the M60. It is clear that we cannot trust the Tories on roads, rail or local transport.
Northern cities are succeeding under Labour leadership despite the Government.
Mr Betts
There are 200 workers in Sheffield who will have listened with incredulity when the Transport Secretary said that HS2—he said it will benefit Sheffield, and I clearly hope it does—should be a reason for companies to look at transferring jobs out of London to northern cities. Yet, in a reversal of that process, the Business Secretary is currently transferring 200 jobs from Sheffield down to London—down the midland main line instead of back up the HS2 line. How will workers in Sheffield feel about the complete contradiction between the Transport Secretary and his colleague in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills?
Lilian Greenwood
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and it is no surprise that people in the city of Sheffield reject this Government completely.
The north was a powerhouse long before the Chancellor arrived, and it will be a powerhouse long after he has gone. On HS2, the Government’s delivery has been anything other than high speed. A decision on the route of phase 2 has been delayed by two years. I would like to remind Ministers of a Conservative party press release issued in Yorkshire on 21 April 2015. They should not worry—it is not about campaign bus expenses. No questions from local media were allowed, and it is not difficult to see why. The press release said:
“Phase Two of HS2 will also start construction from the northern ends, with the Leeds to Sheffield Meadowhall section made a priority to open even before the line as a whole opens.”
Those plans to build HS2 from the north have already been dropped—if they ever existed. Once again, we are faced with a Conservative election promise that has been broken.
Over the last fortnight, it has been reported that phase 2 is under review and that prominent critics of HS2 have been invited into the Treasury to set out the case against the project. Stations at Sheffield and Manchester airport could also be dropped, along with the Handsacre link—which would allow high-speed trains to run to Stoke and Stafford—even though the Secretary of State has given specific assurances in the House on the link’s future.
There are specific questions that the Government must still answer. If those reports have no basis, why did the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise say on Sunday:
“We need to...sort this out or Sheffield might miss”
out on HS2? Has what the Government call the “appropriate third-party funding contribution”, which the Transport Secretary said Manchester Airport station was dependent on, been agreed?
Two months ago, the House voted overwhelmingly in favour of HS2 on a specific understanding of the project. Of course costs must be kept under control, but it would be totally unacceptable if the plans for high-speed rail in the midlands and the north were downgraded by some unaccountable and secretive review.
Let us not forget the Government’s record—if it can be called that—on aviation. In 2009 the Prime Minister famously said:
“The third runway at Heathrow is not going ahead, no ifs, no buts.”
By last July, that had morphed into:
“The guarantee that I can give...is that a decision will be made by the end of the year.”—[Official Report, 1 July 2015; Vol. 597, c. 1473.]
It is difficult to take the latest pledge to report by this summer seriously, but perhaps the Government will surprise us.
While Ministers are failing to deliver on national transport schemes, local services are being severely squeezed. More than 2,400 bus routes have been downgraded or cut altogether. The Rail Minister said at Christmas:
“Our plan for passengers is improving journeys for everyone”,
but the reality is that commuters are being priced off buses and trains, and some season tickets cost £2,000 more than in 2010. Punctuality is at its worst in a decade—worse than when the network was still recovering from the Hatfield disaster. Ministers are considering further cuts to Network Rail’s maintenance plans.
The pothole crisis on local roads gets worse by the day, after local upkeep budgets fell by 27% in real terms. Even on walking and cycling—an area where the Prime Minister has a personal interest—I am worried that Ministers might have misinterpreted their brief. That can be the only explanation for publishing a cycling and walking investment strategy that is so utterly pedestrian. Targets for increasing walking journeys have been inexplicably dropped. I hope the Secretary of State will take advantage of national walking month to reverse that decision.
A year ago the Prime Minister said it was his “aim to increase spending” on cycling further, to £10 a head. However, analysis of spending figures obtained by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) shows that Government funding for cycling is due to fall to just 72p per head outside London. It is clear that the Government have produced a cycling and walking investment strategy with no investment, and the promise to raise spending on cycling has been broken.
Mr McLoughlin
One of the problems of going first and not being able to follow is that the hon. Lady is asking a number of questions that I am unable to answer. However, I find it rather odd that she talks about capital investment, when David Miliband said in the 2010 general election:
“we’re going to halve the share of national income going to capital spending”—
that was on Radio 5 Live in July 2010. That was what the Labour party’s plans were. Our plans have been to massively increase investment in public transport and transport across the piece.
Lilian Greenwood
Would it not make a change if the Secretary of State actually took some responsibility in this place for the past six years and for the Government’s failings?
Across the country, the Government are failing to deliver the investment we need and to support local, sustainable transport. However, there can be no doubt that the situation would be even worse if we left the European Union. We are on the verge of making a decision that will affect countless generations. Europe has made real improvements to the quality of journeys in the UK and, from it, to the continent and beyond.
Although we need urgently to move to real-world testing, overall emissions from new vehicles have been reduced by up to 95% in the last few years alone, thanks to European standards. The EU is also a vital source of funding for national and local projects. Whether it is Crossrail, new intercity express programme trains or major ports upgrades, there is often European funding behind the transport improvements we desperately need.
If we voted to leave, airlines would lose their right to access the American market, spelling chaos for jobs in the aviation industry. Some of our largest car and train manufacturers have made it clear that inward investment and jobs depend on access to the single market.
The transport case for staying in the EU is overwhelming, as is the case in other policy areas. I hope that when we plan transport services over the coming decades, we do so on the basis of a renewed mandate for our membership of the European Union.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. Before I call the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (William Wragg), I want to point out that there are 18 Members wishing to speak in this debate. That works out to roughly 10 minutes each, so if everybody takes about 10 minutes, everybody will get in. That, of course, excludes the SNP spokesperson.
William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Humble Address in response to Her Majesty’s most Gracious Speech. The programme of government for the upcoming Session contains many welcome measures. My constituents will particularly welcome the universal service obligation for internet providers, to be brought in through the digital economy Bill, which will give every UK household the legal right to an affordable, fast broadband connection, with minimum guaranteed connection speeds. That is something for which I have campaigned in my constituency for some years, and it formed one of my pledges to residents at the general election. The more rural areas of my constituency, including Mellor, Strines and Marple Bridge, will, I hope, particularly welcome the policy, because many of those who live there have had to endure second-rate internet connection services for far too long.
I am pleased that the introduction of the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill will provide an opportunity to give local communities more power to control and shape their own areas. As vice chair of the all-party group for civic societies, I am proud of the diligent work undertaken by members of civic societies across the country, including the one in Marple, of which I am a member. Let me be clear. Neighbourhood planning is not about nimbyism. We are not against development; indeed, I praise Her Majesty’s Government’s ambition for house building. Neighbourhood planning is about working constructively with communities, determining sites for appropriate development and providing the infrastructure necessary to make it viable. Neighbourhood planning is a way to bring communities on board with developers and therefore get more built.
A case in point is Marple’s neighbourhood forum, which was recently established in order to develop a neighbourhood plan. I am sure that other hon. Members will have similar experiences in their constituencies. Neighbourhood planning is a way of bringing about collaboration, but such plans need to be assured of legal weight. Although I regret that the Government were unable to accept the amendment from the Lords to the Housing and Planning Act 2016 on the community right of appeal—an amendment with which many Conservative Members had sympathy—I hope that the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill will go much of the way to achieving the same aim.
It will come as no surprise that I welcome the education Bill, and I welcome the Government’s goal of continuing to increase the number and quality of academy schools in the coming years. Importantly, however, I welcome the fact that that will no longer be done on a compulsory basis, as was proposed previously, following a re-think from the Government. I extend my thanks to the Secretary of State for Education for taking the time to listen to my genuine concerns, and those of other colleagues, about the academies programme, and for that important change of tack. I look forward to working with her and others to progress the Bill. It also includes the vital new national funding formula for schools, which will end the entrenched disparities in school funding and bring about fairness for all pupils.
On a related note, I was pleased to hear that measures will be introduced to strengthen social services for children in care, and to increase the number and speed of adoptions. I say gently that in desiring greater speed, we should be careful not to sacrifice the suitability of placements. As the intention of adoptions is to find permanent, stable and loving homes for children, a rushed process could lead to harm in the long term if the system becomes overly streamlined.
The children and social work Bill will improve social work provision through better training and standards for social workers. It will mean that children leaving care will be made aware of the ongoing services that they are entitled to, which include access to a personal adviser until the age of 25. That is particularly welcome, only weeks after a striking report by the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change on the stark disparities in mental healthcare provision for looked-after children.
Mental health problems are also particularly prevalent among the prison population, and mental health care and services for prisoners are not up to the standard they should be. I hope that the Government will put a particular focus on improving that as they work to build new reforming prisons.
The Queen’s Speech contained welcome plans to introduce the NHS overseas visitors charging Bill, under which overseas visitors and migrants will be charged for using NHS services to which they are not entitled. Tighter residency rules will mean that fewer visitors from the EU and the EEA will be able to access free healthcare. In the NHS, we have one of the greatest and most envied healthcare systems in the world, but that envy has led to the NHS becoming a victim of its own success. We have the charade of health tourism, where overseas visitors come to the UK to benefit from our excellent NHS services without making a contribution and the British taxpayer picks up the bill.
Health tourism has been particularly prevalent among migrants and visitors from the EU, who have abused the European healthcare insurance scheme for far too long. The hundreds of thousands of overseas migrants and visitors treated in Britain each year have put a strain on our health service. Although many Britons receive treatment overseas, they are far fewer in number than those who come here. Health tourism accounts for a net drain on our NHS, and I am pleased that a new Bill will allow us to recover the cost of treating overseas visitors and re-invest it in the NHS.
Of course, another way in which we could provide a huge boost to our NHS would be to stop sending £350 million every week to the EU—I fear I may be in some disagreement with my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench about this—and divert some of it back into the NHS. [Interruption.] I am reliably informed that I am also in disagreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), and perhaps with quite a number of my colleagues. Our EU contributions are enough to build a new, fully-staffed NHS hospital every week.
That is not the only way in which the EU is threatening our NHS. This is something that, unfortunately, the Gracious Speech did not address. Under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which the EU is determined to pass, the UK Government and the NHS may face legal challenge from foreign corporations if we refuse to put some of our public services, including the NHS, out to tender for privatisation. TTIP could, in effect, force the partial privatisation of the NHS, and there would be nothing the UK Government or the British people could do about it if we remained a member of the European Union. Conservative Members must not be blind to that issue or leave it to other parties to make the case. The simplest and surest way to protect the NHS from the unbearable strain of visitor cost and forced privatisation, and to save enough money to provide a new hospital every week, would be for Britain to vote to leave and take back control on 23 June.
Mr Betts
Has the hon. Gentleman thought about the fact that there will be, presumably, at some stage a trade agreement between the European Union and the United States, and that if we want to protect ourselves from unintended consequences such as those that he mentions, it is best to argue the case as part of the negotiations, rather than having to stay on the outside and accept the agreement, whatever it contains, at the end of the negotiations?
William Wragg
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I gently say to him that if such an agreement brought with it the risk of sacrificing our sovereignty and the Government’s ability to determine public policy in the process of international tribunals determining matters between Governments and companies, I would, quite frankly, accept President Obama’s offer to be at the back of the queue.
I was delighted to hear in the Queen’s Speech that the Government will continue to strengthen our national security through investment in our armed forces, a commitment to the armed forces covenant and, vitally, a promise to fulfil our NATO commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence. Let us not forget that it is, first and foremost, our work and friendship with allies through NATO, not through the European Union, which maintains our security on the international stage. The world is a turbulent place, but our security and defence forces keep us safe and strong, and it is right that the Queen’s Speech recognises and protects that.
Now is not just the time for strengthening our national defences. The British people will soon need to show the strength of their convictions and not blink in the face of fear. I hope that they will do the right thing for Britain and vote next month to leave the European Union, and thereby free us to take control of our own country and to forge new and prosperous relationships with partners all around the world, not just those on our doorstep.
However, I am heartened by Her Majesty’s most Gracious Speech, because it lays out a positive programme for government for the next year. It means that after the referendum vote on 23 June, I am confident that on 24 June we will have a strong Conservative majority Government who will lead us, united, to a Britain brighter and better, both at home and abroad.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
May I associate the SNP group with the comments made by Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State about the EgyptAir incident?
I will focus on three themes in my speech: first, the measures that we in the SNP welcome, at least in their outline descriptions; secondly, the areas in which we think that other options and measures could have been and, indeed, should be incorporated—it is never too late for Ministers to pay heed to and take forward such ideas, so I hope they are listening carefully—and, thirdly, the actions, examples and lessons to be learned if we are to take the steps required to deliver for the people of the nations of the UK.
First, I am sure the Secretary of State will join me in welcoming Fergus Ewing MSP to his new position as Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Connectivity, and Humza Yousaf MSP to his new position as Minister for Transport and the Islands. I want to put on record my thanks to the former Cabinet Secretary Keith Brown MSP and the former Minister Derek Mackay for their work, some of which I will mention. They are both now performing new roles in the Scottish Government Cabinet, and I am sure that UK Government Ministers agree that they worked positively with them during their time in office.
Mr McLoughlin
May I echo what the hon. Gentleman has said? I heard about the new appointments just before I came into the Chamber. I very much hope that we can work together positively on a number of issues that affect both Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
Drew Hendry
I am sure that where there is a progressive movement, that will be the case.
I want to start with those areas on which there is common purpose, and there are some innovative transport measures—or at least promises of them. That said, if such measures are to gain support, the rhetoric will need to be followed by an inclusive vision that benefits all the nations of the UK. An area where that is not yet clear is investment in further research on autonomous vehicles. Obviously, safety implications and their deployment will need to be considered.
Such investment is welcome, but it will be meaningless to most of the UK nations if it is not supported by the necessary investment and innovation to deliver a truly universal mobile communications network. Let us not yet again take an approach through which benefits are seen only in some urban areas of the UK. Future network licensing deals should include a requirement, in the conditions of the contracts, for rural areas to be prioritised. These areas all across the nations of the UK have suffered for decades because of ill-thought strategy and, indeed, ignorance about the needs of those outside the largest cities.
Linked closely to that is the need for broadband infrastructure. The SNP has campaigned for a universal service obligation for broadband, so we are pleased that that will be included in the digital economy Bill. The Scottish Government are committed to extending superfast broadband to 100% of premises—all businesses and homes. When I recently asked the Leader of the House in the Chamber to match that ambition, he said that he did not know how it could be done. I hope that the UK Government have, in the past few weeks, figured this out and that they will roll out action to match their words. If they do, it will indeed be positive news.
Putting the UK National Infrastructure Commission on a statutory basis is also welcome, but only if it looks beyond the old horizons and prioritises infrastructure for all the nations of the UK. To achieve that, we need more ambition on the development and deployment of electric vehicle infrastructure, so I agree with the remarks of the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) about that. That and investment in autonomous vehicles must go hand in hand. It will be good if that happens, but let us see the detail because, once again, the Government should demonstrate that that matches the ambition of what they are saying.
We are entering a point in our development where, counter-intuitively, roads might actually provide another vision for the future of green transport, and I would like such an opportunity to be explored further by the UK Government. On green travel—indeed, on greener travel measures in general—we are seeking more ambition from the UK Government.
On active travel, we welcome the fact that the recent Budget did not remove salary sacrifice schemes—that will aid the promotion of cycling—but there is a huge opportunity for further investment in cycling, which would lead to healthier outcomes for people and healthy economic benefits. I urge Ministers to reconsider the lack of a strategic UK Government commitment to accelerating cycling infrastructure. Where is the promised five-year strategy and why, given the stated objectives in the cycling and walking investment strategy, is that not a headline at this time? We need greater vision, greater urgency and proof that words are equal to a true commitment.
The SNP Scottish Government are investing £l billion annually in public transport and other sustainable transport options to encourage people to get out of their cars. Since 2011, Scotland has built 190 km of cycling and walking paths to match the commitment to healthier lives for the people of Scotland, where the number of people cycling has increased by about a third since 2003.
When the Secretary of State mentioned HS2, he said, if I am quoting him correctly, that he looks forward to it going to Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester. Ominously, however, he omitted Scotland from that list. The Scottish Government have committed to working in partnership with the UK Government on HS2, but the UK Government must demonstrate their commitment. Will he now confirm that that is correct and commit to the line going to Scotland, with the full investment needed?
HS2 is not the only possibility for cross-border rail development. The Borders rail link—a programme delivered on time and under budget by the Scottish Government—is now open for investigation for an extension all the way to Carlisle. The Scottish Government have said that they will support a feasibility study. Will the UK Government match that ambition by agreeing to consider whether that can be realised for the people on the borders? I hope so.
On investment in green measures, there is a future for green travel for surface users—through active travel and electric developments in relation to road and rail, especially if powered by renewable sources—but there remains no vision from the UK Government on alternative fuels for air travel. Once again, the UK is stuck in the vapour trail on this issue. Oslo has already become the world’s first airport to offer sustainable biofuels to all airlines—Lufthansa, SAS and KLM have already signed up to that—but there is no such commitment in the UK. The UK Government can change that, and I again urge Ministers to include aviation in the renewable transport fuels obligation.
We welcome the UK Government’s commitment to do more work on a UK airspace strategy. Such a commitment is overdue, and we ask that action in this area is accelerated to address the deficit of more than 40 years. If we continue to ignore that, there will be an increased risk of delays, higher carbon use and a damaging impact on commerce. Tackling this, and coming into line with the European Commission’s single European sky initiative, offers an opportunity to boost the UK economy and benefit all the UK nations.
Speaking of things up in the air, although nobody will be shocked by the lack of a commitment to deciding on airport expansion, it remains the jumbo in the room. I know that our frustration is actually shared by Government Ministers. I am certain that, freed from internal pressures, they would have made a decision by now, but they remain paralysed by orders arising from internal party politics.
Madam Deputy Speaker, you were in the Chair on the occasion when I overran the two minutes for my response to a statement on yet another delay on airport expansion, because I was trying to list the broken promises in relation to the many dates by which Ministers and, indeed, the Prime Minister had promised there would be a full and final decision. Such promises have been broken over and over, but when someone hears that long catalogue of missed opportunities for leadership, the frustration and anger caused by these delays immediately becomes understandable. You will be glad to know that, rather than repeat that exercise, I will just quote the Secretary of State’s words from way back in October 2012. He said:
“in the south east the runways are filling up. And the jets are circling in our skies. That’s hitting our prosperity. It’s bad for the environment. It’s putting off investors. It’s costing jobs. And it’s holding Britain back.”
He was right, but that was nearly five years ago. In spite of those sage words, the runways are now fuller, more jets are circling, the environment continues to be damaged and investors have indeed been put off. Who knows how many jobs that has cost?
Mr McLoughlin
Given that the hon. Gentleman has now had time to study the Davies report and that he is so clear in his own mind, will he tell us which option he prefers?
Drew Hendry
I would be delighted if the Secretary of State and the UK Government wanted to hand control of UK infrastructure development to the SNP, because as with the Borders rail link and the Queensferry crossing, we deliver things on time and under budget. By all means, give us the decision and we will make the choice.
Let me come on to why the decision is important for Scotland. More than 90% of international visitors to Scotland travel by air. More than a third use Heathrow as a hub and, if that is combined with Gatwick, I reckon that around half our international visitors travel through the south-east. It is not just about tourism; it is the £5 billion a year whisky industry and the £500 million salmon industry, and other shellfish and exports need to get to international markets. All the time the decision is pushed out and fudged, it harms the Scottish economy.
Another opportunity is open to the UK Government to assist not just Scotland but many other parts of the UK by bringing forward a commitment for public service obligations for linking regional airports point to point with the London hubs. That straightforward measure would point to a much more enlightened and inclusive air transport strategy. Market forces alone cannot provide fairness across all the regions and nations of the UK, and a strategic choice is needed.
We also support the establishment of the UK spaceport, which is an exciting opportunity.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
On my behalf, will my hon. Friend ask the Secretary of State to clarify his comments about this issue? I wanted to intervene on him, but unfortunately he did not hear me. He said that it would be up to market forces to decide the location of the spaceport. We have had discussions in this place about awarding a single licence to a UK spaceport, but multiple licences would be needed, because every vehicle has to be licensed. I hope that the Secretary of State will clarify whether he will let the market make the decision and if it will be possible to have multiple spaceports?
Drew Hendry
That is a very important point, and I am delighted to underline it and to ask the Secretary of State to respond. We see this development as having great possibilities and we would anticipate that, when making their decision, the UK Government will fully appreciate the excellent potential sites in Scotland. We encourage the UK Government to work with the Scottish Government, Scottish local authorities and our public agencies to realise this potential in Scotland.
We would also welcome more detail on developing a genuine aerospace strategy, which must include supporting the industry to address the skills gap in the engineering sector. I urge Ministers to consider some of the work on gender-balance issues. Not long ago in the Chamber I quoted Bridget Day, the deputy director of the national aerospace programme with more than 40 years’ experience. She has highlighted her struggles as a woman in the industry. Only 11% of engineers are women, even though more than 20% of graduates are women. That is the lowest percentage of female employment in the sector across Europe.
There are also apprentice opportunities in shipping—transport should include references to shipping. The Scottish Government worked tirelessly, as they did on the Scottish steel issue, to save the iconic Ferguson shipyard, which is vital to providing vessels and employment for the future. Of course, this place has decided to delay the BAE order for the Govan and Scotstoun yards with the review of shipbuilding. That delay threatens jobs in Scotland and I hope that Ministers will take that message back to the Cabinet and get the Treasury to release the brakes on that development.
On the subject of shipping, we also have an opportunity to put right the dangerous deficit that has been allowed to continue around the seas of the UK, nowhere more strikingly than on the west coast of Scotland. My right hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) has highlighted on many occasions the dangers and folly of removing maritime patrol aircraft from Scotland, but when the removal of one of Scotland’s two emergency towing vessels and the ongoing uncertainty over the remaining tug are added to that, it is easy to see why Ministers are facing calls from every quarter to commit to permanently securing the remaining vessel and reinstating the second. Those vessels, if deployed sensibly, can assist drifting ships, therefore preventing them from running aground, and head off disaster, protecting human lives and fragile environments. They are called emergency towing vessels for a simple reason: they are available for emergencies, such as when they were called in to rescue one of the UK’s nuclear submarines that had run aground off Skye. Their retention and reinstatement has been strongly urged by everyone who understands the risks from the seas around Scotland—the marine industry, marine unions, including Nautilus, every highlands and islands MP and MSP, local authorities and agencies. They have all pointed out that we cannot wait for a disaster to happen before there is a reaction, so protection is needed so that a disaster can be prevented.
The nations of the UK need not just warm words of support for good ideas, but a connectivity strategy: a plan for air; a plan for technology; a plan for suitable sustainable fuels; a plan for marine operations; a plan for health and wellbeing; a plan for tourism; a plan for trade and enterprise; and a plan for productivity. We must see more and better work from the UK Government on those fronts.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
I am grateful to be called early in the debate. I apologise in advance for not being able to attend the wind-up speeches. I have an invitation from Her Majesty the Queen to attend a garden party at Buckingham palace this afternoon. I am sure that the Minister will understand that I am keen to do so.
I am pleased to be able to speak in this debate. Yesterday in the Gracious Speech we learned of the Government’s plans to ensure that the UK will be at the forefront of technology for new forms of transport in a modern transport Bill. This is an incredibly exciting time for the country as we push forward towards a modern transport revolution, which—most excitingly—includes the potential for the UK’s first commercial spaceport. I shall return to that point later.
The magnitude of the progress we are poised to make becomes very clear when we consider the many years of neglect our transport system has suffered, especially in Cornwall. However, at long last, we are seeing serious investment in the county’s transport infrastructure that will create the opportunities for the future. A £60 million project dualling a section of the A30—the main route linking Cornwall to the rest of the country—is well under way, and when finished will relieve massive congestion and delays. I am incredibly proud to be part of the Government who are finally delivering this project, which was cancelled by the Labour Government when they came to power in the 1990s. A further 9-mile stretch of single carriageway further west on the A30 is also due to be upgraded in the coming years. This route experiences a 25% rise in traffic flow in holiday periods, so the House will understand how important such projects are to the ongoing growth of the area.
For many years, residents of St Austell and the surrounding villages have been making impassioned calls for an upgraded link road between St Austell and the A30. Now their calls have finally been answered by the Government. This project, which will go ahead thanks to funding from the local major’s fund, will have a significant positive impact on congestion and traffic issues in my constituency, as well as unlocking future potential economic growth.
It is not just the roads that are being upgraded. The south-west is set to benefit from new trains, replacing ones some 40 years old, and an upgraded Riviera sleeper service, and reports are being commissioned to look into cutting the journey time to London by nearly half an hour and at the much needed additional route through Devon. Meanwhile, passenger numbers at the UK’s fastest growing regional airport, Cornwall-Newquay airport, continue to grow. Thanks to the Government’s backing, it has been able to fly into the jet age with its link to Gatwick, as well as seeing new routes opening up. Through all of this, Cornwall is being transformed and its potential is starting to be realised, but there is still more to do.
With our unquestionable appetite to demonstrate our aspiration for growth and better times ahead, Cornwall is now eagerly edging towards the forefront of the next generation of travel opportunities and is proving itself to be the right choice for the UK’s first spaceport. Although we still await the release of the final bid criteria, it is clear Newquay has established itself as the frontrunner in this process and is the best option of the six shortlisted. Newquay airport already has a wide and long runway, with the added bonus that it has the capacity to be extended fairly easily. The airport is already established and thriving, continuing to go from strength to strength, and I am sure it will embrace the growth and development the spaceport would bring. The proposed site is ideally located right next to the coast, another key factor in this process. It has easy access to uncongested airspace and of course it is not in a densely populated area.
Making Newquay’s bid even more attractive are the hugely beneficial links that already exist between the airport’s neighbouring Newquay Aerohub enterprise zone and Goonhilly Earth Station, after the Chancellor announced the extension of the enterprise zone to encircle Goonhilly, last autumn. This boost for Cornwall’s space ambitions works to make the area even more attractive for commercial investment. As well as enabling the possibility for space tourism or high-speed travel, the spaceport provides an opportunity to embrace the commercial satellite market even further. The UK is already a world leader in the satellite business, but with a spaceport we could finally secure satellite launch facilities of our own.
This is, undeniably, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Cornwall and for my constituency to transform our economy. We will see job opportunities and well paid careers in cutting-edge technologies. In one of the lowest-pay areas of the country, we will see higher-paid jobs brought about and, as well as welcoming new people to the area, the next generation of skilled Cornishmen and women will be able to stay in the county they love to call home, instead of being forced to move away for skilled jobs. For decades, Cornish people have been unfairly torn between their love for and desire to live in their beautiful homeland or seek serious job opportunities elsewhere. I count myself incredibly lucky to have been able to make a living without having to leave Cornwall, working in a number of sectors over many years, as well as running my own business. Sadly, that has not been the case for many of my peers, who were forced to move away in search of other opportunities, and this is still happening today, with scores of talented, skilful young people leaving Cornwall behind, often never to return. This has gone on for far too long and we can stop it. Our young people deserve the chance of having a real opportunity just as much as the rest of the country does.
Clearly, the spaceport needs a home that will embrace the brand-new sector of space tourism, and Cornwall can and will pioneer this. As well as boosting visitor numbers from within the UK even further, this could be the key to finally getting a large portion of the country’s overseas visitors to the south-west; only a small percentage of overseas visitors currently venture out of London, and the benefits of this would of course be felt right across the south-west.
Furthermore, Cornwall has historically led from the front when it comes to industry. Our tin mining and china clay activities are world-renowned, and have transformed the landscape and future of Cornwall. The county is also at the forefront of inventions: the mighty Cornishman Richard Trevithick harnessed high-pressure steam and created the world’s first steam railway locomotive; Humphry Davy saved hundreds of lives with his revolutionary miners’ safety lamp; and of course the first ever radio transmission was sent across the Atlantic ocean from Cornwall, by Marconi. But despite that incredible heritage, Cornwall has been stifled, unable to build any further on those major advances. For too long, Cornwall has been unable to live up to its true potential. Often forgotten by Westminster, its ambitions have been ignored, but the tide is changing and Cornwall is on the up, under this Government. The granting of Newquay spaceport would be another major advancement for the region, and we are ready. The county, and Newquay in particular, is already a premier tourist destination, with millions of people flocking to the area to enjoy all it has to offer. Not only is Cornwall already equipped for such an influx of visitors, but we understand tourism better than anyone else—our communities thrive on it and have done so for more than a century.
The Government’s latest infrastructure commitments and achievements in Cornwall that I outlined at the beginning show their commitment to the county, and the six Cornish Conservative MPs are unequivocally working hard within a Conservative Government to deliver for Cornwall. What better time than now to push this forward? The Government’s ongoing commitment to the county shows a belief that Cornwall holds the key to a fairer distribution of growth and is real evidence of our one nation vision. It is a belief that Cornwall can pave the way forward in this exciting new sector and a belief that Cornwall will deliver. The right choice is clear: Newquay’s bid for the spaceport holds the excitement and enthusiasm for exploration, the spirit of adventure and the capability to be the driving force in scientific and technological advances. Let us make the right choice—for Newquay, for Cornwall and for the country.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
There is a great deal to welcome in this Queen’s Speech in relation to transport, and it is reassuring to see how many issues addressed in it reflect the requests that have come from the Select Committee on Transport. The real test will be whether the promised measures are implemented and do not simply remain aspirations, and of course we will have to see the important details of what is being proposed. I am pleased that the National Infrastructure Commission is to be made a statutory body charged with producing strategic vision for 2050. I just hope that we are not still discussing the issue of increasing hub capacity in the south-east when we get to that date. It is very important that a decision on aviation capacity in the south-east is made soon. Heathrow is the right location and it is important that a decision is made, in the interests of this country as a whole, and on behalf of the regions and nations of this country.
The northern powerhouse also features in the Queen’s Speech, and that is extremely important. Again, we do not need to hear more words; we need to see implementation of proposals and ideas that have been put forward. That means that Transport for the North needs to have effective powers and full accountability, but I do not see any mention of that in this Queen’s Speech. It is of course particularly important that electrification schemes that have already been proposed are properly costed and implemented. We do not want to see any more stop-start processes, where promises are made but much needed schemes are then either delayed or cancelled. When we are looking at much needed improvements across the Pennines—the trans-Pennine improvements and the so-called HS3—it is important for Ministers to remember that trans-Pennine improvements are not confined to Manchester and Leeds, but also include Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield and Hull, to name a few of these very important places.
I am very pleased that HS2 is going ahead, but I would like more clarity from the Minister on the stories now being circulated about possible changes to phase 2. To get maximum impact from that important infrastructure, HS2 needs to be linked with other rail investments, as we have been promised. For example, we need to enable a direct line to be built from Liverpool to link up with both HS2 and HS3. That is just one example of the way in which major infrastructure investments of national importance can also bring great benefits to the regions of this country.
I am pleased about the modern transport Bill, as the promises it makes for the commercial development of transport innovations are extremely important for this country, and that has too often been neglected. I also note the reference that has been made to the importance of using new technology for road safety. It is important to realise that although the trend on road safety over a decade or so is one of improvement, there has been a change in very recent years. In the last year for which we have recorded figures, 2014, we regrettably saw an increase in road casualties: 1,775 people were killed on our roads, and 22,807 people were seriously injured. Using technology to improve road safety is important, but technology on its own cannot do the job. Education and promotional campaigns and enforcement are also important. I remind Ministers that, yes, having the latest technology matters, but we also need more people enforcing the rules of the road and looking at bad driver behaviour, and we need more road traffic officers. This year, the Transport Committee produced a report that showed the impact of reductions in road traffic officers. For improved road safety, we need to harness the technology that is there and to use new technology, and we also need education and enforcement. The three go together.
I give a special welcome to the bus services Bill, although we have yet to see the critical detail of it. For too long, buses have been treated as the Cinderella of public transport, yet more people use buses than any other form of public transport. They are a lifeline for millions of people, enabling them to get to their jobs and to access important local amenities. This Bill—I hope I can repeat this when we see the detail of it—is an attempt to put right the weaknesses of the Transport Act 1985, which left bus services at the mercy of the free market, with local authorities picking up the tab for unprofitable services. London, which was spared deregulation, has gone from success to success, with franchise services using the private sector, but the private sector being employed to implement the transport plans decided by the public sector, Transport for London.
In the rest of the country, when local government cuts started to bite and financial cuts started to be implemented, local authority support for those subsidised services inevitably fell away. Increased numbers of people in communities have found that they are left out of essential transport services, with no access to work, hospitals and shops. It is not solely rural communities that have been affected, although they have been very badly affected; significant parts of towns and cities are losing not only night-time services, but important day-time services as well.
Barbara Keeley
I thank my hon. Friend for making those points. I agree with what she says. Night buses have been cut from Little Hulton in my constituency, which means that people cannot get into Manchester. Does she agree that among those who are excluded from these services are people with sight loss and that this Bill is an opportunity to make all new buses accessible for people with sight loss through next-stop and final-destination announcements?
Mrs Ellman
I thank my hon. Friend for her comments, and I certainly agree with her. A proper public transport service that includes buses has to be accessible for all people, and proper facilities should be available to enable people with sight loss and with other sorts of disabilities to use the service. This is a very important opportunity to do that. Indeed, the whole pattern that we have seen since bus deregulation is that, while services in London, where deregulation did not take place, have increased, services elsewhere in the country have reduced and bus fares have increased. That is not acceptable, and it cannot be tolerated any further. Measures to try to remedy that by having quality partnerships and quality contracts—the partnerships have been effective in some areas—have not resolved the basic question.
I look forward to the publication of the bus services Bill. Given the situation that currently operates so successfully in London, the proposal now is to enable devolved areas with an elected mayor to use franchise services. However, I would like to see the detail of how that can be extended to other sorts of authorities as well and to see what financial support goes with that. The power to make bus services accessible, accountable and effective is extremely important, but the finance to make that a real possibility must be there to go with it, so I look forward to seeing that.
In summary, I welcome some very important measures in the Bill. We need them to be enacted and not just to remain aspirations, and we need proper funding, too. It is vital that proper transport infrastructure is provided nationally, regionally and locally. It is also important that there are effective transport services that are accessible and passenger friendly. The test of whether this Queen’s Speech will deliver those objectives is yet to come.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I wish to focus my remarks on neighbourhood planning and the effects on housing delivery, but first let me draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Just before the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), leaves the Chamber, may I make a very quick pitch for the A64? I welcome the £100 billion investment in infrastructure and the £13 billion investment in the northern powerhouse in this Parliament. A small part of that—£250 million—has been allocated to the A64, for the Hopgrove Lane roundabout. If that improvement does not include a dual carriageway as far as Barton Hill, it will simply kick that pinchpoint down the road. I ask him to bear that in mind and look at it in future discussions with Highways England.
I was astounded to hear the Leader of the Opposition claim in this House yesterday that
“housebuilding has sunk to its lowest level since the 1920s.”—[Official Report, 18 May 2016; Vol. 611, c. 15.]
According to the Office for National Statistics, quarterly housing starts, which are without doubt the most reliable guide to housing activity, have doubled from fewer than 20,000 in the first quarter of 2009 to more than 40,000 in the current quarter. For further proof, I suggest that Opposition Members visit any builder’s merchant or building site and talk to any brickie, chippie or sparky who will put them right. If they do not know any of these business people, I am happy to put them in touch with some.
I welcome the Government’s approach to local plans, which requires all local authorities to have a plan in place by 2017, and to neighbourhood plans. Neighbourhood plans give local people and local communities a say in what is built where, and what the building or settlement will look like. Clearly, neighbourhood planning must work with local authorities to agree the numbers allocated to a particular settlement. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) who has been generous with his time not only in his work with the Government, but in volunteering to visit my constituency to help our local communities to develop their own neighbourhood plans.
Without question, neighbourhood plans are part of the solution to the increase in housebuilding that we need. I welcome the changes contained in the Queen’s Speech to make neighbourhood planning easier and more powerful for local communities. I do not support any community right of appeal, as planning is tough enough without adding more obstacles to the planning process. However, current rules and subjective calculations of the five-year land supply can undermine the expensive and time-consuming process of neighbourhood planning. For example, Gladman, a name that strikes fear in many planning officers, has been successful twice recently at Kirbymoorside and Easingwold in my constituency.
Gladman was successful on appeal in Easingwold thanks to its ability to demonstrate that Hambleton District Council had only 4.17 years of land supply. Nine months later, after a revised analysis carried out by another expensive consultant for the local authority, Hambleton District Council now believes that it has an eight-plus year land supply. In effect, this creates two perverse outcomes. A subjective approach to the assessment of housing market needs incentivises the kite-flying carpetbaggers such as Gladman to game the system, but it also disincentivises local communities from establishing a neighbourhood plan. Even though a neighbourhood may be ahead of its own housing numbers, a shortage in the local authority overall can mean that an inappropriate development is forced on that local community.
Perhaps I can suggest two simple solutions, consistent with the recommendations of the local plans expert group, which says that there is currently no definitive guidance on the way to prepare the strategic housing market assessment. The first solution would be simple definitive and objective guidance on assessment of housing needs, revised only at specified intervals. I suggest that one might base that on a brutally simple formula. There are 26 million homes in the UK, and we need to build around 250,000 homes per annum—roughly 1%. If each local authority grew by a minimum of 1%, we would meet our national housing targets for the first time in decades.
Secondly, there should be a housing delivery test for a neighbourhood planning area so that if the neighbourhood was hitting its prescribed numbers, it could not be subject to an aggressive application based on local authority under-delivery. That would simultaneously deter the kite flyers and encourage and incentivise more communities to develop their own neighbourhood plans and schemes that communities had proposed and consented to.
Mr Betts
I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s comments about a common basis for assessing housing need. It is something that the Communities and Local Government Committee recommended in the previous Parliament, something that the specialist group that the Minister set up has recommended, and something that Lord Taylor of Goss Moor recommended in his work on planning guidance. It would take a lot of the heat out of local controversy about how numbers were arrived at, and it would be there for local authorities to take up if they wanted to. The hon. Gentleman makes a good proposal that the Government ought to take seriously.
Kevin Hollinrake
I am very grateful. As on many occasions in the Select Committee, the hon. Gentleman and I are in full agreement.
I now move on to another important issue in my community. According to almost every business person and key business organisations such as the Institute of Directors, the No. 1 business priority in the UK and for many business people in my community is access to digital connections—superfast broadband and mobile phone networks. To give the Government credit, we have seen a step change in access to these networks since 2010. Even in rural North Yorkshire, 88% of premises are now covered by superfast broadband; 91% will be by 2017, and 95% by 2019. However, there is a growing gap between the haves and the have nots. As coverage increases, the voices of those without broadband understandably grow louder and more vociferous. For home or business, superfast broadband is no longer regarded as a luxury but as an essential fourth utility, and we must treat it as such.
I welcome the bold ambition in the Queen’s Speech for our universal service obligation—a digital imperative that the Government will deliver on. To meet this imperative and the further commitment to increase speed as demand and activity also increase, we need a new relationship between the consumer and the network operator, especially BT Openreach. I must say, I am sceptical about Ofcom’s halfway house solution—an internal separation of Openreach and BT. It is, to my mind, inconceivable that a separate board and a separation of assets will separate the vested interest of a network from the commercial opportunity of the wholesale, retail and content provider operations of BT.
I and many colleagues will hold Ofcom and BT Openreach to account for the huge improvements required, especially including fair cost for access to its ducts and poles and a clear network map of their locations. Only this and a technology-neutral approach will deliver the solutions that we need. BT Openreach has actively thus far deterred third-party operators and complementary technology solutions from reaching the parts that other technologies cannot reach, namely, point-to-point wireless, wireless DSLAM—digital subscriber line access multiplexer—units and, of course a roll-out of fibre to the premises, or FTTP, the only future-proof solution available. Our penetration for fibre to premises in the UK is 2%, compared with 60% in Spain, where competitors can access ducts and poles more cheaply and readily.
May I also suggest to the Government that we look at creative community solutions? The voucher scheme for satellite is welcome, but would Ministers consider allowing residents to combine vouchers to contribute to the cost of installing community-based fibre schemes? We also need more clarity and co-operation between backbone operator Openreach and other technologies so that solutions can be provided today. If community or commercial point-to-point wireless providers are deterred through future roll-out plans, uncertainty about those solutions means that they are sidelined rather than rolled out to people in need.
These are real people with real businesses and real jobs. Ample Bosom in Cold Kirby in my constituency provides quality ladies’ garments for the larger lady; the Construction Equipment Association in Sproxton provides services for exhibitions around the world; the Black Swan is an award-winning hostelry close to where I live in Oldstead. They are all suffering and losing business as a result of the broadband delays and deferrals.
I am very pleased with the measures in the Queen’s Speech and commend those policy initiatives to the House.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I do not think I can follow the last points that the hon. Gentleman raised about certain garment manufacturers in his constituency, so I will rapidly move on to devolution, in which I am particularly interested. I want to talk about the proposals on business rates, buses and housing.
The words “northern powerhouse” have been mentioned again in the Queen’s Speech. We could not have them ignored by the Government. Ministers have to be aware that, while there is a welcome for the general intentions on devolution to increase the performance of our northern cities to the national average—we are unique in the European Union in that our major cities do not perform better than the national average economically—there is a great deal of scepticism in my constituency and the Sheffield city region as we see job losses. More than 600 jobs have been lost from HSBC in Sheffield and more at Tankersley. Polestar in my constituency is in administration, with 400 jobs under threat. On top of that there is uncertainty over steel plants at Stocksbridge and Rotherham. We look to the Government at least to recognise the importance of all these things.
But then we see the Government themselves creating 600 job losses at HMRC and, in contradiction to what the Transport Secretary said, moving 200 jobs from BIS headquarters in Sheffield down to London, without giving any rationale of cost savings. Indeed, it is pretty obvious that it will cost more to move staff from Sheffield to London. The Government talk about devolving powers, but they are centralising jobs. That is causing a great deal of anger in Sheffield, and the Government could do something here and now: stop and give a clear indication that their words about the northern powerhouse mean something in practice for people who live in my constituency and others in the Sheffield city region.
The first major devolved powers Bill in the Queen’s Speech deals with business rates. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has had discussions with the Communities and Local Government Committee. We are conducting inquiries with the intention of assisting that process. There is general support for 100% localisation of business rates, and we want to help in that process. We are already hearing about difficulties that need resolution, whether it be matters that will be devolved alongside 100% retention of business rates, the appeals system, concerns about what happens if an area suddenly loses a major firm that contributes to its rateable income, revaluations, or the very difficult issue of how to marry incentives to growth with help through equalisation for areas that cannot grow as quickly as others. There are a lot of issues there. I believe that the Government recognise the complications and they are going to conduct a further consultation this summer. It is right that we get this policy correct, so making sure we have a bit more time to do that is more important than rushing. The Select Committee will produce an interim report to advise the consultation, then come back later with ministerial information and evidence to produce a final report. That is a good example of a Select Committee and the Government working together to achieve a shared objective.
Having said that, in its devolution report the Committee has already said that 100% retention of business rates should only be a first step in wider fiscal devolution. We hope the Government will engage in that debate, once the Bill has passed. There is a challenge in that we are only devolving retention of the money from business rates, with a bit of power for areas—certainly those with elected mayors—to reduce the rate or impose a small levy for infrastructure projects; what we will not have is local control over the business rates system itself. If a future Government made a significant change, like the one just made to small business rate relief, that could after 2020 significantly affect local authorities’ rate income without their having any say in the system and changes to it. There is a wider debate to be had on whether to have just retention of business rates, or wider localisation of the business rates system itself. I am sure we will return to that when we discuss the Bill.
I welcome the buses Bill. It is right that an important part of devolution deals is the ability for local mayors, if they so wish, to take up franchising arrangements similar to those found in London. Current legislation is inadequate: in the north-east, where transport authorities want to go for quality contracts, they are second-guessed by independent bodies that come to a different view on what the public interest is. I take the old-fashioned view that local elected councillors and mayors are better placed to identify the public interest than any appointed quango.
Franchising of itself is not a panacea for all ills, but it can help to drive up standards, improve ticketing arrangements and make better use of resources by ensuring that there is not overprovision of buses on some routes and none on others. It can deal better with pensioner concessions and reverse the downward trend—the 50% fall in bus trips per head of population—seen in areas such as Sheffield since deregulation came into effect in the 1980s. We proudly pioneered cheap fares and high-quality public transport in South Yorkshire back in the 1970s—even before the Greater London Council did so—but it has been downhill ever since deregulation came into effect.
The buses Bill will work only if it is seen as part of a wider approach to integrated transport. I wish to put on the record my great disappointment that the tram-train project has once again been delayed. Network Rail has announced that after 10 years of thinking about it, the delay until 2017 is now unachievable, and it cannot even tell us the new delay date that it will set at some point in the future. That is a disgrace. Network Rail is bringing in a tram-train system that has been operating in Germany for 30 years. Thirty years in Germany, 10 years thinking about it in the UK, and we do not even have a date when the trams will start running on the tram-train network. I was pleased when, in December in Sheffield, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), got on one of the trams that have been delivered, but now we have no date for when it will run on the tram-train tracks. This is complete nonsense and the Government should launch an inquiry into it.
On wider transport issues, we still want firmer assurances from the Government that the station for HS2 will be in Sheffield and that HS3 will link Sheffield and Leeds across the Pennines. We also want a commitment to the review of the Pennine tunnel, in which many of us are interested.
I am pleased to see the Minister for Housing and Planning in his place. During the general election, we had promises of 1 million homes from the Conservative party. I think that was then a target, but afterward, when I asked him about the target, the Minister said it was only an aspiration. Now that the 1 million figure has been in the Queen’s Speech, I assume it is a clear and firm commitment—you do not put figures in the Queen’s Speech without committing to them, do you, Madam Deputy Speaker? Of course not.
My concern arises from what the Council of Mortgage Lenders said yesterday, in a very interesting piece, about not being sure that the 200,000 starter homes and the 125,000 shared ownership properties were deliverable. The CML thought the numbers were too big and raised questions about market distortion, valuations—it had a whole load of questions about the fundamental building block of the Government’s programme to getting 1 million new homes. At some point, the penny will drop with Ministers that we will not achieve the 250,000 homes we need to build in this country without a substantial programme of social house building, with local councils as well as housing associations forming a key part. Without that commitment—the Government have taken all the money away from social housing; there will be no section 106 money for housing either—I simply do not believe the Government will achieve their million homes. I do not know whether the Minister for Housing and Planning will be here in four years’ time to answer for that. He probably hopes he will be elsewhere and not responsible for explaining why that figure has not been reached.
Turning to something completely different, yesterday, with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) and a number of other Members, I had the pleasure of accompanying members of the Somaliland community in England to Downing Street to present a letter to the Prime Minister. Somaliland achieved independence from the British empire 25 years ago yesterday. Its subsequent history has been troubled: it had a union with Somalia, which was an Italian protectorate, then a bitter civil war, fighting against a dictatorship. Through that process, Somaliland achieved de facto independence. It is now run as a democracy, having had presidential elections, having changed presidents and having had narrow election results that were accepted by the losers.
Somaliland is a democracy, but it is not recognised by the international community. I understand that it is difficult for the United Kingdom Government, as the former colonial power, to be the first country to recognise Somaliland. All I will ask, and all Somaliland’s Government and the community in this country are asking for, is that the British Government will at least give an undertaking that they would accept, recognise and encourage an international commission on the status of Somaliland looking at the fact that it is de facto an independent country, but de jure it is still not recognised by the international community.
Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)
I was extremely pleased yesterday to see infrastructure and transport feature so prominently in the Gracious Address, not just because of the impact on my constituency but because it shows how keen the Government are to deliver economic growth. Infrastructure and transport are at the heart of getting on with growing our economy in the west of England and the rest of the UK.
The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), who is the railways Minister, has visited my constituency many times and stood with me wearing orange overalls, looking at train lines and breathing in heavy smog. I campaigned last year to “Stop Bath Stalling” and she joined me in my pledge to do all I could to tackle our transport problems and disgusting air pollution. Many hon. Members know, from visiting the world heritage city of Bath, that it is blighted by traffic and dangerously high levels of air pollution. Plans to encourage more residents and visitors to use public transport, as well as large-scale infrastructure projects that divert traffic around the city, will be huge steps in reducing the problem.
In an example that I hope the Ministers present will pass on to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, our hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), who is the roads Minister and who has been working with me, one of the key plans in Bath and north-east Somerset is our integrated transport plan. That involves the long overdue—by 30 years—A36-A46 link road. Thirty years is long enough to wait to get on with a critical transport project. For vehicles to bypass Bath and still reach their destination, it is crucial to get on and build this critical link road.
I am sure it will come as no surprise to the Minister that I wanted to raise this issue, as it is probably the only thing that I ever talk to her about, as well as the Government’s commitment to transport. The Prime Minister wrote to me recently to extend his invitation to me to work with Highways England on that crucial project. Following the changes to vehicle excise duty that were announced in the Budget, I hope funding will become available to fund our strategic highways network. If anyone is looking for an anecdote to use in the next pub quiz, here is one: the A36-A46 is the only strategic highway in the entire UK not to be connected. That will no doubt feature in many pub quizzes across the UK.
Other transport plans that will help Bath function more easily and become a much more prosperous city include a new junction 18A on the M4, which was announced by the Prime Minister just before the election. It will ensure that our science park, which is owned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, can be accessed by the University of Bath. The greatest investment in the railway since Victorian times, the electrification of the great western main line, will make a massive impact on the regional economy in the west of England. So too will the improvements to the cycling network, and a rail link between Heathrow airport and the great western main line. Those four miles of track, which are long overdue, would make a massive difference over to the west and do not need to be put on hold until a decision is reached on Heathrow airport expansion. Some of these improvements are already in place and I look forward to working with the Government to see more of them come to fruition though Bills that were announced yesterday.
On the subject of Heathrow, I join other Members in hoping that a decision on where to build a third runway will be made this year. It has taken far too long and we need to make a decision as soon as possible to enable our country and our economy to grow. We hope, too, that the resources will be found to pay for that, and that the announcement will be made shortly.
I was pleased to hear that action will be taken that will ensure that the UK leads the way in developing the technology for driverless cars. Those cars present a unique opportunity to change transport fundamentally in this country, by cutting congestion, reducing emissions and saving lives. It is important that the Government recognise the need to accommodate technological innovation, so I am encouraged that this House will consider legislation for the insuring of driverless cars, preparing for the future. As I understand it, companies in Bath are looking at introducing this technology in order to reap the benefits that it promises to bring. I am glad there is no Whip present, as a Whip would not be pleased to hear me say that I look forward to reading the detail of the Bill to find out what the legislation will say and how that will benefit the wider sector.
I turn to the buses Bill and the reforms to public transport services that it will bring. The Minister will be pleased to hear that I promise not to bore the House by going through my bus timetable for Bath. The west of England devolution deal is in the negotiation process, and I hope we can come to a positive conclusion so that the deal can be sealed as quickly as possible. Our regional economy will benefit massively from devolution and from the franchising powers being devolved to the region in the buses legislation if it comes to fruition.
To encourage more people in Bath and the west of England to use buses, an integrated strategy is needed, especially across rural areas. If we integrate services, economies of scale can be produced to help pass on savings to travellers, just as they were when they were introduced in London. I have met numerous passenger focus groups in Bath which are all concerned with the future viability of services. The new buses Bill and the potential devolved solution in the west of England will ensure the long-term financial sustainability of the project.
Users want to be confident that they can complete their journey easily at a reduced cost and on time. Passengers will be delighted to hear that the buses Bill will require operators to share route, fare and schedule data with app developers so that travellers can keep up to date on the move with how the journey is likely to progress. To make it even easier for commuters, we need to see smart ticketing introduced. At a time when we can pay for a cup of coffee with a tap of our card, it is crazy that across the bus network in Bath and throughout the country outside London the only way to pay to use the bus is to have the correct change. Many of our constituents rely almost solely on their bank cards and the need to find cash to use a bus leads many to get into their car.
As soon as smartcard ticketing was introduced in London, passenger numbers went up and prices went down. The introduction of a similar integrated and technology-focused system will reduce congestion in Bath, Bristol and across the west of England, and confront the disgustingly high levels of air pollution. I hope the Bill will bring bus travel across the country into the 21st century.
I cannot speak in a debate on infrastructure without taking a moment to discuss the important subject of broadband, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) spoke so eloquently. Like most Members across the House, I am inundated with complaints about the problems of accessing high speed broadband. Even in cities such as Bath and Bristol, which have the fastest-growing tech economy in the UK, people struggle to access high speed broadband, and productivity is thus thwarted. In 2016 that should not be the case. Together with colleagues across the House, I welcome the digital economy Bill, with a commitment to the broadband universal service obligation. This improvement to broadband is essential for maintaining and growing a strong economy and I look forward to supporting the Government in passing this legislation.
Finally, I cannot speak on infrastructure without drawing attention to the critical shortage of housing in the west of England. My hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning came to Bath a couple of months ago to lay the first bricks for new homes, but it is clear that in the Victorian, Georgian and Roman cities that many of us represent, the housing and the road networks were not built to sustain the growth that has since taken place. If as a result of the infrastructure Bill we lay better equipped roads and better railway systems to serve our housing needs first, rather than as an afterthought, we will be able to get on and deliver the new towns that we desperately need across the whole of the UK.
In conclusion, I welcome the Government’s continued commitment to supporting the economic recovery by focusing on creating jobs and apprenticeships and investing in infrastructure. Historically the UK has spent far too little on infrastructure compared with other countries. Although there is much talk about the need to get things done, the delivery of infrastructure projects entails a lengthy process and remains disappointingly slow. At both national and local level we must remember that efforts need to be made to ensure that large infrastructure projects come to fruition in a timely manner. That is the responsibility of Government, devolved Government and local councils. I hope that that is remembered as we look forward, hopefully, to building my long overdue A36-A46 link road.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Like the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), I start with an apology. Unfortunately, I will be unable to stay for the duration of the debate and to listen to the summing-up. Unlike the hon. Gentleman, however, I am not going to Buckingham Palace; I am going back to my constituency.
The theme of today’s debate is transport and local infrastructure, and there is no doubt that infrastructure investment drives growth and creates both construction jobs and long-term business-related jobs. Any sensible investment in infrastructure is therefore to be welcomed, but I believe that more can be done, which is why the SNP’s proposal to release additional spending of 0.5% per year in real terms for public services over the period to 2020 should be considered. That would free up an additional £150 billion, eliminating the needless £40 billion of cuts in the Chancellor’s austerity budgets. It would allow something to be done about the transitional arrangements called for by WASPI— the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—and still leave money for long-term investment to stimulate growth. Such a proposal would lead to net debt and borrowing falling over the current Parliament.
Another way of freeing up money for sensible infrastructure investment would be to scrap the idea of Trident renewal, which has an estimated cost of £205 billion. If the SNP’s proposal for an alternative summer Budget was implemented, the majority of the Chancellor’s £32 billion giveaways through tax and other means could be reversed. We could scrap the £28 billion commitment to Hinkley Point C and the five other nuclear power stations in the pipeline, which would create another half a trillion pounds for investment in infrastructure—a truly transformational sum. That would double the current allocation within the UK’s national infrastructure delivery plan, and allow for that plan to be truly national and for Scotland to get its fair share of investment.
What could we do with such additional money? We have heard a lot about roads, and additional roads investment in the rest of the UK would be welcome. However, another issue associated with roads is the shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers. This could have an impact on us all because of the knock-on effect on the price of goods in the shops, given that within the UK 85% of consumption goods are delivered by road. It could also have knock-on impact on exports—another target that the Chancellor is currently failing on. The industry suggests that there could be a shortage of some 45,000 HGV drivers by 2020. It is well known that the cost of driver training is approximately £3,000, which prevents many individuals from being able to take it up, and the test costs a further £230. There is no way that someone who is unemployed with little income can access that, and someone who is young can forget it, because they clearly do not have that money behind them. A Government initiative in this area could create additional career opportunities for the younger generation.
When this matter has been raised in the Chamber before, the Government have said that it is the industry’s responsibility to step up. However, given that the average fleet size is just six trucks, and that 85% of haulage companies are classified as medium or small, the industry does not have the capacity to step up. In reality, the Government are missing a trick. In simple terms, covering the cost of training and testing is much cheaper than the payments associated with companies involved in the workfare programme and, of course, if people are put into employment, that reduces welfare payments in general. I estimate that the payback period in Government welfare and overhead costs would be in the region of six to 12 months, depending on the age of the person on jobseeker’s allowance, for each licence that the Government paid for. While I am not asking for additional investment, this would be a spend-to-save move that could make inroads into the figure of 630,000 unemployed 18 to 24-year-olds.
For many people, the most important aspect of local infrastructure is housing. We cautiously welcome the UK Government’s ambition to deliver 1 million new homes, but we do not know what mix of housing will be included in that, and so far the UK Government have had a poor record on affordable homes. I have often spoken out against the extended right to buy for social housing. It is obvious that the only way to ease the housing crisis is to build more homes—not just homes for sale, but homes for rent at affordable prices. Instead, as the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said, we have a Government who are potentially crippling housing associations with enforced rent cuts as well as the sale of more attractive stock. In Scotland, after years of sell-off without replacement, the SNP has ended the right to buy for council houses. That was absolutely the right thing to do when faced with such an imbalanced and depleted stock.
The UK Government continue the myth that like-for-like replacement will be the solution, but there is no guarantee of what that really means, nor about the geographical location of the replacement houses, given that they are clearly dependent on land supply. The latest figures indicate that since the new right to buy was introduced in 2012-13, there have been over 35,000 sales, with on-site starts of just over 4,100. Clearly, at the moment, there is not realistically going to be like-for-like replacement. Indeed, a National Audit Office report in March confirmed that 8,500 homes were sold in 2014-15 and that, in order for those to be replaced in the target three-year period, on-site starts needed to rise fourfold from an average of 420 per quarter to 2,130 per quarter. It would be good to know what Ministers are going to do to achieve that.
To demonstrate that much more can be done, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has highlighted that the Scottish Government spend 85% more per head on social housing than is the case in England and Wales. The SNP Government outperform other parts of the UK in terms of social sector completions, with over 31,000 affordable homes delivered to date, two thirds of which are available for social rent. The SNP is delivering on promises, which was why we were elected for a third term.
I would like much more investment in transport infrastructure in general. My hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) suggested further rail investment. We could extend the Borders rail link to Carlisle. More needs to be done on the high-speed rail line, which should be extended to Scotland. At the very least, the existing network north of Crewe needs to be upgraded to allow for quicker journey times when we move to the classic-compatible trains.
We welcome the idea of a spaceport, but it is vital that the Government set out clear assessment criteria and timescales for making a decision. In general, I would support any of the Scottish airports that are shortlisted but, like many other people, I want to make a pitch for my local airport, which is Prestwick in the adjoining constituency. This would give my constituency a great boost, but it is also the most logical choice. In terms of existing transport infrastructure, we have Ayr harbour; a railway, including a halt at Prestwick; and close links to the motorway network. There is therefore no doubt that Prestwick is the most accessible of the airports under consideration. There is already an aerospace industry located around Prestwick, and nearby Glasgow has existing space technology firms. Prestwick has one of the longest runways in the UK and does not suffer from fog problems. It really is a logical choice.
I cannot emphasise enough the importance of infrastructure investment. It is something that the SNP Scottish Government have taken seriously since coming to power in 2007, with investment of over £15 billion in transport, including the largest road investment programme that Scotland has ever seen. We have heard about the new Queensferry crossing and the 31 miles of new Borders rail. Infrastructure investment drives growth, reduces congestion and increases productivity. Conservative Members and some Opposition Members are wedded to the idea of austerity and Trident at any cost. I suggest that additional investment in roads, rail, housing, broadband access for all and energy security are more likely to get Members re-elected and, importantly, to create a true legacy that would stand the test of time.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
I am grateful to be called to contribute to the debate on the Queen’s Speech and very pleased to follow the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown).
I want to start by covering a few transport issues. It is good that the Government are taking action on drones, which are a nuisance and in danger of even becoming a menace to commercial aviation. However, the big absence in the Secretary of State’s speech was any reference to aviation expansion and the decision on the Airports Commission report which, as we all know, is long overdue. As such, it was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) and the hon. Members for Bath (Ben Howlett) and for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry).
It is 40 or 50 years since there has been any increase in airport capacity in the south-east. We have had the 2003 White Paper, the 2008 decision by the previous Labour Government, the withdrawal of support for the third runway at Heathrow in the 2010 Tory manifesto, the coalition decision stimulated by the Lib Dems, the U-turn in 2012, the Airports Commission in 2013, and the promise year on year that we will get a decision. We are still awaiting that decision, so we hope to see it sooner rather than later. My preference is for Heathrow, but I would not like Gatwick to be frustrated, because aviation is an important economic tool for the UK internationally, and it is important for parts of the UK that rely on international connections. It therefore would be good to see movement on this.
The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey also mentioned shipping, to his credit. It was disappointing that the Secretary of State did not mention shipping in any sense, because it is important to the UK economy and still contributes billions of pounds. Notwithstanding the challenges to which the SNP’s spokesman referred, the Government have a fairly good record on supporting shipping, so I am surprised that they did not want to make more of that. Perhaps when the Housing and Planning Minister winds up the debate, he will say, “Shipping is important to the UK Government.”
As the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South, said, deregulation of buses outside London has not worked. The Secretary of State blamed Labour policy from 1999, which was a little time ago. Quality contracts have not worked, but privatisation and franchising have worked in London, because they have been regulated, so that should be done elsewhere. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) has said that the approach should not be restricted to those local authorities that have elected mayors; it should apply to all local authorities right around the country. I am grateful to the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association for its briefing, to which several colleague have referred, on how successful the talking buses campaign has been in London and why it should be replicated across the country.
I have another two points to make about transport before I move on to housing. On road safety, in 2010 the Government eliminated targets for reducing the number of people who are killed or seriously injured on our roads, because the then Secretary of State did not support any targets that the Government might not be able to meet and failure would give others the opportunity to criticise them. There has been consensus across the House for more than 30 years about the ambition to reduce deaths and serious injury on our roads.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)
I would be delighted to listen further to the hon. Gentleman, but I just want to correct him on this point: targets are not the same as results. I am sure that he will celebrate with me the fact that British roads are safer than they have ever been. One death on our roads is too many, however, and we continue to work effectively to drive down both the number of road deaths and the causes of accidents.
Jim Fitzpatrick
I do not for a second underestimate the Government’s ambition to reduce deaths and serious injury; my point is that we need to demonstrate that ambition. We have had targets to reduce deaths and serious injury on our roads for more than 30 years. They started under Mrs Thatcher, when the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) was the road safety Minister, and they have been successful. Basically, such targets say to people, “This year has been unacceptable, so next year we’re going to try to do this.” For the past 35 years, the numbers have been scaled down, but for the past six years they have plateaued, and in one instance increased. That is an indictment not of the Government, but of the fact that we have lost sight of ambition, so the Government should bring that back.
I have spoken about this to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), who has responsibility for road safety, and the Secretary of State, and I know that they are sympathetic. The approach is contradictory, because the British Government sign up to European Union and United Nations targets while our roads are among the safest in the world. We should be proud of that and broadcast it, but the fact is that we are in denial.
Drew Hendry
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his earlier comments. On road safety, does he agree that if one of the driving principles behind developing driverless technology in the UK is increased safety, it should apply across the length and breadth of the nations of the UK, not just in urban areas?
Jim Fitzpatrick
The hon. Gentleman is correct. Most people who listen to media reports might think, “There’s nobody in charge of driverless vehicles, so they’re more dangerous and riskier.” The reality, however, is that the technology now exists for automatic stop, electronic stability control and anti-skid brakes, which make the vehicles much safer. It is the human element—people who are on their mobile phones, who have been drinking or taking drugs, who are not wearing seatbelts, or who are speeding—that causes most crashes and deaths. If we take out the human element, we will see the number of road crashes tumble and a fall in deaths and serious injury. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the proposal should be extended right across the piece.
My only other point on transport relates to air quality. Transport contributes to more than 20% of emissions. With the advent of new technology, there is real scope to reduce that figure. I hope that the Government will work with the new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, on his commitment to address the issue more seriously than it has been for years.
On housing, the biggest issue in my constituency, London and the vast majority of the country is the need to build new homes. The Housing and Planning Minister has acknowledged that I do not think that the Housing and Planning Act 2016 will help. Selling off the most expensive properties in Tower Hamlets will not help our housing crisis, because it is the bigger homes that will be sold off and that will affect larger families. The imposition of market rents in and around Canary Wharf means that local people will not be able to afford them. On the sell-off of housing association homes, we need local replacements. A percentage of all new developments need to be affordable homes.
London needs people working in the city. For example, how do we expect Palace of Westminster staff to be able to get here 24/7, from all parts of London and the south-east, whether they be security officers, police officers, cooks, cleaners or involved in other duties, if they do not have somewhere affordable to stay in London? We are pricing them out of the market and making it more difficult for them to get in. London’s economic infrastructure will be negatively affected if we do not make sure that affordable housing is available.
Finally on housing, I want to refer to the speech that the hon. Member for Worthing West made on leasehold reform yesterday, which can be found at columns 71 to 75 of Hansard. I thank the Housing and Planning Minister for his interest in the matter. We have had several meetings with him and his civil servants on leasehold reform. The hon. Member for Worthing West has also been to No. 10. I hope we can make progress on leasehold reform, including the right to buy, retirement homes and private sector sales, which represent the vast majority of new properties. The sector is raising its own standards, but most of us believe that it requires regulation and statutory reform. The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership is working very hard to help people who are in a very difficult situation.
I am disappointed that there is nothing in the Queen’s Speech on banning the use of wild animals in circuses. On Tuesday I attended a photocall at No. 10 with kids from Devonshire Road Primary School in Bolton. This is a Government commitment, and the Prime Minister has made a personal commitment, that it will be in the legislative programme by 2020. I am sure that it will come, but it is disappointing that it is not happening now. It is not a major issue in general national politics, but it affects a lot of people around the country.
Business rate retention for local authorities is great news for my constituency in Tower Hamlets. We are on the City of London fringe, and Canary Wharf is at the heart of my constituency. Holding on to those business rates will result in us moving from being one of poorest to one of the richest boroughs in the country. Obviously, the Government will have a mechanism to equalise, which has always been the case. I am not clear on how that is going to work, so I look forward to hearing the Minister explain it later, if he has time.
During business questions this morning, the shadow Leader of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), said that he welcomed the National Citizen Service being put on a statutory footing, but youth services have been cut right across the piece. There are some great organisations in my constituency, including 2nd East London scout group, 31 Tower Hamlets air cadet training corps, the Marine Society and Sea Cadets, and the Prince’s Trust, which has recently moved its London and south-east headquarters to Mile End. They are doing fantastic work and it is equally welcome to see an adult service being put on a statutory basis. Organisations such as Keep Britain Tidy will be very much in support of that.
On local government and planning, when we passed the Planning Act 2008, the shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), who is on the Front Bench and might speak later, led on the Bill for the Labour Government. We introduced an independent planning commission for nationally significant infrastructure projects. One of the first things the coalition did was repeal that Act, and five years later the Conservatives recognise that a fast-track planning procedure is needed for nationally significant infrastructure.
There is a real conflict for local councils that have the prospect of shale extraction and fracking. Notwithstanding the clamour from the environmental movement and the Greens for shale extraction not to be proceeded with, I think the vast majority of people in the country would much rather that we use our own natural resources than import gas from the US, Qatar or Russia. Shale extraction makes much more sense for our economic security, but the Government have to address the conflict between local communities being panicked and scaremongered into opposing shale extraction applications and the need for that national industry to be developed.
The measures on counter-extremism, anti-terrorism and security are all welcome. We are living in much more dangerous times, and getting the right balance between civil liberties and the opportunity for the security and intelligence forces to protect us is a real challenge. When the three girls from Bethnal Green went to Syria, people asked why the security forces and the police had not intervened, but exactly the same people objected when the Government tried to improve security, intelligence gathering and interception. I supported identity cards under the Labour Government. I thought it was wrong that we did not proceed with them, and it is wrong that the current Government are not doing so. They would be a simple mechanism and a positive step forward at a time when we are all carrying ID in the shape of credit cards, contactless payments cards or whatever.
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
I want to talk about the importance of rail manufacturing, and primarily about the importance of Hitachi to the local economy in my constituency. The Hitachi Rail Europe factory in Newton Aycliffe opened last year and is creating 730 jobs, with many more in the supply chain. The factory is a superb, modern facility. Costing £82 million, it is the largest private sector investment in the north-east of England since Nissan. The factory’s first task is to build the next generation of inter-city trains for the Great Western line, which will begin entering service next year. It will then build trains for the east coast main line from 2018. For those who use the service on a regular basis, that day cannot come too soon. The company has also won contracts for commuter trains in Scotland and on the trans-Pennine route.
Hitachi built the first bullet train in Japan in the 1960s, and I understand it is now on its seventh series of bullet trains. I want to see that technology brought to Britain and manufactured in Newton Aycliffe. Hitachi’s expertise means that it could manufacture the rolling stock for HS2 in Newton Aycliffe if it wins the contract. That would provide a great boost to manufacturing in the north-east and the rest of the UK. I see the 730 jobs that are already to be created as a minimum.
There are other areas of expansion. Hitachi Rail Europe has that name for a simple reason: it sees the UK and the north-east as its launch pad for exporting rolling stock into the European Union. That is one reason why our continued membership of the EU is vital. Hitachi has shown great confidence in UK manufacturing’s capabilities, and I can only endorse its faith in the workforce of Newton Aycliffe and the surrounding area. It has moved its global rail headquarters to London and opened a European rail research centre there, and for one primary reason: because the United Kingdom is part of the European Union. I worry about future investment in the Hitachi plant if we leave the EU.
What I am saying is not meant to be part of some “Project Fear”, but as the MP for Sedgefield, which includes Newton Aycliffe, I feel that it would be irresponsible of me not to express my deeply held worries about the future of Japanese investment if we leave the EU. Those worries find their source in statements made by the chairman of Hitachi, Mr Nakanishi. In an interview with the Financial Times on 12 October 2013, under the headline “Hitachi president warns UK against leaving the EU”, he said that he did not expect the UK to leave the EU, but that if it did,
“I would have to reconsider how to manage our railway business.”
In an article that he wrote for the Financial Times on 11 May this year, Mr Nakanishi stated:
“Britain is the centre for Hitachi’s two largest overseas infrastructure projects, in rail and new nuclear power. We invested in the country as the best base for access to the entire EU market. For our manufacturing and supplies we depend on skills and parts that come from within the UK and from Europe. Take away its EU membership, and the investment case looks very different.”
Some who want to see Britain leave the EU play mischief with major foreign investment and become cavalier with quotes and facts, picking only those that support the argument they wish to promote. For example, Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of Vote Leave, insinuated at the Treasury Committee’s public hearing on 9 May, through selective quoting, that nothing would change with Hitachi if the UK left the EU. The recent and consistent statements of the chair of Hitachi prove that there would be repercussions for further investment in the UK if we left.
As this speech is not part of a so-called “Project Fear”, I will say that if Britain votes to leave the EU on 23 June, it will not mean that the Hitachi factory in my constituency closes on 24 June. However, I am deeply concerned about its ability to generate more jobs and expand in the long term, and therefore to create economic growth both locally and nationally, if it does not have unfettered access to the EU marketplace. In a recent survey that I undertook of businesses in my constituency, more than 50% of respondents said that leaving the EU would have a negative effect on their investment plans for the future.
Christian Matheson
Is my hon. Friend aware that I made exactly the same point at a meeting of the all-party aerospace group about a large employer next to my constituency, Airbus? This is not simply about Hitachi, in his constituency; major manufacturers and their suppliers right across the UK have the same fears.
Phil Wilson
That is absolutely right. I made the specific point about Hitachi because it is based in my constituency, but it is fair to say that for a lot of foreign investors, our being part of the EU is key to their future plans.
I am disappointed that some Members are prepared to play fast and loose with the facts. The hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) was recently quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that big businesses
“agree with an open-border immigration policy because it means they don’t, for instance, have to worry too much about us getting local people. They think they can just get a steady supply of unskilled…labour from abroad”.
That is a slur on the good name of good employers such as Hitachi, which built its factory in the north-east because of the local people’s skills and application to their work. Some 95% of Hitachi’s workforce at Newton Aycliffe come from the north-east, and they are skilled and well paid.
Because of its commitment to the local people, Hitachi—along with Gestamp, the major employer in the town, employing 1,300 people—has sponsored a university technical college, built overlooking the Hitachi factory. UTC South Durham will have more than 60 young people passing through its doors once it opens in September, and that number will build up to 600 local teenagers, who will be equipped with the essential skills required for the world of work. That is all possible because of Hitachi, Gestamp and Sunderland University’s belief in local people, but also because we are part of the European Union.
Hitachi has written to its workforce outlining the company’s position on Europe, not to bully but to inform. It is what a responsible employer does. It has made it absolutely clear that the decision on 23 June is one for the British people, but that it would be remiss of it as a responsible employer not to state its position. Some of the text of the email that Hitachi has sent its employees reads:
“Like many other international companies we invested here because of the UK’s strong economic fundamentals and rich access to talent. We are also in the UK in order to have access to the entire EU and European market. In particular for our manufacturing and supplies we depend on skills and parts which come from within the UK and Europe at large.
We can understand that the EU is not perfect but the UK’s departure from the EU would create huge uncertainty for all Hitachi businesses in the UK in terms of economics, trade, skills and talent, and would affect the stability that the company needs for continued investment and long-term growth.
We also believe that it would have negative impact upon the UK economy and carry significant risks for the remainder of the EU. Therefore we believe that a strong and united Europe with the UK in a single, open market offers the best conditions for Europe’s prosperity, and for Hitachi’s business.”
The matter could not be made clearer.
Like a lot of people, I campaigned long and hard to ensure that the Government went ahead with the deal to bring Hitachi to the north-east, because of the jobs and investment that it would bring. I am not prepared to stand idly by and watch that new inward investment—not just Hitachi, but other major investors—be threatened by our leaving the EU, and that is why I will be campaigning for a remain vote on 23 June.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
The Gracious Speech has already been described as “thin” and “short on detail”, and although I understand the sensitivity of the timing in relation to the EU referendum that my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) mentioned, that could have been avoided if the state opening had been delayed, as Labour Members suggested.
The Government’s programme falls short in a number of areas, including the provision of support to carers. There is nothing in the Gracious Speech to improve support for carers or to ensure that local authorities have the resources necessary to implement the duties that the Government placed on them in the Care Act 2014. The 2011 census shows that the number of carers increased by 11% over the previous 10 years, and the steepest rise was in those caring for 50 hours or more each week. The number of older carers is also increasing. Age UK has found that one in seven people over 80 now provides unpaid care to family and friends. In the last seven years, that number has increased by 40%, and now includes 417,00 people in their 80s.
Failure to address the needs of older carers will mean that many will find it difficult to cope with their caring responsibilities. Caroline Abrahams of Age UK stated that
“as public funding falls further and further behind the growing demand for care we worry that very old people are being expected to fill the gap. They can’t do it all on their own and we shouldn’t take advantage of their determination to do right by those they love.”
It is wrong to presume that when budgets for adult social care are cut unpaid carers will fill the gaps, and current pressures are bringing carers closer to breaking point.
Earlier this month, Carers UK released the findings of its annual “State of Caring” report, which highlights the difficulties of providing quality services for carers against a backdrop of continued local authority cuts. It states that
“the spirit of the Care Act 2014 and the Children and Families Act 2014 have not become a reality for all – and carers are struggling to get the support from health and care services that they need to care, work and have a life outside caring. The survey shows evidence of public services creaking under pressure – charging is up, the right services are harder to find and vital support is cut or under threat, leaving many carers anxious about the future and their ability to continue to care.”
I have raised the impact of funding cuts on the care sector in a number of debates, because social care is too easy a target for cuts. Ministers have been prepared to slash local authority budgets, leading to cuts of £4.6 billion in adult social care since 2010. The Local Government Association has estimated that the implementation of the national living wage—as the Government call it—will this year cost an additional £330 million for home care and residential care providers. In Salford, for example, the 2% social care precept—that is all the provision that the Government are making this year—will raise £1.6 million, but the cost of implementing the national minimum wage will be £2.7 million. It is easy to imagine that gap multiplied up and down the country.
Despite what Ministers say during debates and questions, there is no extra funding from the better care fund for social care this year, and only £105 million next year. Pleas were rightly made by the directors of adult social services and the Local Government Association for the Chancellor to bring forward £700 million from later years of the better care fund, to address those immediate financial pressures. Failure to do that could lead to care providers failing or walking away from publicly funded care, and that could have serious consequences for vulnerable people who rely on care services. It is unfair to think—as seems to be the view—that unpaid family carers will be able to pick up the pieces if care providers fail because of cost pressures.
Unpaid carers are already under increasing pressure because of the impact of Government policies, and one third of carers told Carers UK that they have experienced a change in the amount of care and support that they receive. Almost 60% of those reporting a change say that the amount of care and support they receive has been reduced because of cost or availability, and in some cases those cuts have been significant. One carer reported:
“The social worker who assessed my wife said all direct payments in the borough were being reduced. We discussed the needs and were advised we would be informed of any change. Without warning or notification the budget was cut by 30% immediately.”
Given those facts, it is not surprising that 54% of carers surveyed felt that their quality of life will get worse over this year, despite the Care Act 2014.
The 2014 Act was supposed to entitle all carers to a timely assessment of their needs, yet one in three carers who have had an assessment in the past year had to wait six months or longer. Worryingly, nearly 40% of carers caring for someone at the end of life also had to wait six months or more for an assessment. There is no time at the end of life to be considering what a carer needs “in six months’ time”, and I urge the Minister to press Health Ministers to respond to the independent review of “Choice in end of life care”, which was published more than a year ago, and to consider a new review that would extend choice at the end of life to children and young people.
Almost a quarter of carers had to request an assessment for themselves over the last year, instead of having one offered to them as the law requires. Even when carers receive an assessment, many feel that it does not address their needs. Almost 70% of carers felt that their need to have regular breaks from caring was not considered, and 74% of working-age carers did not feel that the support needed to juggle care with work was considered sufficiently. It appears to some carers that assessment is just a listening exercise that provides no real help. As one carer reported:
“All assessment areas were considered by my assessor but due to cuts there was no support they could practically offer me. I was listened to but there was no positive outcome.”
Along with the emotional stress and physical exhaustion that can occur from providing care without enough support, many carers are finding that it has a real impact on their finances. Of the carers struggling to make ends meet, nearly half surveyed are cutting back on essentials such as food and heating. Others are borrowing money, and more than a third are using up their savings. That is clearly not sustainable in the long term.
I urge Ministers to ensure that carers have the financial support they need. Carers also need access to services to help them in their caring role, and the health and social care system should have a duty to identify carers and take meaningful action to promote their health and wellbeing. Assessments should be accessible to carers, and they should be more than a tick-box or listening exercise. They should lead to carers being provided with tangible support.
The Gracious Speech did not provide any assurance that the Government will address the funding problems that local authorities face in providing social care, which I have outlined. The move to full business rate retention by local authorities will not address the chronic underfunding of social care. As with the social care precept, the proposed financial arrangement for local government fails to consider need, and could create further inequalities in funding for social care. I am concerned that those areas where most funding is needed will be those that gain the least from business rate retention. Unless the Government outline significant changes for carers in their upcoming carers strategy, it is likely that we will continue to see higher costs for carers, and lower levels of support for them or the person they care for.
It was disappointing that the Gracious Speech failed to mention addressing the injustice experienced by women born in the 1950s who are now bearing the brunt of the changes to the state pension age. They face additional financial hardship because of the Government’s failure to provide fair transitional arrangements—an issue we have debated a number of times. The pensions Bill will do nothing to address that injustice, and I would like to outline some of the options that have been suggested.
The new Work and Pensions Secretary keeps saying that there are no viable options, but he does not appear to consider those that have been put forward. In an Opposition day debate on this issue, six options were put forward by the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, who suggested changing the timetable to delay the pension age increase until 2020, so that it would not reach 66 until 2021, and capping the maximum state pension age increase from the Pensions Act 2011 at 12 months. He suggested keeping the qualifying age for pension credit on the previous timetable, which would help some of the women who are facing the greatest financial hardship. [Interruption.] Ministers on the Treasury Bench do not seem interested in the 2.6 million women who are suffering hardship thanks to policies that they have introduced, and it is a pity that they bother to sit here but not to listen.
The fourth option, which the Work and Pensions Committee has put forward, is for people to take a reduced state pension at an earlier age or pay a lower state pension for longer. I do not support that option but it is one that is being put around. The other option is to extend the timetable for increasing the state pension age by 18 months so that it reaches 66 by 2022. I have suggested that the Government consider a bridge pension such as that which I understand is paid in the Netherlands to women affected by the increase in the state pension age.
Andrew Gwynne
I am glad that my hon. Friend has mentioned the 1950s women, and I congratulate her on becoming chair of the all-party parliamentary group on WASPI last week. She will no doubt be aware that Labour colleagues in the Welsh Assembly have tabled a motion calling on the British Government to introduce fair transitional arrangements for these very women.
Barbara Keeley
Absolutely. I fear that we will keep coming back to this until the Government realise it is unreasonable to expect these women, who were expecting a pension at 60 but had it taken away from them, to live on nothing. I have constituents trying to live on their savings.
Christian Matheson
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Government have made the cynical calculation that most of the women affected will have reached pensionable age come the next general election and that they are hoping the problem will simply go away, even if the injustice does not?
Barbara Keeley
They might have made that calculation, but they are wrong, because over the next 10 years, as the changes are made, 2.6 million women will be affected. I think the Government will find themselves with hundreds of thousands of very angry women, as well as their family members, husbands, sisters, children and so on. The numbers ought to make Ministers take this more seriously than they appear to be doing today.
I want to finish the detail because people are interested. One bridge pension was set at around £400 a month. That is better than forcing these women, who have worked all their lives and paid national insurance contributions for 40 years, on to the Work programme, employment and support allowance or jobseeker’s allowance at 62 or 63. It is disgraceful to treat women born in the 1950s that way. And while we are discussing transport and buses, I repeat what someone wrote on social media about the lack of concessionary travel in some parts of the country for people whose state pension age has changed. Why should there be concessionary travel at 60 in London but not in many other parts of the country? That brings further hardship.
I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) mentioned the all-party parliamentary group on WASPI, which I am delighted to say 120 hon. Members signed up to last week. It was formed to provide a cross-party forum in which we can hold the Government to account over the transitional arrangements to compensate the 1950s-born women affected by the changes to the state pension age and campaign on all the other issues around the state pension age. I look forward to helping the group pursue those aims and to making progress to help my constituents. I would be happy to work with Welsh Labour, too, if it is an important issue for it. I will campaign for the hundreds of thousands of 1950s-born women affected by this injustice.
I have raised issues of Government policy adversely affecting 2.6 million women in the UK and 7 million unpaid family carers. There was nothing in the Gracious Speech to help those nearly 10 million people, but I have talked about their issues. It is a pity there were no measures to help them, but we might have an opportunity to do so in the months ahead, when I hope to see extra measures.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Yesterday we had a day of tradition, pomp, ceremony and fancy costumes, but the reality behind the Gracious Speech is that we have another year of Conservative Government.
I start by commending the Government, which is not something I often do, for the opening paragraph of Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech, because it is something that all Members ought to be able to sign up to:
“My Government will use the opportunity of a strengthening economy to deliver security for working people, to increase life chances for the most disadvantaged”.
I welcome that statement of intent. It is one of the things that brought me into the Labour party. I believe in social justice and fighting against inequality in whatever form it manifests itself, but I say to the Government that they will be scrutinised on the measures they bring before the House. Intentions are all fine and well, but it is on their actions that they will be judged.
I remind the Government, who speak about helping the most disadvantaged, of their actions over the past six years: the reliance of many of my constituents on food banks; the increase in tuition fees, trebled under the last coalition Government; the abolition of the education maintenance allowance, which helped so many disadvantaged young people into further education; the pernicious and evil bedroom tax, which has hurt so many families in this county; and the reduction in social security support, including for the disabled and those in low-paid work. Yes, let us try to increase the life chances of the most disadvantaged, but it is on actions not words that Ministers will be judged.
I want to talk briefly about some of the measures in the Gracious Speech. The buses Bill is long overdue, particularly in my city region of Greater Manchester, which, being one of those areas with an elected mayor, will be able to take advantage of the measures, but I ask Ministers why the powers will be available only to areas with an elected mayor and why they should not also be available to other areas and local authorities that have problems with their bus services and want to introduce an element of control into planning a strategic transport network.
It is good news for Greater Manchester, however, because 80% of public transport use is by bus. The effects of deregulation are clear: at its peak, there were 500 million bus journeys in Greater Manchester; last year, that figure was 220 million. That shows the decline in bus usage. On car ownership, still 31% of households in Greater Manchester do not have access to a car, so bus, tram and local train travel is really important. As I say, 80% of those public transport journeys in Greater Manchester are made by bus.
Greater Manchester saw the worst of the bus wars at the height of the deregulation madness. Rather than sensible competition, with a tendering regime that allowed network areas to be planned, standards set and timetables regulated and which ensured a fair competitive process, we had the opposite—an unplanned system with competition not in a council committee room, as part of a fair and transparent planned network system, but on the roads. It was chaos and it destroyed the bus industry in Greater Manchester. I really hope, therefore, that the buses Bill will be a success and that areas that want to take on those new powers can do so.
On the subject of devolution, I also want to talk about the proposals for business rates retention. Again, this could be a success, but the Government need to tread carefully. In Greater Manchester, we have come to an understanding of what is needed in the conurbation and agreed, through the combined authority, that business rates will be pooled and shared. That is really important. If we are to make sense of the devolved settlement in Greater Manchester, we must acknowledge that not all parts of the city region are drivers of growth. We must make sure that people from across Greater Manchester have the skills, education and transport links necessary to access the jobs being created in the growth areas and that the wealth and benefits generated by those jobs are spread across the whole conurbation. That is why pooling and sharing are so necessary.
I acknowledge that my constituency is probably not one of the major areas of growth in the conurbation. That would be the city centre, around Manchester airport and airport city, Trafford park and around the Trafford centre and at Salford Quays around the media city UK. We have to make sure that the wealth generated in those areas is spread across the entire conurbation. That is why I hope the Government will ensure fair arrangements for the retention of business rates.
One of the two boroughs I represent, Tameside, is a net gainer of the current system of business rates because it is a predominantly residential borough. Most of the big industries have disappeared and not been replaced with anything like the number of companies that could generate substantial business rates. That is not to say that the borough council is not trying, but to put it in context, if we did not pool and share with the rest of Greater Manchester, Tameside would require another 17 IKEAs to be built, just to break even under the new system. That is why we have to be careful, and it is why we need a sensible approach with pooling and sharing across Greater Manchester that recognises the challenges I have mentioned.
I want to draw Members’ attention to the part of the Gracious Speech where the Government talk about tackling
“some of the deepest social problems in society”
in order to “improve life chances”. Her Majesty went on to say that
“my Government will introduce new indicators for measuring life chances.”
I have to tell the Government that I am a little cynical about that. It does not matter how we look at the causes of deprivation if the measures are changed in order to give the answers that are wanted. We need to tackle poverty in a holistic way.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the idea of improving life chances is just another way of saying that the Government are scrapping poverty targets?
Andrew Gwynne
That is very much my worry, and I hope that the Government can reassure us on that. If they are not scrapping the targets, they are changing the goalposts, which is my other worry. What we really need to do is to look at the causes of poverty, deprivation and inequality and then tackle them.
That is broadly where I want to finish, but there is one missed opportunity—one that I hope the Government will come to consider in due course. If we are serious about tackling the endemic health inequalities that are prevalent, to a lesser or greater extent, in every single constituency, we must have better joined-up government. We need to break out of the silo mentality and get away from the notion that public health is solely a matter for the Department of Health. We need a national health and wellbeing strategy that every single Government Department and every single devolved institution is fully signed up to.
Let me give one example. When a Bill is introduced here or in the other place, Ministers have to certify to Members that it is compliant with two pieces of legislation: the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act 2010. But I would go further, because I believe that every piece of legislation should also be health and wellbeing compliant. In that way, Ministers will have to ask very simple questions: does this piece of legislation that I am proposing improve the health and wellbeing of the citizens of the UK? Does it reduce health inequalities for our citizens? If the answer is no, why the heck should we be legislating for it? I believe that that is the best way to pull all Ministers and all Government Departments towards the aim of tackling health inequalities in our country.
Whether we are talking about housing, planning, health, education, skills and training, leisure opportunities, open spaces, clean air and the general environment, jobs or transport, all those things, dealt with by myriad different Departments and agencies, impact on the health and wellbeing of our citizens. I would like to see much more joined-up thinking about that. I hope Ministers will take that on board, break out of the silo mentality and, once and for all, really tackle the health inequalities that are so endemic in too many parts of the United Kingdom.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who offered some excellent advice to the Government Front-Bench team. I hope that they will take heed of it.
The Government have a blind spot when it comes to transport and the south bank of the Humber, and there was nothing in yesterday’s Gracious Speech to give much cause for optimism. We have seen delay after delay on electrifying the TransPennine route. The Office of Rail Regulation just last week rejected the proposal to create a direct rail service between Grimsby and London, but the lack of such a direct link is really holding back the area, giving a competitive advantage to comparative towns and cities in the region.
Grimsby and Cleethorpes combined have a bigger population than York, yet York has a direct service to London, with a travel time of under two hours. For people travelling to Grimsby, which is just 40 miles south of York, it takes an hour longer, and they will have to change trains. The Gracious Speech referred to pursuing space travel and trips to the moon, but to be perfectly honest, my constituents would be happy to get to Doncaster in under an hour.
There is a strong case for greater investment in transport infrastructure for the south bank of the Humber. We are a strategically important region for trade and logistics; and we are a gateway to Europe, with goods worth millions of pounds being shipped in and out of our ports every day, and then being transported across the country. Any plans for transportation in the region should recognise and consider those factors. Yet the Government’s 35-page “Northern transport strategy” published earlier this year does not mention Grimsby even once.
It is not just for trade and freight purposes that our region needs greater focus from the Department for Transport. Hull will be the city of culture in 2017, but while many people cross the Humber travelling to work every day, connectivity between the south and north banks remains poor. The year 2017 could bring huge benefits to the entire Humber region, but poor transport links threaten to shut the rest of us out. There are many things that the Government could do to help ensure that that does not happen. Many fellow Humberside MPs supported my call earlier this year to suspend the tolls for the Humber bridge. The lower toll since 2012 led to a 26% increase in the use of the bridge, and brought economic and social benefits to the area. At least while Hull is the city of culture, free travel across the bridge could end it being seen as a barrier to work, leisure and trade.
The last bus service back from Hull to the south bank currently leaves at half-past 6 in the evening, so people from Grimsby are excluded from spending the evening there. With no direct rail link, and just one train after 8 o’clock, our public transport network will not allow people who do not drive, and particularly young people, to access the cultural events in Hull next year. Putting on evening bus and rail services for 2017 would be a popular move, and could even become permanent if people continued to use them.
Children from all backgrounds should be able to cross the Humber to see the performances in Hull next year—whether or not their parents can afford the tickets and travel. I would like to see the Government support state schools in the region with a fund for free school trips to visit arts and cultural activities. Those minor steps would go a long way towards ensuring that 2017 leaves a lasting impression on the current generation, and I hope that the Transport Secretary will agree to meet me, and my fellow Humberside MPs, to discuss them.
I welcome the announcement of a Bill to change the franchising system for bus services, but I worry about what the effect on services in my constituency will be if Britain votes to leave the European Union next month. The numbers 1, 2 and 20 buses—with which I hope everyone will be familiar—are all funded by the EU. The number 1 bus is particularly important to our local economy. It goes to Europarc, Grimsby’s flagship business park, which is the location for hundreds of jobs in the town, and which, as the name suggests, is also funded by the EU. If the bus were to stop running, I should be worried about the impact on businesses on the site. I should like to hear the Minister’s view of the potential impact of Brexit in that context.
Let me now turn to an issue about which I have previously written to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones). Owing to a change in the lighting regulations last year, community first responders are no longer permitted to attach certain reflective markings to their vehicles. A constituent of mine who is a first responder contacted me to say that he feared that the change could put his safety at risk if he was called out to an incident on a country road, or at night, and approaching vehicles did not see him until a very late stage. He is also worried that the lack of reflective signage on his vehicle will make it harder to spot when other emergency service vehicles are attempting to locate the site of the incidents.
I want to record my thanks to the Minister for his response to my letter, and also take the opportunity to follow up a couple of the points that he made. First, he raised the prospect of an amendment to the regulation of retro-reflective Battenberg livery in the Deregulation Act 2015. I should like to hear confirmation that the Government intend to pursue that, and also to hear what the extent will be of the amendment that he suggested. Secondly, he referred to concern that attaching Battenberg livery to the vehicles of members of the public as they went about their daily business devalued the livery. Given that the point of the signage is visibility for safety purposes, I am not sure that I see why that would be such a bad thing. The Minister said there would be a consultation, and I would appreciate more information about what opportunities my constituent will have to feed into it.
I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to those points in a letter to me after the debate. I am sure that he and all Members agree that first responders do an incredibly important job. They save lives, they do it voluntarily, and they should be given all the tools that they need to do the job safely and to the best of their abilities.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and to follow the many speeches that have been made so far.
Today we have heard about drones, driverless cars, spaceports and space planes. That all sounds a wee bit like a sci-fi movie, but it forms the headlines of a Queen’s Speech that is forward-looking when it comes to transport and infrastructure. The forward-looking, fully prepared United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that we all need and want is taking the lead on the global stage, and making sure that we are ready to lead beyond the globe. A forward-looking Bill will secure future transport and the jobs of tomorrow that will come with it.
Not only does the Queen’s Speech refer to provisions for driverless vehicles, space planes and spaceports, but we see a welcome recognition of the need to adapt the insurance market to reflect the changes that driverless vehicles will bring about. This is not just about the vehicles themselves; it is about the way in which the system will work. Autonomous vehicles could represent a safety revolution. Insurers have already been trying to shape the right framework to keep insurance simple for future drivers. I believe that this commitment could throw some of these “rocket boosters”—if I may use that terminology—behind efforts to turn the future of driving that is envisaged into a reality.
A few weeks ago, during Transport questions, I asked what moneys were being set aside for electric cars and the ministerial reply was that moneys were being disbursed throughout the United Kingdom. However, there needs to be a sea change of attitude on the high street as well. If we are to have electric cars, there will have to be better charging points on the high street, where the people are, on every garage forecourt, and in shopping centres and stores. We need a policy and a strategy that extends throughout the UK.
That said, while it is all well and good to look to the future—as indeed we should—existing problems with our infrastructure and transport sectors need to be sorted out now, rather than being left to the future. There has been that futuristic commitment to spaceports and space plans, but the Government need to keep their feet on the ground just for now and postpone take-off, because huge issues affecting airports and aeroplanes are still outstanding. For instance the Government still cannot agree on where to build a new runway in the south-east.
A recent announcement from Heathrow—supported by the Democratic Unionist party, which is committed to Heathrow 3—shows that it is willing not only to meet the requirements set by the Independent Aviation Noise Authority, but to go even further. Surely the process of securing the future of the country’s premier airport is just as important to our future, in Northern Ireland and in the rest of the United Kingdom, as ensuring that we are in a position to harness future transport means. For us, with Belfast City and Belfast Aldergrove, Heathrow is an international airport that gives us connectivity to the rest of the world, and the development would also help our economy to grow. There has been no mention of air passenger duty, but it would have been nice to see something about that. In the past week or two, we have heard—this does not affect my constituency, but it is good to recognise it—that we will have more direct flights from China to Manchester, and some Members will obviously speak to that. The boost that that will give to the economy will be £230 million, so we must get connectivity right and make sure we benefit across the whole United Kingdom.
One of those writing today about the Queen’s Speech said:
“While there was praise for the futuristic vision, there were complaints that the government’s programme made no mention of the long-awaited expansion of airports in the southeast…‘The business community will be surprised that the Queen’s Speech included a commitment to build a new spaceport but there was no commitment to make a final decision on a new runway for more conventional aircraft,’ Gavin Hayes, director of the airport campaign group Let Britain Fly, said. ‘We are urging government to make a final decision by the summer recess.’”
I also urge them to do that. Let us have this decision made once and for all.
Every Member who has spoken so far has referred to the bus services Bill, which is most welcome—I thank the Government for it. However, we need to see that commitment turned into action. We had the same commitment last year, but we have yet to see it delivered on. The Bill is an opportunity to make a real difference at ground level, allowing powers over bus services to lie with those people closest to the operation of services. Talking buses are also an exciting prospect. If they are implemented properly and become widely available, they will be a great way of making a difference to vulnerable people—those in society we have a duty to support and help.
On spaceports, we face competition from over 20 rivals, including the United Arab Emirates, Spain and Australia, so the Government are right to take that into account by committing to spaceports. A Bill will pave the way to our seeing spaceports built by 2018. However, as with the bus services Bill, we need the vision to become a reality and to be delivered.
I want to make a quick comment about drones, because they are also part of infrastructure. We need better monitoring, regulation and control of drones. We need to make sure they are used correctly. Like many things in this world, if they are used correctly, they can benefit us all, but when they are used in a dangerous fashion and for the wrong reasons—for instance to deliver drugs, mobile phones, money and contraband over the walls of jails—something is wrong. If they are used dangerously around airports, we also have to control them. When it comes to drones, let us have a wee bit more detail about how things will work.
Infrastructure does not mean just transport. The Government are in danger of moving on to the next phase of infrastructure advancement without finishing the implementation of the last great advancement—the internet. My constituency, like those of many hon. Members in the Chamber, does not have proper access to broadband just yet. The commitment to fast broadband nationwide has been a long-standing one, but one that, moving towards 2020, still has to be delivered.
The fact that every UK household is to have a legal right under the universal service obligation to a fast broadband connection is welcome but, again, it will have to become a reality. For too long, I have had literally hundreds of constituents contacting me every week about their broadband connection. The issue of broadband has been brought up in the House, in questions and in Westminster Hall. Some 13% of my constituents cannot get broadband. People want to grow their business and to employ extra people, but they do not have broadband. The Government committed some money to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland a while ago, but it has now run out. It is time that we had a concrete, strategic plan on paper to show how we are going to reach the 100%, which is something that I certainly want to happen in my constituency.
I am pleased about the Government’s commitment to 1 million houses; I will be interested to see how that works. Again, however, it is important that we put that commitment in place. I make a plea for social housing and for us to make sure that people have the opportunity to acquire property for a rent or a mortgage that they can afford.
I have laboured the issue of infrastructure so, to conclude, I would like to touch on a couple of other issues. We have a commitment to the infamous sugar tax—I totally support and welcome it—or rather to the soon-to-be-famous sugar tax, once this great nation reaps the inevitable benefits of this long-overdue measure. There may have been some controversy about the issue, but when it comes to the facts and those who are affected, it is clear which side those who want to make a positive difference are on. Some of my colleagues who sit alongside me—they are not here today—have a different opinion, but I am pleased that the Government are committing themselves to dealing with the issue.
From obesity networks to sports clubs and cancer charities, all the stakeholders we would want to be onside are in the right place on this measure. This move is not a magic wand, and many people look at it and say, “What is it going to do?” It cannot do everything by itself, but it is a good step towards tackling the nationwide obesity epidemic and reducing the risk of the many diseases associated with obesity. The debate around this issue has been met with some cynicism and opposition, but we have to commit ourselves to the measure, and I am pleased that the Government have done so.
As we approach June, no contribution would be complete without a mandatory opinion about the European Union. It will be of no surprise to hon. Members that I am in the out camp. The Government have tried to keep this one even quieter than usual this year—perhaps that is why the Queen’s Speech was a wee bit low key—no doubt to ensure that their abject failure on renegotiation is put as far to the back of the nation’s mind as possible. There was no mention of the much-lauded sovereignty Bill—it is now quite clear that that will be scrapped. The will of the House would have shown the British people just how much of a success the Prime Minister’s charade of a negotiation was. Where was the negotiation for the fishermen? Where was the negotiation for the farmers? Time will tell where we will be on 23 June, or when the result is made available on 24 June.
Furthermore, the silence is accompanied with desperation, as tight restrictions are to be imposed on visitors using the NHS, with less free healthcare access for EEA visitors. In reality, we all know that such a move will have little or no impact, and will result in little or no saving. All it does is to show the level of the Prime Minister’s desperation with respect to what he is willing to undertake to keep the European project on the road. Playing immigration politics with health is the latest in a long list of insults to the intelligence and decency of the British people. The Prime Minister might have had a good deep breath of the scuba gas, but he must be careful when he resurfaces after the referendum. We all know that resurfacing from such depths is extremely dangerous, and we are not sure what state of mind he will be in when it is all over.
I am pleased that the Government will introduce an adoption Bill to speed up the system and reduce delays. I am also pleased about the Bill on reforming prisons, but I have to say that we can build nice new prisons and give prisoners all the accommodation we like, but that will do no good if we do not address neo-Nazism and radical Islamism in prisons, where people are being radicalised before they come out. Perhaps at some stage we will find out what is going to happen about that.
The military covenant, and Northern Ireland’s full involvement in it, is something that I also wish to see. I look forward to the state visit of the President of Colombia in November. That is important because we in Northern Ireland have a peace process that has worked, and it is good to see that peace is at least resembling some sort of normality in Colombia. We welcome that, and we look forward to seeing it continue. We also look forward to the Government working, as the last paragraph of the Queen’s Speech states,
“in Northern Ireland to secure further progress in implementing the Stormont House and Fresh Start Agreements.”
The DUP is committed to the Stormont House agreement and fully committed to the peace process. Our election results, with Arlene Foster becoming First Minister, are an indication of that. We believe in the democratic process, and the people of Northern Ireland will be the greater for supporting the partnership and the political system as we move forward.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
I want briefly to comment on the words of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and I echo the sentiments he expressed about the visit of the President of Colombia. I pay tribute to Members from all parts of the Northern Ireland Assembly who have played a role in the Colombian peace process based on their own experience. Hon. Members in this House can be proud of the role that our colleagues from Northern Ireland have played in making the peace process as successful as it has been so far.
I welcome those parts of the Gracious Speech that we are able to support, particularly those that have been purloined so successfully from the manifesto on which I stood for election just one year ago. I am really pleased that the Government will be proceeding with the infrastructure commission. I am also pleased to welcome the measures in the buses Bill, although I was concerned to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) about the restrictions that the Government seem to be imposing.
The ability to regulate bus services will be extended only to those areas where the Government have decided that there will be an elected Mayor. Perhaps the Minister for Housing and Planning might convey my concerns to the Secretary of State and his fellow Ministers in the Department for Communities and Local Government about the fact that the Government say that they do not have a one-size-fits-all policy but proceed with one anyway. It would seem that they will require Cheshire West and Chester, Cheshire East and Warrington to adopt a mayoral structure in an area that, frankly, is not suitable for it. The requirement comes with a carrot and a stick, and there will be no carrot unless we take on an elected Mayor. That is wrong for the area I represent, and I ask the Minister to bear that point in mind and take it back to his colleagues.
I welcome the moves to improve the infrastructure for electric vehicles. Following a question asked by the hon. Member for Strangford a couple of weeks ago, I made the point that infrastructure includes knowledge infrastructure. Electric vehicles are entirely different from those that use petrol or diesel. I urge Transport Ministers to consider very carefully the proposals of the Institute of the Motor Industry about providing a training and certification programme for automotive engineers so that they are aware of the dangers that electric vehicles pose to those who work in the industry and are properly trained to deal with electric engines.
On transport infrastructure, Her Majesty said that the Government would continue to support the development of the so-called northern powerhouse. I suspect that the northern powerhouse is little more than a sham—a slogan to distract from the fact that the substance is entirely lacking. I congratulate the Government on their sloganising because it has got us all talking about the northern powerhouse, rather than examining its substance. The northern powerhouse has almost become an accepted reality, which displays their mastery of distraction.
London is getting Crossrail and will now get Crossrail 2, as well as another runway. I confess that I do not have a dog in the fight when it comes to where the new runway in the south-east should be, except that I suspect it should be at Heathrow, if only because that option is least far away from the rest of the country. However, I am concerned that infrastructure development is seen merely an as extension of London infrastructure. I have always supported HS2 and I would support HS3, HS4 and HS5, because I believe infrastructure investment should be just that: investment that brings a return in the shape of jobs and prosperity. I have to say that before I became a Member I always wanted HS2 to be built from the north to the south. I fear all we will get is a London to Birmingham fast railway line, which will do little to encourage growth north of Birmingham. If so, we in the north-west of England in particular will become part of a client region of London, feeding off the scraps of London’s economic growth, rather than developing our own.
I was very concerned to hear the Secretary of State for Transport talk about HSBC transferring jobs to Birmingham as though that was something to be proud of. That will not be good for the people in London, but, more importantly, it will detract from the whole point, which is that infrastructure development should generate economic growth of its own, not simply shift growth around or across the country.
As other hon. Members have said, the danger is that the Treasury is threatening to take over the HS2 project and to trim it back so that none of the benefits originally promised will be delivered for the north-west.
Christian Matheson
I would always give way to my good friend from Denton and Reddish.
Andrew Gwynne
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. There is some suggestion that, in the trimming back process, the HS2 station at Manchester airport might be dropped. Does he agree that that would be incredibly short-sighted? This is about having a high-speed rail link to the airport running not just from north to south, but—with HS3—from east to west. The airport station ought to be a hub, which would provide new links not just from the north-east right through to Manchester airport, but to Chester and beyond in the other direction.
Christian Matheson
What an excellent point. We used to talk about an integrated transport policy with a few local buses and a couple of local railway services. My hon. Friend has identified an integrated transport policy that includes international transport as well, and he made that case very eloquently.
The Secretary of State talks about HS2 having an impact, as I am sure it is, but the danger is that, because of the uncertainty, it will be a negative impact. To some extent, we are seeing that in the north-west, where investment decisions have been delayed until we find out exactly what will be proposed. If the Government are really serious about the northern powerhouse, they should put a stop to the anonymous briefings and the newspaper speculation, and commit to HS2 in a way that benefits the whole of the north, along the lines described by my hon. Friend. I do not want to see HS2 simply as a new line painted on Harry Beck’s London underground map, making the midlands an extension of London. That means making a reality of Sir David Higgins’s vision of a true northern rail hub at Crewe, with at least seven HS2 trains an hour stopping there to provide the great connections to the rest of Cheshire, Warrington and beyond, and a commitment to run some trains direct from HS2 to Chester—of course—and north Wales, some of which could make up those seven trains. We need to make sure that it is not just people living close to the stations who benefit from the £40 billion that the Government will invest in HS2. Local roads and railways must be built that allow my constituents and those of all other right hon. and hon. Members in Cheshire and Warrington—including, of course, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne)—to take advantage of the new services quickly and easily.
I understand that capacity is a fundamental driver of HS2, but so are reliability and speed. If HS2 above Birmingham is simply designed to link the centres of the major cities —London, Birmingham and Manchester, and perhaps not even Liverpool or Glasgow—it will do more damage than it saves, by sucking investment and economic growth out of areas, such as mine, seen as being on the periphery and preventing them from taking full advantage. They will lose out to the big cities. I warn Ministers that the Government risk snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by making the false and incorrect predictions of the doomsayers who opposed HS2 come true through their own myopia and the catastrophic mistake of allowing the Treasury to take over the project—not to achieve the careful cost management that we all know has to take place, but to slash and burn on investment in services to Chester and north Wales, such as cutting out the hub at Crewe and the Manchester airport option, as mentioned by my hon. Friend. All those options would generate the returns demanded by that investment. The Chester, west Cheshire and north Wales cross-border economic area is one of the fastest growing in the UK. If the Government want to pull the plug on that, it is easy: just cancel the northern HS2 hub at Crewe.
If I return briefly to the matter of road transport, the Minister will know exactly where I am going. The M56 in my area is desperately in need of an upgrade to deal with the impossible congestion that drivers experience on a daily basis, but the need for investment goes far beyond this. I remain desperately disappointed that no action is planned by the Government before 2020. I remind the Minister that this is a cross-party campaign. My next-door neighbour, the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans), is leading the campaign and has support from across the parties because of the importance of the motorway for my area and as a principal artery into north Wales and parts of Merseyside. Unless the Government commit to that work now, they will stifle further economic growth in that area. If I were being cynical, I might predict that the Government will make a promise to upgrade the motorway just before the 2020 election, but such a promise will be taken with the same scepticism as befits any of their promises after the collapse of their £38 billion pledge to upgrade the railways immediately after the 2015 election.
The local authorities and the local enterprise partnership in my area are clear about where investment is needed if their ambitious plans to double the size of our economy are to be delivered, and the Government need to commit to supporting those. Transport infrastructure does not come cheap, and in calling for the electrification of the Crewe to Chester to north Wales line, to link up with a new HS2 hub at Crewe, and an upgrade of the M56, I am calling for cash spending which requires prioritisation. But investment must be considered as just that: investment to generate economic growth. It is not like sticking a pin in a bet on the grand national. My area has proved its ability to grow. The local enterprise partnership has proved its ability to work with local authorities across the political spectrum to deliver that growth and bring in businesses from across the sectors to work together to achieve that growth potential. If the Government are willing to waste £70 million on an unnecessary vanity garden bridge across the Thames in London, surely they can recognise that HS2, as a national project, must benefit the whole of the nation and allow the whole of the nation to grow under its own enterprise. They should not just consider London to be the sole driver of economic growth in the UK. For all the sloganising about a so-called northern powerhouse, without the correct infrastructure in place, it seems that crumbs from London’s table will be all that we can get.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
At a time of major economic challenges, it has become painfully obvious that Her Majesty needs a new scriptwriter who can add a bit more substance to the Gracious Speech. As I read the 21 Bills mentioned, I thought, until a short time ago, that this was simply a stalled Government awaiting the results of the European referendum. However, I listened to the Leader of the House this morning who indicated that these 21 Bills would mean the full accomplishment of the Tory manifesto—after only two years. We have a threadbare Queen’s Speech, with no future plans, and it would appear that a period of long-term economic misery awaits many people. We should be addressing the chronic UK productivity problem, a matter that is not even mentioned in the Queen’s Speech, where the word “productivity” does not appear.
Before I address some issues of transport and infrastructure, I would like to discuss an anti-terrorism matter connected with future initiatives, and I wish to give some praise to the Government. Some weeks ago I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill on establishing standards for forensic linguistic analysts—people who can analyse text messages and help identify some of the most dangerous people in our society. Although the Bill has fallen, I am pleased to say that the Government have agreed to a meeting with me to discuss whether this is something they could take up in the future, and I am very grateful for that.
Of the measures in the Gracious Speech, I welcome some of the moves on transport, and I wish to comment briefly on a couple of those areas. First, when the Government consider the buses Bill, I ask them to remember, among other things, the needs of students, particularly those in rural areas who attend college. The National Union of Students has already pointed out that it considers this to be one of the major barriers to some students engaging. I hope the Government will consider that, and perhaps it would be a good idea to engage soon in deep conversations with the NUS to address the issue.
I also wish to address an issue raised by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who mentioned not only the great cause that many of us share in the WASPI campaign, on whose behalf she has done some outstanding work, but concessionary travel schemes, which are very important for women and men who are of or nearing retirement age. If I recall correctly, she said there were inequalities in England, in that in London it is possible to engage in these schemes at 60 but elsewhere in England the relevant age is already 63 for women, with the prospect of that rising. May I recommend that the Government think about the very simple solution adopted by the Scottish Government of having a flat-rate entry common for women and men at the age of 60 for concessionary travel? The difference that has made to the lives of large numbers of women and men over the age of 60 in Scotland has been remarkable. Other Members have talked about the importance of health and wellbeing in our society, and a measure such as this would command the support of the whole House.
Barbara Keeley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. He makes the good suggestion that the Government adopt the London model, whereby men and women have concessionary travel at 60. I met some WASPI women from Derbyshire last week here in the House. One of them was telling me that she no longer went out with a group of people who were her friends before, because she is still working, cannot afford the fares and has not got a concessionary bus pass, whereas they are retired with their pensions and concessionary travel. How unfair to divide friends in that way.
Roger Mullin
Absolutely. That adds to my point about how this is about not merely the simple issue of travel, but people’s health and wellbeing and their ability to engage with their friends, to engage in the community and to contribute more to the life of that community.
Drew Hendry
It is worth underlining the mental health benefits of concessionary travel. The scourge of loneliness comes with an ageing population and more people being isolated, and the ability to get out and travel on the bus network and to socialise is a real boon. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is something we should foster and encourage to reduce that scourge of loneliness?
Roger Mullin
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, perhaps the Government could consider making their disabled companion programme for those on disability benefits a national programme, not something available only on a regional basis. That would bring it into line with what is happening Scotland. It is of great benefit to people who otherwise face considerable disadvantages.
I am aware of the time, but I wish to mention something that concerns me greatly about the Government’s infrastructure plans. I have to say that the way in which some of them have been undertaken leaves a lot to be desired, particularly when it comes to how some so-called major national infrastructure projects are being funded and managed. I wish to highlight what some might consider to be the financial shenanigans that are going on in relation to the Thames Tideway Tunnel project. The funding model of this rather controversial multi-billion pound project comprises conventional equity—made up of about 40% pure equity and 60% subordinated debt with interest tax deductible—and medium-term bank debt to be refinanced with bonds issued over the six-year build period. However, if market conditions prevent bonds being issued, the UK Government provide a £500 million loan facility as contingent support. The liability associated with the £500 million support is unrecorded in UK Government accounts. This Parliament has never been informed of the details of this type of contingent support. It is a dodge. It exposes customers, and it should be thoroughly examined by this House. We need to have proper methods of financial management of major infrastructure projects.
My hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) mentioned the Queensferry Crossing—the new bridge being built across the Forth—which is very close to my constituency. Using the new Scottish Futures Trust, which was developed when we got rid of the horrendous private finance initiative, this major new bridge is coming in quicker than planned and £1 billion under budget. How many other major infrastructure projects in the UK have come in quicker than planned and significantly under budget? The answer is very few. Perhaps we should look again at the Scottish Futures Trust model of investment.
We face many transportation and infrastructure challenges in this country, but, above all, we face major productivity and economic challenges. They should have all featured much more strongly in this Queen’s Speech. We need to focus on them not just for our benefit but for that of future generations.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I was eager to speak today on transport because I believe that there is arguably no more potent policy lever in the hands of Government that has the capacity to drive increased economic prosperity than that of improving transport. Transport is a policy area that requires Government action more than any other. Infrastructure projects begin to deliver payback only over the longer term and, in the case of railways, decades. With that time horizon, business finds such projects difficult to finance, but the payback, which includes more jobs, increased housing and a more diverse and knowledge-intensive business sector, is critical to the continued prosperity of our country.
Importantly, not only politicians but business people believe this. Business requires Government to step up, show leadership, and signal their commitment to helping our business community to deliver what we all agree it is best able to deliver—increasing prosperity throughout this country.
Unfortunately, I fear that my constituents and the constituents of so many of my right hon. and hon. Friends will find little comfort in the measures announced in the Queen’s Speech. As this House knows all too well, this Government are fond of grand announcements, backed by even grander rhetoric. And no area of Government policy is blessed with grander rhetoric than transport. We hear much about sea changes and renaissances from the other side of the House. A case in point is the northern powerhouse, and more recently, its close relative, High Speed 3. These so-called powerhouse projects both promise, we have been told, a renewed industrial revolution in the heartlands of the north. As you can imagine, Madam Deputy Speaker, as an MP who proudly represents the city of Bradford, I was keen to hear more about how this Government intend to invest in improved regional transport, whether railways, buses, roads, or indeed air, to help to rekindle an economic renaissance in my city. I was hopeful that I would be able to offer a debt of gratitude to this Government for investing in the city of Bradford, helping my constituents to realise their potential. But in reality little has emerged from this Government's Queen’s Speech, other than further confirmation that the Government’s term of office is going to be marked by a roll-call of broken promises and a litany of excuses.
Despite six years of the so-called northern powerhouse, the only realities felt by my home city of Bradford, and by my constituents, have been bruising Government cuts and a continued concentration of wealth, economic activity and capital investment in London and the south-east of England. Until I and other northern MPs hounded the Government into an embarrassing U-turn, we faced a broken promise about the trans-Pennine electrification project. This has now been reinstated, albeit with a much less ambitious delivery date.
By most measures, Bradford is one of the UK’s strongest players. It is the fifth largest local authority in Great Britain, with a growing population of over 528,000. It benefits from having the youngest population of any city in the UK, with 23.5% of the population under 16 years of age, compared with 18.8% nationally. In 10 years’ time the population is expected to increase to 569,000, with its working age population forecast to rise by 24,000 to 353,000.
Bradford’s economy is valued at £9.2 billion, the 11th largest in the UK. The city is home to a number of major companies, including Morrisons, Yorkshire Building Society, Princes, Santander, Provident Financial, Pace plc and Hallmark cards. In total, 17,000 businesses call the district of Bradford their home, providing much valued employment to over 195,000 people. But despite these figures, Bradford continues to be shackled by poor connectivity. This poor connectivity is especially glaring when we take the time to consider the city’s regional rail links. Unlike comparators, both nationally and internationally, it has few direct services to other major regional cities. For example, and most shockingly, Bradford has no direct rail services to Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, Hull or Manchester airport. Where Bradford does have a direct service to major regional cities such as Manchester, the average speed of the journey is a derisory 33 miles per hour.
A further indictment is the poor regional rail link with Bradford's neighbouring city, Leeds. Currently 45,000 workers commute between Leeds and Bradford on a daily basis, the largest flow between any two major cities in the UK. Despite the two city centres being only 8 miles apart, three quarters of those journeys are made by car rather than by public transport—an unbelievable figure.
As many will recall, since being elected to this House I have reserved my precious few opportunities to question the Prime Minister directly for the subject of regional rail improvement. I first asked about the Government’s broken promise on trans-Pennine electrification. My second question, asked only a few weeks ago, was on electrification of the Calder Valley line, because of the key role it promises to play in HS3 and Bradford’s connectivity.
My constituents might have hoped that the Prime Minister and his Government would take the opportunity offered by the Queen’s Speech to bring forward proposals to improve rail connectivity between Bradford and its neighbouring major cities. The northern powerhouse and HS3 promise no increased regional connectivity for Bradford. For a city the size of Bradford, with an economy valued at £9.2 billion, the 11th largest in the UK, to be notable by its absence from one of the Government’s flagship infrastructure projects is a stark and disturbing oversight. There was an opportunity in this Queen’s Speech to put right that error and to announce measures to better connect a vital cog in this country’s engine room of growth. It is a shame that this Government have chosen not to take that opportunity.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
What an extraordinary waste of time! I counted 42 announcements in the Queen’s Speech and only four had not been announced before yesterday. This is a Queen’s Speech that risks being a waste of the Queen’s time, the people’s time and Parliament’s time. I cannot recall in 19 years in this House seeing a Queen’s Speech debate in which the speeches from the Government Back Benches numbered two and ran out before we got a third of the way into the debate, and those Benches were entirely empty for the rest of the debate.
Headline measures in legislation for this year are little more than a middle manager’s task list for the next month: more control over budgets for prison governors; stop radical preachers from taking jobs in elderly care homes; longer school days; more NHS charging for non-EU citizens; money for school sport from a levy on fizzy drinks. I ask you, Mr Deputy Speaker! This is the “So what?” Queen’s Speech—minimal, managerial, marking time; minor policy changes hugely overblown and hugely over-briefed to the Minister.
What was not a waste of time was the speech from the shadow Transport Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), and many of the speeches made this afternoon by hon. Members on both sides. My hon. Friend warned the Secretary of State for Transport, who is again not in his place on the Treasury Bench, about the gap between what this Government do and what this Government say. She welcomed the buses Bill, which has received wide support in the House this afternoon, including from the hon. Member for Bath (Ben Howlett), my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—who also referred to this as the sci-fi Queen’s Speech.
My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) also talked about how valuable the buses Bill is, and I think the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (William Wragg), who is no longer here, might have said that, too. Although they welcomed the Bill, my hon. Friends the Member for Nottingham South and for Denton and Reddish both questioned why it was only for areas with elected mayors. We want other mayors to get the same powers in the same way as the Bill goes through this House.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South took the Government to task for the lack of response to the Law Commission’s report and the lack of a taxi licensing Bill. We want the system to be tightened up so that drivers who are rightly and properly rejected for a licence in their own area cannot sidestep the bar by getting a licence in another area. Above all, my hon. Friend took the Secretary of State to task for the continuing delay regarding any decision on airport expansion, particularly on the runway at Heathrow.
My hon. Friend was strongly backed by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), with the authority that she brings as the Chair of the Transport Committee, by the hon. Members for Bath, for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) and for Strangford, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who said that the big absence from the Queen’s Speech was any announcement on airports and on Heathrow. He described such an announcement as long overdue and rightly reminded the Government of all the groundwork done by the Labour Government—a White Paper on aviation in 2003 and the decision in 2008 on the expansion of Heathrow, but nothing since.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse went on to talk about housing and the damage that the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which has just reached the statute book, will bring—
John Healey
Let me finish my comments on my hon. Friend’s speech, then I will give way to him.
My hon. Friend went on to speak about leasehold reform. He is one of the champions of leasehold reform in the House. I was glad to hear that the Minister for Housing and Planning is now taking an interest. For too long, under Governments of both parties, leasehold reform has been put in the “too difficult to do” box. To the extent that the Minister is willing to act on leasehold reform, we are willing to support him where we can.
Jim Fitzpatrick
Because of time constraints, I was not able to point out our belief that the Government’s housing record is not very good. Notwithstanding the claim that they have a better house building record than we had when we were in power, they are taking credit for things that we paid for and put in the planning process before they even came to office.
John Healey
It will not surprise my hon. Friend to know that I will come on to that. He is right. We sometimes hear the Government say that they have built more social homes than we did, but 90% of the social homes built by this Government were commissioned by the Labour Government and largely funded by the Labour Government. I should know—I was the Minister who did it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) made a strong case for lower tolls on the Humber bridge. Existing tolls, she said, were a barrier not just to work and to trade, but to leisure. I am pleased to see the Secretary of State for Transport on the Front Bench. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby asked whether he would be prepared to meet her and other MPs from the area to discuss how the barriers that transport creates—especially barriers to leisure for young and older people, as well as to their work and trade—could be overcome. The Secretary of State is nodding, which is a good sign. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend that that meeting will go ahead shortly.
One thing that my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish always brings to debate is passion and principle. I love the way he speaks. He rightly said that intentions were well and good, but it is on actions that people will judge this Government. It is fine to talk of social justice, increased life chances and reducing inequality, but we look to the actions for proof that the Government mean what they say and do as they say. As my hon. Friend said, when we look at the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance, the introduction of the bedroom tax, and the cutting of benefit support to disabled people and to people working hard on low incomes, all the signs from the past six years point in the opposite direction.
My hon. Friend described this Queen’s Speech as a missed opportunity. I thought he made an interesting argument, which he could perhaps take up with the Procedure Committee, about whether, as one of the consistent systematic checks that this House applies to any new legislation, we could assess its impact on national health and wellbeing.
Over the years that I have known her there has been no more consistent, forceful or better champion of older people than my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). She gave the House the extraordinary statistic that one in three carers now has to wait six months to get an assessment of their needs, never mind get those needs met. As she rightly said, the £4.6 billion cuts to adult social care since 2010 are a big part of that story, and there is nothing in this Queen’s Speech to reassure people concerned about this that the essential funding is in place. She also noted that there is no pensions Bill to deal with the problems of the 2.6 million older women who have been hit so hard by the recent pension changes.
The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin), who has left the Chamber, argued that it might be helpful to adopt the Scottish model—or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South pointed out, the London model—for concessionary travel.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) rightly reminded the House that business demands better infrastructure. A city as big as Bradford, as rich in business history and business innovation, as it now is, is being badly let down by the quality of the investment and transport infrastructure to support it. As she said, grand rhetoric is what we get from Government while real change, real investment and real improvement falls so far short of that, and people in her city, businesses and residents alike, will find little comfort in the Queen’s Speech announcements.
I liked the argument that my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) made when he reminded the House and Ministers that we require intellectual infrastructure as well as hard building and capital projects. He urged a training and certification programme for, for instance, engineers involved in the development of electric vehicles and in the electric infrastructure to support those vehicles. He expressed a fear shared by me and many colleagues in Yorkshire and Humber that HS2 will simply mean faster rail journeys between London and Birmingham, and the north-west will be left out. The Secretary of State said nothing to reassure the House about the plans or promises on HS2 being delivered in full.
The Secretary of State talked about UK infrastructure and, with a flourish, picked two dates, he said, at random—1997 and 2010. In 2010, Labour’s last year in government, public sector net investment—or infrastructure investment from Government—was 3.4% of GDP. One year later, in the first year of the previous Parliament, after the Chancellor made his cuts, it was down to 2.8%. By the end of that Parliament, it was 1.9% of GDP. This year, it is 1.9%. By the end of this Parliament, it will be 1.5%. That is the reality between the great rhetoric that my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South talked about and the actions, investment and long-term commitments we see from this Government. Housing investment—part of the picture—was slashed by 60% in 2010, the first year of the previous Government. In the same year, roads investment was slashed by £4 billion. The renewables obligation—Labour’s renewables obligation, which was creating the funding to invest in green energy—was removed entirely. That is the reality of what happens when the Government do, rather than talk about, infrastructure.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) spoke about why this sort of investment is so important—why it is more than simply figures and argy-bargy in this House. He talked about Hitachi in his constituency, and the huge number of jobs and a big boost to growth in that region because of the investment in our rail system and in the rolling stock required to upgrade it.
It is that sort of impact, on all parts of the country, that makes infrastructure investment more than simply a matter of political and policy debate. It has a real impact when we get it right in areas all across the country. Instead of that investment in Britain’s future, the Chancellor and Conservative Ministers have, from 2010 onwards, cut investment that would secure our place in the world, stronger long-term growth and the future welfare of our citizens.
The Transport Secretary told us at the beginning of the debate—I have checked this—that yesterday’s Queen’s Speech was “all about building a stronger, more resilient, more modern economy”. I have to say, however, that after six years of failure, it is clear that the Government are doing no such thing. It is clear that the Chancellor did not fix our economic foundations after the global crash. Any right wing, hard-line Finance Minister can cut public spending, but he is dodging the really tough decisions that he himself promised to take in 2010.
Rather than helping British businesses to sell to the world, our UK trade gap was a record £96 billion in the red last year, which is the biggest ever deficit since records began in 1948. Rather than reforming the finance sector and rebuilding our production base, the number of manufacturing jobs in this country is still almost 10% below that before the global crisis and crash. Rather than rebalancing the economy away from borrowing, debt and household consumption, it is now forecast that household debt will top pre-crash levels and reach 160% of income by the end of this Parliament.
The six years of failure on the economy will be unaffected by many of the measures in the Queen’s Speech. There have also been six years of failure on housing. After 2 million more homes were built and 1 million more households became homeowners under Labour, we have seen failure on all fronts since 2010. When this Queen’s Speech needed direction on housing and planning, we got more of the same.
The effects of six years of failure include 200,000 fewer homeowners in this country. A third of a million fewer under-35s—young people—are able to own their own home than when the Prime Minister took over in 2010. The number of families accepted as homeless has risen by a third in the past six years. Rough sleeping has doubled and is up by a third in the past year alone. Last year, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse said, fewer affordable homes were built than at any time in more than two decades, and the housing benefit bill rose by £2 billion in real terms over the course of the last Parliament.
My hon. Friend the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee took the Housing and Planning Minister to task over his target of 1 million homes. He made the strong argument—this was echoed by the hon. Member for Strangford—that social housing, new social housing and affordable housing to rent as well as to buy must be part of the picture. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown)—he is not in the Chamber, so I will not mention him again—made a similar point.
Yesterday the sovereign said in the other place:
“My Government will support aspiration and promote home ownership through its commitment to build a million new homes.”
The Housing and Planning Minister sometimes plays fast and loose with the figures. It is not possible to house people in planning permissions or to live in a start. It is building new homes that counts, and if he is to build 1 million new homes in this Parliament, he will have to do a great deal better than what we have seen over the past six years.
There were fewer new homes built in the last Parliament than under any peacetime Government since the 1920s. Even in the latest full year, 2015, the number of new homes built was still far below where it needs to be—a total of just 143,000. By the way, that is still 24% below the peak during Labour’s 13 years in office. Because growth in new house building has been so sluggish under this Government—astonishingly, it has been only 2% on average since 2010—if they do not improve that run rate, they will not hit their target until 2033.
Some of the best policies are bigger than party politics and capable of commanding a broad consensus, such as Bank of England independence, the national planning Act for major infrastructure projects and the localisation of council housing finance. Under the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill, there is a welcome commitment to put the National Infrastructure Commission on a statutory footing. Like the commission itself, that was a recommendation made in Labour’s Armitt review in the previous Parliament, so we are pleased that the Government have taken it up. We look forward to seeing what further compulsory purchase powers the Government introduce in that Bill. Labour’s Lyons review in the previous Parliament recommended updating legislation on compulsory purchase orders to streamline and simplify the relevant powers and to enable CPOs to be secured at closer to existing use value. I hope that those suggestions will be in the Bill, because they will be among the tests that we use in considering it.
We will, however, oppose the privatisation of the public Land Registry, which will undermine the trust of homeowners, mortgage lenders and solicitors, and put at risk the essential neutrality, quality and transparency that the Land Registry offers. It will be a gift to tax evaders and avoiders. I remind the House that the Land Registry returned a profit of £100 million to the taxpayer in 2012-13 and has delivered a surplus to the taxpayer and the Treasury in 19 of the past 20 years. It is a public asset that makes money for the public purse, and we should keep it that way.
The deeper truth about this Queen’s Speech is a Conservative party riven over Europe and too divided to prepare a serious legislative programme that even tries to get to grips with the country’s problems. It is a Queen’s Speech for a quiet life in No. 10 Downing Street. It confirms a Prime Minister past his sell-by date. As the former Work and Pensions Secretary said when he walked out of the Government, policies are
“distinctly political rather than in the national economic interest.”
This is a Government who worry more about political message than policy substance, and who are more concerned to fix headlines than the housing crisis, the elderly care crisis, the crisis in wages for working people, or the crisis of low investment, productivity, skills and exports. Never mind one nation; this is a Government and a Queen’s Speech that are failing the nation.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)
It is my great pleasure to deliver the closing remarks in today’s debate. It is also nice to see the shadow Housing Minister in the Chamber, taking an interest. Given his absence throughout much of our deliberations on the Housing and Planning Act 2016 in the previous Session, I wondered where he had got to.
Happily, there has been no back seat for the Government’s agenda on local growth. Ministers in the Department for Communities and Local Government continue to play a prominent part in the debates that follow each Queen’s Speech, Budget and autumn statement, because local growth remains central to everything that the Government do. The right hon. Gentleman might be used to listening to Labour speeches that are full of high words and no action, but we are clearly focused on ensuring that we deliver for our country, and that is what this Gracious Speech is about.
Another thing that never changes is the shadow Housing Minister himself. He goes back to his old lines that he has used before, forgetting to mention that he was the Minister who oversaw the lowest level of house building that this country has seen since 1923, at just 88,000 homes in a year. He is rather like a fleetingly successful popstar of yesteryear—he cannot help but sing the same tune over and over again. Well, he is welcome to keep his record of boom and bust; we will stick to, and build on, our record of rescue and reform.
When the right hon. Gentleman was speaking about this country’s economic situation, it was as if he had completely forgotten the sheer mess in which the Labour Government, in which he was a Minister, left this country. We have not forgotten, however, and neither has the country. Indeed, the situation was well outlined in the letter from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), who explained that there was “no money left”. Under a Conservative-led Government, employment is up, inflation is down, rates are down, and wages are up. The country is on the move, and the Labour party would do well to stop doing it down and start recognising that we are moving forward. I am sure that at some stage Labour Members will come back and tell us what the spending reductions that they outlined in their manifesto would be.
We heard more original contributions to the debate from Members across the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (William Wragg) stated his desire for more neighbourhood planning and outlined his work to support that not just in his area, but with Civic Voice more generally. I have already spoken to the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the National Association of Local Councils, and the Royal Town Planning Institute about proposals in the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill, which were welcomed by them all.
The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) was pleased with the innovations in the Queen’s Speech that were outlined earlier by my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary and outlined the importance of seeing UK-wide benefit from those measures—I am glad that he now agrees that we are “Better Together”. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) continues to make a strong case for improvements to roads and infrastructure in his area, and I will come on to the comments made by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) about 1 million homes in a moment.
I have worked closely with my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Ben Howlett) to ensure that new and affordable homes are built in areas such as his, and that people have the chance to buy a home of their own. The Labour party tried to block that policy at every opportunity, but we have delivered it though the Housing and Planning Act 2016, and it can deliver new jobs. I look forward to working with hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), and I appreciate his comments about our work to improve the situation for leaseholders. My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) outlined his views on neighbourhood plans, again reinforcing just how important they can be. We should remember that such plans deliver more homes.
The hon. Members for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) spoke about a wide range of matters that ranged from transport to health and business rates. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) also mentioned business rates, and the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) outlined the issues with the Humber bridge. I reassure her that we will ensure that tolls on the Humber bridge do not return to their peak under Labour—we cut them in 2012. The hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) spoke about investment in the northern powerhouse, as did the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins). The northern powerhouse involves vast investment and devolution, and that has been welcomed by Labour council leaders in the north, who are working with my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), the Minister for the northern powerhouse.
Barbara Keeley
Labour Members are getting used to discourteous winding-up speeches from Ministers, but the hon. Gentleman did not have the courtesy to listen when I and other Labour Members were speaking, and he has just summarised what three people said in about six words. I spoke on behalf of 7 million carers and 2.6 million women who are affected by this Government’s changes to the state pension age, and I think that that deserves a little more than three words from the Minister. He is extending a discourtesy. This is a “so what?” Queen’s Speech from a “so what?” Government who cannot even be bothered to support it.
Brandon Lewis
I am slightly surprised, if not disappointed, by the hon. Lady’s slightly snipey intervention, because I have not finished mentioning what Members spoke about. If she had paid more attention when she was speaking, she would have seen that I listened to everything she said, particularly about the pensions Bill. I will ensure that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions reads her speech so that he can respond to it, and when the Bill is brought forward, he will no doubt respond to her directly. The hon. Lady can do better than that kind of intervention.
Hon. Members from across the House have outlined their views and concerns about the effect that the vote on 23 June could have on investment and about the importance of our EU membership. I agree with them that our membership is important for investment, particularly overseas investment, and the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) will agree with me that stability for investors is vital if housing is to continue to grow. Any disruption to that could be quite damaging, and if housing is damaged, our economy will be too. I think, therefore, that hon. Members have made an important point.
Today’s debate, as was fitting to its subject matter, has ranged far and wide, from pensioners and integrated transport to intergalactic transport, but hon. Members will excuse me, I hope, if I bring us back to the Bills that my Department will be leading on in the year ahead. Having just completed work on the Housing and Planning Act 2016, in the last Session, DCLG officials, who like to stay busy, are delighted to be taking on two new Bills. The first is the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill. Since 2010, the number of homes granted planning permission has increased by over 50%. In the last year, permissions have been granted for over 255,000 new homes. Net additions to the housing stock have recovered from the record lows that the right hon. Gentleman oversaw and which were achieved under the last Labour Government, while the number of first-time buyers is up by 57% since 2009, with 262,000 first-time buyers last year alone. But we must go further and faster. We want 1 million more homes this Parliament and 1 million more first-time buyers. The right hon. Gentleman might want to update his figures. Homelessness remains below its peak under the last Government. We have been clear we want to deliver 400,000 affordable homes, meaning the biggest Government-led building programme since the 1970s. More than 181,000 homes were built last year, up from the 88,000 he left us with. That is a 25% rise last year alone, which dwarves the 2% he referred to.
Melanie Onn
Homelessness has doubled under this Conservative Government. Is the Minister suggesting that people will go from being homeless to accessing these 400,000 so-called affordable homes?
Brandon Lewis
We need to work across the piece not only on building new homes but on the better care fund, social services, the No Second Night Out campaign and our extra investment in homelessness. So ultimately, yes, we will have done our job to the best of our ability when we give everybody in the country the chance to own their own home. Labour seems to want to stop people having that chance. The hon. Lady might want to think about the fact that 86% of our population want to own their own home. She might want to support their ambitions rather than doing them down.
In addition to the 1 million more homes and the 1 million first-time buyers, we want enduring, sustainable improvement to the delivery of new housing in this country. The chronic under-supply of new British homes is a failure that was decades in the making. Halfway through this turnaround decade, our changes are bearing fruit. In this Parliament and the last, we have devoted the effort required first to rescue and then to reform housing delivery. Time spent building carefully on each round of reform, learning from experience and forming the local relationships required for delivery, is time well spent.
As we saw in the previous decade, the quick and dirty debt-fuelled approach to building more houses is no solution at all. Rather, it led directly to a disaster that set Britain back by years. The purpose of the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill is to empower local communities to plan and deliver the development they need where they need it. It will simplify and streamline the neighbourhood planning process and give communities confidence and certainty that their voices will be heard as soon as possible. The creation of a fully fledged neighbourhood planning system stands as one of the great reforms of this Government. The neighbourhood planning process is now under way in thousands of communities.
Andrew Gwynne
The Minister knows that I have an interest in neighbourhood planning because he responded to my Adjournment debate earlier this year about problems in the Haughton Green area of my constituency. What assurances can he give to the people of Haughton Green that the things they want to see happen in their community could be delivered through the Bill? For example, will there be a neighbourhood right of appeal—something the Government blocked when Labour tabled amendments on such a measure?
Brandon Lewis
Actually, the Labour party did not vote or even call a vote on the neighbourhood planning third-party right of appeal. The hon. Gentleman might like to check back and see how that issue played out. What we want to ensure, through the Bill, is that there is no need for a third-party right of appeal, because the community’s voice will have been heard at the beginning of the process. I think prevention is much better than cure. Having talked to organisations such as the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and to colleagues and people who have drawn up neighbourhood plans around the country, that certainly seems to be the more popular way to get things done.
Barbara Keeley
I was one of the shadow Ministers on the Localism Bill and we did support the community right to appeal—I know because I was there. A big issue is brewing in my constituency. There has been a lot of talk about neighbourhoods having a say, but the Secretary of State appears to have dropped support for a substantial local application. My community and my constituents are thoroughly sick of the lack of support at national level from the Secretary of State for important local green-belt issues.
Brandon Lewis
I am sure the hon. Lady will appreciate that I cannot comment on any particular planning application, but when it comes to support for the green belt, this Government have gone further than ever before to ensure that the green belt is properly protected. Ultimately, it is a matter for the local community, but as I said, when it comes to neighbourhood planning, she might like to have a look at what her party called votes on during the passage of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. She might like to update her knowledge on that.
To date, almost 200 neighbourhood plans have passed referendums, including a case in the last couple of weeks. We saw 18 go through in just one week—pretty much a record—with more going through week by week. Local people are now participants, not bystanders, in the planning process. That is helping to transform attitudes to development, and there is a much more positive approach to it. It turns out that when planning is done with people instead of being done to them, we create trust and see more homes given planning permission. We want to go further, and I am determined to provide the certainty and ease to neighbourhood planning that people want.
The Bill will make sure that planning conditions are imposed by planning authorities only where necessary. Let me be clear about the problem. As the Minister for Housing and Planning, I have had examples come to me of planning permissions with hundreds of conditions attached, the worst of which are those that stop any work happening at all until further details are agreed—so-called pre-commencement conditions. The worst I have heard of so far had over 800 of them.
I am aware of cases where half of the conditions attached require further agreement from the local authority. These are planning permissions that have been given the green light for building, but it can take months or even years to resolve these conditions. Many Members of all parties will have had residents affected or seen for themselves examples of sites for which permission has been granted, yet they have not been built on. It is most frustrating for a community to see that, and we need to put an end to it. We need to get people building on sites more quickly. The grief this causes is not restricted to companies who cannot get on with building because it affects communities themselves—the local communities that draw up their neighbourhood plans and go through the process of getting planning permission. They decide for themselves where they want new building to take place, and that localisation and simplification of the planning process is behind much of the successful new building since 2010.
When sites that have gained permission are drowned with pre-commencement conditions, disillusion with the entire planning system sets in. Frankly, it is toxic. We need to make sure that the power to decide where building will take place stays in the hands of local communities, which is why we need to refine the process. This is not—let me be very clear—about taking away any protections or checks; it is about stopping needless bureaucracy and time-wasting. Our intention is that many issues will be resolvable at the same time that the building is under way, making sure that any legitimate concerns are addressed without holding up production of the houses that we need.
Another key element of the Bill is the completion of our reforms to compulsory purchase. For the avoidance of confusion, this involves purchase at current, not future, use value. The Government do not propose changing the existing fundamental principle that compensation should be paid at market value in the absence of the scheme underlying the compulsory purchase. These proposals are intended to make the compulsory purchase process clearer, fairer and faster for all parties involved in it. The key point is that we are not changing anything like that.
If we want a much wider range of developers to play their part in building the homes and infrastructure we need, we must remove risk from the process of planning and land acquisition. Needless uncertainty does nothing to protect the countryside or to guarantee good design. What it does is restrict home building to the biggest players. The Bill, however, will give communities the tools that they need to diversify development, enabling both quantity and quality to be achieved in house building. It will also establish the independent National Infrastructure Commission on a statutory basis. I appreciate what was said about that by the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne. The establishment of the commission is the next step in the Government’s plan to improve UK infrastructure, and will help us to deliver our manifesto pledge to invest more than £100 billion in our infrastructure networks during the current Parliament.
The second piece of legislation, the local growth and jobs Bill, will make an equally important contribution, not least by giving communities a direct financial stake in their future growth. Most important, the Bill will deliver on our commitment to allow 100% retention of business rates by councils, and, moreover, will allow them to reduce the business tax rate. It will also enable combined authority mayors to levy a supplement on business rate bills to fund new infrastructure projects. That will require the support of the business community through the relevant local enterprise partnership, but the potential for locally led infrastructure investment is clear.
All this takes place within the broader context of localism—of growth and devolution deals throughout our country, and of the decentralisation of billions of pounds of infrastructure funds. Local communities have never had a bigger opportunity to direct their future development. Indeed, who can blame certain Opposition Members for eyeing up those opportunities? With the political undead occupying their Front Benches, a new life in our newly empowered city halls has never looked so enticing. “In the name of God, go!” is what Oliver Cromwell told a previous Parliament. What I would say to Opposition Members such as the shadow Home Secretary who have itchy feet is “Yes, go for it: there has never been a better time to be in local government, with more influence and more power to do things for your local community than ever before.”
Brandon Lewis
I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was present for the first part of my speech, but I made it very clear that yes, we have an ambition to deliver a million homes during the current Parliament.
It falls to me to have the final word in today’s debate, but in years to come it will not fall to me, to the hon. Gentleman—the Chair of the Select Committee—or, indeed, to anyone else in the House. The final word on transport, infrastructure, housing and other matters that are vital to local growth will not be heard in the Chamber at all. Instead, thanks to this Conservative-led Government, key decisions will be made with communities that have been empowered to set their own course. They will be part of their own destiny. They will be designing, drafting and delivering on their own long-term economic plans, and I am proud to be part of the one nation Conservative Government who are setting them free to do so. That is why this is such an important Gracious Speech. It is delivering for our country, and I commend it to the House.
Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Jackie Doyle-Price.)
Debate to be resumed on Monday 23 May.
Petition
William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
I rise to present a petition relating to the closure of the Lloyds bank branch in Bredbury, located in the Woodley precinct in my constituency. High street banks play a vital role as part of the make-up of our high streets. They are an important point for people to access their money and to get financial advice. Members of the community will struggle if the bank closes. This is particularly important to elderly and vulnerable people, who may not use online banking facilities. A further local petition on this matter has attracted over 580 signatures. The petitioners therefore request that this House urge the Government to do all they can to prevent the closure of the Bredbury branch of Lloyds bank.
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The petition of residents of the UK,
Declares that the proposed closure of the Bredbury branch of Lloyds Bank will have a negative impact on the local area; further that vulnerable members of the community will struggle if the bank closes as most do not use online banking; further that the bank staff deal with many different situations with dignity and care which is vital in a community where there is a large elderly population; further that a number of dedicated staff will be made unemployed; and further that a local petition on this matter has been signed by 580 individuals.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to stop the closure of the Bredbury branch of Lloyds Bank.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P001696]
Committee on Standards
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I beg to move,
That, in accordance with Standing Order No. 149A, the following be appointed as lay members of the Committee on Standards:
(1) Jane Burgess and Dr Arun Midha, for a period of six years; and
(2) Charmaine Burton and Sir Peter Rubin, for a period of four years.
As Members will recall, we started in 2013 with three lay members on the Committee on Standards, together with 10 elected members. Let me take this opportunity to thank the three pioneers who were appointed at that time—Sharon Darcy, Peter Jinman and Walter Radar—for their continuing dedication to the work of the Committee. Such has been their impact that in March 2015 the House agreed to the Committee’s recommendation that there should be equality of numbers, with seven elected and seven lay members. Last year, the House of Commons Commission accordingly set in train a recruitment process to select four additional members, and today’s motion is the last step in that process.
The Commission has produced a report giving much more detail of the process that was followed, but, for the record, I should emphasise that, in accordance with the Standing Order, these candidates were selected on the basis of a fair and open competition. The recruitment panel was headed by an independent chair and was assisted by a recruitment consultant.
Rather pleasingly, 380 applications were received. After longlisting, shortlisting and final interviews, the panel put forward to the Commission a package of candidates reflecting a mix of skills and experience and a diversity of background, gender, age and geographical location. The Commission was happy to endorse those recommendations, and I would like to put on record our thanks to the recruitment panel for its hard work in identifying such a strong group of candidates from the field.
Looking at the candidates themselves, I am sure the House will agree that they are not just the usual suspects and that they will bring a broad range of insights and experience to their work on the Committee. In brief, Jane Burgess is the partners’ counsellor and a main board director at John Lewis Partnership; Charmaine Burton is involved in community work and is the host of her own radio show in Birmingham; Dr Arun Midha has experience working with a number of public bodies in different sectors, primarily in Wales; and Sir Peter Rubin is the former chair of the General Medical Council and professor emeritus at the University of Nottingham. Further biographical details of all the candidates are published in the Commission’s report for the information of the House and beyond.
The House will note that the motion proposes differing lengths of office for these appointments. Lay members may be appointed for fixed terms of up to six years. The appointments are not renewable. On the advice of the recruitment panel, the Commission is recommending that the new appointments be staggered to provide for two terms of four years and two of six years, to militate against the loss of expertise and experience when lay members come to the end of their service.
I am sure other Members will join me in wishing the new lay members well in their new role. I ask the House to agree the motion for the appointments.
Question put and agreed to.
Closure of Lloyds Bank in Bredbury
William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
I rise to present a petition relating to the closure of the Lloyds bank branch in Bredbury, located in the Woodley precinct in my constituency. High street banks play a vital role as part of the make-up of our high streets. They are an important point for people to access their money and to get financial advice. Members of the community will struggle if the bank closes. This is particularly important to elderly and vulnerable people, who may not use online banking facilities. A further local petition on this matter has attracted over 580 signatures. The petitioners therefore request that this House urge the Government to do all they can to prevent the closure of the Bredbury branch of Lloyds bank.
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The petition of residents of the UK,
Declares that the proposed closure of the Bredbury branch of Lloyds Bank will have a negative impact on the local area; further that vulnerable members of the community will struggle if the bank closes as most do not use online banking; further that the bank staff deal with many different situations with dignity and care which is vital in a community where there is a large elderly population; further that a number of dedicated staff will be made unemployed; and further that a local petition on this matter has been signed by 580 individuals.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to stop the closure of the Bredbury branch of Lloyds Bank.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P001696]
Detention of Kamal Foroughi in Iran
(8 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)
I am very grateful that this debate has been selected. It deals with an important subject, which has gained even greater relevance in recent weeks.
Kamal Foroughi is a 76-year-old dual UK-Iranian citizen. In 2001, he was working in Iran as a consultant for the Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas. He had never previously been in trouble with the law. He spent his life socialising with friends, playing and watching tennis, and working for Petronas. He had no involvement whatever in politics—in fact, he was glad to be both British and Iranian. However, on 5 May 200l he was arrested by plain-clothes police who refused to show any identification or to explain what was happening. He was given no choice but to get into their car, in which he was driven to the notorious Evin prison. He was held there in solitary confinement for the following 18 months without charge.
Mr Foroughi was finally told the charges when his trial commenced in early 2013. The trial was conducted by branch 15 of the revolutionary court. It was lacking in even the rudiments of natural justice. He was granted access to a lawyer only the day before the hearing, he was forced to attend the trial without his lawyer, and no record or transcript of the trial has even been produced. Indeed, the Iranian authorities have never publicly mentioned Mr Foroughi’s name, let alone explained why they are holding him. We know that he was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment: seven years for espionage and one for possessing alcoholic beverages, both of which, of course, he denies. As hon. Members know, the United Kingdom, as part of the P5+1, recently secured agreement with Iran on the joint comprehensive plan of action to deal with its nuclear programme.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing the matter to the House for consideration. He will be aware of the UN resolution on human rights in Iran, where there is quite clear and blatant discrimination against ethnic minorities and persecution of Christian groups. Is he aware of any steps that the Home Office has taken to secure Mr Foroughi’s release, or of any discussions that have been held to establish what evidence, if any, exists against Mr Foroughi?
Oliver Dowden
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. On his second point, it is hard to determine whether there is any evidence to substantiate the charges against Mr Foroughi, because the Iranian regime is so lacking in transparency. Even his own family do not know the details of what he has been charged with or the evidence for it. I understand that representations by Her Majesty’s Government have been undertaken by the Foreign Office, and I will come on to those in a minute. The matter has been raised at every level, including by the Prime Minister.
As I was saying, Members are aware that the United Kingdom has recently secured a deal with Iran on the join comprehensive plan of action. Many of us had reservations about the seriousness of Iran’s intent in concluding that deal. Its underlying purpose is to secure a path for Iran to normalise its international relations. In regard to that, the complete lack of transparency shown by the regime in relation to Mr Foroughi’s case is a worrying indication. It demonstrates a disregard for basic international norms against arbitrary detention and for the right to a fair, public, independent and impartial trial.
This May marks the fifth anniversary of Mr Foroughi’s detention. His son, my constituent Mr Kamran Foroughi, is up in the Gallery today, and I take this opportunity to pay tribute to him for his tireless efforts to secure his father’s release. He has been joined by many other Members of this House in that campaign, and I pay tribute to them for the work that they have undertaken.
In today’s debate, I seek to draw attention to Mr Foroughi’s case, to make the case for his release on humanitarian grounds and to show the world—and, most importantly, the Iranian regime—that his case has not been forgotten. That is well represented by the fact that more than 130,000 people have signed a petition calling for his release on compassionate grounds. That really demonstrates how many people care about his plight. Since my constituent chose to go public last year, I have raised this case on two occasions in the House, and I have met my hon. Friend the Foreign Office Minister with Mr Kamran Foroughi to discuss ways of securing his father’s release. I know how seriously my hon. Friend the Minister takes this case. I am pleased that the Prime Minister has personally raised it with President Rouhani. I know that the Foreign Secretary has raised it with his opposite number in Iran, and that representations have been made by my hon. Friend the Minister.
One of the challenges faced by Ministers is the fact that Iran does not recognise that the United Kingdom Government have any locus in relation to dual UK-Iranian citizens. That puts them at particular risk when they travel to Iran. We have seen that in relation to both UK-Iranian citizens and US-Iranian citizens, and it appears that the Iranian regime views them with particularly intense suspicion. Their rights are often trampled on by the Iranian judicial system, and, given the stance taken by the Iranian regime in relation to dual citizens, it is very hard for them to be represented properly by their home Government.
Previously, the Foreign Office has warned of the risks faced by British travellers to Iran from
“high levels of suspicion about the UK”,
arbitrary detention, and
“the UK Government’s limited ability to assist in any difficulty”.
The Foreign Office used to make reference to a case in 2011, which we presume was the case of Mr Foroughi. That guidance has recently been removed, and I would be grateful if the Minister could address the risks faced by British citizens travelling to Iran, and the reasons for the change in that advice, when he responds to the debate. This risk has been very vividly illustrated in recent days by the case of Mrs Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, another dual UK-Iranian citizen. Nazanin was visiting family in Iran in early April when she was detained by members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard at Iman Khomeini airport in Tehran. She was transported 600 miles south to Kerman province, where she has been kept in solitary confinement. Her 22-month-old daughter, a—sole—British citizen, was stripped of her passport and taken away from her mother at the airport.
I know that all our hearts will go out to Nazanin, her husband Richard and her family for the suffering that they have endured. My constituent Mr Kamran Foroughi has been in touch with Mr Ratcliffe, and they have been a source of comfort for each other during this extremely difficult time.
This case illustrates the fact that the Iranian regime is alert to international coverage and representations. Since Nazanin’s case secured a lot of coverage in the media, she has in fact been released from solitary confinement and has been given very limited access to her daughter. Although that is clearly well short of the full and immediate release that her case demands, it is a welcome signal.
Similarly, in Mr Foroughi’s case, there are urgent humanitarian grounds for his release. Not only is Mr Foroughi an elderly man, but in 2011, before he was detained, his London-based doctor informed him that he was at risk of developing cancer and required regular check-ups. Since his detention, Mr Foroughi has received only one medical check-up, which took place last November. Again, that happened only after international attention had been drawn to Mr Foroughi’s case. Sadly, his family still do not know the outcome of that check-up, which is a source of considerable concern for them.
Given that Mr Foroughi has three years left to serve, my constituent and his two girls—Kamal Foroughi’s grandchildren—are very concerned that he will die in prison, isolated and alone. Iranian law allows somebody to be released early if they have served a third of their sentence. As Mr Foroughi has served over half of his sentence, I really urge the Iranian authorities to show some humanity and urgently release this elderly man purely on compassionate grounds so that he can finally be reunited with his children and grandchildren.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate about his constituent Mr Foroughi. He mentions that the right thing to do—purely on compassionate grounds, without any reference to the Iranian justice system—would be to release Mr Foroughi. Does he agree that, since Islam is a religion of compassion, releasing Mr Foroughi would also be the Islamic thing to do?
Oliver Dowden
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That approach has been taken by Mr Foroughi’s family. To put aside my earlier criticisms of the manner in which his trial was conducted, however the Iranian regime may dispute such criticisms, it really cannot dispute the compassionate and, as my hon. Friend says, the Islamic grounds for his release, which are that he is a very elderly man suffering from cancer.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on putting forward this case so articulately. May I suggest that, as well as its being compassionate, humanitarian and Islamic, it would also be very diplomatic for the Iranian authorities to do this? They seem to be showing some sort of compassion towards Mrs Ratcliffe, about whom one of my constituents has written to me. It is important that the Iranians realise the extent of the coverage and awareness of these cases, and the positive signal this would send to this country and to many people here who are worried about such cases. If Iran really wishes to improve her relations with the United Kingdom, this would be a wonderful way of making an appropriate gesture.
Oliver Dowden
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. I was coming on to the point that UK-Iranian relations are in general improving, and it would be a very good signal of the warmth of those relations if the release took place. I understand that the Iranian Government have made the legitimate point about the separation between the judiciary and Ministers, but I feel that Ministers should bring to bear every kind of pressure they can to secure that release.
Sadly for Mr Foroughi’s family, they have suffered considerable ups and downs in relation to his case. They were initially advised that if they kept quiet about it, his release could be secured. That did not happen, so they eventually took the very difficult decision to go public. There were indications from the Iranian regime that he might be released on both the fourth and fifth anniversaries of his imprisonment. Again, that did not happen. The family’s fear now is that he may face the fate of other prisoners who, at the end of their original sentence, are then charged with further crimes, leading to longer and possibly indefinite spells in prison.
I would be grateful if the Minister could update the House on his understanding of the current status of Mr Foroughi’s case and what further steps the Government plan to take over the coming months to facilitate the release of both Mr Foroughi and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again; he has been very gracious. The issue I want to bring to his attention is the gentleman’s medical condition. We all know that cancer can be exacerbated by stress and poor conditions. The hon. Gentleman has asked the Minister what contact he has had with the Iranian authorities, but could he also ask whether regular medical checks can be made, because those are very necessary at a time of critical medical and health needs?
Oliver Dowden
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I was slightly loose with my wording earlier: the fear is that Mr Foroughi has cancer. Because he has had only one check-up, the family do not know whether cancer has developed, which adds to the worry. Again, it is a solid humanitarian basis for him to have regular check-ups and, frankly, for his release. Releasing him would be compliant with Iranian law because he has already served a significant proportion of his term.
Releases have taken place in the past. I was pleased to see that in January four American-Iranian dual citizens were released, including the journalist Jason Rezaian who had been detained for two years. Again, I would be grateful if the Minister could explain to the House what lessons might be learned from those cases. I know that they are not directly comparable, but it would be helpful to understand the distinctions.
As I said earlier, UK-Iranian relations continue to improve overall, but many hon. Members would take it as an indication of the seriousness of the Iranian Government’s commitment to improving Anglo-Iranian relations if they were to use every means at their disposal to secure the release of both those citizens and others in similar situations. I will conclude my remarks by conveying a message from Mr Foroughi’s son and grandchildren. It is simple—“Please let Grandpa come home.”
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden) on securing the debate and thank him and the Minister for allowing me to make a short contribution. I welcome the recent improvements in relations between the UK and Iran, and I hope that this will provide some space and an opportunity for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to raise human rights issues with the Iranian authorities and have a constructive dialogue with them.
Mr Foroughi’s case, which I have raised previously with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is distressing and perplexing. It is unclear what the charges against him are. Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case is very similar. Some 150,000 people have signed the change.org petition in support of her release. Both she and Mr Foroughi appear to have been subject to arbitrary detention. In the absence of any justification from the Iranian authorities, we have to come to that conclusion.
I am aware from a parliamentary answer that I have received that the Foreign Secretary has discussed Mr Foroughi’s case with the Foreign Minister, Dr Zarif. Can the Minister give any indication of whether the Iranians are considering changing their position in relation to dual citizenship? Are they willing to consider doing that? Can the Minister confirm when the Foreign Secretary will next raise the cases of Mr Foroughi and Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe with the Foreign Minister? If the UK authorities are not allowed access, could the FCO request access by another organisation, such as the Red Crescent or local humanitarian organisations, or does the Minister think that that would not, regrettably, deliver any results? I hope he would agree that as Iran opens up and more businesses from the UK go out to develop relationships there—I suspect that these will often be initiatives driven by British-Iranian citizens—they need to have certainty that if they do go to Iran, whether on business or to visit family, they will be able to return. Otherwise, those business and family links will not be established or will not be able to be re-established as Iran opens up to UK citizens and UK trade.
I wish to raise one final issue. Many Members will know that the fate of the Baha’is in Iran is difficult, and the Minister will be aware of the case involving 24 Baha’is who were sentenced to 193 years in prison by a Gorgan court. Although probably not a matter for this debate, is it one he is pursuing? Perhaps he would write to me about it with an update on the situation there.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)
First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden) for securing this important debate and for the measured tone he has adopted in raising this delicate matter. As he implied in his speech, he has not just brought this to the Floor of the House today, but has been pursuing it and supporting the family for a long period. We have met on a number of occasions and I have been grateful for the support and communication he has provided to me in being able to place light on this, and improve the communication with the family and make the case to the Iranians. I am very grateful to him for the approach he has adopted.
My hon. Friend pointed out that we are dealing with dual nationality here, which is critical to this case in comparison with others. It is important to make it clear to the House that Foreign Office support for those who carry two passports, who have two nationalities, is different from that provided to those who have a single British passport. Ownership of that second passport obligates the citizen to that second state, and the laws and processes it has in place. From my Foreign Office consular policy perspective—this is consistent through not just our Government, but previous Governments—I can say that we do not normally provide the same level of assistance to dual nationals in the country of their second nationality, unless there are extreme, exceptional circumstances, for example, humanitarian grounds, health conditions and so on. It is important to make it clear that there is a distinction between the two.
Today, we are considering a case in Iran, which does not recognise a dual nationality, regardless of what that country is, be it Britain or otherwise. Iran formally does not recognise another country in terms of intervening in any way whatsoever. Although we disagree with that position on dual nationality when we speak to the Iranians, we need to understand it and place it into context. I have also explained in my meetings with the Iranians that the reason why Britain, the Foreign Office and Parliament take an interest in these things is that these individuals do hold a British passport, hence there is an interest and we therefore request that dialogue in certain specific cases.
Let me step back from consular matters per se, as my hon. Friend did touch on this point. Following the nuclear deal, we are seeing Iran enter a new chapter of opportunity for transition—I choose my words carefully, because there is an awful lot to move forward in order for this opportunity to come to fruition. Our embassy has reopened in Tehran, visits are now taking place in both directions and trade opportunities are also being explored.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
My constituent Councillor Jill Houlbrook, a former lord mayor of Chester and the auntie of Richard Ratcliffe, whose wife Nazanin has been detained, will be most relieved and gratified to have heard the contribution by the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden), and the delicate but persuasive way in which he put it. The Minister talks about Iran opening up, and the Chairman of the Defence Committee mentioned that Iran might be opening up and also opening out. The Minister will be very cautious about his dealings with Iran, but does he detect an improvement in the tone of Iran that might assist us in resolving the cases that the hon. Member for Hertsmere spoke about so eloquently?
Mr Ellwood
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The atmosphere developing between our two countries is providing greater opportunities to raise delicate matters. I will, if I may, come on to that point later, and I will also, time permitting, touch on the Mrs Ratcliffe case in a second.
With that embassy opening, there are more opportunities for bilateral meetings to take place. A series of meetings have already taken place at a number of levels. Most recently, the Foreign Secretary raised Mr Foroughi’s case with Foreign Minister Zarif in the margins of the International Syria Support Group. The meeting took place on Monday of this week. Yesterday afternoon, in preparation for this debate, I met Iran’s chargé d’affaires, Mr Habibollahzadeh, to discuss Mr Foroughi’s case.
The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary raised Mr Foroughi’s case with Foreign Minister Zarif in London in February, and the Prime Minister wrote to President Rouhani last year, and also discussed Mr Foroughi’s case with him in January of this year. The Foreign Secretary raised Mr Foroughi’s case during his visit to Tehran in August 2015 when our embassy was reopened. We have also been utilising our partnership relationships with Germany, France and Italy to get them to lobby the Iranian Government on our behalf.
There has been a huge amount of effort at the very highest of levels to raise these matters. On a consular level, the team in the Foreign Office is working to support the family and to make sure that we are providing the consular assistance that is expected.
In answer to the questions of the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), the reopening of the British embassy on 23 August last year has enabled us to have face-to-face discussions about a series of consular cases—not just the two that have been mentioned here today. He asked specifically about the direction of travel. We have seen the results of the Majlis elections and the panel of experts. Clearly, that is an indication that Iran wants to move in a new and welcome direction, but there is a long way to go. Part of that includes showing that discussions on sensitive matters such as this can also take place at the same time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere asked a couple of questions, to which I will now turn. First, our travel advice explains that the security services in Iran remain suspicious of individuals with links to the UK, and we advise travellers to keep in close contact with friends and family. British nationals, including dual nationals—British-Iranian nationals—face greater risks at present than nationals from other countries.
My hon. Friend asked about the medical checks for Mr Foroughi. Again, we have asked the Iranians to ensure that he receives regular medical check-ups. The Iranians have confirmed that he now has access to a doctor.
Oliver Dowden
Specifically on that point, it is important to know not just whether the check-ups are taking place, but what the outcomes are. Can diplomatic efforts be made to secure the outcome of those medical checks, particularly to comfort Mr Foroughi’s family?
Mr Ellwood
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I will make sure that that is passed on to the Iranians. The family should be kept more readily informed of the medical condition of Mr Foroughi. May I also pay tribute to Kamran Foroughi, whom I have had the honour to meet? He has been working on this extremely diligently, and he is doing his best, in a measured and constructive way, to shine a light on this matter in a way that will lead to results.
Going to the media is a double-edged sword. Sharing the story and having it on front pages can have an adverse effect. Without reference to this case, I can say that the reaction to discussion of other consular cases in the media has delayed matters, caused frustrations and affected sensitivities. In other cases, media attention has highlighted matters and could be perceived to have moved things on. It is the family’s call in all cases. I simply make the humble point that it always makes sense to work with the Foreign Office and consular staff so that our strategy to leverage change and ensure that an individual is able to leave or whatever they are requesting to do is as efficient and expeditious as possible.
I was asked when would be the next opportunity to raise this matter. I will seek to meet Dr Zarif, the Foreign Minister, in Helsinki next week at a conference. It will be another opportunity to keep the matter to the fore.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is another dual nationality case. She was arrested on 3 April and has not been charged. She has a very young daughter in Iran. We have provided consular support to Mrs Ratcliffe’s family since we were first made aware of the arrest. I met Richard Ratcliffe yesterday to discuss the matter and I raised it at my meeting with the Iranian chargé d’affaires when I met him in the afternoon. I understand that the daughter is now with her grandparents, which is good news, and I welcome the fact that Mrs Ratcliffe has been released from solitary confinement.
We are concerned about Mr Foroughi’s continued detention. I understand that it is both worrying and distressing for his family, and we are doing all we can to support them.
Mr Bacon
My hon. Friend mentioned the Foreign Office’s travel advice, which has changed. It is certainly not for me to question it. When I went to Iran a year or so ago, I found it very safe. It is probably fair to say that it is now one of the safest places in the middle east.
To return to my hon. Friend’s point about dual nationality, of course, even if we differ from the position of the Government of Iran, we can respect their position. When I met the chargé d’affaires, Mr Habibollahzadeh, two weeks ago, he lobbied me about the fact that OCR had withdrawn the Persian GCSE. I spoke to the Education Secretary about it and she told me yesterday that Pearson had agreed to take it on. That is one more indication of the efforts that are being made to strengthen relations. The Iranian embassy legitimately takes an interest in the welfare of the 350,000 people of Iranian heritage who live in this country, many of whom are dual nationals, and in their desire to protect, cherish and enhance their links, including with the language. Does he agree that it would be a powerful symbol of the Iranian Government’s seriousness about improving relations with the United Kingdom if they could apply all possible pressure within their own system in the case of Mr Foroughi?
Mr Ellwood
I pay tribute to the interest, knowledge and expertise that my hon. Friend provides in relation to Iran. He is right, and he touches on a number of avenues for leveraging and advancing the bond. I fully agree that this is an opportunity to show that this is what countries that develop stronger relationships are able to do—we can engage behind the scenes and through consular matters to get the best outcomes, engaging at the same time in other areas, including education. I fully concur with what my hon. Friend says.
The reopening of the British embassy in Tehran last year and the successful implementation of the nuclear deal earlier this year are positive steps in our relationship with Iran. Our renewed diplomatic presence gives us the opportunity for face-to-face discussions on issues such as Mr Foroughi’s case. The Government will continue to do whatever we can to support Mr Foroughi’s family and to raise our concerns with the Iranians at every opportunity. I sincerely hope that he will be reunited with his family soon, and I concur with my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere and believe that there are strong humanitarian grounds for consideration of the release of both Mr Foroughi and Mrs Ratcliffe.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Statements
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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National Infrastructure Commission
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Hands)
Yesterday, I laid the response to the National Infrastructure Commission consultation [CM 9289]. This reconfirms the Government’s plans to establish the Commission via primary legislation, and sets out a number of areas where policy has developed following public consultation.
On 5 October 2015, the Chancellor announced the creation of the National Infrastructure Commission to provide expert independent analysis of the long-term infrastructure needs of the country. The Commission has been operating in interim form since then.
The Government held a 10-week public consultation between 7 January and 17 March on the governance, structure and operation of the Commission. The public consultation attracted 136 responses, primarily from industry associations, companies, lobby groups, local authorities and research bodies. The majority were very supportive of the concept, and of the Government’s proposals for fully establishing the Commission.
The response confirms that the Commission will produce a national infrastructure assessment once in every Parliament, setting out its analysis of the UK’s infrastructure needs over a 10 to 30-year time horizon. The Commission will also examine pressing and significant infrastructure challenges in studies set by the Government. The Government will be obliged formally to respond to the Commission’s recommendations.
To fulfil its objectives, the Commission will be able to request information and analysis from Government Departments. The Commission will work within a remit to ensure that it recommends infrastructure that is sustainable and affordable and offers real economic benefits.
The Government intend to introduce legislation to place the Commission on a permanent, independent footing as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Copies of the response are available in the Vote Office, Printed Paper Office and on the gov.uk website.
[HCWS2]
Foreign Affairs and General Affairs Councils: 23-24 May
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs will attend the Foreign Affairs Council on 23 May and I will attend the General Affairs Council on 24 May. The Foreign Affairs Council will be chaired by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, and the General Affairs Council will be chaired by the Dutch presidency. The meetings will be held in Brussels.
Foreign Affairs Council
The Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) will be preceded by the annual EU-Eastern Partnership ministerial meeting. The FAC agenda will include the Syria/Iraq/counter-Daesh regional strategy, the EU global strategy and external aspects of migration. Ms. Mogherini is expected to cover the Arctic and Libya in her opening remarks.
EU-Eastern Partnership ministerial
EU Foreign Ministers will meet with the Foreign Ministers of the six Eastern Partnership states—Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine—to review progress on the Eastern Partnership initiative since the EU-Eastern Partnership summit held in Riga on 21-22 May 2015.
Syria/Iraq/counter-Daesh regional strategy
The May Foreign Affairs Council will review of External Action Service (EEAS)/Commission programmes and projects undertaken within the framework of the March 2015 regional strategy for handling Syria, Iraq and the Daesh threat. This review will assess how the EU has been supporting political transition in Syria, political settlement in Iraq and efforts to defeat and degrade Daesh in Iraq and Syria.
The European Union global strategy
Over lunch the High Representative will update Ministers on the preparation of the European Union global strategy.
External aspects of migration
Ministers will exchange views on the external aspects of migration. We expect the focus of the discussion to be on common security and defence policy (CSDP) activities to support the development of border security in Libya and the Sahel. Building the capacity of the Libyan coastguard is of particular importance. We will also use the opportunity to discuss progress on Valletta action plan implementation. With a range of high-level international events this year, leading up to the UNGA high-level event on large movements of migrants and refugees, there is an opportunity for the international community to build a sustainable global response to large population movements and the issue of irregular migration, by placing an emphasis on global responsibility sharing, reducing large-scale irregular migration, and providing protection and humanitarian support to those who need it.
The Arctic
Following the recent publication of the joint communication on the Arctic, Ministers will discuss whether the EU’s policy in the Arctic is appropriately focused. We also expect discussions on the EU’s application for formal observer status at the Arctic Council.
Libya
Discussions will focus on the latest developments in the Libyan political process. The EEAS is planning for a possible civilian CSDP mission for Libya. We will press the EU to develop a realistic and achievable offer based on the needs of the Government of National Accord and the situation on the ground. We are aiming for progress towards agreeing an updated mandate for EUNAVFOR MED (Operation Sophia), to include capacity-building for the Libyan coastguard. The Vienna ministerial on 16 May underlined international support for the Libyan political agreement, Presidency Council and Government of National Accord.
General Affairs Council
The General Affairs Council (GAC) on 24 May is expected to focus on rule of law and preparation of the June European Council.
Rule of law
The GAC will conduct its annual dialogue on the rule of law, focusing on the issue of the integration of migrants.
Preparation of the June European Council
The GAC will prepare the agenda for the 28-29 June European Council, which the Prime Minister will attend.
[HCWS1]
Government’s Legislative Programme 2016-17
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Leader of the House of Commons (Chris Grayling)
Following yesterday’s state opening of Parliament, and for the convenience of the House, I am listing the Bills, which were announced yesterday:
Better Markets Bill
Bill of Rights
Bus Services Bill
Children and Social Work Bill
Counter-Extremism and Safeguarding Bill
Criminal Finances Bill
Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill
Digital Economy Bill
Education for All Bill
Higher Education and Research Bill
Lifetime Savings Bill
Local Growth and Jobs Bill
Modern Transport Bill
National Citizen Service Bill
NHS (Overseas Visitors Charging) Bill
Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill
Overseas Electors Bill
Prison and Courts Reform Bill
Pensions Bill
Small Charitable Donations Bill
Wales Bill
The following Bills will carry over from the last session:
Finance (No.2) Bill
High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill
Investigatory Powers Bill
Policing and Crime Bill
The following Law Commission Bills will be introduced:
Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Bill
Detailed information about each of these Bills can be accessed from the No. 10 website at: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/prime-ministers-office-10-downing-street.
[HCWS3]
Government’s Legislative Programme (Northern Ireland) 2016-17
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mrs Theresa Villiers)
The second Session UK legislative programme unveiled in the Queen’s Speech on 18 May includes a number of measures directly relevant to the people of Northern Ireland. The majority of the 22 new Bills containing provisions that apply in Northern Ireland either in full or in part. Once again, this is a strong programme of legislation for Northern Ireland contained in a one nation Queen’s Speech from a one nation Government. The Government also reaffirm their commitment to the implementation of the Stormont House agreement and “Fresh Start” agreement.
The Government are using the opportunity of a strengthening economy to deliver security for working people; increase life chances for the most disadvantaged and strengthen national security. Bills such as the Better Markets Bill and the Digital Economy Bill demonstrate our commitment to strengthening the UK economy and supporting businesses and consumers in Northern Ireland, and right across the UK. The Lifetime Savings Bill provides important support for those on lowest incomes and in encouraging the younger generation to save regularly. The Criminal Finances Bill provides a new legislative framework to tackle money laundering, criminal assets and terrorist financing.
The following is a summary of the legislation announced in the Queen’s Speech and its proposed application to Northern Ireland. Some Bills are still under development, including final decisions on the extent to which provisions should extend to Northern Ireland. The list identifies the lead Government Department. It does not include draft Bills.
The following Bills will extend to Northern Ireland, in whole or in part. Some deal mainly with excepted/reserved matters. Discussions will continue between the Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure that, where provisions for a transferred purpose are included in any of these Bills, the consent of the Northern Ireland Assembly will be sought for them.
Better Markets Bill (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills)
Bill of Rights (Ministry of Justice)
Criminal Finances (Home Office)
Digital Economy Bill (Department for Culture, Media & Sport)
Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Bill (Law Commission Bill)
Lifetime Savings Bill (HM Treasury)
Overseas Electors Bill (Cabinet Office)
Modern Transport Bill (Department for Transport)
Small Charitable Donations Bill (HMRC)
Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill (Department for Culture, Media & Sport)
Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Department for Communities and Local Government)
Higher Education and Research Bill (Research Councils)—(Department for Business, Innovations and Skills)
National Citizen Service Bill (Cabinet Office)
Pensions Bill (Department for Work and Pensions)
NHS (Overseas Visitors Charging) Bill (Department of Health)
The following Bills will have limited or no application to Northern Ireland:
Bus Services Bill (Department for Transport).
Children and Social Work Bill (Department for Education)
Local Growth and Jobs Bill (Department for Communities and Local Government)
Prison and Courts Reform Bill (Ministry of Justice)
Counter-Extremism and Safeguarding Bill (Home Office)
Wales Bill (Wales Office)
Education for All Bill (Department for Education)
[HCWS5]
Government’s Legislative Programme (Scotland) 2016-17
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)
Following the passage of the Scotland Act 2016, the Scottish Parliament is now poised to become one of the most powerful devolved Parliaments in the world. Ensuring the smooth transfer of those new powers will be a major priority for the UK Government over the next parliamentary Session and beyond.
A total of 13 of the 21 new Government Bills for this Session of Parliament contain provisions that apply in Scotland, either in full or in part. Elements of others may extend later depending on discussion with the Scottish Government.
The Government’s legislative programme has three clear aims: to deliver security for working people across our country, to increase the life chances for the most disadvantaged, and to strengthen our national security. Some of the Bills announced yesterday apply across the UK, while others cover areas where responsibility is devolved to the Scottish Parliament.
UK legislation on the digital economy will enable the building of world-class digital infrastructure including fast broadband and mobile networks, as well as helping to support new digital industries.
A new Lifetime Savings Bill will create a new help to save scheme to support those on the lowest incomes to save and also a new lifetime ISA, providing savers with a bonus on savings that can be used for a first home, or retirement, or both.
A Better Markets Bill will give UK consumers more power and choice, open up markets and make economic regulators work better. We will also take forward further reforms in a Pensions Bill that will provide greater protections for people in master trusts and remove barriers for consumers who want to access their pension savings flexibly.
This statement provides a summary of the new Government legislation for 2016-17 and its application to Scotland. It does not include draft Bills.
In line with the Sewel convention, the Government will continue to work constructively with the Scottish Government to secure legislative consent motions where appropriate.
The Bills listed in section 1 will apply to Scotland, either in full or in part. Section 2 details Bills that will not apply in Scotland, though some elements could be extended later following discussion with the Scottish Government.
Section 1: Legislation applying to the United Kingdom, including Scotland (either in full or in part);
Better Markets Bill
Criminal Finances Bill
Lifetime Savings Bill
Modern Transport Bill
Overseas Electors Bill
Pensions Bill
Small Charitable Donations Bill
Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill
Digital Economy Bill
Wales Bill (as a constitutional bill this extends to the UK, but policy will impact on Wales)
Higher Education and Research Bill
Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill
Bill of Rights
Section 2: Legislation that will not apply in Scotland, though some elements could be extended following discussion with the Scottish Government.
Counter-Extremism and Safeguarding Bill
NHS (Overseas Visitors Charging) Bill
National Citizen Service Bill
Bus Services Bill
Children & Social Work Bill
Education for All Bill
Local Growth and Jobs Bill
Prison and Courts Reform Bill
[HCWS4]
Government’s Legislative Programme (Wales) 2016-17
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Wales (Alun Cairns)
The Government’s second legislative programme announced in the Queen’s Speech on 18 May contains a wide range of measures that will apply to Wales either in full or in part.
The following Bills and draft Bills will extend to in whole or in part:
Better Markets Bill (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills)
Bill of Rights (Ministry of Justice)
Children and Social Work Bill (Department for Education)
Counter-Extremism and Safeguarding Bill (Home Office)
Criminal Finances Bill (Home Office)
Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Digital Economy Bill (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Education for All Bill (Department for Education)
Higher Education and Research Bill (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills)
Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Bill (Law Commission Bill)
Lifetime Savings Bill (HM Treasury)
Modern Transport Bill (Department for Transport)
National Citizen Service Bill (Cabinet Office)*
Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Department for Communities and Local Government)
NHS (Overseas Visitors Charging) Bill (Department of Health)*
Overseas Electors Bill (Cabinet Office)
Prison and Courts Reform Bill (Ministry of Justice)
Pensions Bill (Department for Work and Pensions)
Small Charitable Donations Bill (HMRC)
Wales Bill (Wales Office)
The following Bills will not extend to Wales:
Bus Services Bill (Department for Transport)
Local Growth and Jobs Bill (Department for Communities and Local Government)
*Discussions with the Welsh Government on these Bills will consider their application to Wales.
Discussions will continue with the Welsh Government on Bills that might include provisions that require the consent of the National Assembly for Wales or Welsh Ministers.
[HCWS6]
House of Lords
Cessation of Membership
The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)
My Lords, I have to notify the House that the noble Lords, Lord Bridges, Lord Neill of Bladen and Lord Thomas of Macclesfield, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Walliswood, yesterday ceased to be Members of the House under Section 2 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 by virtue of not attending any proceedings of the House during the Session 2015-16. On behalf of the House I thank the noble Lords for their much-valued service to the House.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Thursday 19th May 2016
(8 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Children and Social Work Act 2017 View all Children and Social Work Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text
Bus Services Bill [HL]
Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [HL]
Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Bill [HL]
Committee of Selection
Lord Laming
That in accordance with Standing Order 63 a Committee of Selection be appointed to select and propose to the House the names of the members to form each select committee of the House (except the Committee of Selection itself and any committee otherwise provided for by statute or by order of the House) or any other body not being a select committee referred to it by the Chairman of Committees, and the panel of Deputy Chairmen of Committees; and that the following members together with the Chairman of Committees be appointed to the Committee:
L Bassam of Brighton, L Craig of Radley, L Faulkner of Worcester, L Hope of Craighead, L Newby, B Smith of Basildon, B Stowell of Beeston, L Taylor of Holbeach, V Ullswater, L Wallace of Tankerness.
Queen’s Speech
(8 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord King of Bridgwater
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, it is an honour to be asked to open this debate on Her Majesty’s gracious Speech today. I look forward to the many valuable contributions that I know noble Lords will make during the course of this debate. I also thank my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, who will be winding up today.
As the Prime Minister said in his address, this Queen’s Speech uses strong economic foundations to make a series of bold choices that will deliver opportunity for all at every stage of life as part of our aim to bring social justice to everybody. Today we will consider the Government’s priorities for education, welfare, health, culture and business for the year ahead. All are vital to a strong economy and a secure future for our country.
I turn first to the Government’s education business. Over the past six years, our education reforms have led to 1.4 million more children being taught in good and outstanding schools, but we are not content to stop there as 1.4 million children is a start but is not enough. There are many more competent young readers thanks to our phonics programme and many more pupils are leaving primary school with the necessary literacy and numeracy to succeed at secondary school. In 2010, one in three pupils left primary school without this. This is now one in five, but we need to do much better. In 2010, only one in five pupils took a core suite of academic subjects at secondary school, which we now call the EBacc. That figure is now 39%, and we are determined to see it far higher as it is so fundamental and is particularly important for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
We are committed to building on these improvements by moving towards a system where all schools are academies, as set out in the White Paper. The vision for an academies-led system where autonomous schools are free of local authority control is built on international evidence that clearly shows that autonomy is linked to improved performance. We have seen these improvements being realised. In sponsored primary academies, those open for just one year have seen their results improve by five percentage points, from 66% to 71%. On average, those schools that have chosen to convert, at both primary and secondary, have built on their existing success with further improvements in standards, and, importantly, are delivering better results for free school meal pupils than their local authority-controlled counterparts.
An academy-led system is the best way to tackle underperformance and ensure that every child gets the education they deserve. It will allow the best schools to expand their reach and give excellent leaders and teachers the freedom to run their schools. We will therefore introduce a Bill to convert schools in the lowest-performing and unviable local authorities to academy status. These local authorities either will have failed to help their schools to succeed or will struggle to support the remaining proportion of local schools that remain under their control. We do not want to risk the standard of education that young people in these schools receive.
I assure noble Lords that we will consult fully on how such local authorities will be identified and that Parliament will be able to consider our proposals. We understand the concerns that have been raised about a hard deadline and legislating for blanket powers to issue academy orders. This is why we have decided that it is not necessary to take blanket powers to convert good schools in strong local authorities to academies at this time. However, these schools will still be able to convert at a time that suits them best, and more and more good schools are embracing the benefits of academy status. In fact, in March this year a record number of schools chose to apply for academy status. We are committed to the vision of a dynamic, high-performing school system where every school is an academy by 2022. This will ensure that we achieve educational excellence everywhere, so that all children and young people are able to fulfil their potential, regardless of location, prior attainment or background. That is why this Bill also brings forward fundamental reforms for how children excluded from school are educated and reforms to technical education to give clear routes through to skilled employment. Noble Lords will hear much more about these proposals in coming months.
The Children and Social Work Bill will make a major contribution to improving the life chances of our most vulnerable young people. It represents the next stage in our commitment to making sure that those children in our care get the start in life they deserve. It will ensure that there is a proper framework of support around looked-after children and those leaving care, whether to adoption, to placement with another family member or to make the transition to adulthood. For the first time, we are setting out a clear statement of the principles governing the state’s role as corporate parent to these children, making sure that local authorities think and act in those children’s best interests in the same way that any other parent would.
Through the Bill we are also making sure that support and help do not stop simply because a child has left care. There will be designated people at local authority and school level to promote the educational attainment of previously looked-after children, and a “local offer” to care leavers, setting out clearly the support to which they are entitled. This will include the provision of advice and guidance up to the age of 25. The Bill also focuses on the key professionals working with these children, enabling the establishment of a specialist regulator for social work to drive up standards of both practice and training.
Lastly, the Bill will promote more effective learning at national level from incidences of serious harm. It will help to foster innovation at the local level, enabling forward-thinking local authorities to test new and more effective approaches to delivering social care and to set the direction themselves for future reform and improvement.
I turn to welfare. As the Prime Minister has previously said, this Government are committed to giving,
“the highest priority to improving the life chances of the poorest in our country”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/3/16; col. 1246.]
This means a relentless focus on tackling the root causes of poverty and disadvantage. That is why in the forthcoming life chances strategy we are introducing life chances indicators that will look at family stability, drug and alcohol addiction and problem debt. This will drive action across the Government so that no one is held back or prevented from making the most of their lives.
We plan to introduce a private pensions Bill. This Government have continued pension reforms to provide greater security, choice and dignity for people in retirement while ensuring that the system is sustainable for the future. It is crucial that people and their employers can have confidence that they are protected when they are putting money into a scheme and when they are ready to retire. Our private pensions Bill will correct the current gap in the regulatory landscape for master trust pension schemes, and will cap excessive exit fees for trust-based schemes. The Bill will allow the reform of the financial guidance landscape, announced at the time of the Budget, to ensure that consumers can access the debt and money guidance they need and have access to straightforward pensions guidance at all stages of their lives.
I turn to health matters. The Government greatly welcome the agreement between the BMA and the NHS, and very much hope that the BMA will support it in its ballot. Noble Lords will have heard of our intention to introduce legislation that would ensure that overseas visitors paid for healthcare received at the public’s expense. To achieve that, the Bill would reduce the number of overseas visitors and migrants automatically eligible for free NHS care while increasing the number of NHS services for which charges would apply. Collectively, these measures would see us take a significant step towards delivering the Government’s commitment to recover up to £500 million a year for the NHS, and would mean that only those living in the UK lawfully and making a fair financial contribution were eligible for free care. We also intend to bring forward measures that would make the cost recovery process more effective and efficient at all points in the health system, meaning that the full cost of care was recovered at every stage, with those funds directed straight back into the NHS. Further details will be brought forward when the Bill is published.
I shall now address the Government’s business on culture and media. Our country is a leader in the development and use of technology. The pace of change is relentless, and our economy, society and government must continue to evolve to keep ahead. The digital economy Bill will build the foundations for the digital future. It will support telecommunications businesses to build infrastructure to provide the connectivity that we all increasingly depend on. The Bill will help people to participate in this new economy and close the digital divide, ensuring that everyone can access communication services for the best value and best service wherever they live. The Bill will also provide important protections, protecting children from online pornography and protecting consumers from spam email and nuisance calls. As the world goes online, we must protect against new harms and we must not allow the social and economic exclusion that would result if we left people behind during our country’s digital transformation.
I know that many noble Lords have waited a long time—12 years, in fact—to hear that the Government will finally bring forward the legislation that will enable the United Kingdom to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two protocols. I hope that the announcement of the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill will therefore be welcome news. The Bill was introduced to the House today, so noble Lords will not have to wait long to debate and scrutinise the Government’s proposals.
The remaining subject of discussion in today’s debate is business, innovation and skills. The first Bill is the Higher Education and Research Bill. Our universities rank among our most valuable national assets, underpinning both a strong economy and a flourishing society. By lifting the cap on student numbers, we have ensured that participation in higher education can be a reality for more people than ever before. However, there is considerable unfinished business. If we are to continue to succeed as a knowledge economy, we cannot stand still. We must ensure that the system is also fulfilling its potential and delivering good value for students, for employers and for the taxpayers who underwrite it.
Through the Higher Education and Research Bill we will ensure that everyone with the potential to succeed in higher education, irrespective of their background, can choose from a wide range of high-quality universities, access relevant information to make the right choices, and benefit from excellent teaching that helps to prepare them for the future. The UK is a world leader in science and innovation, and through the measures in this Bill we will maintain and build on this reputation and ensure that we maximise the Government’s £6 billion annual investment in research and innovation.
We plan to introduce a better markets Bill. Strong competition is the key to a healthy economy, boosting our nation’s productivity. The UK’s regime is already world-class and highly respected internationally. We want the regime to remain an exemplar, keeping pace with dynamic and innovative markets. We also want to empower consumers further to ensure that they fully reap the rewards of vibrant competition. The better markets Bill will help to improve competitiveness in the UK.
To help innovative businesses to negotiate over disputes and avoid litigation, this Government will bring forward legislation to reform the law relating to unjustified threats of intellectual property infringement. The Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Bill will deliver detailed recommendations from the Law Commission in this complex area of intellectual property law.
The gracious Speech sets out a clear programme for taking this country forward. As a whole, the legislative programme contains some highly topical and important issues. It will be here in your Lordships’ House where much of the detailed scrutiny will take place. I appreciate that, in the speeches that follow, a range of issues will be raised by speakers. Those issues, whether they are concerned directly with the Queen’s Speech or not, are likely to set much of the agenda for this Session. I look forward greatly to the contributions to the debate from all around the House.
Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)
My Lords, first, I humbly apologise for arriving late in the Chamber. I apologise in particular to the Minister, and I extend my appreciation to my Front-Bench colleagues, who I think were experiencing various forms of nervousness and other deeper medical states. I am pleased to be here today to respond to the Queen’s Speech on our first day of debate.
Many people have been slightly unkind to the Queen’s Speech. There have been suggestions that this is the product of a Government with no real governing strategy and no consistent economic policy, a divided party, a weakened Prime Minister, and a self-inflicted moment of political paralysis. Some have drawn the conclusion that it is no surprise that we have such a limited Queen’s Speech and with so little ambition, designed to cause no turbulence to the European vote and to reunite a party that awaits with bated breath the outcome of the referendum.
There are, of course, well-known virtues in doing nothing, or in doing very little. Limited ambition can sometimes be very powerful, and some systems of government are designed to do almost nothing. Incrementalism can always be a very effective way of governing, and there can, of course, be some amusement in making small things appear big. There is an oft-quoted maxim that it is not just the size that matters. Some of the Bills, especially in relation to transport and science, seem to be very small measures, but they underline some very big changes in our country and where we play most strongly.
There are three particular points to make about the overall context of the Queen’s Speech. First—this is especially relevant today—some measures appear to be the start of a legacy for the current Prime Minister and are in areas on which we can praise the Government for deciding to look at them. It may be a little late to establish a firm legacy, but tackling prison reform has been much delayed and is certainly very worthy.
As regards today’s debate, the Children and Social Work Bill, which is designed to get children out of the care system and permanently adopted and to ensure that those who leave care are properly supported, addresses these people’s huge diminution in life chances and is especially welcome. Both these measures have our broad support; there will be challenges in implementation, but they are none the less extremely important. There will be issues such as costs for providers, but certainly the House will take these matters very seriously.
Secondly, there will always be problems with a package of Bills such as this—with the objectives, the evidence, the ability of the proposed remedies to deliver, and managing their consequences. Delivery is of huge importance to a lot of these measures. It is true to say that the best plan is not as good as the plan that can be delivered best. Within these measures there is scope for further ambition from Ministers and civil servants as regards their drafting, and in their response to the debates that will take place in this House and the other place. The value of scrutiny and the role of this House are extremely important in this regard. Certainly, the Strathclyde review and the proposed increase in the membership of this House may not assist those debates. As evidenced in not just the performance of this House but the Minister’s systematic unravelling of the entire work of his predecessor, greater care and attention in listening to the deliberations of this House would have been useful.
I worry that the Government seem to be set again on looking to the private sector for solutions and massively overplaying its benefits and the public sector’s failures. Governments have frequently miscalculated the benefits of the private sector and should look at other forms of provision, allowing the private and public sectors greater flexibility to work together in other ways, and certainly investing more in public sector capability, particularly management capability. We have to reform the way the Civil Service looks at the delivery of these measures. We cannot go on with a system that was designed for a previous era. The asymmetry of responsibility and authority in the public sector ensure chronic delivery problems.
Academic research on public sector management emphasises the importance of managing people over adherence to systems, whereas in the private sector, systems are much more implementable due to money being the central measurable focus, and the competitive advantage of human relations. It seems remarkable that we have not learned how to move on from the maxim, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. Especially with regard to some of these Bills, we need to use more effective business intelligence and better understand economic behaviour. Putting that into impact assessments would be extremely useful.
Thirdly, this Queen’s Speech does not meet the requirements of the time, although one should not underplay the potential of some of the measures, especially those on business and the economy and on productivity. We do need this—our productivity crisis is worsening. The latest data show the worst productivity slowdown since the financial crisis, the UK’s performance is the worst among our peers, and our workers are now 14% less productive than they were pre-crisis. We have huge weaknesses in professional services, telecoms and communications, and banking and finance, and due to the slowdown in investment caused by the financial crisis and in recent times by the possibility of Brexit, there are also problems in manufacturing.
We strongly support the plan to deal with this by promoting competition across the economy, and in this context we welcome the better markets Bill, which represents a huge opportunity to address some of these issues, and which can be applied more widely. The European Union referendum is crucial to this. It is an economic fact that our productivity gains, modest though they have been, are largely a result of our entry into Europe in 1973. Those who advocate withdrawal are not coming clean about the scope of the impact, and the centrally planned economic and skills transformation that will be necessary if we leave.
More generally, the department for Business, Innovation and Skills needs to step up to the challenge. There is certainly a case for promoting the Minister, or at least for providing additional support to deal with the large number of Bills she is responsible for. We are conscious of her Herculean efforts in the last Session. It is important that the department grasps the nettle of having an active industrial policy; much more energy is needed. Even decisions such as on the location and functions of staff seem to have very little utility or sound evaluation, apart from the most London-centric and simplistic cost-cutting functions.
The crisis is not just in the private sector. The public sector too has acute productivity problems. Take the health service. Recent figures demonstrate that productivity has fallen in NHS hospitals for the third year running. I pay tribute to the excellent report by my noble friend Lord Carter, but a strong cadre of managers is needed to deliver any real changes. Certainly, the Secretary of State needs to address what is now a clear funding gap. After his most recent agreement with the NHS, there was a definable figure of what money was needed but it depended on productivity benefits. The current productivity decline probably means that the funding requirement is moving nearer to £30 billion than £20 billion. However, even the attempt to develop a seven-day health service seems to be challenging. The changes to junior doctors’ contracts are there but no other staff have had any changes. Therefore, an effective operational plan still seems immensely elusive, as my discussions with health professionals have made clear. Much more attention needs to be paid to public sector management and strategic skills, especially given the nature of this Queen’s Speech.
We are strongly supportive of some of the measures and look forward to engaging very constructively with the Government on them. The better markets Bill is a very important step towards establishing stronger responsiveness to consumer demands. It is true that this also has an impact on a number of smaller businesses and microbusinesses, which we should consider. We should ensure that the entrenched advantages and anti-competitive processes that many of our industries have developed are opened up. We should increase transparency and we can even address further measures, such as late payments, by using much more effective mechanisms. That could certainly be covered in this Bill. We look forward to seeing the detail of the Bill and establishing how we can take it forward to address the challenges and transform the prospects for the different sectors in our economy. For example, the service sector, which makes up between 75% and 80% of our economy, still requires massive opening up to competition.
On the digital economy Bill, we support many of the Government’s measures, such as on nuisance calls. However, we have to get serious about our objectives, a feeling that I know is shared by many on the other side of the House. Currently, we do not have as good a rollout of broadband across our country as we need. The speeds are limited and our targets are from yester- year: they should not be anywhere near as low as they are; we should be looking at much more significant targets. I have to make one confession. I possess in my house broadband from three separate providers. Not one of them achieves the advertised speeds and not one of them provides an uninterrupted service. Even by having three providers—the main three players in the market—we have had interrupted service in a relatively straightforward part of London. I cannot imagine the stresses and challenges that people in other parts of the country face. Enough is enough: this has gone on for far too long. This Bill will also, I hope, address some of the weaknesses in Ofcom’s approach to this issue, which I believe has been utterly inadequate—I am sure that many in this House will have a similar view.
On the Higher Education and Research Bill, we have many challenges. We have a fantastic science base and I have spent a lot of time recently, as a private investor, looking at some of the achievements of our research and science base. It is utterly outstanding, world-class and world-leading. We should do much more to encourage that and I wish that the department was much more active in that regard.
We have to be very careful that we do not end up saddling our students with greater debt by allowing huge freedom to increase fees without any consideration. We have to be absolutely clear about what we are measuring. Universities are one thing, but university departments may be another. I have a daughter who has just started a course at a university that I will not name, to spare its blushes. She did international history and politics in her first year and believes that she has spent £9,000 to be self-taught. In some university departments, that is the case. However, she shares a flat with a number of people who have had outstanding teaching support. It is wrong to say that that is a factor of the university; it could be more to do with departments. We must first consider the particular context, and we look forward to hearing the detail. While opening up the market to private providers is not inherently wrong, it would be wrong to do it in a way that is hugely detrimental to our overall university reputation. I do not like the idea that we will castigate a series of universities. The most recent figures on university approval worldwide show a huge rise for universities in the Far East, and a lowering of the position of some of the main UK universities.
Across this Queen’s Speech, in measures such as private pensions and the criminal finances Bill, business has an important role that should not be underplayed. On health, there are many measures that do not address the principal crisis but are important in their own right, and we would do well to scrutinise those here. This Queen’s Speech is limited in scope and nature, but that does not mean that our deliberations here cannot achieve more and cannot, in tandem with the Government’s objectives and values, which are broadly supported across this House, find ways to enhance the passage of these Bills and the other measures available to the people of our country.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, before turning to the gracious Speech, I first echo the thanks of the Lord Speaker to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Walliswood, and the other three colleagues who have ceased to be Members of this House today. To my personal knowledge, the noble Baroness was an excellent and very hard-working Peer in this House when she was in full health. She made an enormous contribution to the work of these Benches, and I am quite sure that the other noble Lords mentioned had a similar track record. I would not have felt it necessary to make these remarks had it not been for the rather unfortunate laughter after the announcement earlier, which our ex-colleagues and their families may have found somewhat hurtful. I am sure that the House did not mean any disrespect.
On these Benches, we welcome much of what was in the gracious Speech, especially those items that have been Liberal Democrat policy for some time. Of course, we will scrutinise the measures very carefully when they are put before us. Noble Lords will hear from my noble friends on these Benches about various topics today. My own remarks will be addressed to health and social care, although my noble friend Lady Brinton will say more about the latter.
When I heard the gracious Speech, I did not know whether to be astonished that there was hardly a mention of the NHS or glad that the Government were not planning another disruptive top-down reorganisation. This morning, there is a Statement in the other place about progress at last with the junior doctors’ contracts but we have no Health Minister in this debate in your Lordships’ House. I asked for the Statement to be taken in this House, but I was refused by the Chief Whip. The noble Lord, Lord Prior, has been such a trooper, patiently standing at that Dispatch Box week after week reporting that there was nothing to report. Then, on the very day when there actually is something to report, the noble Lord is not allowed to answer our questions. That is treating your Lordships’ House with contempt and it is treating the health service with contempt.
I hope that the Minister, when winding up, tells us what will happen next and why, when it is now possible to make arrangements to protect women doctors who wish to take maternity leave or take time out for training or research, it was not possible to do that a long time ago. Why, if it is possible now to make some small concessions to the quality of life of doctors and their families, was it not possible to do that before? Why, if it is not just about money, did we have the Secretary of State telling us this morning on the BBC that it will cost hospitals one-third less to roster doctors at the weekend? At least the gracious Speech contained a further commitment to mental health, but my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield will express our concerns that the commitments made during the coalition Government have not been followed through.
As to the proposals to charge non-resident visitors to the UK for health services, we will wait for the details before we comment further. However, our main concern will be that no one in the UK should go without the healthcare they need.
It has to be said that the past 12 months have not been the NHS’s finest hour, and certainly not the finest hour of the Secretary of State. This is not because NHS staff are not working hard or because they are not working at weekends, because they have been, but rather it is the failure on the part of the Government to be realistic about the legitimate health and social care needs of our population and the right of those who work in these services to be properly paid and have a reasonable work-life balance. While I accept Jeremy Hunt’s personal commitment to patient safety, he has not gone about it in the best way. The industrial action taken by junior doctors over the past year is only one, although a very serious one, of the indications that health and social care services are at full stretch. The whole debacle has been damaging to the morale of the health workforce, and the Government will have to work hard to regain its confidence.
It never was just about money, it was about being constantly asked to do more with less, or at least the same amount. While I do not deny the right of the Government to make a commitment in their manifesto and then try to implement it, I believe that the way they have gone about it has been a disaster. Governments should be very careful about the factual basis on which to build their policies. There have been several expert reports, including a recent one by a health economist in Manchester, which have questioned the weekend death rates quoted by the Government as being the basis for what they are trying to do. We shall see how the members of the BMA vote, but I hope very much that this matter can now be settled in the interests of patients and doctors.
The pressure does not apply only to junior doctors in hospitals. GPs are also hard pressed. I shall quote from an email I received recently from a GP known to a friend of mine: “I was working from home last Sunday night going through results, patient records and letters. Tim was also on the system from home and Dan was in the surgery doing administration. We are working 12-hour days in the surgery as it is and we really do not have the capacity to do seven days on top of what we are doing now and remain healthy. We are also working on our frailty project, plus looking to see if we can expand the premises. As you can see, I am juggling lots in addition to the daily seeing of patients. These other bits do not get registered: talking to social services, carers, families and patients, looking at the systems in place for clinical safety, multi-disciplinary meetings, emails, keeping up to date and more”. That could be echoed by GPs all over the country. I am lucky that I live in an area where my GP is able to give me a good service, but in some places, especially in London, patients have to wait weeks to get an appointment.
This is the result of bad planning. It takes eight years to train a GP, so today’s needs should have been planned for years ago. Unfortunately, the planning of training for health professionals has been fragmented and everyone blames everyone else for shortages. Now the Government even want to charge a £1,000 skills levy on visas for health workers from overseas. That is crazy and it certainly is not joined-up government. Sadly, the system is playing catch-up all the time. Targets are being missed, deficits have skyrocketed and will swallow up most of the new money announced last year. The Government will not recognise the real black hole in funding and believe that the hard-pressed workforce can make £22 billion of savings in the next few years when it is struggling just to stay afloat.
Then, of course, there is the equally serious shortfall in social care funding. The recent NHS ombudsman’s report on unsafe discharges from hospital with non-existent or inadequate social care packages made for very sad reading. Frail, elderly people are being discharged to cold homes, left alone at night and their families not informed. This should not be happening in this country in this century, and it is no good saying that guidelines were not followed. No one in the NHS would do something like that deliberately, but the pressure on beds through delayed discharges sometimes causes people to make mistakes—fatal mistakes in some cases.
The pressure on the NHS could, of course, be lessened in future if we paid more attention to prevention, yet the Government had to be led kicking and screaming into agreeing some kind of sugar tax to reduce child obesity. The measures announced lack ambition. They should be broader and introduced sooner, but at least they are something. But where is the long-promised child obesity strategy? And what about putting fluoride in all our drinking water to prevent children getting tooth decay and having to go into hospital for extraction? What about fortifying flour with vitamin B to prevent neural tube disease? What is being done about the quality of the air we breathe? Why did Boris Johnson suppress the report about the terrible state of air pollution in London? We need to be told. Then there was the further cut in public health spending, attacking the very local services that help people to stop smoking, get active, avoid unwanted pregnancy and all the other things that local authorities try to do for their residents. This is all so short-sighted, but, if it were reversed, what a difference all these measures would make to rates of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and the sustainability of the NHS.
Savings could also be made on the drugs Bill. I wonder whether the Minister will tell us what progress is being made with the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Carter, on that. Will she also assure us that the Government will take notice of the recommendations in the report from the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, published today, on the actions that must be taken nationally and internationally to combat the over- prescribing of antibiotics and the consequent rise of antibiotic-resistant micro-organisms—a global disaster waiting to happen?
What else should happen? We need some straight talking about the funding and capacity challenges our NHS faces and the steps needed for positive change. So although much of what needs to be done in health does not require the signature of Her Majesty, the Liberal Democrats propose a future of healthcare Bill to find solutions to these challenges, independent of interference from political parties, so that the NHS can continue to deliver health and care for future generations without detriment to its hard-working staff.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, I speak as a member of the Select Committee on Social Mobility, so expertly and energetically chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Corston. It was indeed heartening to hear so much about social mobility yesterday in the gracious Speech. Then I got home and I heard a lot more from Liz Truss on “Newsnight”, and we have heard more encouraging words from the Minister. I summarise the theme as being that it is not only to improve life chances, but, importantly, to include measurements of that. I add that our report has not yet been responded to by the Government, which is perfectly fair as it was settled only on 8 April, and therefore not debated. I will make two points to the House today concerning social mobility in the gracious Speech.
The first is in respect of data. I will briefly read out our recommendation on data in our report:
“Transitions from school to work should be supported by publicly available data, compiled by the relevant Government departments. This data should be made available to researchers so that they have access to earnings data, study patterns, and different demographic patterns, brought about by legislative change if necessary”.
That is an important “if necessary”. Over the year we sat, we heard a lot of evidence about data and a lot of evidence about the fact that they are being kept in many different places—the Department for Education, local authorities, BIS, HMRC. Often when academics want to investigate those data, they are told that the Data Protection Act applies and there is a problem, or that the Education and Skills Act applies and there is a problem there. We were often dubious about the existence of those problems.
The thing about analysing data is that it is free; it does not cost the Government any extra money. Putting any obstacle in the way of academics and others analysing those data to drive improvement for social mobility seems to me very much an own goal. The good thing about the gracious Speech is that the education for all Bill could be a Bill where suitable changes, such as the ones we referred to in our recommendation, could be made. I therefore invite the Minister to indicate whether she agrees that that was an important thought and whether the Government would be happy at least to hear argument on this point as these Bills go forward.
My second and final point is about careers advice. This was another area that the Social Mobility Select Committee spent a lot of time on, and we heard many very disappointing stories from a lot of people about the wide differences in the quality of careers advice up and down the land at the moment. Our recommendation there was:
“We therefore recommend that the Government should commission a cost benefit analysis of increasing funding for careers education in school and independent careers guidance external to the school in the context of social mobility”.
In this country, academic and vocational paths still have very different social standing among our fellow citizens. Very often, people who are probably well-suited for the vocational path are sent off on the academic path. Of course, if there are more universities, that tendency could easily be exacerbated.
We heard in many evidence sessions that there was no discrete budget for careers advice in schools, that there was no specific gold standard around the country to which schools could aspire and that, when Ofsted went to look at a school, although it would comment on careers advice in its report, it was not a core part of the report but just a comment which did not matter in that school’s score. We felt that it is very likely that the cost to the country of allowing people who should go down the vocational route to go down the academic route could be very great, not only for that person, who will be paying £9,000 for a year or two of wasted time at university, but also for us in loss of opportunity and in people not feeling good about themselves. I feel that that, too, is an element to be captured from our report, and I would very much like the Minister to comment on it.
I repeat that it was very encouraging to hear that social mobility is at the core of what the Government want to do in the next year. I hope that the encouraging words that we heard in the gracious Speech can be turned into carefully crafted legislation by this House in our next Session.
The Lord Bishop of Durham
My Lords, the gracious Speech makes several commitments to improving life chances for the most disadvantaged. There is also a renewed commitment,
“to support the development of a Northern Powerhouse”.
It is in welcoming these that I shall make most of my remarks.
Children need the best possible start in life. They need to be loved and cared for above all else. Where this is best found in an adoptive family, seeing this established as well and as quickly as possible is important, so I welcome the proposed measures here and look forward to the details. For some, care ends up as the best loving option. We need to ensure that life chances for those in residential or foster care are as good as for all other children. When the time comes to leave care, it is often traumatic. A move to provide care leavers with a personal adviser until they are 25 is therefore a very welcome proposal.
With the passing of the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, the focus for the rest of this Parliament will be on the implementation of these reforms, including the wider rollout of universal credit. I have always been a strong supporter of the aims behind universal credit: to simplify an overly complex system and to incentivise work. Work is usually the best route out of poverty. It also helps combat isolation and gives purpose and meaning to people’s lives.
Unfortunately, there is a real danger that recent changes to universal credit are undermining its original intent. Substantial reductions in the work allowance mean that the returns from working will be much lower than was anticipated when the scheme was first enacted in 2012. According to the Resolution Foundation’s recent report, universal credit will now, on balance, be less generous to low-income working families than the tax credit system it replaces. I hope that the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will take the opportunity to revisit this policy and look for ways to strengthen work incentives and support progression in work. This could be the difference between building on the early success of universal credit in boosting employment rates among claimants and sacrificing all the hard work that has gone into developing this programme for the sake of short-term savings to the Exchequer. I also look forward to seeing the Government’s White Paper on narrowing the disability employment gap.
The welfare system can and should be used to promote work and other virtuous behaviours that reduce the need for welfare in the long term. The Government’s new Help to Save scheme is a very good example of this, incentivising low-income working families to save and reducing the likelihood that they will get into problem debt. We strongly support this initiative, which complements the work we are doing in primary schools with Young Enterprise. We are grateful for the extra government funding for the LifeSavers programme.
However, we must not lose sight of the welfare system’s role in alleviating suffering in the short term. There is growing evidence that large numbers of people are falling through holes in the welfare safety net. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, at least 185,000 households in the UK are destitute at any given point in time, unable to afford even the basic essentials of life—food, clothing, housing and heating. It is estimated that 668,000 households experienced destitution at some point over the course of the last year—affecting around 1.3 million people, including more than 300,000 children. The routes into destitution are complex, but problems with the benefits system feature prominently in this and other studies. We need to take these findings seriously, by starting to measure levels of destitution and food insecurity more systematically. There is an urgent need to fill the gaps in the welfare system caused by delays and errors in administering benefits and the uneven access to crisis payments.
In the north-east, there is currently little evidence of any slow-down in the need for food banks. The holiday hunger programmes run last year through Communities Together Durham look like doubling this coming summer because of the need that exists in many of our communities. I recently spent eight days walking around Darlington and Stockton in the Tees Valley. These are areas in which levels of poverty are high. They are also potentially key players at the heart of any northern powerhouse. There are some encouraging signs in relation to manufacturing and employment, although there is much more work to be done to ensure that apprenticeships grow and turn into real long-term jobs. Concerns remain that any recovery is slow and fragile.
Alongside the manufacturing and service industries, there is immensely impressive work through a wide range of charities. Among those which stand out are the Daisy Chain Project’s work with autism; A Way Out’s work with sex workers and preventive work among young people; Mind with dementia support; Billingham Environmental Link Project with local gardens and community centres and Love Stockton, which involves 84 churches together offering a wide range of care and support to the very neediest. The One Darlington partnership awards evening was truly inspiring. All this work—whether business or voluntary—needs decent infrastructure and good local services. Local authorities have had their funding cut by 50% over the last few years. They are now stretched to the limit, arguably beyond it. Those are not their words but those of the businesses and charities that I met.
It is therefore not surprising that from all quarters I hear scepticism and concern about turning the rhetoric of a northern powerhouse into real significant development and growth. We face the ironic possibility that the cradle of the railway industry—the Stockton to Darlington line and the home of Hitachi’s excellent new train-making facility—provides the trains for new infrastructure developments but is excluded from benefiting any further by inadequate investment in railways in the north-east itself. Newcastle, Sunderland, Hartlepool and Stockton could all lose out because there is such an emphasis on the Leeds-Manchester-Liverpool axis that the far north, both east and west, is not properly included. If we are to have HS2, I suggest that we start building from Newcastle at the same time as we do from London.
I support having elected mayors for the north-east and Teesside, but they and the local authorities need adequate funding. The reforms to business rates do not work well for our local authorities. To be really significant in improving the life chances of children, young people, adults and the elderly in the north, the northern powerhouse must work for the whole of the north and must take seriously our region’s brilliance in manufacturing for the 21st century. We in the north-east are the leaders in the nation.
In conclusion, we need a vision of life chances which is bigger than that in the coming new measures. We need a vision which is about the fullness of life, where all are valued—a life marked out above all else by love, for which, of course, we cannot legislate.
Lord Fowler (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. We should all listen very carefully to what he said, particularly on universal credit and welfare generally —which I still prefer to call “social security”.
It may well be that the most significant words in the Queen’s Speech yesterday were that,
“other measures will be laid before you”.
We will see whether that is the case. Sensibly, the Government are proceeding cautiously. In this respect I very much welcome the fact that the Department for Culture’s White Paper on the BBC charter was not what we were led to expect. The Secretary of State drew back from some of the more extravagant ideas that had been floated, which undoubtedly would have damaged the corporation.
I will raise one concern about the language that the Government use. They can claim that this is a consensual White Paper trying to achieve the maximum agreement— I agree with that—but they cannot at the same time refer to the concerns that had been expressed, as I fear the Secretary of State did in his Statement, as,
“hysterical speculation by left-wing luvvies”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/5/16; col. 736.]
As much of the concern came from ministerial speeches, that does not totally add up, in particular when a recently departed Minister—lain Duncan Smith—said only yesterday that the Government had “watered down” their proposals on the BBC charter.
I will make two points on broadcasting. First, although the White Paper is a great improvement on what we had been led to believe, it would be wrong to say that there are not still matters of concern. For example, there are fears that the new board will be insufficiently independent. Having at last got rid of the BBC Trust, we do not want to see a board on which government appointments overinfluence the running of the corporation. I also remain to be convinced that the five-year review is necessary. I would have thought that between charter reviews we could leave this to the board, provided that it is strong and independent. Equally, the last thing I want to see is the Government interfering in the programming of the BBC. Frankly, I can think of very little that would be worse. So the debate on the BBC will continue.
I have a second concern on broadcasting that relates not to the BBC but to Channel 4, and arises from a detailed report in the business section of the Daily Telegraph—a newspaper with strong links particularly to the Treasury, as I know to my cost. I remember that when I was trying to abolish the state earnings-related pension scheme, this radical step first appeared there and totally inconveniently. The story in the Daily Telegraph is basically that the Government have stepped back on full privatisation but may still sell a minority stake in Channel 4, and that the Treasury may take a dividend from the broadcaster. Perhaps I can remind the House that Channel 4 was created by a Conservative Government, and in particular by two people whom not even the wildest special adviser would describe as “left-wing luvvies”: Margaret Thatcher and Willie Whitelaw.
Since that time, Channel 4 has had substantial success. It is a not-for-profit corporation and its surplus goes back into content. This year, a surplus of something like £26 million has been achieved, with £1 billion in terms of revenue. Channel 4 has done what we asked it to do and, on that basis, I think that it deserves support. So I would be grateful if the Minister, when she winds up, could tell the House what exactly the position is with Channel 4 as seen from the perspective of the Department for Culture?
The point that continues to trouble me the most in the broadcasting area is the power of the Executive. Channel 4 is a statutory corporation, so a major change such as privatisation would have to come to Parliament. The BBC is different; it is governed by the royal charter, which is another way of saying that, ultimately, it is Ministers who take the final decision. The Executive decide. That is how we got the BBC Trust. Many of us, including one or two colleagues here in the House today, argued—strongly argued—against this 10 years ago, but it was the Government who decided that they would go ahead in any event. That is why there is now a search for some kind of check, either to make the BBC into a statutory corporation or to do what the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has proposed in his Private Member’s Bill, which is to keep a charter but to make any changes to that charter subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
Underlying all this, it seems to me, is the question of the balance between Parliament and the Executive. That is one of the issues of the Queen’s Speech, particularly that the Government,
“will uphold … the primacy of the House of Commons”.
I have absolutely no quarrel with that as a general principle. The Commons is the elected House and that gives it authority, but I would say that it is not quite as simple as that statement suggests. We do not want the primacy of the House of Commons translated into the primacy of the Executive—the primacy of the Government unchecked. That question affects every subject that we are debating today. We know what can happen in practice, under any Government: the legislation that arrives here has been pushed through without proper scrutiny in the other place and, unless one is careful, it becomes the law of the land.
We should be concerned about the relationship between the Lords and the Commons but also the relationship between Parliament and the Executive. We should guard against giving the Executive too much power at the expense of Parliament. The starting point is that Governments—any Government—simply want to get their measures through. Chief Whips, in my experience, do not stay awake at night worrying about such niceties as balance and the good arguments of the House of Lords. They want their legislation—we all know that that is the case. I remember Margaret Thatcher saying after one defeat in the House, “What has happened to all those people I sent to the Lords?”—and, after another defeat, exclaiming: “What we should do is just send them there for one Parliament”. The subtext to both is, “Just you remember who the boss is”—and do not believe for a moment Margaret Thatcher is the only Prime Minister who has held that particular view.
In this Session we will doubtless come to the position of statutory instruments. Again, we need to recognise that, from the Government’s point of view, delegated legislation has the potential of a get-out-of-jail-free card. It cannot be amended and far less time is spent on scrutiny. The trouble is that matters of policy such as tax credits are much more profound than putting simple changes before the House. In the 1980s I was defeated three times in this House on social security. I went to see the Leader of the House, Lord Whitelaw, who said, “We’ll put back two but you’ll have to give them one”. I am not sure that that is a blueprint for advancing but it does at least illustrate that there is a certain amount of give and take on this basis.
My conclusion is that we should proceed with care. We are in a position now where all Governments are likely to be in a minority. The days of Governments with majorities of 200 have gone for ever. I hope that it will be recognised that the Lords is doing an invaluable job, particularly in improving legislation and in giving warning that some proposals raise serious issues of principle and practice. By all means let us examine the issues concerned with statutory instruments and the other issues, but let us also be vigilant and ensure that the power of the Executive is not increased at the expense of Parliament.
Lord Macdonald of Tradeston (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome this early opportunity to comment on the White Paper published last week, A BBC for the Future: A Broadcaster of Distinction. An 11-year term for the new BBC charter is in line with past practice of 10 years, with the extra year designed to delay partisan pressure until after the general election fixed for 2025. However, the proposed “health check” review of the BBC after just five years will inevitably be politicised and should be dropped. The uncertainty and disruption will distract management from the task of creating the broadcaster of distinction promised in the title of the White Paper, and anyway is it not Ofcom’s new role to do such so-called health checks?
The BBC should indeed try to be more distinctive and to occupy the high ground more often rather than churn out formulaic series, particularly in daytime schedules, that might sit just as easily on commercial channels. A former governor and chairman of the BBC, Gavyn Davies, said a few years back that BBC executives paid too much attention to ratings. With the licence fee to be inflation linked and extended to include on-demand iPlayers, and with the lucrative BBC Worldwide subsidiary secured and its subscription options being opened up, it seems reasonable that the BBC should be more mindful of its market impact on other media companies, which depend on ratings or readership for advertising revenue or on niche markets for sales or subscriptions.
Since the launch of Channel 4 in 1982, independent production has had a huge, positive impact on British television. The independent sector has a turnover close to £3 billion a year, with 259 companies making programmes for public service broadcasters. The BBC presently commissions 25% of its output from independent producers, which are also able to bid against in-house BBC competition across a further contestable 25%, with 50% of the programme output reserved for in-house BBC production. The White Paper proposes that by the end of the next 11-year charter period, all television output apart from news and news-related current affairs should be open to competition. This positive approach is related to another major White Paper proposal, to which the Government give their support in principle; namely, the creation of a new commercial subsidiary, BBC Studios, which will offer its production facilities on the open market and which, to ensure fairness and avoidance of conflict of interest, must be very closely monitored.
Devolving and outsourcing on this scale should allow the core BBC to reduce its layers of management and staff levels, especially in London. The devolution of programme-making to the three smaller nations of the UK now matches, or indeed sometimes exceeds, their proportion of licence fee payers—a considerable advance on past practice.
However, the fine-tuning of the commissioning process to ensure that programming from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland reflects the distinctive characteristics of each nation while enhancing the diversity of the BBC network schedules will be a very big creative challenge. Diversity is now to be enshrined in the new charter, to reflect the changing nature of the United Kingdom, in particular its growing numbers of black, Asian and minority-ethnic citizens, and to give more proportionate employment to those with disabilities and to the LGBT communities and of course better gender balance. A diversity unit will be based in Birmingham, alongside the English regions headquarters, local news partnerships, BBC Three online initiatives and the drama village at Selly Oak. All that will at least strengthen the BBC’s still meagre presence in the Midlands. Let us hope that after many previous failed initiatives, the diversity unit can now set hard targets, be underpinned by dedicated funding and have ready access to the centres of power in Broadcasting House.
The most controversial issue now in charter review is probably how best to ensure the independence of the new unitary board which replaces the BBC Trust. It is already decreed by the Government that the current chair of the trust will chair the unitary board, at least until the expiry of her present contract. The Government also intend to appoint the deputy chair and the non-executive “national” member for England. There are also non-executive directors from the three other nations of the United Kingdom, to be appointed through established protocols by the UK Government in consultation with the Government of Scotland and the Executives governing Wales and Northern Ireland—a delicate process, bearing in mind the need for these four “national” appointees to balance their representative role with a legal duty under the charter to serve the BBC as a whole. That adds up to six government appointees as non-executive directors.
Of course, the director-general will be on the board and, crucially, will be nominated as editor-in-chief and be an executive director. If the board has, as expected, 14 members, that would leave five further non-executives and two more executive directors to be appointed, as I read and understand it, by the BBC itself. Does that mean a board nominations committee will be set up by the chair, to include perhaps the deputy chair—also chosen by the Government of course—and the director-general? Will the Commissioner for Public Appointments be involved in the appointment process, to help ensure the promised independence from Government? Perhaps the Minister, in replying, can clarify that.
The appointment process obviously cannot involve Ofcom, which already has a board appointed by Government and would surely not want a role in appointing those it must then regulate. The new unitary BBC board will set strategy, deliver services, oversee operational delivery, measure performance and engage with the public—all important areas of governance, to be sure. For context, it may reassure noble Lords concerned about political interference to note the importance of the remit given to Ofcom in regulating the BBC: monitoring and reviewing performance; establishing a licensing regime; regulating editorial standards; holding the BBC to account; and acting as the appeal body. That is a daunting list, even for a super-regulator as well regarded as Ofcom. There is plenty of scope there too for regulatory clash if the BBC board overreaches its governance remit. I trust the Government will ensure that Ofcom has the resources to take on this very big job.
Through further clarification and debate in both Houses of Parliament, the potentially positive aspects of the White Paper could deliver the licence fee payers of Britain an even better BBC than the one they now support so strongly. I therefore join the noble Lord, Lord Hall, and the BBC in giving the White Paper a cautious welcome.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, in the minutes available to me, I want to concentrate on those aspects that relate to my own portfolio for the Liberal Democrats: business, innovation and skills. Having said that, noble Lords might be relieved to know that I do not expect to be speaking for too long. In all, the Government have made 30 announcements and 28 of those, by my reckoning, have already been made before. However, there is no mention of the deficit or how the Government are going to address the black hole of £7.5 billion they left themselves in the Budget this year. As we approach the referendum, the business world is holding its breath, and so, apparently, are the Government, by failing to look forward to the medium and long-term future of business and the economy of this country.
The gracious Speech starts with a claim that the economy is strengthening. This is patently not the case—economic growth slowed in the first quarter of this year, with the economy growing by only 0.4%. Construction output fell by 0.9%: so much for the party of the builders. Just this week, the CBI downgraded its growth forecast to 2% for 2016, down from 2.3%. The Speech asserts that there will be legislation,
“to ensure Britain has the infrastructure that businesses need to grow”.
However, legislation is not going to solve our infrastructure crisis. The Government’s own spending plans, which require no public borrowing by 2020, are what is putting the constraint on our ability to invest in housing, road, rail and digital infrastructure.
Speaking of digital, the Government’s lack of ambition on broadband is staggering. The universal service obligation for broadband being proposed is for 10 megabytes per second by 2020. That is not close to what we need to be world leaders in the digital economy. The Government’s idea of ultrafast broadband is 25 megabytes per second. South Korea already has speeds of 1 gigabyte per second and rising. The reason why our speeds are so poor is that the Government refuse to invest in new technology. They, and BT, are relying on out-of-date copper-wire technology because they refuse to make the money available for the rollout of fibre-optic cabling to homes. We cannot compete on the world market relying on copper cables. It is like trying to win a Grand Prix on a sit-down lawnmower. If the Government were serious about being a world leader in the digital economy, they would support fibre-to-home broadband, spending money on vital infrastructure, support business to invest in new technology, such as 3D printing, and offer solutions to problems such as the collapse of our retail sector in the face of changing technology, which risks putting 900,000 people out of work by 2025.
We support the objective of being at the forefront of new forms of transport, including autonomous and electric vehicles; we welcome the trialling of autonomous vehicles in the UK. It is important, however, that vehicles are built to run electronically in order to improve air quality. It is also essential that insurance issues are ironed out to determine accountability and that any software vulnerabilities are eradicated.
Time is short, and I know that other colleagues want to talk about this, so I will just briefly mention the support given to the northern powerhouse. The infrastructure announcements are welcome, but although the Government continue to use the rhetoric that featured in March’s Budget, there is actually underinvestment in the north. It accounts for only 1% of currently planned or in-operation infrastructure projects in terms of transport linkage. Moreover, why should Liverpool be ignored as part of the northern powerhouse? Nor is there any mention at all of the so-called “Midlands engine”. Is that now stalled in the Government’s eyes? It certainly needs a bit of revving up.
The announcement on business rates—allowing local authorities to retain business rates—has already been announced in last year’s Autumn Statement. Devolution of business rates has long been a Liberal Democrat policy, but we hope that the Government do not use it as an excuse to cut funding further to local authorities. Proof of this will be shown in which local authorities lose out in the settlement.
I welcome the better markets Bill, even though most of the details have been expressed before. I welcome the objectives expressed, and we look forward to receiving more detail. I hope that we can work together to make sure that those details and objectives can become a reality.
Lastly, I touch on the universities Bill. Noble Lords may recall the Browne report of 2010, which recommended a total free market on fees. These proposals mean that many people would need to make the decision about where to study based on cost and not on academic standards. It is no secret that the Liberal Democrats have struggled on fees, but this is something that we succeeded in holding back the Conservatives from implementing when we were in coalition. We will oppose these measures as bad for students and unnecessary for the long-term finances of universities.
That is all that I have to say on the Queen’s Speech, other than that it is a missed opportunity to look at the medium and long-term future of Britain and bring forward new, innovative plans instead of just rehashing the old ones.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, on listening to the eloquent words of my noble friend Lord Kinnoull on statistics and the transition from education to employment, I was reminded of the life of Florence Nightingale, broadcast last night on that national treasure, the BBC. Florence Nightingale was, I think, the first female fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and highlighted to Parliament and the public the plight of soldiers in Crimea, particularly in the barracks at Scutari, through the use of statistics. I am sure that she would have strongly supported my noble friend’s concerns. It is thanks to the BBC that I fully understand the importance of my noble friend’s words, and I am so grateful to the BBC for what it has done for me in my education throughout my life. I hope that it will continue to be an institution that inspires and educates our public and the public of the world for many years to come.
I declare my interests in the register as the trustee of two child mental health charities, the Brent Centre for Young People, dealing with adolescents, and the Child and Family Practice Charitable Foundation, assessing children with autism, and a child welfare charity, the Michael Sieff Foundation, as well as being vice-chair of the parliamentary group for children in the care of local authorities. There is very much to welcome in the Queen’s Speech, from my point of view. I hope that the British public choose to remain in Europe and that there will be the opportunity to take these humane and enlightened measures forward.
Outwith the Speech, I particularly welcome the Government’s increasing awareness of the unaddressed mental health needs of many children and young people in the care system. I stress to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and his colleague, the Minister for Health, Lord Prior, the importance to the mental health of those children that those who care for them—the foster carers, teachers, social workers and residential childcare workers—have clinical supervision and the very best support from the health service. Such supervision by a mental health professional is vital if we are to be more effective in improving the lives of these young people and help them to give their own children happier childhoods, most importantly.
I hope I may offer the warmest of welcomes to the Children and Social Work Bill, whose First Reading took place in your Lordships’ House today. I would like to focus on the new duty to provide mentors to all young people leaving care to the age of 25, and the introduction of a new regulatory body for social work. Given the imminence of the Bill, I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I speak for longer than I might otherwise have done. It was your Lordships who persuaded the Labour Government to extend their care leavers Bill to those care leavers in education to the age of 25. Children are not removed lightly into the care of the state; most will have experienced abuse in their families. The removal process is itself very troubling for many children. While there have been significant improvements in the quality of local authority care and while evidence shows that those children taken into care do better academically than those of their peers who are not removed, young people in the care of local authorities can still experience much further upheaval, and the quality of foster carers, social workers and residential childcare workers can still be variable.
It is unsurprising that young people in care often experience what is called developmental delay. In the short term, this can mean they struggle academically and in finding and keeping employment and are open to exploitation by others, but often they will blossom in their late twenties. That has often been my experience. For instance, Mark Kerr, a care leaver and a graduate of a young offender institution with no educational qualifications, began his studies while in the criminal justice system and recently attained his doctorate. The number of care leavers entering university immediately after leaving care remains troublingly low, at about 7%, and that figure is declining. Dr Kerr conducted a survey of care leavers and found that more than a third had gone on to higher education but, critically, a large number did so as mature students, meaning they do not show up in official statistics, highlighting the delay in their attainment.
It is important to have continuity of care until the age of 25 for all these young people. I pay tribute to the Government for their humanity and engagement in introducing this. On average, children in this country leave home at 24. I hope your Lordships may wish to join me in consideration of the appropriate qualifications, support and caseloads for these mentors. The think tank, the Centre for Social Justice, has been critical of the current arrangements for personal advisers, the mentors for such young people. We need to ensure that this new legislation works for these young people.
Equally welcome is a new social work regulator to focus on training and professional standards. There can be no more exacting job than that of a child and family social worker. With them lies the decision about whether to take a child away from his family or leave him there. That literally is the judgment of Solomon, yet social work has often been neglected. It is a profession that would never have been permitted to decline in the way it once did if its customers, its clients, had been middle class, educated and articulate. It is a great tribute to the Government that they are taking the profession so seriously. I know many Members of your Lordships’ House have campaigned to improve the status of social workers over many years. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has played an important role recently in that regard.
There are several other welcome measures which will improve the life chances of children and families on the margins of society, and I wish there was time to speak to them now. However, before closing, I shall say a few words about the Government’s work to improve the mental health of all children, with special attention to children in local authority care. At the end of the last coalition Government, £1.25 billion was pledged for child and adolescent mental health services over five years. The Government commissioned the Future in Mind report on CAMHS and reports focusing on looked-after children have come from the NSPCC, the Education Select Committee in the other place and the Alliance for Child-Centred Care. Edward Timpson, the Minister of State for Children, has been consulting widely on the mental health needs of looked-after young people. The interest of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in mental health and their campaigning have been of immense encouragement to those working in the sector.
Those focusing on the mental health of looked-after children have particularly campaigned for improved initial mental health assessments for these children. Most of these children have very complex mental health needs but currently their assessment is being undertaken by generalists, perhaps a GP, which is not sufficient. In future, children should have a mental health assessment undertaken by a mental health professional when they come into care because the current assessment process is, in practice, not effectively identifying their mental health needs and ensuring that they receive the support they need. We know that 60% of children first enter care due to abuse or severe neglect and that almost half of all children in care have a mental health problem. We are missing a huge opportunity to provide better support at an earlier time in their care journey, which ultimately would ease the pressure of support needed when they leave care. That is the view of the NSPCC, the Alliance for Child-Centred Care and the Education Select Committee. It is a view that I share and I hope that it is becoming the Government’s.
For many of us with experience of working with these young people, of equal importance will be a move to clinical supervision for the foster carers, social workers, teachers and residential childcare workers. This need not be financially perilous. Clinical supervision by an appropriate mental health professional can take place during the normal group discussions with children that take place in social care, but would mark a sea change in how we met the mental health needs of these children. With clinical supervision for staff dealing with these children, better and timelier referrals would be made to higher-level mental health services. This in turn would allow a far more efficient use of scant mental health resources. With clinical supervision, the all-important relationship between carer and young person would be better managed. That relationship is the most important tool for recovery from their early shattered and shattering relationships. With clinical supervision, we can avoid the real risk of the escalation of difficult behaviour from young people into violence or of carers themselves resorting to violence, as they have done at times in the past, or simply withdrawing from their young people by either leaving the job or emotionally withdrawing from them.
It was encouraging to hear the Health Minister say last year at a meeting of the Parliamentary Group for Looked After Children and Care Leavers that he was looking at the expansion of the clinical supervision of residential care homes to children’s homes. Clinical supervision would finally move us to a model of social care for young people that was integrated with mental health, and that would be a major step forward in our care for those young people. What further thought are the Government giving to the recommendations set out by the Education Select Committee, including the development of clinical supervision in social care for looked-after children and the improvement of initial mental health assessments?
I look forward to the noble Baroness’s response—perhaps she might like to write me if that is more convenient—and I am grateful to the Government for this important programme of social reform in the gracious Speech.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)
My Lords, I remember a time when culture did not make it at all as a subject for Queen’s Speech debates, so it is a cause for celebration today that we are now top billing.
As a country, we have always been blessed with a wealth of creative talents. This creativity has formed industries that are a significant contributor to our economy. The creative industries are fed by the talent, ideas and innovation of Britain’s culture and its arts, and they are the fastest-growing sector of our economy. What has been missing has been a clear sense of what exactly investment in this area provides: the real value of investing in culture, and how to ensure that this value is properly woven into government policy. So this Government are to be congratulated on recognising this and publishing a culture White Paper—the first since Jennie Lee’s, 50 years ago. I also congratulate them on the ratification of the Hague convention, which was signed over 60 years ago.
Now to today. Last week we saw the much-anticipated BBC White Paper. The consultation process leading up to it confirmed that the British public overwhelmingly cherish and support their BBC—so, despite the huffing and puffing of the Secretary of State and the threats delivered via anti-BBC competitors in the printed press, he did not blow the house down. We welcome the fact that there will be an 11-year charter and no top-slicing of BBC revenue, and that the index linking of the licence fee will stay and will cover people using catch-up on iPlayer. We also welcome very much the requirement to improve diversity, and the fact that alongside on-screen targets there are to be workforce targets. These must be delivered.
But, while the edifice still stands, this White Paper messes with its foundations and there are major causes for concern. Let us start with the crucial matter of BBC independence. The BBC, let us be reminded, is a public broadcaster, not a state broadcaster. It must be independent in order to do its job, and it must be seen to be independent, so it is wrong, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, has said, that six members of the new governing board are to be made up of government appointees. This body will oversee day-to-day editorial and strategic decisions, including issues around political programming and contentious investigations. Peter Kosminsky, director of “Wolf Hall”, said:
“Think about that for a moment. The editorial board—the body charged with safeguarding the editorial independence of the BBC from, amongst other things, government interference—will be appointed by the Government”.
As the noble Lords, Lord Macdonald and Lord Fowler, mentioned, the BBC charter is to be reviewed every five years—always, by the way, coinciding with a general election. It is,
“an opportunity to check the reforms are working as we intend”,—[Official Report, Commons, 12/5/16; col. 731.]
said John Whittingdale in his Oral Statement. “We intend” are chilling words, whoever is in government, and they surely hand that Government the opportunity to usurp the 11-year charter. Both these measures introduce controls that attack the BBC’s independence. There should be no five-yearly review and all members of the new unitary board should be appointed by an independent appointments committee.
Then there is the matter of “distinctiveness”, which seems to have replaced “scale and scope”. The Secretary of State was clear that,
“we will place a requirement to provide distinctive content and services at the heart of the BBC’s overall core mission”,
and the new licensing and governance regime,
“will ensure its services are clearly differentiated from the rest of the market”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/5/16; col. 730.]
In short, the BBC’s creative freedom to make popular entertainment will be gradually curtailed.
I fear that there is a Trojan horse element here. It was anticipated by actor and writer David Mitchell in an article a couple of weeks ago in which he wrote:
“An overt challenge to the corporation’s existence remains politically unfeasible—the public would miss it too much. The first step, then, is to turn it into something that fewer people would miss—and eventually, over time, to make it so distinctive that hardly anyone likes it at all”.
Then there is the matter of how to justify the licence fee. On the matter of the licence fee, it is not public money but the public’s money—and there must be no more raids. Using the public’s money to pay for government policies such as free licences for the over-75s is double dipping. The licence fee income is for the use of the BBC and the BBC alone. Does the Minister not agree that the process of setting the licence fee should in future be transparent and that the level should be recommended by the new regulatory body?
We believe in an independent BBC, and in a BBC that belongs to the licence fee payer, who wants it to continue to educate, inform and, yes, entertain in the brilliant way it does today—and to provide recipes. Whatever was wrong with the trust, it represented the licence fee payer. Who does that now?
I wish to echo rather than repeat the words of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, on Channel 4, and await with interest the Minister’s answer.
Finally, our creative industries benefit massively from our being a member of the European Union. The British music industry contributes £3.8 billion to the UK economy, and Europe is its second-largest market. The UK is the second-largest exporter of television in the world. Membership of the EU means that these music and television producers and retailers can export and import freely across the continent. It means that they have unrestricted access to the world’s largest free trade area; and the free movement of people to work and travel across Europe without the need for visas both facilitates and fuels the exchange of culture, creativity and expertise, and generates better commercial and artistic opportunities.
Alexandra Shulman, editor of Vogue, said about Brexit’s likely effect on the fashion industry:
“It would make everybody’s job much harder because they all operate internationally … Of course it is going to impact on companies … many of our fashion students when they graduate get great jobs working abroad. That would be much harder for them. Versace, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent—they use our designers”.
There is also the Creative Europe programme, which has a budget of £1.1 billion. UK applicants for this funding have a success rate almost double that of the EU average, and this year the programme is introducing a new bank guarantee, the Cultural and Creative Sectors Guarantee Fund, which will underwrite bank loans to creative businesses.
Across the country there are examples of the EU enhancing UK culture. York’s Pilot Theatre is leading the £1.6 million PLATFORM shift+ project to help young theatre-makers in nine countries develop productions and skills for young audiences in the digital age. Tate Liverpool is participating in the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme, which has secured more than £1 million in EU funding to support the training and development of artists working in local communities. No fewer than seven British films that received Oscar nominations this year were EU-funded. The EU provides a continuing stable and mutually beneficial partnership. Materially, it adds value. Culturally, everyone benefits—practitioners, consumers, communities and individuals—and there is the unquantifiable added value of furthering mutual understanding.
As I said at the beginning, we are a creative nation, and so far as the creative industries are concerned we are ahead of the game. Let us make sure that we stay there. That means a properly funded cultural sector, a truly independent BBC, an unprivatised Channel 4 and a positive, progressive future within Europe.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness is an experienced commentator on and watcher of the BBC, and she has made a distinguished speech, one of several we have heard on the topic today, including from my noble friend Lord Fowler. I am not an experienced BBC-watcher—they will have forgotten more about the BBC than I will ever know—so if they will forgive me, I do not propose to follow them. I reassure my noble friend on the Front Bench who will wind up, and the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, that neither will I talk about pubs. That is not for today but for another day, probably in the Moses Room. Today I will focus my remarks on the sentence in the gracious Speech:
“My Government will continue to work to bring communities together and strengthen society”.
I do so because I fear that our social cohesion—the glue that binds our society together—will face some special challenges over the next few years.
The first major challenge will be the further hollowing-out of our society as the result of the widening impact of robotics and artificial intelligence on top of the information revolution we have already experienced. That first wave primarily impacted blue-collar, less- skilled jobs. Outsourcing, first to eastern Europe and then to India and the Far East, has reduced inflation but has also reduced—some would say has stopped—the rate of the rise in blue-collar living standards. The frustration and anger that this has caused has fuelled the rise of political parties espousing more unconventional policies. These include, for example, Donald Trump’s US presidential election campaign.
However, a second and potentially far more serious wave is about to hit us. Over the next five to 10 years, wide swathes of jobs in offices and administrative functions will disappear. The Future of Jobs, published earlier this year by the World Economic Forum, the McKinsey report on disruptive technologies, and Martin Ford’s book Rise of the Robots all explain this event. However, this revolution will be different from previous revolutions in one crucial sense. In the earlier phases, revolutions created more jobs than they destroyed, but this time it will be different: they will destroy far more jobs than they create. Therefore members of middle or lower middle-income families, accustomed to a reasonably secure future for themselves and their children, will see those futures disappear. We, and the Government, need to think about ways to adapt our economy and our society to face such volatility if our social cohesion is not to be imperilled.
The second area of challenge is a declining public readiness to accept compromise and is a by-product of the social media revolution. Some noble Lords may be aware that I have just completed a year-long review for the Government of the legislation covering third-party campaigning—that is, campaigning by non-political parties. This gave me some very valuable insights into the way that campaigning methods are developing.
It is well known, even by an average technophobe like me, that increasingly people—especially younger people—get their information online. Less well appreciated is the extent to which that information is delivered in short bites: single articles, blogs or tweets. Even less well appreciated is the extent to which website operators, who have a keen interest in keeping individuals on their website since average usage numbers drive advertising spend, have become very sophisticated in analysing our individual likes and dislikes by trawling through our past data usage. We all like to be told that we are right. We are all flattered to be told that our view is the one that should prevail. So what better way can there be for a website operator to keep us on his particular website than to analyse our likes and dislikes and make sure that we are fed a diet of articles and blogs that is 100% supportive of our individual points of view? Therefore, I fear that an increasing proportion of our population may hear only one side of the arguments about the many complex problems that our society faces. However, in a liberal democracy, and a country of more than 60 million people, an absolutist point of view does not offer sufficient room for the compromise, pragmatism and indeed the disappointment necessary to enable our society to function. An absolutist point of view puts at risk the web of delicate balances that lies at the heart of our democracy, and so may threaten our social cohesion. Addressing this conundrum is going to require some far-sighted, innovative thinking.
Lastly, I turn to an issue about which some Members of your Lordships’ House may have heard me talk in the past: the present and projected rate of increase in the population of the country. As always when I speak about this, I make it clear that this is not a speech about immigration under another name, and it is not about race, colour or creed. When I refer to the settled population of the country, I mean just that. My concern is about the absolute numbers, and the numbers are stark. In the year to September 2014, the population of this country increased by an average of 1,436 people a day. Roughly half of that was from a natural increase, an excess of births over deaths, with the other half from immigration. That is equivalent to a large village or a small town being put on the map of Britain every week of the year. This rate of increase must be expected to cause stresses to our society.
Let me give the House just one example of those stresses: housing, an issue that has been much in your Lordships’ minds these past few weeks. We currently live 2.4 people per dwelling. If we want to house our new arrivals to the same standard, and I assume that we do, we need 598 new dwellings per day. That is 25 per hour, or one every two and a half minutes. That is before any attempt to try to improve our existing housing stock. This is in a country, England, that has already become the most densely populated in Europe, having recently overtaken the Netherlands. The outlook for the next 25 years is no less challenging. The mid-projection for 2039 by the Office for National Statistics is that our population will grow by 15%. That is an increase of 9.7 million people. On the same housing metric that I have just given the House, we will need to build four and a quarter million more dwellings by 2039 or one every three minutes for the next 25 years. To put it another way, Greater Manchester’s population currently is 2.7 million, so we are going to have to build the equivalent of more than three Greater Manchesters over the next 25 years.
I urge the Government, all political parties and every Member of your Lordships’ House to consider the implications for social cohesion of 9 million more people and four and a quarter million more dwellings in a country that is already three times more densely populated than France. Governments and all political parties have found this issue hedged about with landmines. Given the long-term nature and impact of demographic policies, they have taken refuge in Einstein’s famous dictum:
“I never think of the future. It comes soon enough”.
By 2039, at the end of the 25-year period, the best I can hope is that I will be dribbling into my cornflakes. However, our successors will be entitled to ask why, when the evidence of these growing challenges was so stark, we looked the other way.
Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)
I rise as a Welsh Peer. If I were still a Member of the other place, as a Welsh MP, I could not vote on education matters but I could speak on them. Happily, I am regarded as a full Member of this House of Parliament and I can do both.
The first issue I want to raise with the Minister, who will undoubtedly refer to it in her winding-up speech, is higher education. I know that the Bill applies only to England, but there is no question that the nations and regions of our United Kingdom interact with each other very significantly when it comes to where our students go to university. For example, about 50% of Welsh students study at Welsh universities. The other 50% go to universities in England and Scotland and some to Northern Ireland. My plea to the Minister is to talk to her ministerial counterparts in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales about the implications of this new legislation on our devolved Administrations. After all, that covers nearly 11 million people in the United Kingdom.
I also want to touch on the Government’s U-turn on academies. Not long ago, the Minister’s ministerial colleague—the noble Lord, Lord Nash, who has now left the Chamber—was talking about the policy to ensure that every place in England had academies. He said that squabbling local politicians were one reason why it was important to have academies. That did not in any sense fit well with the Government’s avowed policy on localism. The Government have said over the years that it is important to devolve powers, whether to the northern cities or to local authorities and local education authorities. The enforced academisation of schools in England would have completely gone against that idea and policy, so I welcome the change.
It is also important to understand that academies are not the only way that educational excellence can be achieved. I was a member of the Labour Government who introduced the academy system, and I have nothing against that system. Academies do very well in certain places—but not everywhere. A headline in the Times last week, for example, revealed a huge gulf in academy standards. After all, only 15% of primary schools in England and 60% of secondary schools are academies.
I also want to mention the effect of legislation on faith schools in our country. These schools play an extremely important role in the education of our young people, and they are significant in various parts of the country. However, of the 2,100 Roman Catholic schools, only 450 are academies. I urge the Government, when introducing this legislation, to involve themselves with the diocesan authorities of both the Anglican and the Roman Catholic Churches in England to ensure that there is proper consultation, particularly regarding the role of regional commissioners. There is a great need for a memorandum of understanding between the Church education authorities and the regional commissioners on coming to certain decisions.
The other issue that I want to touch on is the way in which Governments take their decisions on legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said some wise things about the relationship between the legislature and Executive. Over the past year there have been at least nine U-turns by the Government—all of which I completely applaud, by the way—including, of course, today’s decision on junior doctors. However, when we look at tax credits, disability benefits, VAT on tampons, Sunday trading, child refugees and others all in one year, we have to think about how the Government are taking decisions. Last week the Guardian said in a leading article that,
“this government prefers to charge into controversy, citing the authority of manifesto commitments approved by a little more than a third of those who voted, and when forced to backtrack on ill-planned proposals, blames parliament as undemocratic”.
You might think, “That’s the Guardian—they would say that, wouldn’t they?”. But a few days later the Sunday Times, not a supporter of my party, said that, “this is a parliament of pulled punches, abandoned initiatives, and U-turns. A Government that cannot risk making enemies—even of the Labour Party—has U-turned on tax credits, disability benefits, academy schools and the trade union political levy”.
The Government should reflect on and rethink the way in which legislation is introduced. The humility which is required by Governments does not come easily to them after five or six years. The Labour Government of whom I was a part had large majorities, and even they were wrong and became arrogant as the years went by. But if a Government have a majority of fewer than 20 in the House of Commons and a House of Lords which is quite rightly flexing its muscles, it seems not only wrong but daft that they should deal with matters in such a way that they end up having to make U-turns almost on a monthly basis.
The Government’s decisions to change their mind were based not on some sort of Damascene conversion to the cause but on parliamentary arithmetic. Would it not be better if, at the end of the day, or perhaps at the beginning of the day, Ministers thought about the implications of their policies before they decided to set them in stone? Then all they would have to do is come to this place—which rightly scrutinises Bills with great energy and verve—and then go back and change their mind, or they could go to the other place where they might be defeated because they do not have a majority, particularly given the divisions at the moment in the government party.
My plea to the Minister who is to wind up the debate is to persuade the Chancellor of the Exchequer not to pull too many rabbits out of the hat; to persuade the Prime Minister and the Chancellor that government departments should control their own policies; and to persuade members of the Cabinet that the way we deal with things politically is not the same these days. The landscape has changed dramatically over the 30 years that I have been a Member of Parliament in one House or other. People vote differently and I think that we will end up with more minority Governments, or certainly Governments with small majorities, during the remainder of my political lifetime than we have had in the past. The Government should think about these issues when dealing with their legislation and when considering the relationship between the Executive on the one hand and the legislature on the other.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, and I absolutely concur with the approach he has taken in directing the Government’s attention to the fact that the landscape constitutionally has changed across and throughout the United Kingdom. It affects not only devolution and some of the important policy areas he mentioned such as higher education, but all the decentralisation measures which both in principle and philosophically are probably right to contemplate. That is because if anything, the United Kingdom is an over-centralised state. We must be careful about “powerhouses”, private prisons and private schools, all of which individually and on a freestanding basis might make sense, but do not necessarily all fit together. The House should be mindful of that during the rest of this year, as we consider the content of the Queen’s Speech. The Government therefore have a responsibility to pay attention to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Murphy.
The Government should also make it clear that they will not totally ignore local authorities. Local government is part of the constitutional warp and weft of all parts of the United Kingdom, and there is a sense that things are being done over the heads of duly elected members of local authorities. We on these Benches pay a lot more than lip service to the crucial work that councillors do for their communities. I am therefore pleased to support the main contention set out in the noble Lord’s speech.
This Queen’s Speech has no real edge to it. I have been reading Queen’s Speeches for many years, and in my judgment this one is limited in scope and is a rehash of previous plans. I hope that the Minister, in her reply—it is a tough task to respond to a debate of this range and depth; I would not have her job but I am sure she will make a fine fist of it—will take note of the three powerful speeches made from our Front Bench. They were all, in their different ways about investment and pressures in the system—whether in the health service, the business world or our cultural and media spheres—and they were all mindful of the ever-present austerity as we go through the rest of this Parliament. A worry that we all share on these Benches is that people think the economy is better, the job has been done, the Chancellor is going to get his big prize of a balanced budget some time soon and everything is going to be fine. That is not the reality in the country, and the House needs to bear that in mind when it considers the detail of the legislative programme that has been laid before it.
Infrastructure will be a crucial issue for the country over the next couple of years. There may not be any primary legislation to deal with it, but we need to note that infrastructure is not just about roads and railways; it is also about broadband. I would like housing and the capital work necessary to deal with climate change issues to be adequately considered as part of the infrastructure plan. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has been listening intently to the debate until just now. We are lucky that the noble Lord is playing such a key role for the Government. I applaud that because he is an excellent person, and I hope the Government will take proper account of anything he says.
At the same time, I hope the Government are realistic about what they can do. There are many examples of claims and counter-claims being made in press releases that the public do not actually believe any more. Government departments—or perhaps spads—always overclaim and underdeliver when it should be the other way around. I am sure that the Minister knows that, because she has a lot of experience in business. I hope she can help on that issue.
I want to say a word of support for the comments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. We have often been in the same camp during many campaigns over the months and years. The right reverend Prelate was absolutely right to say that austerity is getting worse because of the reductions in the social security budget, which are creating adversity for many low-income families. As he rightly said, universal credit is being stripped out. I support everything he said, and I will work shoulder to shoulder with him to make sure that the Government take account of these issues.
A lot of statistics fly around, and people talk about a few billions here and a few billions there, but to reinforce the point made by the right reverend Prelate, as recently as this Monday the Office for National Statistics published some information about persistent poverty rates in the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 2014, 6.5% of the UK population was in persistent poverty, equivalent to approximately 3.9 million people. Colleagues will remember that persistent poverty is defined as experiencing relative low income in the current year and in at least two out of the three preceding years. That is a serious situation for a country such as ours. Interestingly, the ONS figures also point out that persistent poverty bears down unduly on women and single-person households. We do not do that well in comparison with our European sister countries on the issue of experiencing poverty at least once in the past three or four years. We have work to do.
Austerity is still with us. That will play into the Government’s life chances strategy, which the right reverend Prelate also mentioned. I am certainly prepared to work with this strategy. The troubled families issues are important and the strategy is effective, but mentoring and early years assistance cannot put food on the table and pay rent. If people in low-income households cannot put food on the table and pay rent, they are under stress, which causes heartache and marriage breakdown. I know that that is not in the Government’s long-term interests or plans.
Finally, the disability employment gap, which I think the right reverend Prelate also mentioned, is a key measure for the rest of the Parliament. I am sure that that view is shared across the House. It is a very ambitious target but no reference is made to it in the Queen’s Speech. There is the White Paper, expected later in the summer, which some of us will look at very carefully. Innovation and sensitivity will be required, and we will need to avoid the kind of mistakes we made in reassessing the PIP 50-metre test to 20 metres, for example. But even if the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions uses the time between now and the summer to come up with a plan to address that point, it cannot possibly be done without extra investment. We certainly wait with anticipation to see what he comes up with in the summer. I hope that that will lead to legislation—the “other measures” that the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, referred to.
The Speech is not mindful enough of the continuing pressure on low-income families and deprived and persistent poverty groups. In the coming weeks and months, the House would do well to recognise that in considering the detail of the Bills in the Queen’s Speech.
The Lord Bishop of Ely
My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, in thanking my fellow right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham for his speech. I join my right reverend friend in reminding the House that, in particular with children and young people, we are about ensuring their experience of love and the fullness of life. If you like, we are interested in human flourishing and community. That is the prism through which I will look at some of the direct provisions from the gracious Speech and the implications for future policy.
Research done already on the implications of what has been said by Ministers shows that academisation will proceed very fully. The think tank CentreForum suggests that only about 3,000 free-standing schools might be left that are not academised in the future. I am concerned that we do not end up with thousands of outstanding schools going it alone. We need to ensure that all strong schools, in MATs or otherwise, support schools that are struggling. There is no way of flourishing that does not take in support for others.
Another thing relating to structural change as it continues is that it is very important that this change, however important it may be, does not distract us from the business of front-line support for children and young people in school. In that regard, I am thrilled that the Government intend to sustain the pupil premium, and I am very pleased that one of my right reverend friend’s schools, the Northern Saints Church of England primary school in Sunderland, was a joint winner of the DfE’s pupil premium award very recently. It won that award because it used the pupil premium to establish a reader-in-residence scheme. This funds a reader for two days each week, transforming the children’s early reading experience. It set this up following research that says that successful adults have a love and enjoyment of reading. Northern Saints works with national and community groups using evidence-based strategies and a knowledge of their pupils’ needs to give them access to a broad and varied curriculum.
But funding on its own does not solve the challenges faced by schools. It requires good stewardship of those resources, an interest in what actually works and a commitment to the children that they serve. Collaboration, aspiration and creative thinking are as important for schools as the funding that they receive. I assume that the proposed legislation on fairer funding for schools will make good the White Paper’s commitment to support isolated rural and small schools with additional funding, but we hope it will also encourage them to collaborate and find sustainable ways of working for the future, sharing CPD and ensuring that children have access to a breadth of educational opportunities.
I note the intention of the digital economy Bill to improve access to broadband. In the Fen country the architecture for broadband and mobile access has hardly got beyond early English, let alone to Gothic. Although I will offer every available spire and tower to improve this, the main concern is about connectivity and how this directly facilitates the delivery of education across remote rural areas. Lack of connectivity is not just a nuisance for us adults; it is a genuine deprivation for our children and young people. We must also be mindful in these straitened times that adjustment to the funding formula for schools will mean losers as well as winners. There is a need to support education in any disadvantaged community, whether rural or urban, if this Bill is truly to benefit all.
I also wish to raise a question of religious literacy. We live in an age characterised by globalisation, social media manipulation, and concerns about religious extremism and the limits of pluralism. In this febrile as well as fertile context, religious literacy is more and more vital. This is never neutral, but it should be reasoned and generous. As the Church of England’s chief education officer recently said:
“Religious education is about giving people the critical skills they need to recognise deep differences in religion, belief and worldview, to understand our history and to take the diversity of voices seriously … This means much more than simply accumulating knowledge about religion and belief. It’s about enabling children and young people to encounter and wrestle with fundamental questions about God”.
This should never involve coercion or violence, but should ally passionate faith with a deep honouring of the other. Our Church schools are not proselytising communities, but they are places where we are sufficiently confident in ourselves and in our faithful witness that we are even more confidently inclusive and diverse.
In the past, local authorities have been a key link in ensuring that children have access to high-quality religious education and collective worship in schools that do not have a religious designation. This has enabled engagement with local faith communities and given children access to information about religion that dispels fear and promotes understanding. Currently, local authorities are statutorily obliged to maintain a standing advisory council on religious education. I ask the Minister: will this be lost as the role of local authorities in education changes? If so, how will we be able to monitor and assure the quality and provision of religious education in areas that have become fully academised? This is an issue of great concern to all those of us who believe in the importance of religious education and see the need for improved religious literacy.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, I say that the implication of closer working between the RSCs and the dioceses is very important. In the case of the diocese of Ely and our RSC it is working well, but it continues to need further development.
Moving on to FE and higher education, I note the intention of the Higher Education and Research Bill to link the quality of university teaching to the level of fees that institutions can charge. It would be unfortunate if this were to lead to a situation where only the wealthiest could attend the best universities, and I hope that the legislation will seek to avoid this. In our Anglican foundation universities we are clear that the best education goes beyond simply serving the knowledge economy or providing a ready supply of well-trained employees, important as these things are. Indeed, without a wider perspective it is difficult to do those things in any case.
I look forward to finding out more about the Government’s skills plan and reforms to technical education. The further education and skills sector, which already educates more than 3.5 million learners every year, including a large number of those studying HE-level programmes, is worthy of greater recognition. It would be a great shame if HE and FE provision were separated like sheep and goats. This would, I fear, further reduce the prestige given to vocational education, a long-standing problem in our system.
Whatever the shape of the future it is clear that a key factor in implementing this legislation is leadership. Great leaders not only set out a bold vision of what educating for flourishing should look like, but equip their teams to deliver it. This is why the Church of England is establishing a foundation for educational leadership, offering the kind of networks, training and research to potential leaders which will enable them to make manifest in our systems a vision of education which sees its purpose as human flourishing for teachers and learners together.
The Church of England will soon make public its renewed vision for education, at the heart of which is the teaching of Jesus himself that he has come that people,
“may have life, and have it abundantly”.
This is not theological code for coasting. Life in all its fullness means being exacting, rigorous, ambitious and having appetite for all that excellence demands. Any school which accepts underperformance from children is failing those children. Academic rigour and progress are vital components of school life lived to the full. The Lord who promises us fullness of life tells us in John’s gospel that he is the good shepherd who is not going to lose even one of his sheep. No child is ever to be written off and we must do all we can to ensure that they receive fullness of life.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this debate on the gracious Speech. I am sure I am not alone among your Lordships in finding yesterday’s colourful ceremony inspiring and refreshing. It brought home to me, as it always does, just how great a privilege it is to be a Member of your Lordships’ House and to be able to play a role in improving legislation using the vast and diverse experience possessed by so many Members.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord King on his entertaining and interesting speech yesterday. As he recognised, the elephant in the room is the looming referendum on our membership of the European Union. I wish I could agree with him that, like Mr Larry Adler with his mouth organ, if we go on and on playing the same tune eventually we will get it right and our partners will come to appreciate us. I cannot see any evidence from the pronouncements of European leaders, either during or after the Government’s negotiations, that they want to hear us again, so I cannot be confident that the much more fundamental reforms that are clearly needed in the EU are going to happen anytime soon.
What we do know is that the five presidents’ report, published in June last year, reveals the European Commission’s intentions that fiscal union will be developed within the framework of the European Union, meaning that the UK will be dragged in. I do not buy the arguments of those who believe that we must remain in order to maintain our influence on the world stage. The five presidents’ report also proposes abolishing the UK’s representation on key international bodies, where global regulations and standards are increasingly set. It states that,
“in the international financial institutions, the EU and the euro area are still not represented as one”.
It singles out the IMF as one example.
In visits within the last month to Holland and France, I found that almost every banker and businessperson I met wanted to discuss the likelihood of a British vote to leave. Many of them, perhaps surprisingly, expressed the view that the only way to persuade the leaders of the EU to abandon their aspirations to deepen the structures of the Union to the extent that it becomes effectively a federal state will be if we vote to leave. The Swiss people voted last year to end the free movement of people, which their current arrangements with the EU require, and therefore they are now preparing to renegotiate their trading arrangements with the EU. Switzerland, as your Lordships are well aware, is the second-largest financial services market in Europe, so we would be in good company if we were to be engaged in similar talks at the same time.
I believe that a vote to leave will provide the best chance that Europe will morph into a looser community of nations while perpetuating free or nearly free trading arrangements that are so essential to our prosperity, the growth of new businesses and the creation of jobs. We would, of course, remain able and free to collaborate with our European partners in many areas on a bilateral or multilateral basis, in programmes such as Horizon 2020 for scientific research and other programmes.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to continue work to deliver NHS services over seven days of the week. There are other excellent proposals in the gracious Speech, including the focus on improving children’s life chances through the Children and Social Work Bill. I also welcome yesterday’s agreement between the Government and the BMA and I congratulate the Secretary of State.
I find myself in full agreement with the views of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham on HS2 and the northern powerhouse. It is welcome that the Government have committed to continue to support its development and, as a director of a company that manufactures plastics on Teesside, I am well aware of the crucial need for further investment and job creation in that region, building on the very welcome establishment by Hitachi of its new rolling stock factory at Newton Aycliffe. I have read recent newspaper articles suggesting that the costs of HS2 are escalating rapidly and that this may lead to the truncation of this project, possibly as far south as Crewe. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure the House that there is no truth in these rumours.
Lord Cashman (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Viscount, though I have to say, having spent 15 years working and legislating in the European Union, that I do not share his views of the Union or how it functions. I am reminded that one tends to get the answers one wants when one questions only the people that one chooses to target. Like others in this House, I am deeply concerned about the shadow that the European Union referendum casts across not only this country but the rest of Europe.
I remind noble Lords of my interests in the register, in particular as a rights holder of TV programmes. It is a pity that the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, is not here to hear me say that I agree with his every word—it is just as well, because it would probably worry him more than it worries me—particularly in relation to the BBC. Regarding his statement that the Government and both Houses should really be in the realms of a certain amount of give and take, I want to give by saying to the Government that there is much that I commend in the Queen’s Speech—much indeed—but the issue is how it is woven together. I may even stray into certain areas which we are not due to discuss today, because I think there is an interconnection between rights and responsibilities, between communities and the way in which we provide housing and health, for example. So there is much here and I commend the Queen’s Speech. As ever, the delight and the challenge will be in the detail.
If your Lordships will allow me, I will address something that is crucial for me and, I hope, for others, and that is the Bill of Rights. The Government are, perhaps, thinking twice on how to approach this issue. I welcome this. I note that there will be a proposal on which, I presume, there will be consultation. I urge the Government to publish online the responses to any such proposal and consultation. It is vital that we have the utmost transparency, especially when we are dealing with issues of fundamental human rights. We also need to be very careful about a disconnection with the universality of human rights. Arguably, as soon as we have a British Bill of Rights, those rights will only kick in when you enter Britain; you will lose them when you leave.
Equally, we must be extremely careful about the language that we use when referring to the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The defamation of judgments undermines the very principle of the universality of human rights. When we selectively endorse certain judgments that please us in government, we undermine the very ones that we selectively grab by denouncing the others. I wholly endorse anything that improves, enhances and reinforces the universality of human rights.
Turning to culture, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, my noble friend Lord Macdonald and the noble Lord, Lord Fowler. The White Paper on the BBC charter review is to be welcomed, but I have some serious concerns, not least about the make-up of the board. Will it be sufficiently independent? I think that the mid-term review will prevent the BBC from having a long-term strategy. I believe that there is an intention to stress the BBC to work in other areas, much wider than those in which it currently operates. This is in order that, in five years’ time, the board—and certainly the Government—will turn round to the BBC and say, “Well, you are no longer a world-class leader; you are not matching exactly what we want you to do, so you need to do less”. This is a big worry for me. Equally, regarding the concept of distinctiveness, are we going to say, “Why are you doing popular programmes, because they are being done by the other channels? That is not distinctive; do something different”? How do we make programmes in the public interest? Who defines the public interest? We should also celebrate and support what the BBC does and encourage it further. The same goes for Channel 4. Channel 4 is a beacon of diversity, not only in the programmes it makes but in the people who work within and for it. The £26 million surplus is to be welcomed. It is another example of broadcasting success.
I turn now to education and particularly to education and the arts. My life was, arguably, changed by arts in education. I failed my 11-plus and I remember when I went to my secondary modern school they gave up on me. You could see it in the eyes of teachers who did not know what to do with this energetic rebel. Yet, a drama teacher—Bill Everett—saw something. It was because of him that I spent a lifetime in the arts and creative industries. And we are in the creative industries. Here in both Houses, we use our creative talents to imagine something better. We pool them to bring forward solutions to problems that other generations have tussled with for thousands of years. One of our brilliant policemen came up to me and said, “It is nice to see you still performing, my Lord”. I said, “Actually I gave up performing some years ago”. “No, you haven’t”, he said, “I have seen you in the Chamber”.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, said, let us celebrate the enormous talent base in this country. Let us celebrate it around the world. It has not happened by chance; it is because we have invested in talent and education which changes people’s lives, hearts and minds. This is why I believe that all students should have access to drama as a subject in schools, taught by specialist-trained drama teachers with qualified teacher status. Drama is a distinct art form and should have its own subject status, separate to English, in both primary and secondary schools. For drama to be engaging before GCSE level requires trained and qualified drama teachers in secondary schools. In primary schools it requires high-quality, in-service drama training as a minimum. English teachers are not usually drama trained and drama should not be seen just as a method of English teaching.
I hope that the Government will seize this opportunity to review their narrative around the English Baccalaureate, against which the arts community fought so valiantly. It sent a damaging signal to downgrade the arts in education. This has happened. The number of children sitting arts GCSEs is declining steadily. It is down in music and drama, and film is excluded from the curriculum altogether. Teacher training places in arts education have been cut by 35% and the numbers of specialist arts teachers have fallen. This makes no sense for the arts and our creative industries. It makes no sense in wider educational terms either. We must reject the binary choice between science and arts. We need our young people to grow up to be problem solvers—to be creative and analytical, innovative and inquiring in their chosen profession. We do not need them to live their lives in closed silos, shut off from the possibilities of imagining other approaches and other ways.
I believe that, in the end, it is art that defines us as human beings. We underinvest in this and future generations at our cultural and economic peril. We need a curriculum that embraces arts in all its forms and places it at the centre of how we all explore the world.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, having listened to much of this debate, I feel it is right to comment on one or two of the previous speeches. One in particular sums it up. The BBC is going to be an incredibly hot topic during the next few months, as is the whole public sector broadcasting system, regardless of the result of the referendum. I hope that we will be able to get some form of cross-party unity on this.
Any further comments from me have been rendered superfluous by the speech of my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter, so I shall restrict myself to the substitutes’ bench and cheering duties thereafter. Having listened to and thought about that speech, I believe that the House and I would be much happier if I take this role.
The rest of my speech will be directed towards education. I must make another small confession. This is something of a continuum from the last Queen’s Speech debate, when I said that, in dealing with education, if you do not know how to teach somebody with specific problems and are then expected to achieve success with people who have those specific problems, you are going to fail or underachieve. I described it as “the bleedin’ obvious”. Whether that is unparliamentary language or not, I have not changed my mind. Since then, I decided to go away and do something positive about it and have spent much of the last year speaking to people about how we change this. I have spoken to people in virtually all the pressure groups and in academia and have looked at government responses on this issue. I looked at about four government responses on special educational needs or aspects of them, which said that we needed people who were better trained to deal with this. A volunteer researcher working for me got through 39 other documents written by learned people which recommended this. At that point I told him to stop. I am still flirting with the idea of holding a publicity event with all the documents piled up on a very sturdy table. I have put a Private Member’s Bill into the mix to suggest that we should take action to ensure that teachers are given at least some awareness training in dealing with those with the most commonly occurring special educational needs.
It is absurd to expect somebody who has a different learning pattern to get the best out of a standardised one. I draw attention to my declared interests, particularly my role as president of the British Dyslexia Association. The difficulty with a “talk and chalk” method of teaching—that is, talk, write something on the blackboard, pupils write it down—is that some pupils may find it incredibly difficult to write things down. Their short-term memory means that they cannot remember things. They look up and down and do not take in what is said because it is difficult for them to do that. However, that is the main method of classroom teaching. In addition, those with dyscalculia interpret maths as being funny symbols and somebody talking in a foreign language. My knowledge of this, of course, is not good. Those with dyspraxia who have problems with vision and writing need to be taught in a different way. Autism may also be added to the mix. Unless teachers are aware that some pupils have different learning patterns and teach them in a different way, those pupils will achieve poorer results or fail. Twenty per cent of the population come into these categories.
There is probably no definitive example of any of the spectrum disorders. For some bizarre reason they all overlap, which makes the situation even more complicated. The classic stereotypes of somebody with Asperger’s and somebody with dyslexia are almost totally contradictory. However, these conditions overlap and can both occur in the same person. People with these needs will always struggle in the classroom. One also needs to counter certain perceptions. Having talked to people in the teaching unions and the professions, I know that a certain perception is declining but nevertheless still exists—namely, that you can be taught to teach anybody if you can be taught to teach well. That is not the case.
Teachers need to understand what conditions exist and how to adapt their teaching style accordingly. They also need to understand that a pupil who struggles in the classroom will also struggle in the playground. All these conditions come together. In addition, some pupils may have speech and language problems. Teachers need a basic awareness of these conditions. However, there is no guarantee that teacher training courses will supply this awareness. Some people receive as little as two hours’ training in this area. I have told this joke before: a friend of mine, in discussing the two-hour timeframe, ran through various conditions such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and a few others. He then said, “I could not learn to spell those words in that time but you are supposed to carry out a classroom intervention to help pupils with those conditions. That is not going to happen”. As I say, 20% of the population come into these categories.
Regardless of what is said about education structures, unless we get this right we are guaranteed to have a higher wastage rate than is necessary if we are talking just about statistics. If we are talking about individuals, they will not fulfil their potential. In terms of personal happiness, wealth—you name it—they will have problems. Making sure that we change this would be a major step forward. I have spoken to people from all parties and bodies and hope that over the next year we can take a major step to ensure that the education system is more responsive to this issue. Somebody may say, “We have taken up phonics now, and that is how you teach dyslexics”. That is right but those with dyslexia still learn more slowly with the aid of phonics than those without dyslexia. If a teacher sets his teaching pace based on the conventional classroom, those who have the conditions I have described will be left behind. This is not about working harder but working smarter and accepting that these disabilities will be with people for life. The response tends to be to provide extra lessons. That is like asking a very small man to carry sacks of coal. He will break down. If you ask a person to do something that they find incredibly difficult to do and overload them, they will break down. Instances of such pupils failing and shutting off from the other children in the classroom have been recorded ad infinitum. We must make teachers more aware of “smarter” working to tackle this situation.
My dream is that in future these conditions will be identified by teachers telling parents, “Your child has condition X”, rather than parents, having endured several years of their child’s failure and unhappiness, telling the teacher, “Don’t you think he might have such and such a condition?”. We should at least seek to achieve that over the next few years.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I want to make a few observations on the arts, culture, education and the media. I would like to start on a high note, so first, I very much congratulate the Government on introducing a Bill finally to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. This is great news. There should also be a special mention of the UK’s Peter Stone of Newcastle University, who since the beginning of the year has held the first ever UNESCO chair in Cultural Property Protection and Peace and has campaigned for this legislation for the past 13 years.
Bringing broadband to every household that wishes to have it is an excellent idea and I hope that project works well. I echo what others have said about speeds. In other areas I have some concerns. I am anxious about how the intention to allow local councils to retain 100% of business rates will affect charitable bodies, including art centres, orchestras and theatres large and small, which currently are allowed 80% mandatory relief, on which many organisations depend. If this is to be left up to already cash-strapped councils, it simply will not work. Can the Minister allay my fears on this?
In a wider cultural sense, there should be some concern about the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill. I am probably one of the few in this House who are a little sceptical about housing-led development, and who feel that we may be in danger of sacrificing what ought to be a sensitive, balanced and inclusive approach to urban design. One of the crises in the arts is the shortage of studio work spaces. Of course, this is only one kind of demand among many others. Nevertheless, this and other uses to which space might or should be put are increasingly likely to be shut out, not just by spiralling rents but by the not unrelated issue of the increased muscle of developers.
A different topic—arts education—was not in the Queen’s Speech. However, I want to make this point because it is timely. The petition to include arts subjects in the EBacc reached well over 100,000 signatures last month. Consequently, there will be a debate on this in the Commons on 4 July, as the Minister will be aware. I hope the Government will take into consideration the views expressed in this debate before they respond to the EBacc consultation.
I want to say a couple of things about the BBC. The way I think about the BBC—as do others—is as a public space. Public space is under threat in this country at present. Indeed, in the geographical sense of buildings and land, too much is being sold off. In respect of arts and cultural services, libraries and museums, particularly in the north, are under increasing threat from continuing cuts to local government funding—cuts which many now believe are unnecessary.
The BBC is a special kind of public space and, in this sense, the distinction that some have recently drawn between a state broadcaster and a public broadcaster is apposite. A public space should contain within it, by definition, a range of public interests, from the most popular to the specialist, but all accessible within this one space. That is why the term “distinctiveness”, as used by the Secretary of State, is the wrong language. In this context, it is about distinctiveness of product: that is to say—I think wrongly—about programme content. It is the language of the marketplace. This term is being used to do down the BBC at the same time as misrepresenting it. The BBC’s distinctiveness is already determined by its inherent shape, not primarily—and I emphasise the word primarily—by its programme content. Its shape, therefore, as a non-commercial broadcaster with programmes uninterrupted by commercials, is part of its character which should not be underestimated. If you remove the popular, the BBC would be destroyed as a public space, which would be a great tragedy.
My second point concerns the constant pressure to prove both independence and impartiality. Again, the BBC is, by definition, already both independent and impartial, because it is a public broadcaster and a public space. But with appointees to the new board accountable only to the Government, the BBC would—again, by definition alone—lose that independence. As an illustration of the current pressures, last month in the Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash, in the context of the EU debate, said that by,
“bending over backwards to be impartial … The danger … is that it reduces everything to claim and counterclaim”.
Facts then become hard to come by, and it becomes too easy to exclude other, more nuanced voices. Given the current uncertainties and the pressures on the BBC —some obvious, some less so—the terms of the charter review need to be scrutinised, and I would support this being debated and voted upon in Parliament.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to be participating today in this debate on the gracious Speech. I will restrict my remarks to issues of education, and in particular the need to help those who come from more disadvantaged sections of our community. I should also declare my interests as a governor of a primary school which is now an academy and as an honorary fellow of both the City & Guilds Institute and Birkbeck College.
I will start by saying how pleased I am that the Government have seen fit to drop their original proposals for the forced academisation of all local authority schools that have not so far become academies. I am thoroughly with the Government in terms of wishing to improve the quality and the performance of schools and, in particular—as mentioned by the Minister in his introduction—in the wish to change the appalling statistic of how many children leave primary school unable to cope with the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic. As the Minister mentioned, despite the improvement, one in five children leaves primary school without really being able to cope with the secondary school curriculum. This is, I think, a very difficult issue to deal with and one that as a nation we have failed to grapple with over time.
The reason why I am pleased that we are not forcing academisation is that the evidence does not indicate, as the Minister seemed to imply, that academisation leads to improvements in the quality of teaching. Academisation, which the school that I am a governor of went through, costs a fair amount in legal fees because land and assets are transferred from the local authority—roughly £50,000 to £60,000 per school. We have something like 15,000 primary schools still to be converted, so it is a big issue. We are talking about a lot of money—between £300 million and £500 million—to convert them.
The key issue in terms of improving the performance of schools is the quality of the teachers concerned. We could spend that money on improving CPD for teachers and training more teaching assistants. A higher-level teaching assistant is paid something like £20,000 a year, so for the £60,000 that one might be spending on legal fees, one could in fact employ three higher-level teaching assistants and make an important contribution to the quality of teaching in our classrooms.
We should look at countries such as Finland, which has traditionally topped the PISA tables and which insists that people should have five years’ training to become a teacher. One problem that we face in the classroom is the degree of stress that the current system imposes on teachers, and for that matter on pupils. I pick up the point that was made by both my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter and the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, about the importance of creativity within the classroom and the inclusion within the broader curriculum of subjects such as drama, dance and sports—I know that this something that my noble friend Lord Addington talks about a great deal. There is undoubtedly too much emphasis today on testing and league tables. Testing for diagnostic purposes is very important—but, equally, it has created far too much stress. Two in five teachers in this country leave teaching within the first five years. If we want to improve the quality of teaching it is vital that we have a stable workforce. At the moment we face very real problems in both recruiting and retaining teachers.
Like the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, I am a member of the Select Committee on Social Mobility. Our report concentrated on the transitions to work for 16 to 24 year-olds. We felt very strongly that too much emphasis was placed on what might be called the “golden route”, when in fact the majority of young people—between 55% and 60%—do not go through the golden route of GCSEs, A-levels and on to university. We called our report Overlooked and Left Behind. The reasons why these young people are left behind are extremely complex, but one issue is undoubtedly that many are demotivated by the secondary school curriculum that they face, which has long been—and continues to be—too academic. There has been a failure to have a broader curriculum and to include the creativity of the arts subjects. Subjects such as design and technology, home economics, sports, drama and dance have largely been dropped from the curriculum these days; it is all narrowly academic and demotivates a great many pupils.
I will make a number of points on the proposals relating to universities. Major changes are suggested to structures in relation to both teaching and research. There are considerable worries about both sets of reforms. In many senses, it is almost reform for the sake of reform and one wonders sometimes why, if it ain’t broke, we are wishing to fix it. The Government seem to have ignored many of the responses to the Green Paper consultation and pushed ahead with their proposals to link the ability to raise fees with the performance in the teaching excellence framework. The proposal is to allow three years for the system to bed down, but there are real doubts as to how adequate the teaching excellence framework will be and whether its reliance upon the National Student Survey and jobs data is really justified. In particular, there are fears that the latter will create a two-tier system, because all the evidence indicates that those from wealthy homes go into the higher-paying jobs.
The second issue is that of encouraging new entrants into the university sector by changing the procedures and requirements for degree-awarding powers. This has been very much welcomed by the further education sector, which has traditionally provided a considerable number of higher education courses, including the well-known HNC and HND courses, which have now largely been overtaken—rather sadly, I think—by foundation degrees. The problem has been that since 2012 the universities that accredit these courses have tended to take them in-house because they wish to keep the fee income. We have seen a huge drop in the number of part-time students on these courses. I have raised this issue in the House before; it is a huge issue, which none of the Government’s proposals have really addressed.
If we look at the demographics, we can see perfectly well that this country is going to have to use older workers more intensively. People are going to have to carry on working longer than they used to, and we are going to have to rely on older workers more than we used to. When this is combined with technology, their skills and capabilities will get increasingly out of date. It is therefore essential that we have institutions such as further education colleges that can provide part-time degree courses—often disproportionately for those who come from poorer homes. The problem is that many of these people already have debts of one sort or another—mortgages, bank overdrafts, car loans and so forth—and they are loath to take on any more. Yet the only answer the Government have provided is more loans, which do not seem to have provided the answer.
I will finish with one further observation. To my mind, what is lacking in the education system in this country today is not competition but joined-up strategic system thinking. Collaboration, not competition, should be the name of the game, and none of the reforms envisaged in the gracious Speech will give us this.
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, I apologise to the House for missing a few of the opening words of my noble friend the Minister.
I am excited about the commitment in the gracious Speech to tackling the barriers to opportunity and to laying the,
“foundations for educational excellence in all schools, giving every child the best start in life”.
Communicating the message that it is possible to be young, gifted and disabled is fundamental to building a one-nation society in which disability discrimination is consigned to history. That does not mean tokenistic excellence just for disabled pupils and students. It means expecting and demanding more of them so that intellectually talented disabled children are singled out, encouraged and supported to excel. As the Prime Minister said in his inspiring speech on life chances in January, it means a new way of thinking. Surely, as the Government seek to halve the disability employment gap—a worthy goal—building employers’ confidence in disabled people means ensuring that when they want to recruit the best, they can be confident that talented disabled job applicants are more than equal to the challenge.
For me, a one-nation society is one that does not discriminate on account of disability—a society in which disability equality is a consistent reality. My commitment to disability equality and my appreciation of the remarkable record of your Lordships’ House in advancing disability equality have informed my introduction of a Private Member’s Bill on the issue. It concerns an area where, unbelievably, the diagnosis of disability carries a death sentence. Partly because of your Lordships’ House, discrimination on the grounds of disability after birth is outlawed. Yet today legal and lethal discrimination on the grounds of disability is allowed up to birth by law. It is illegal for an unborn human being to have their life ended by abortion beyond 24 weeks, but if they have a disability their life can be ended right up to birth by law. Where is the consistency, the justice or the equality in that? If anyone thinks such obvious discrimination is acceptable, I respectfully invite them to imagine the outcry if the same were applied to skin colour or sexual orientation. Such discrimination would rightly be regarded as outrageous.
To be a Member of your Lordships’ House is to be a Peer, an equal. Yet, for as long as this discrimination is allowed by law and remains on the statute book, how can I, as a severely disabled person, reasonably be expected to regard myself as an equal? The recent excellent report on the Equality Act 2010 and disability produced by an ad hoc Select Committee of your Lordships’ House shows that this House is equal to the challenge—equal to the noble task of righting this wrong, of advancing disability equality once more and of building one nation in which disability discrimination is consigned to history. Surely if life chances are to have meaning, if every child is to have the “best start in life”, as the Prime Minister quite rightly wishes, disabled children must first be given an equal chance to live.
Lord Harrison (Lab)
My Lords, in the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, who chaired the very committee on disability and the Equality Act 2010 mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin—I was a member of it—I thank him for his words. It was of great interest for me to do something so out of my natural habitat but I learned a lot indeed.
When I came into the Chamber I was going to direct my words principally to some old chestnuts concerning business, with which the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, will be thoroughly acquainted, but I cannot resist the opportunity to say to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, on his education brief that I am a fanatic for the single market, about which I will speak later, but it seems to me that we have never asked the crucial questions. What are the challenges? What are the skills required by our young people to face that single market of 28 member countries and growing? We have never asked the question—never mind getting the answer.
My first old chestnut is one which my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn mentioned from our Front Bench, on late payment of commercial debt. I ask again whether any progress has been made there. ABFA, the Asset Based Finance Association, is the most recent organisation to say that smaller UK manufacturers wait twice as long as their larger competitors for invoices to be paid. Indeed, those SMEs with turnover below £1 million face waits of up to 14 weeks. Disappointingly, ABFA goes on to say that poor payment practices have become,
“increasingly ingrained in business practice”,
and are “endemic” in many sectors. Can the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, update us on this challenge, which goes back 25 years? I remember leading on this in the European Parliament.
The noble Lord, Lord Nash, mentioned the better markets Bill. I am a fanatic for markets, but competitiveness is not something that the present Government have fulfilled expectations on, and I encourage them to do so. Another enthusiasm of mine is the tourism and hospitality industries. I talked to representatives from them this morning, who tell me that, according to the World Economic Forum, the United Kingdom is the second-least competitive of 141 countries in terms of drawing in inbound tourists. It is things such as the air passenger duty that affect our ability to be competitive.
Another old chestnut is productivity. The ONS says that productivity is worse now than before the recession, which set in in 2007. The UK’s productivity gap has widened, with competitors doing better than us in France, Germany and even Romania, which I visited last year. Why we have the second-worst productivity of the G7 leading western industrial nations requires an answer. Sometimes people talk of a productivity puzzle. I do not think it is a puzzle: we have failed to invest in people, plant and modernisation and to promote long-term investment. Perhaps the Minister should look at the Investment Association’s report, Supporting UK Productivity with Long-Term Investment.
In respect of small businesses’ access to finance, I invite the Minister to give a report on the very hard work of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, in Brussels, on our behalf and on behalf of the European Union, to develop a capital markets union. Where have we got with that? It is important that we enable small businesses in particular to have access to finance.
My last old chestnut is the trade imbalance. There is still a yawning gap, which is getting wider. Some of us are yawning to hear it repeated so often in your Lordships’ House, but I wonder whether we could do something about that. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, also suggested that the digital economy Bill was on its way. It really is time that the Government pulled their finger out on this one. Connectivity is dreadful, and we heard from my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn about the patchiness of broadband. How different it is in Estonia, which I visited last week. The Estonians now have a paperless Parliament. They now have an e-economy, which they celebrate. Indeed, on the Radio 4 business report this morning, we heard from Starship Technologies, which we visited in Tallinn.
One example of how you can use e-technology impressed me. We were driving towards the Russian border when the British ambassador pointed out all the trees—the forests of fir trees in northern Estonia, on the Baltic coast—and said, “With e-technology you can do the co-ordinates and get your Christmas tree for Christmas for €5. You can identify it, choose it and get it sent home”. We have to make a real and greater effort on the e-economy. I would be grateful for a reply from the Minister—she can even send it by email if she likes—as to what we are doing with our Estonian colleagues, who follow us in the EU presidency after our forthcoming one in 2017. We have a common cause in developing the digital economy. Are we actually talking to our friends—those who have beaten the path already before us? I hope we are, but please let us know that it is the case.
I conclude by saying that, as I mentioned, I am a fanatic for the single market. It promotes wealth and opportunity in the United Kingdom, but we too often fail to make the effort on something that was created here in the United Kingdom by Lord Arthur Cockfield—a former Member of this House, who in his time, in the last century, was Margaret Thatcher’s Commissioner for developing the internal or single market. It is something we should celebrate and do with the other 27 member states for the benefit not only of the United Kingdom but of the European Union as a whole.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (LD)
It is an honour to join your Lordships’ debate on the humble Address. My remarks will focus on culture, education and health, with special reference to children in UK schools.
Like many of your Lordships, I was alarmed recently to see the latest NICE press release on standards in care, which focused on statistics published by YoungMinds recently on the mental health of children and young people in our schools. I notice that one in 10 of children in class have diagnosable mental health disorders. In over a decade, there has been a 68% increase in young people’s hospital admissions due to self-harm, while 80% of those under 16 and 8,000 children aged under 10 suffer from severe depression. Of course, as we know, depression is commonly treated with anti-depressants and with psychotherapy—as Hale 1997 tells us. Both tricyclic anti-depressants and the more recent selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—the SSRIs—have been found to be effective in treating depression, according to studies by Paykel and Edwards respectively in 1992.
The Minister may be aware of the recent Cochrane review by Moncrieff in 2003, which found small differences only between anti-depressants and active placebos, with the lowest effects being shown in in-patient trials. In consequence, the advice is to prescribe SSRIs to moderately and severely depressed adolescents only quite rarely. But I wonder whether the Minister has spotted a parallel finding, which is reliant only on small sampling so far and which I believe is well worth further research. It gives remarkably good outcomes—considerably better than those I have just quoted—on depression for passive and participative music therapy and for active music in classes. Of course, music therapy for depression is a well-known support system. The National Health Service has published reports on it over the last decade or so. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, some later findings showed that singing in a choir for 60 minutes scientifically proved to be good for mental and physical health in a very large proportion indeed.
I doubt whether it is any surprise to the Minister to recall that the overall education of children and young people—and, indeed, adults—is vastly enhanced by music, mathematics and speech. The very recent findings on the Broca’s area of the brain—which has been known for quite some years to be the area where we develop speech—have shown something hugely exciting: as that area is activated for speech, it is activated at exactly the same time and in the same way for music and, alongside that, for mathematics. That is the very recent finding by the Max Planck Society, which is enormously important. The new findings teach us that when you are learning to communicate through language, it is majestically enhanced through the learning and practice of music and mathematics, which, in the modern world, lead one immediately into being an IT expert.
It is therefore a credible argument that there is immense value to many classes of our society—many children and many adults—to be learning and practising music. It helps the physically disabled immensely, as I see, for example, when working with physically disabled children in Romania. The difference of a year working with children in music and dancing—however handicapped you may be; whether you are a quadriplegic and in a wheelchair—is astounding in terms of physical health. But we can now tell why—because of the recent findings on the Broca’s area—it is of such enormous importance for mental health as well.
I recall that, in the case of so many prisoners in the UK—socially disadvantaged, yes, but also innumerate and illiterate to a very high degree—if they begin on music, it triggers, as we now know, the linguistic competence that is inherent in the brain. Music is enormously effective in developing emotional IQ. As we now know from the recent findings, 90% of high performances in the workplace have very high levels of emotional intelligence; 58% of success in all jobs can be explained, according to the latest statistics, in terms of high emotional intelligence. That, again, is vastly enhanced by music. It helps the deaf as well; and the academic elite, of course, will need great challenges in order to forge ahead. Music provides social cohesion of a huge capacity. We can look at the Trojan horse schools, particularly Saltley Academy and others in Birmingham, which are now twinning up with Tower Hamlets children in a huge set of musical performances for the Water City Festival in the Tower of London this year. It is enormously helpful.
Nevertheless, the national plan that the Government put in place in 2011, following the Henley review on music in schools, has by all accounts not been delivered. The music hubs that it proposed—composed of local music services, voluntary groups and private firms—simply do not work. The money invested in them—£171 million —has been ineffective. As the Ofsted report said, there was “little discernible difference” to three-quarters of the schools it inspected after the Henley review was put in place and the national plan. It is hard not to conclude that somehow the Government have washed their hands of the provision of music because of the cuts in musical budgets of up to 25%, yet the national music plan was to ensure that every child was offered an opportunity to learn an instrument. The First Access programme was to offer instruments in groups for a short time. What has emerged is that, between the ages of 5 and 18, a child might—if they are fortunate, through the First Access programme—have only five hours of shared instruments.
That is simply not enough to tackle the enormously high level of depression in children and the other socially excluded groups that I have mentioned—and there are many more—and it does not take account of the tremendous findings put forward to us all by the National Health Service, which tells us a different story. I wonder if, somehow, the famous joined-up government thinking should be brought into play, because, as we know, the theory and practice of music, the performance and the active participation with instruments and with others give the most extraordinarily good results. We have the findings. I ask the Minister to give me a meeting, perhaps, to discuss all of this. It is not good enough that, when our children were polled—the eight, nine and 10 year-olds—on their own happiness, as happened recently, we should be so low down the scale. Romanian children were at the top—three-quarters or two-thirds of them offering happiness—while British children were very near the bottom. I have the evidence, and I seek a meeting with the Ministers. I think that this is a topic of true importance.
Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)
My Lords, my remarks all relate to higher education and research. I declare an interest as a member of Cambridge University. The backdrop, of course, is that higher education enrolment has risen over recent decades to around 40% of each age cohort. This expansion is surely welcome, but it has not led to greater variety among universities. They nearly all still focus on three or four-year degrees and nearly all offer some postgraduate degrees. They all try to rise in the same distorting and misleading league table.
The system needs a more diverse ecology, a blurring of higher and further education, and an expansion of distance learning and lifelong learning. There is scope for new teaching institutions, including high-quality liberal arts colleges, but it is not clear that degree-giving powers should be so widely dispersed. Surely it is fairer to students that their qualifications should be accredited by a respected institution—in the spirit of the old London external degrees—rather than by,
“a provider that may exit the market”,
to quote the inelegant phrase in the White Paper.
Despite energetic access initiatives by universities such as mine, 18 year-olds unlucky in their school-age experiences are challenged to reach the bar for entry to a demanding degree course. Sadly, the present system gives them no second chance. The most selective universities could enhance social mobility by reserving a fraction of their places for mature students who have not come directly from school but who have caught up later by obtaining credits or doing foundation courses elsewhere, perhaps via the Open University. Transferable credits, even if they are not sufficient for graduation, should be accepted as worthwhile qualifications in themselves. Those who do not complete degrees should not be typecast as failures or wastage. An American will say, “I had two years of college”, and will regard the experience as positive.
Another feature of the American system is that PhD-level education and research are concentrated in only about 5% of the institutions that give bachelor’s degrees. At the top of the research league, Harvard, MIT and Berkeley are major national assets through the worldwide pull they exert on mobile talent, the collective expertise of their faculty and the consequent quality of the graduates they feed into all walks of life. Each is embedded in a cluster of research labs, small companies, NGOs and so forth, to symbiotic benefit.
We should cherish the UK’s counterparts to these great research universities. But it is also crucial to foster and fund the translation of research findings into social or commercial benefits; that is the rationale for Innovate UK, the Catapults, and so on. But there are misperceptions about what is actually needed. Even though the UK punches above its weight in producing research, more than 90% of the world’s research is still done elsewhere, so most UK innovations and start-ups are unlikely to be based directly on discoveries made here. That is why the research universities are doubly valuable—because their faculty and graduates are plugged in to global networks. They can seize on good ideas from anywhere in the world and run with them.
The system depends on the dual support system for research, which is something that our universities value, and which Americans envy. For it to operate, some kind of research excellence framework, or REF, is a necessary evil. But at the moment it looms far too large; it offers perverse constraints and incentives. In so far as teaching is under-prioritised, the over-focus on the REF must take some of the blame. It is welcome news that the noble Lord, Lord Stern, is undertaking a review; it is also welcome that the introduction of the new teaching assessment in universities will be gradual and can be adjusted in the light of experience.
In contrast, the White Paper proposes a major one-off reorganisation of research funding. There are widely-voiced anxieties that the changes are needlessly drastic. It is proposed that all seven research councils will lose their royal charter—even the Medical Research Council, which has a global reputation and a century-old history. The executive chairs of the councils will be subordinate to the CEO of a single merged organisation called UKRI. Moreover, UKRI will also, more controversially, include Innovate UK, a body with an important but distinct role in promoting innovation. UKRI will report to civil servants in BIS, where there will no longer be a senior independent scientist analogous to the former director-general for the research councils.
After any reorganisation, there are transitional hassles before the new structure beds down. This was manifest when research councils were established or closed down and when a separate ministry, DIUS, was set up, and then closed down within two or three years. When the research councils set up the so-called shared research service in 2008, the overheads went up, not down.
The Government’s proposals are based on a review by Sir Paul Nurse, who accepted that the current research support system worked fairly well but aspired to improve it. It is seductive to believe that reshuffling the administrative structure will achieve this, but it may not prove either necessary or sufficient and may indeed be counterproductive. Moreover, it is already proving hard to attract people with the stature expected as heads of research councils. That may be harder still if the posts are downgraded.
It is plainly important that the existing research councils mesh together and collaborate when necessary. Ministers need advice on how to apportion funding between different councils, on the balance between responsive mode grants and strategic initiatives, and so on. But these aims can surely be achieved with good will and capable management within the present structure by strengthening high-level input from the CST and reviving a body resembling the old advisory board for the research councils to play the role envisaged for UKRI’s board. When there are so many distracting pressures in the educational and research world, surely we should avoid risky upheaval in a system that is working reasonably well and which really needs no more than some fine-tuning.
Baroness Benjamin (LD)
My Lords, I rise to speak in the debate on the humble Address. I am delighted to see that children’s welfare and well-being is being addressed in some of the proposed Bills, especially the issues of online protection for children, adoption, education and care leavers. The gracious Speech contains some welcome proposals for improving life chances for the most disadvantaged. The Children and Social Work Bill is a fantastic opportunity to do so, but we must make sure it lives up to its promise.
I have long backed calls from Barnardo’s—I declare an interest as a vice president—for care leavers up to the age of 25 to have access to a personal adviser. So progress here is very welcome, but perhaps the Minister can say how the Government will make sure that these young people know what they are entitled to, and how to get it. To have a sustainable outcome, there is a great need for a holistic, joined-up strategy for children’s health and well-being that is embedded in all government departments, not just the Health and Education departments. It is vital that we get it right.
I am privileged to co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group on a Fit and Healthy Childhood, set up to address the obesity epidemic, which is causing type 2 diabetes, heart conditions and cancer. Obesity is the biggest single cause of preventable cancers after smoking. This epidemic is affecting very young children. Slimming World has reported that 10 and 11 year-olds are already attending its sessions, suffering from depression and anxiety due to being overweight. This is why we must focus on children—most importantly, even before birth, on the ante-natal and pre-pregnancy stage. Our APPG makes those points strongly in our fifth report, The National Obesity Framework, and we hope the Government’s own national obesity strategy will also adopt this approach as indicated in the gracious Speech.
In all our five APPG reports, we have stressed the importance of supporting individual families, whatever their make-up, in enabling children to grow up in a safe, healthy and stimulating environment. So there is a real need for joining up the dots. That is what the Government must do, and what I hope we will see when the national obesity strategy is unveiled. However, there is already an example of not joining up the dots—the announcement of the eye-catching tax on sugary drinks. This may prove beneficial but it is not a silver bullet; it can be only a single element in the type of co-ordinated strategy that will benefit our children. Sugar in our food and drink is a key factor in obesity and overweight, but its contribution to tooth decay in young children is perhaps not as much in the public eye as it should be. Thousands of children have been admitted to hospital in the last four years to have teeth removed because of advanced decay. Tooth extraction is the number one reason why children aged five to nine are admitted to hospital—more than 8,300 in London alone. But interestingly, Professor Nigel Hunt at the Royal College of Surgeons has reported that 90% of tooth decay is preventable. The Government propose to address this problem by paying dentists to keep children’s teeth healthy, instead of just dealing with problems as they arise. But 40% of children do not go to the dentist to take advantage of this proposal. Five year-old children cannot take themselves to the dentist. So what is needed is an holistic approach, rolling out strategies and partnership working to make hard-to-reach families understand the importance of tooth care to halt this unnecessary problem. Policies across all departments should be assessed for their impact on children by someone at Cabinet level to ensure that policy for children is co-ordinated and coherent.
A fit and healthy childhood is not just about the physical aspect of children’s lives. The media, especially television, have a huge impact on children’s well-being and even on their mental health, so they should be exposed to content that reflects their lives and their world in order for them to grow up knowing how they fit into society and, most importantly, that they belong. This gives them the confidence they need, so I welcome the prominence children’s content gets in the White Paper on the future of the BBC, published last week. The BBC’s children’s programmes are a distinctive and precious resource that needs supporting and protecting. However, I have some specific concerns about areas in the White Paper that need addressing. To the major concerns that other noble Lords have expressed, which I support, I add concerns about children. First, it is hard to know whether the creation of a contestable fund aimed at PSB children’s content is a positive thing, because there are too many unanswered questions and some big risks are signalled. For example, what percentage of the fund will be ring-fenced for children’s content? Who will commission content and on what criteria? Who will administer the fund? What will be the cost of doing so? What happens when the money runs out at the end of the initial three-year period? There should be no suggestion that money will be top-sliced from the BBC licence fee to bankroll the fund in later years.
Another grave concern is the proposal to remove the children’s BBC in-house production guarantee. This will create a significant risk that may not be obvious to the casual observer, because children’s BBC in-house production teams are asked to do things that independent producers are not asked to do. They are asked to locate their shows out of London. This keeps creative economies afloat, especially in our northern cities. For example, £5 million is spent each year on children’s drama in the north-east of England, all thanks to the underlying stability offered by the in-house guarantee. So I hope the Government will think very carefully before they decide how to proceed, and do not inadvertently hurt our precious and celebrated BBC children’s output. The digital economy Bill is an opportunity to address the provision of children’s PSB content through primary legislation and make children a tier 2, rather than tier 3, requirement for broadcasters. That will address the contestable fund proposal. I hope the Minister will give this some consideration.
We all believe that children are our future, so let us put them first by putting in place long-term, joined-up strategies. I hope that in this new Session, it will become abundantly clear that this is the direction the Government will take because, as I always say, childhood lasts a lifetime. I declare an interest when I speak about the BBC.
Lord Colwyn (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a retired dental surgeon and a fellow of the British Dental Association. I am sure that noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that in my remarks I am keen to turn the attention of the House towards the important but too often overlooked field of dentistry and oral health. As noble Lords will probably realise, the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, virtually made my speech word for word, but that is the problem with getting briefs from the same source.
Yesterday, I was disappointed to discover that the Government have yet again continued to kick the badly- needed reform of health regulation into the long grass. In the wake of the Francis inquiry back in 2013, the Prime Minster pledged to sweep away the outdated and inflexible legislation governing health regulators. Yet, despite repeated commitments to reform of the regulation of health professionals, three Queen’s Speeches later parliamentary time has still not been found to introduce a Bill which would simplify and modernise the regulatory framework for dentists and more than a million of their fellow healthcare workers in Britain. The complex, burdensome and frankly antiquated laws we currently have in place hurt patients and practitioners and cost time and money. Will the Minister set out a clear timetable for action in this area?
While there was no mention of improving health outcomes in the gracious Speech, statistics clearly show why oral health deserves much more attention this Parliament. One in four five year-olds in England has tooth decay, and the number of children facing hospital admission for tooth extractions under general anaesthesia went up by a quarter between 2010-11 and 2014-15. While data published last week by Public Health England show modest improvements in the oral health of English children, the pace of progress is significantly slower than in Scotland and Wales, where devolved Governments have introduced innovative preventive dental health programmes. Data also show that despite the small overall improvement, regional and social inequalities in oral health continue to persist. I welcome the proposed measures to establish a soft drinks industry levy to help tackle childhood obesity, and I support the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in the use of fluoridation, which should be much more widespread than it is at the moment. I urge the Minister to show the same ambition and appetite for innovation as her colleagues in Holyrood and in the Senedd. The Childsmile and Designed to Smile schemes have cut NHS treatment bills and shown that dental disease and deprivation do not have to go hand in hand. Will the Minister consider learning from their success and investing in a similar national oral health programme to drive improvements in children’s oral health in England?
I am pleased to see that access to NHS dentistry continues to increase, with the latest data showing that more than 30 million patients were seen by a dentist in the 24 months. However, there are still many areas where access to a dentist remains a significant challenge and there is anecdotal evidence of constituencies where not a single practice accepts new NHS patients. I am sure the Minister will agree that this is largely due to the way NHS dentistry is currently commissioned, with the current dental contract putting a cap on how many patients each dentist can see in a year. This April marked the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the current contract, and to mark the occasion the British Dental Association conducted a survey of more than 1,200 dentists. Seven out of 10 said that the current contract prevented them being able to take on more national health patients.
Noble Lords will agree with me that a shift in focus from treatment to prevention is crucial if we are to ensure the long-term sustainability of the NHS, and this is as true in the area of dentistry as it is elsewhere in our health system. It is crucial that the new contract for NHS dentistry improves access and rewards dentists for keeping their patients healthy rather than for carrying out interventions, as is currently the case. Dentists and patients were promised a new contract back in 2010, but the Government are dragging their feet and the new arrangements are not expected to be rolled out earlier than 2018-19.
With a second round of pilots going live this spring, this time labelled “prototypes”, it seems increasingly likely that we might end up with little more than a watered-down version of the current system. The prototypes contain the tarnished structure of payment per unit of dental activity alongside payments for capitation and quality. That is a step back from the previously tested pilots, which moved away completely from rewards for activity. The BDA feels strongly that the options currently on offer are decidedly unambitious and thinks that all reward should be based on keeping local communities healthy, not on the number of procedures performed. How can a system improve oral health, deliver prevention and provide continuing quality care when the proposed contract continues to offer perverse incentives to treat instead of rewarding dentists for improvement in oral health? Both dentists and their patients deserve a contract with a square focus on prevention, and neither of the options being tested goes far enough in meeting that objective.
Lastly, I want to reflect on the recent hike in charges for NHS dental services. As many noble Lords will have heard, fees for treatment are going up above inflation, by 5% this year and a further 5% next year. I fear that this unprecedented increase will discourage patients who most need to see the dentist from going to see one, and will undermine the relationship between patients and practitioners. One in five patients already says that they had delayed dental treatment because of its cost, and this will only go up as the cost of NHS dental treatment continues to rise much faster than people’s earnings.
I am also concerned that the money raised this way is not ring-fenced to be spent on improving dental care or access to dental services. Dentists are being asked in practice to play the role of tax collector while their patients are singled out to subsidise the wider health service. Expenditure on primary-care NHS dentistry as a proportion of the total NHS England budget has gone down by 13% in cash terms over the past four years, while proceeds from dental charges were going up even before this latest surge in prices. Treating dental patients as a source of easy money is not fair and, as the increasing sums spent on hospital extractions show, it is also a false economy.
Much progress has been made in the field of oral health over the past few decades and that momentum cannot be allowed to falter. Adequate funding for NHS dentistry, investment in reducing oral health inequalities, a new regulatory framework and an improved, truly preventive contract are all essential components of not only delivering quality cost-effective dentistry but improving health outcomes for the British people.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, I want to pluck one bloom—education—from the bouquet brought forward on this first full day’s debate on the gracious Speech. I suspect that education underlies the consideration of all the other areas of concern today. I listened carefully to the opening speech by the noble Lord the Minister and have read the Government’s outline description of the education measures to be presented in due time to your Lordships’ House. It is from the impressions that I have gathered from those sources that I am left with two areas of concern, which I want to express.
The first arises from the way in which we intend to pay for the proposed new measures. As noble Lords will be aware, a consultative exercise on school funding was held earlier this year, and we await the Government’s response to it. The driving force behind the exercise is to achieve a fairer system of support for pupils in every part of the land, which is very noble and worth while. There are so many variables to consider in agreeing a formula to apply across the board—some regional, others economic and yet others relating to special needs. These should help to shape such a formula, which can then be applied to all schools and authorities in an effort to iron out the huge funding discrepancies that are to be found in our system. This is greatly needed. The coalition Government, to their credit, allocated an extra £390 million to the 2015-16 school fund grant. That covered 69 of the least-funded authorities and more or less brought them up to par. However, that action also clarified the need to go further and look at the funding arrangements more broadly in the round. All this is to be honoured, and we await with great interest the Government’s response to the consultation.
A great deal has been achieved, so where then is my concern? I speak on the basis of my experience in London. There is a feeling here in London that the response to the consultative exercise will see a top-slicing of funds from London schools to schools in other parts of the land. A first glance at the figures might seem to support such a proposal. Eighteen of the 20 most disadvantaged boroughs in the land are London boroughs; only Birmingham and Nottingham get a look in on that league. Arsenal came second in the Premier League to Leicester, trailing by a massive 10-point gap, but with education it is exactly the other way around. Islington schools are allocated £6,220 per pupil, while Leicestershire pupils received £4,238—a massive gap of around £2,000, or over 30%.
So should London happily concede the point and let the redistribution take place? Heaven forfend. It is the investment in London schools over the last 10 years that has completely turned them around. Failing schools have become good, outstanding and outstandingly good schools. I shall take as an example the two schools where I have some responsibility, the Central Foundation schools of London. They are inner-city local authority schools that are both ethnically very mixed and single-sex. They have hugely outperformed the national average for five GCSEs. For English and maths, A* to C grade, the boys’ school got a massive 82%; when I joined the governing board, it was down to 12% or 13%. So those schools are riding high.
If the funding cuts, together with other costs related to pensions, the living wage, special programmes like Prevent and others are applied as anticipated, each of our schools, with others throughout London, will need to cut its budget by 14% in the three years beginning 2017. Add to that the fact that existing grants per pupil have remained cash flat—they have not risen with the cost of inflation since 2010—and noble Lords will have no difficulty in recognising the looming crisis lying ahead if, as feared, that top-slicing of money going to London schools takes place. All this is at a time when London has been experiencing the fastest pupil population growth and the severest school-places shortfall—a trend set to continue, they say, until at least 2020.
The commendable injection of new money for the most deprived authorities in this current year must surely point the way to achieving justice and fairness in funding across the board. More money needs to be found. It cannot be right to make radical inroads into the successes of those schools that have found the road to success. “Boom and bust” cannot be a phrase that can ever be applied to education. We cannot risk the recurrence of some of the educational problems that London has known in the too recent past. Even at a time of austerity, money spent on education should be viewed as an investment. Sustainability must be built into the system. What assurance can the noble Baroness give me on this point?
I shall deal with the second concern only briefly, although I feel just as passionately about it. The drive towards academies, the one-size-fits-all approach to education, sounds more ideological every time I hear it. The whole country—certainly the world of education —heaved a sigh of relief when the Secretary of State seemed to draw back from forcibly imposing such a model on the country a few short weeks ago. But here it comes again in the note supporting yesterday’s Speech:
“a system where all schools are academies”—
a phrase that kept coming up. I am not unfamiliar with the world of dogma; I have spent the whole of my professional life fighting it. I bring my innate sympathies to this kind of suspicion, and I am as fearful of formulae that would convert schools into academies as I am of those who seek to convert Catholics into Protestants or Baptists into Methodists. Respect, variety, humility, diversity: these things must be at the heart of our educational policy. I honestly see the strong points of academies, and I am pleased that they are part of the mix. Bring them on, say I.
I was glad to see that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, is down to speak in a few minutes’ time, because he chaired a forum recently on Multi-Academy Trusts: Governance, Growth and Accountability. The virtues of academies are well-rehearsed in that report: innovation, entrepreneurialism, independence, good leadership, economies of scale, value for money, academic success. What could be more desirable? However, that same report had other, counter-indicative, things to say. There are challenges; governance can prove “unhelpfully complex”. There will be dilemmas; a successful school that takes on a less successful school might find its own dynamism reduced. Regarding leadership, it seems that,
“Headship was as unattractive as it ever had been. … There was also a danger that, with the imposition of rules and regulations across the chain, MATs”—
multi-academy trusts—
“might increasingly reproduce the bureaucracy of local authorities”.
I will leave things there. I could go on.
All this reinforces the point that we ought to let this road towards academisation unfold at its own pace. We have yet to accumulate the data to make sound judgments. If more and more schools choose to become academies, indeed if all schools choose to become academies, I could live with that outcome, but forced change is too risky. We should opt for the age-old formula of “solvitur ambulando”: let things work themselves out. There are enough academies in the system now for the case to be made on the basis of their performance.
I hope that the Minister will feel able to assure me that schools will be allowed to make their own choices rather than be lured with financial goodies or frog-marched into doing what they would never otherwise have chosen to do.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths. I share many of his concerns about the Government’s plans for academies, but I noted that he described the gracious Speech as a bouquet. Sadly, it is a bouquet with relatively few flowers, very many of them quite old, for relatively little is new in the gracious Speech. The soft-drinks sugar tax and plans to allow local councils to retain business rates were in the Autumn Statement. The British Bill of Rights first appeared a year ago in last year’s Queen’s Speech—incidentally, I believe that it was a wrong idea then and it is wrong idea now.
One has to go back even further for the first mention of the creation of a criminal offence for assisting in tax evasion—that was first announced by my right honourable friend Danny Alexander during the coalition —and further back still, to two years ago, for the first mention of the better markets Bill, which was announced by my other right honourable friend Ed Davey. Much of the Queen’s Speech has been heard before, but sadly, and rather bizarrely, lots of things were not mentioned, not least the deficit.
Not even small but important matters got a look-in. There was no mention, for example, of any plans to tackle the crack cocaine of gambling, the fixed-odds betting terminals. Perhaps when the Minister winds up she can tell us when the Government will carry out the much-delayed triennial review of stakes and prizes for gaming machines so that they can consider reducing the stake for FOBTs to £2 to help to protect young unemployed men in particular from the misery that they bring. I hope that your Lordships’ House will support the Private Member’s Bill on this matter, which is proposed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, although I note that he came 43rd out of 51 in the Private Member’s Bill ballot today. I came only 48th out of 51.
There are, of course, some genuinely new measures in the Queen’s Speech. Some of them, such as plans to speed up adoption, are very welcome, but, sadly, many lack ambition. Legislation to provide the infrastructure that business needs in order to grow must, of course, be accompanied by serious investment, yet realistic levels of investment in housing, roads, rail and digital infrastructure are constrained by the Government’s own spending plans. No wonder the OECD has urged increases in infrastructure spending.
Nowhere is this need more apparent than in the lack of ambition for broadband. We have some of the best creative industries in the world. They create jobs and help to drive exports. As a proportion of GDP, we have the largest digital economy of the G20 countries, but that position will be put at risk unless we have ambitious plans for broadband. To be world leaders, we surely have to have more than a universal service obligation of just 10 megabits per second. As my noble friend Lady Burt pointed out, if we are going to do this, we have to stop relying on out-of-date copper-wire technology and invest in the rollout of fibre-optic cabling to our homes.
We should also pay much more attention to demand stimulation. If more people and more businesses see the benefits of truly high-speed broadband, the higher take-up will reduce unit costs. The BBC iPlayer has already played a critical role in demand stimulation. Forty-three per cent of broadband users claim that it was one of the reasons why they got broadband in the first place. Certainly if we are going to drive up high-speed broadband demand in our homes, more needs to be done to help content creators such as the public service broadcasters, and more needs to be done to provide greater protection for legal online content.
Notwithstanding the fact that, after the US and Germany, the UK ranks third in the world in the number of legal digital music services available, it is still estimated that 26% of UK users have accessed music content illegally. I therefore hope that the Minister will assure us that the digital economy Bill will include domestic measures to act against illegal sites and that we will work with our EU partners to take effective cross-border action to block such sites, including by replacing notice and take down with notice and stay down, which is technologically easy for hosting sites to implement and reduces the need for copyright owners to keep checking to see whether an illegal site has re-emerged.
The digital economy Bill will occupy a great deal of time for the already busy Mr Whittingdale and the Minister, so I hope they will not waste time seeking to part-privatise Channel 4, which would be economic and creative madness, but I do hope they will have time to address the concerns of many in your Lordships’ House about the future of the BBC, following the White Paper. My noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter, the noble Lords, Lord Fowler and Lord Cashman, and others have already expressed their concerns, and I will not repeat in detail what I said in your Lordships’ House last Thursday, but having carefully studied the White Paper I remain firmly of the view that the independence of the BBC is now threatened.
It is threatened because, despite the possibility that the proposed unitary BBC board could influence editorial scheduling and creative decisions, the Government are insisting on appointing six members to it—creating the impression of a state, and not a public, broadcaster. Like my noble friend on the Front Bench, I believe that all non-executives should be appointed by an independent body. It is threatened because of the mid-term so-called health check, which I believe could lead to the unpicking of bits of the charter itself, which would undermine the security of planning and investment for the BBC, and the creative industries allied to it, which was meant to be the purpose of an 11-year charter period. It is threatened because so far, the Minister has not answered the question I asked her last Thursday, which was raised again by my noble friend Lady Benjamin. Can she therefore give a categorical assurance that the licence fee will not be raided to pay for the continuation of the proposed contestable fund when the £20 million runs out? Unless she can, the financial independence of the BBC is put at risk.
Finally, BBC independence could be at risk because of the intention, as the Secretary of State put it, to ensure that the BBC’s,
“services are clearly differentiated from the rest of the market”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/5/16; col. 730.]
Despite assurances, that increasingly looks like the Government want gradually to curtail the BBC’s creative freedom to make popular programmes. The BBC is the best and most trusted broadcaster in the world. Threatening its independence will put that at risk. Trust in the BBC will evaporate, and I hope many in your Lordships’ House will resists any attempts by the Government to do so.
Rather like that spaghetti western, the gracious Speech has the good, the bad and the ugly, some of which, like the movie, is oft repeated. However, whatever we think of the measures included in, and those omitted from the gracious Speech, the biggest threat to our nation will come, not from this Queen’s Speech, but from a leave vote in the referendum. Resisting that is surely our biggest challenge.
Lord Bichard (CB)
My Lords, I will talk about social care and will share my disappointment that the gracious Speech did nothing meaningful to address the problem—some might say the crisis—that faces social care and therefore millions of some of the most disadvantaged people in this country. I declare an interest as the chair of the Social Care Institute for Excellence.
I do not think that many people would deny that these are challenging times for social care. Too many users are critical of the services they receive, too many providers struggle to survive, too many commissioners feel disempowered by a lack of resource, and too few people see social care as an attractive career option. For those clients who experience the consequences of this, arguments which we often hear in this House about who should be blamed, debates about budget numbers and discussions about pioneers, vanguards and better care funds feel a world away from the reality of their lives. Of course, those lives cannot be put on hold, awaiting the end of austerity or the next new pilot initiative or organisational restructuring. They have to be lived now, and we all have a responsibility not just to offer promises for the future but to look at ways in which we can improve the quality of lives that are being lived now.
How might we do it? We could start with money. For me, resources are never the complete answer, but social care has suffered disproportionally from recent cuts, and some urgent investment is needed—some urgent reordering of investment, not necessarily new money. We could, for example, revisit the criteria for free prescriptions, 91% of which are now not paid for. We could look again at winter fuel payments paid to well-off pensioners, review free public transport for well-off pensioners, look again at free TV licences for all over-85s, and taper the currently free national insurance for over-65s. There are ways in which, by reordering our resources, we could liberate money for those most in need.
But, as I say, it is not just about money. Users—I meet quite a lot of them—often tell me that they do not get what they need in the form they need it because they were not sufficiently involved in prioritising and shaping services at the outset. I become increasingly passionate about what in the jargon is known as co-design, which is about giving users a real say in shaping services at a point when they can make a difference. Providing services that people do not regard as a priority in a period of austerity is an affront, so let us give users much more control over how reduced budgets are spent.
While we are on the subject of design, I would like to see government, local and central, building its capacity to design services around clients. If that seems a bit esoteric, look at the practical consequences of us not understanding design. Look at the way in which we currently deliver care support. It involves three separate departments, countless assessment regimes and a mix of benefits—some means-tested, some not, and some delivered nationally and others locally. This system was never designed—it just happened, and in ways that made sense to bureaucrats but not to users or their families. We have reorganised much of the benefit system, but not this confused, stress-laden mess. We should and we could do so.
Of course, people will receive whole-person care only if we, the bureaucrats and the politicians, learn to work better across organisational boundaries. The rhetoric of integration has certainly taken root—but, again, the reality is often very different. That is because we talk as if integrating organisations will inevitably deliver better services to people. It will not. People in residential homes want free, convenient access to GP services. Old people who leave hospital need to be able to access domiciliary services. They do not need ambitious promises about how primary healthcare and commissioned healthcare will integrate better at some time in the future.
We have talked a lot today about digital. We could do more to realise the digital dividend. But, again, it is about delivering practical improvements. I will give describe one. The Airedale vanguard enhanced health in care homes will introduce telemedicine links in all 248 care homes this year. So, for example, staff supporting a care home resident with Parkinson’s disease will be able to access clinical advice and support 24 hours a day, every day of the week, through secure video conference. It is not rocket science—they probably would not even bother to mention it in Estonia. There are of course similar examples in this country, but they are not uniform good practice. They should be. Digital technology is not a silver bullet but we could do better and we have been slow to exploit its potential in telecare and telemedicine.
In the same way, we have been slow to come to the aid of and support providers, who currently struggle with increased regulation, increased fees for regulation—I am not sure how that one happened—the living wage and clients with increasingly complex conditions. I know that Governments have always shied away from appearing to support private sector companies, but in this unique situation, maybe we should consider an improvement fund for smaller providers in particular so that they can get better access to the best practice in their industry.
What about the crisis in the workforce? Social care should be seen as the noblest of professions, but in reality it is often seen as a last-resort career. Could we do more? Could we encourage former clients, care leavers perhaps, to join the profession? Can we extend initiatives such as Teach First and Frontline to social care? Do we know enough about why people leave the profession? Should we revisit the excellent report of the noble Baroness, Lady Kingsmill? Too often—it is not just the case in social care—Governments prefer to blame and restructure rather than invest in improving the workforce. But, at the end of the day, whether it is education or social care, it is the workforce that matters and will deliver quality.
Maybe we could do more to reinforce quality and good practice through the inspection process. I am pleased with the work that the CQC is doing; I was pleased to see it moving into area-based assessments. But maybe we should shift our focus away from always looking at the institutions and start asking questions such as, “What does a good life look like in Doncaster?” —I just plucked Doncaster out of the air. Maybe we should look at what happens between the institutions, not always at what happens within them.
Finally, despite all the problems, let us be prepared to innovate in social care. We have talked quite a lot today about the arts and culture. I have become increasingly involved and interested in how the arts and culture can contribute to improved health and well-being. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, is chairing an APPG at the moment which is uncovering countless wonderful examples of how visual and performing arts, music and dance, are helping to address loneliness, mental illness, stress and pain.
So yes, we can improve social care, even in the time of austerity in which we live—and we must. But I am not seeing much evidence that this is receiving the attention it deserves.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I am pleased today that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, is responding to the debate, as I want to focus on the tech and creative industries, which are increasingly interdependent and important to us. I welcome the new cross-departmental role that the Minister herself plays, across both the DCMS and BIS. The Minister is a champion of intellectual property. She also recognises the massive adverse impact that Brexit would have on the tech and creative industries, including our software industry. I so much agree with my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter in her rallying cry on the dangers of Brexit, and indeed with my noble friend Lord Foster. This is, of course, particularly in respect of the digital single market, but many other issues impact on the future prosperity of these industries.
I share the concern of my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, that the Government need to go much further in allaying our fears for the BBC’s future. As the Minister heard during last week’s Statement on the White Paper, we believe that the BBC’s independence will be eroded by having direct government appointees on the new unitary board: chairman, vice-chairman and four other members of the board. Given the Culture Secretary’s form on appointments to the board of the National Portrait Gallery, we have little confidence on this side of the House in his impartiality.
We also have the inclusion of “distinctive” in the BBC’s remit. Once created, does a programme have to remain distinctive for ever? What is the correct level of risk-taking and innovation? All this will be judged by Ofcom, with some rather sinister government guidance in the background, as on page 55 of the White Paper:
“The government will provide guidance to the regulator on content requirements and performance metrics to set clear policy parameters for the creation of this new regime”.
This spells future trouble, as my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, pointed out, and could lay the ground for reasons to deprive the BBC of the licence fee. The Government are warned: we will scrutinise the charter extremely carefully when it appears and we will demand a vote on it. Despite Channel 4’s continuing success as a public service broadcaster, we see from its recent annual report that there is still uncertainty about its future, with the Secretary of State seemingly keen on at least part-privatising it with no benefit to the public. These two institutions are vital pillars of the creative industries and we must not put them at risk.
Then we have the new digital economy Bill, the rollout of so-called high-speed broadband and the universal service obligation. Let us be clear: the USO will not be superfast or a minimum of 25 megabits per second. Instead, it will be a miserable 10 megabits per second, when the average in the UK is already 29 megabits per second. This is a huge disappointment, particularly to rural households and businesses. The Government should be far more ambitious. Superfast broadband of at least 25 megabits per second is a utility. It should be universal and the Government should invest in it. There will be long-anticipated proposals to clarify and improve the electronic communications code to ensure we have the infrastructure that the UK needs. The ECC and planning rules must now, at the very least, ensure improved access for operators to BT’s ducts and poles.
A range of IP issues will be covered in this Session—not only in the Intellectual Property (Unjustified Threats) Bill, as part of the new digital economy Bill will cover that. The Government will make changes to the penalties for online copyright infringement. I welcome that in principle but look forward to debating the details of the definitions in both cases. I also welcome the provisions in the Bill which, it seems, will result in improvements for small businesses in protecting their design rights after the Trunki case. I welcome the IPO’s recent strategy paper on IP enforcement, especially the section on strengthening the legal framework. But how will this be put into practice? Will the digital economy Bill enshrine the necessary backstop powers, as my noble friend Lord Foster mentioned, to ensure that platforms take proper responsibility for preventing piracy if voluntary persuasion does not work? Will it contain provisions against illegal streaming? What is clear from the paper is that the EU IP enforcement directive will be of real benefit to UK IP creators. I hope that the Minister will be arguing for a pan-European enforcement agency at the same time as for the retention of vital territorial licensing.
Finally, a word on finance for the tech and creative industries. Where is the funding for scale-up, follow-on and growth? Where is the understanding that IP can be used as collateral? The Business Growth Fund backed by the major banks is a good start, and I commend the London Stock Exchange’s ELITE programme. However, we still have a gap in the market. We need to ensure that companies can put long-term skilled jobs on their payroll. What are BIS and the Treasury doing to ensure this? There is great concern that changes made in the Finance (No. 2) Act 2015 have significantly restricted the number and range of companies that venture capital trusts can invest in. Can the Minister assure us that the Treasury and BIS are going to amend the rules to ensure the availability of growth finance?
The agenda in these sectors is huge and often underplayed. I could mention digital skills and arts education. I could mention the sore need to deregulate commercial radio. I could bemoan the Home Office legislation which is oppressively restricting that mainstay of street artistic life: busking. I could expand on how artists are being driven out of much-needed studio space by rising property prices. I could inquire what has happened to the secondary ticketing review, which is of great importance to live music. I could even argue with the arts White Paper. Like my noble friend Lord Foster, I am gravely disappointed that there appears to be no intention to lower the stakes on FOBTs or even hold a triennial review of stakes and prizes. I hope that the Minister will be able to give a comprehensive reply to all our questions in this respect.
Lord Suri (Con)
My Lords, I have lived in three different continents. Having been involved in Asian, African and European societies, I see a plethora of differences between the cultures and communities that inhabit those places. However, in all three of those countries, Kenya, India and the UK, we were bound by a common respect and shared institution. That is, of course, the monarchy, spread all over the world via the Commonwealth. Sitting in this House yesterday, listening to Her Majesty’s speech, I marvelled at the extraordinary longevity and perseverance that she has gifted not just to this country but to the numerous other nations and territories around the world that are proud to call her their head of state. I was only 17 when she said her famous words:
“I declare that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service”.
It is often said that politicians do not keep their promises. No one can dispute that in the case of Her Majesty, in 63 years on the Throne, she has kept herself wholly removed from the political fray, no matter what some of the less reputable tabloids would suggest. In doing so, she has ensured tremendous stability in these islands and kept us moving on steadily and happily.
I was pleased to see a substantial shake-up of prison legislation in the Queen’s Speech. I have served as a magistrate and was a member of the board of visitors of Her Majesty’s Prison Pentonville. I have seen into the real heart of our criminal justice and prison system. Reform has been long overdue. Significant manifesto changes have been postponed or cut down by successive Governments worried of being seen as soft on crime. The Prime Minister is right when he says that we should not “tolerate persistent failure”, and I wholeheartedly agree. We should never accept mediocrity in any institution that receives vast amounts of public money, and, furthermore, is essential for holding together the fabric of our society.
As a businessman, I think that the best way for shareholders to see the problems in a company is to open up the books. The Lord Chancellor appears to have taken a similar approach in requiring prisons to release their data on education, reoffending and inmates’ employment on release. From what we already know, we have some of the worst records of any major developed country and we need to get it right, not just from a societal perspective but from a hard-headed perspective. We cannot afford to waste the hidden talent that lies in many of the young people that our prison system breaks. The people that know best how to make offenders into happy, productive members of society again are those who work with them every day.
I eagerly anticipate the results of the six prisons that are to be devolved a huge amount of power. I hope that they will manage to improve some of the more dire statistics on reoffending and self-harm, but they will need robust and strategic oversight, given the delicate nature of the work they are doing. I look forward to getting the actual Bill so that I can scrutinise the provisions made for effective oversight.
The Coates review into prison education was also published yesterday, and it was good to see an embrace of new technologies to lower reoffending rates. One of the biggest issues that I saw at Pentonville and that I took into account as a magistrate was the effect of prison time on the family lives of young men. There is an intriguing section in the report that recommends that prisoners be allowed to use video calls to stay in touch with their friends and family. When I suggested this, many said that if it was that important their family and friends could come to visit them in person. However, that does not take into account the immense inconvenience and personal anxiety that comes to many people when they enter prison on visits. The technology is there. It is cheap, easy to oversee and represents a positive forward step. I hope that the trial is successful and rolled out across the UK. I am sure that the Minister will look into it and see further improved results.
There were noticeable omissions from the Queen’s Speech yesterday. Apart from an announcement of superfast broadband for rural areas, which will help some small businesses, the offering to business was not as significant as it has been in the past. However, the biggest thing that the Government and the Prime Minister can do right now is to campaign heart and soul to stay in the EU. We send 45% of all our exports, about 12% of our entire economy, into the EU. I am not prepared to sit by and see the institution which has brought enormous prosperity to Britain and secured peace on the continent after two terrible wars be brought down by populist politicians. Leaving the EU would be an act of economic self-harm. Those who want us to leave keep saying that we would have a fantastic deal, with no guarantee. Our closest neighbours and allies have our interests at heart and we theirs, and, in this increasingly macho world, collaboration will be required to maintain European and western influence in the world. How will we deal with air pollution and with multinationals that do not pay tax, if not with our European allies? I have been told that we can go and engage with the Anglosphere, with NATO and the WTO, but not a single friendly country has recommended a vote to leave—not one.
The Queen’s Speech contained measures intended to help working people to succeed and improve their lot. The worst thing that we could do to them, as a country, is to hammer them with Brexit, just as we crawl out of the recession.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)
My Lords, I am honoured to speak in the Queen’s Speech debate and join others in congratulating Her Majesty on her 90 years. It was a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Suri, who was born in India, as I was. We also obviously share the same belief in the importance of remaining in the European Union.
The Queen’s Speech outlined an ambitious programme, but curiously does not emphasise perhaps the greatest achievement of this Government—that of restoring full employment after the banking crisis in 2008. Indeed, that is why we have so many migrants, who have contributed to the dynamism in every aspect of UK life. But this growth has not been accompanied by adequate growth in our infrastructure, nor in industrial productivity. I shall return to that. Fortunately, the Government and the coalition Government inherited the successful infrastructure projects of the last Labour Government—first with the Olympic Games, then Crossrail and the beginnings of HS2. But they have failed to initiate the important project begun about the third London airport. We look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply about that and about what progress there is on HS2, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham referred to.
It is very important of course that our infrastructure enables the UK to catch up with other countries. All countries also need a strong and respected institutional infrastructure. One expects any government, but especially a Conservative government, to preserve and maintain successful institutions. But what do we see except undermining of the National Health Service, successful schools and the BBC? As a former head of the Met Office, I worry that we are also undermining the collaboration between the BBC and the Met Office to provide what was a world-class weather forecasting service, which we understand is to be given to a New Zealand company, still not determined. The Table Office would not enable me to ask a Question about that, so I mention it now. Equally important, the legal institutions of the public are being undermined, which are extremely important to the law. The Government have emphasised that they want a UK that is responsive to the needs of the most disadvantaged, but one of the most important of those is access to the law.
The Minister and other speakers mentioned the high international standards of UK science, as the noble Lord, Lord Rees, emphasised in his remarks. But the word “science” was not mentioned in the text of the Queen’s Speech and there is no section on it, hence my remarks on it under the heading of business. They did not explain that in many key areas of science, Parliament and government benefit only if the scientists and engineers, as well as the Government, can report openly on their work. The recent rather heavy asides from the Government that they may stop scientists being allowed to speak are extremely dangerous, and there was some retreat from the Cabinet Office’s earlier remarks. The air pollution dangers of diesel engines is an example. As I learned last night, there was a report to the Department of the Environment in 1993 about the dangers of diesel engines for air pollution and health, but it was not publicised nor reported to Parliament. Japan acted earlier to eliminate most diesel-engine cars in cities. I saw that in Japan and have never had a car with a diesel engine. But the EU has not introduced the regulations that are needed although there has been a lot of scientific work, and some of that has not been adequately publicised.
The Queen’s Speech rightly identified the growth of information technology as vital to the modernisation of the UK economy and continued growth. The Government also need a broader strategy for other areas of technology. As a Rolls-Royce engineer pointed out to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee when we were looking into the question of the effect on the science and technology base of the UK perhaps leaving the European Union, UK industries are not participating sufficiently in EU industrial research programmes. He ascribed this problem to the demise of the regional development agencies, which was an immediate knee-jerk reaction by the coalition Government when they began their work in 2010. There has been some slow reversal of that through local enterprise boards, but the money available to them is much less and they do not have the role of enabling small enterprises to work beneficially with the EU on industrial R&D projects.
The House of Lords committee also benefited from the advice of Siemens, a leading example of the many foreign high-tech companies that have invested in and set up branches in the UK. Although some economists say that it does not matter whether industries in this country are owned by UK or foreign companies, according to the Financial Times and many other commentators—starting of course with Lord Macmillan when he was here in the Lords—there are serious limitations in allowing everything essentially to be sold off. It is clear that where there are foreign owners, the strategic R&D work is often done in the countries where the companies are based, and we have seen the effects of this in some aspects of aviation, trains, steel and so on. The financial benefits of UK government investment in research often simply lead to the benefit of these companies in their foreign-based headquarters and overseas share holders. As I said, the Financial Times laughed at the French because they had to have a French yoghurt industry, but it has now withdrawn from that point of view.
If companies are foreign owned, will HMG do more to improve networking and combined technologies for advanced industries? In some areas of Europe technological networks have been developed, some of which are as advanced as any in the world—I was involved in organising one in aviation and fluid mechanics. I am pleased to see that the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is now strengthening the network involvement of UK scientists and institutions. The future integration and collaboration between industry and government is likely to be much more conceptually advanced than at present. The new policy of the German Government on industrial software programmes is called Industry 4.0—it sounds much better in German. It connects technology and design in terms of the human, social and commercial aspects of companies. In an extraordinarily integrated way the software looks not just at one company or one product, but at how different companies can work into projects. This is far beyond anything we can see at the moment, but perhaps the Government’s catapult programme will begin to develop the kind of integrated approach adopted by the German Government, which was described last week at the German embassy. I am afraid that some German industrialists in the UK have commented that while Britain is very good at moving the deckchairs around in endless reorganisations of science and technology, perhaps we are not as effective as they are in Germany.
However, there is one very encouraging development in UK technology, and that is the design, construction and research associated with the Trident project, which was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech. But there is no question that it would be more effective and more likely to be accepted if there was a closer integration between the military project and civilian ship construction. At the moment there is a gap and indeed there is very little civilian ship construction in the UK. In France, for example, it is really rather different.
I have sought in my remarks to review our industrial and technological developments and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Taverne (LD)
My Lords, I want to follow the excellent speech made by my noble friend Lady Walmsley and discuss the question of the future of health and social care. Our National Health Service is heading for a crash and it may come sooner than even the pessimists fear. You cannot run a viable health service if the Government are committed to reducing their share of national income while health costs increase much faster than GDP, but that is what is happening. Health costs are rising inexorably because the population is ageing, new lifesaving drugs are expensive, the needs of mental health and many other urgent demands have been neglected and so require more funding. More and more hospitals are piling up huge deficits. Yet according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the share of GDP allotted to the NHS will decline from 6.1% in 2014-15 to 5.4% in 2020-21, the lowest of any comparable country in the European Union. At the same time social care, which also desperately needs more money, as the Barker commission showed, faces draconian cuts. Social care and health cannot be separated. How else can the problem of, for instance, bed-blocking ever be solved?
The Government claim that efficiency savings will keep the NHS afloat, but even a miraculous leap in efficiency greater than anything experienced to date cannot close the huge gap between health and social care needs and what the Government are prepared to spend. What is required is a new cross-party commission on the future of health and social care, as advocated by Norman Lamb and others. But the NHS as we have known it will cease to exist long before any commission has had time to report, which is likely to take years.
To survive, the NHS needs a substantial injection of extra funds in the next few years. Unfortunately, the Conservative manifesto has committed the Government to not increasing income tax, corporation tax, VAT or national insurance contributions, so where can the money for health and social care be found? There is only one source left: a new, reformed national insurance system, earmarked specifically and exclusively for health and social care. Of course, the Treasury strongly dislikes hypothecated taxes. Indeed, they reduce government flexibility and the ability to allocate tax receipts according to spending priorities and best value for money. There are other, technical objections, but they are not insuperable.
There is one overwhelming argument for a system of especial health and social care contributions. According to opinion polls, people seem far more willing to pay additional money to fund the NHS, which is still regarded as a national treasure, than taxes in general. Indeed, in 2002, when Gordon Brown, with some hesitation, increased NICs by a penny to finance extra spending on the NHS, he was surprised to find that it was very popular. Of course, in the event, less than half the proceeds went to their declared purpose. Most were swallowed up in the general tax pool.
In fact, NICs no longer make sense. They were originally designed to finance the NHS and pensions—most people believe that they still do—but most of the proceeds go into the general pool of tax receipts. Only some 20% goes to the NHS; 80% of the NHS is financed from general taxation. Likewise, the basic state pension is now almost entirely unrelated to contributions, and is also financed from general taxation. The public are unaware of what they are paying for when they pay NICs, contrary to every principle of a good tax system.
Who should set the health and social care budget and be responsible for its oversight and administration in such a reform? The answer should be a new independent health and social care mutual, as advocated by Frank Field and others, the trustees of which would include not only representatives of the Government and the relevant professions, but members elected by the public. After hearing his speech, I suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, would be a very good member. It would be part of a new deal between the public, politicians and the NHS.
Lord Quirk (CB)
My Lords, like others before me, including the noble Lords, Lord Fowler, Lord Foster and Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, I shall largely address issues to do with broadcasting. As I worked my way through the White Paper on the future of the BBC, noting its attractive and helpful format, my first reaction was pleasurable relief that months of alarmist speculation seemed to have been unwarranted. The BBC’s mission will still be to inform, educate and entertain.
There is glowing recognition of the public regard in which the BBC is held and of the reputation for objectivity that it has earned over the best part of a century. It is probably the most trusted broadcaster anywhere in the world. As the White Paper notes, it is “hugely valued by audiences” worldwide, and,
“a vital part of the UK’s ability to lead the world in terms of soft power and influence”.
The White Paper has much less to say about independence, though it is surely on this widely perceived independence that the public trust is based, at home and abroad.
On the proposal for a governing board to replace the short-lived BBC Trust, I have nothing to say. Its membership and its powers seem to be still open for discussion. I hope that they are. But I have something to say on the direction of travel that the Government seem intent on following. In framing my reflections, I naturally resorted to the magisterial five-volume History of Broadcasting by Asa Briggs, whom this House sadly lost only a couple of months ago. Lord Briggs knew more about the BBC than anyone else in the world. So it was not only to his voluminous history that I turned, but also to shorter distillations of his thought and knowledge, such as his recent study, From Gutenberg to the Internet of 2002, his book Governing the BBC of 1979, and his contributions, along with those of Shirley Williams and others, to the 1982 volume, The Future of Broadcasting.
What, I asked myself, would Asa Briggs have made of this new White Paper? I think that, on the whole, he too would have been pleased and reassured, but I have no doubt that he would also have had serious concerns. After all, the fifth and final volume of his History, published in 1995, is entitled Competition, an activity he strongly favoured. He knew that in the fierce environment of television, competition was essential and he was in no doubt that, despite talk and very real fears about “dumbing down” and the “race to the bottom”, the very existence of the BBC, its strong ethos and the keen competition it presented, had already had a strong beneficial effect on the output quality of the proliferating commercial channels.
The White Paper insists on the need for the BBC to be distinctive—a much used word—and that it should stop watching the ratings as a guide to its success. Is there not in this, Briggs might wonder, a hint of the BBC abandoning its role as a mass provider? Would not this put at risk the licence fee model of financing, which has worked well for more than 90 years? It was always vulnerable and it could become critically so if the White Paper’s hints turned into outright discouragement of mass entertainment. Surely, we do not want the BBC to be relegated to niche programmes for niche audiences, whether these be regional, ethnic, social or culturally highbrow. Can the Minister reassure me?
After all, the BBC has been highly distinctive before. In the 1920s and 1930s, which most noble Lords do not remember but Asa Briggs did and so do I, the BBC had its own distinctive voice, its linguistic style, which was called BBC English. If the masses happened to switch their newly acquired “wireless sets” to a BBC programme, they would promptly, and in droves, switch over to a commercial station such as Radio Luxembourg. By 1940, of course, the exigencies of war were requiring the establishment to reach out to the masses. Then, 20 years later and under quite different pressures, Carleton Greene took the risk of reaching out further still. The moment was noted by an editorial in the BBC’s own newspaper, the Listener, on 22 March 1962:
“The BBC needs to be braver and sometimes is. So let there be a faint hurrah as Auntie goes over the top”.
It was only from about then that the BBC became genuinely popular.
The challenges facing all public service broadcasting are vastly more threatening today than they ever have been. Let us in this House ensure that the governance provided by the new BBC board will stoutly support and encourage the creative professionals as they compete to offer programmes of good music, good drama, good documentary and, yes, good sitcoms and quiz shows.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I, too, welcome the gracious Speech. I note that there are 21 Bills—too many in my judgment—but I can applaud the vast majority since they are focused on one-nation Conservatism. En passant, I note that there is a key Bill on prison reform. I am a man of Bedford, where John Howard was the great prison reformer. John Bunyan was put in Bedford jail and Hanratty was the last man to be hanged there, following the A6 murders. I hope that we have done enough thorough, in-detail, pre-research in relation to the all-important reform of our prisons.
In my judgment, the Chancellor has set a clear financial strategy which I greatly applaud. Now is the time for implementation. I will comment on business and health matters. An element of business is the situation with Tata and British Steel. I want to thank the Secretary of State and the Minister of State for the time, energy, work and commitment they have put in to finding a solution. I had the privilege of working in India for a couple of years. I know the Tata company and I know in some depth the way in which the Indian community negotiates. I say to my noble friend who has to do a lot of it that I hope she has plenty of patience. She will need it. But the longer you sit there, the more likely you are to be successful. If the pension area is a problem, as a trustee of the parliamentary pension fund, I can say that no one particular format is a solution that can be implemented anywhere. There is flexibility and I hope that we will find an answer there, too.
I turn to exports. The House will recognise that, certainly in my judgment, five Ministers in charge of our exports over five years is not a good strategy. It is not one likely to produce any consistency. We can see the results in the balance of trade. Now we have a new Member of our House to take over that role, my plea to my own Government is that he will stay in position for at least three years and agree a strategy with the CBI and other relevant parties so that we can move forward and reduce what is really a pretty poor situation on the balance of trade.
London airport has been mentioned. Here is a golden opportunity to have a bigger hub airport to assist all our exporters, be they the SME Export Track 100 group, the City, or anybody else. The third runway is a must. I speak as someone who was only an RAF pilot but, by the time this runway is implemented, we will have a new generation of aircraft, with better fuel consumption, lower noise, a lighter carbon footprint from sustainable fuels and better air traffic control allowing better and less-noisy stacking. The people of south-west London should welcome all this.
Moving from high-tech to low-tech, I declare an interest in that my daughter has two shops in Bedford. There has been some progress on business rates but why does the poor, hard-pushed retailer have to wait until 2020 to move from increases based on RPI to increases based on CPI? Why can that not be done next year to help them a bit? We have a situation where 40% of trade is now done online. No business rates are paid by online traders. We have to find a way to bring about a balance between high-street and online trading. In my judgment, we should learn from the United States and look long and hard at a sales tax.
Thirdly, in the business area, I turn to the PM’s conference on fraud and the effect it may have on the Overseas Territories. Again, I declare an interest in that my youngest son is a lawyer in the Cayman Islands. That part of the Overseas Territories has worked really hard over the last three or four years to produce a register that is legitimate and to build up a financial infrastructure with it. It is available to the authorities here in the UK at 24 hours’ notice. I believe that that is as much as we can ask them to do.
This brings me to the USA, which is not co-operating at all but just siphoning off business from our Overseas Territories. Delaware, Wyoming, Nevada and now South Dakota are proudly advertising in the Financial Times and they are all taking business from our legitimate Overseas Territories. I do not think that is acceptable. If we are to have a global conference in 2017 with the USA as co-host, it is time that was sorted out.
I will mention three issues in relation to health. I ask Her Majesty’s Government to think again about changing the position of the specialist Cancer Drugs Fund to one where it is controlled by NICE and the commissioning committees. I suggest to the House that it should stay where it is because it is working well and we have a long way to go to equal what is done in the rest of Europe.
Secondly, palliative care is a disgrace. No GP—or very few—visits dying people. Young doctors are not even taught any element of palliative care. That whole area needs urgent attention.
Thirdly, as regards GP numbers and work patterns, the King’s Fund has just produced a report showing that 90% of trainee GPs and 70% of women GPs want to work part-time. On top of that, we have a shortage of GPs. This situation needs urgent review in terms of both numbers at our medical schools and rebalancing the figure from the 60%—and growing—female intake to somewhere nearer a 50-50 intake. Given our expenditure on health and on their training, we need to ensure that they commit to work full-time in the National Health Service. I declare a past interest in that my wife ran a large GP practice, had three children and helped me in my work as a Member of Parliament. That was not out of the ordinary in the days when she was a GP, which was not so long ago. If my suggestion is not taken up, I say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that there is no hope of having seven-day care.
I conclude with a very serious subject, which is prompted by just seven words in the gracious Speech—namely,
“the primacy of the House of Commons”.
Your Lordships will recall that I was Chairman of Ways and Means in another place from 1992 to 1997, charged with running all the committees and taking all the constitutional debates on the Floor of the House, including 25 days on Maastricht. I am acutely aware of the angst felt by the Government over the treatment of amendments to the welfare Bill. I warned the Government at the time that the amendments sent to your Lordships’ House should never have come here as they involved major changes involving billions of pounds and were in effect money Bill matters. I trust, therefore, that in the cold light of day and upon further reflection, Her Majesty’s Government will not be tempted to put any new check on your Lordships’ legitimate role to revise as we see fit any Bill that is sent to this House.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I follow the analogy of my noble friend Lord Griffiths in relation to gardening and the blooms of education with, of course, the accompanying thorns, and the need for delicate care rather than frog-marching. Last week, I attended a debate on life chances in your Lordships’ Chamber, which was eloquently introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer. Many noble Lords spoke movingly about the importance of various factors in improving life chances, such as parenting, where and how families live, skills, opportunity and education. I shall speak about the importance of education in improving life chances.
Education was important for me and was important, apparently, for many colleagues in this House, yet I see a paradox in the Government’s education reforms since 2010. All politicians have the best interests of children at heart. However, even a Conservative Back-Bencher recently stated that the Government have “gone bonkers” in trying to rush through academisation—that dreadful word. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, gave a more elegant, but still critical, response. In a recent article, my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley spoke of the growing number of failing academies, resulting in fragmentation, incoherence and confusion. I regret the lack of consultation and the lack of hard evidence that academies are a panacea to improve school performance—I think that this has been realised. Some academies are of course excellent; some are not.
There is a terrible muddle about much of education—here come the thorns—and I think that parents and teachers are tired of it. I am uneasy about several things: the confused picture on early years care and education; school admission policies; the overtesting of young children; the mistaken belief that pupils will do better the more that they are trained to pass exams; teacher recruitment; the north/south divide in school attainment; and the lack of cohesion in education and training for 16 to 24 year-olds. It seems to me that the Government would do well to take stock and develop a coherent and consistent policy across government for children and young people, from birth to 24. Young people and children do not come in bits; they have different talents and interests, they move through different phases of life and different influences, including education, health, social care, economic status, and so on. As the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said earlier, they need holistic consideration.
The school admissions policy is full of holes. It is divisive and unfair. I hope that the Government will look at the LSE’s recommendations: that school admissions policy should be, by law, easy to understand; that local authorities should be involved in the whole process; that an independent body should handle admissions; and that banding assessments should be revised.
Regarding learning and achievement, the principal of a college in Cambridgeshire said recently on the White Paper for education that,
“reference to children’s learning is sparse”,
and that:
“The essence of schooling, its complexity and richness, appears to have been overlooked. Schools aren’t factories for results”.
These are powerful words. In the debate on life chances last week, many noble Lords spoke of a broad and balanced education that encourages inquiry and independent learning. Sport and the arts—the importance of which has been discussed already—citizenship, self-confidence, self-esteem, and the ability to form good relationships are not only worth while in themselves but also encourage good academic performance. Time and again, however, the Government have backed away from making this aspect of education statutory.
I welcome the Government’s commitments to fundamental reform of the alternative provision for excluded pupils and to technical education, which brings me to my next point. The House of Lords Select Committee on Social Mobility recently published its report, which begins by saying that 53% of young people do not follow the traditional academic route into work and are significantly overlooked by the education system. I hope that its eight recommendations will be noted. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, who put much emphasis on careers and advice.
My final point is that variations in achievements are stark between the north and south of England, as pointed out by the IPPR North report and alluded to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. Liberating the potential of all people must start early and requires early investment in future success across all areas of the country. This means focusing on children’s and young people’s achievements and life chances.
The Government must recognise that consultation and collaboration are vital in education—with teachers, parents, academics, school governors, the voluntary sector and pupils. I repeat my plea that a policy for the life chances of all children and young people should be made vital and apparent and discussed regularly in Parliament. Our young people, parents and teachers deserve respect and consideration, not bureaucratic and inflexible hammering, and I hope the Government will listen.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interests as an honorary fellow of Birkbeck College and a former director of learndirect, when it was owned by UFI. In today’s debate on the humble Address, I want to focus on social care but will also make some brief comments on a couple of other topics.
First, while I know that the prison education reform proposals will be debated more fully next Tuesday, there are inevitable links with education, BIS and welfare, through vocational and academic achievement as well as in-work learning such as apprenticeships. I am concerned that the proposals are being described by government spokespeople as the academisation of prisons. Yet again, we see a Government changing structures rather than focusing on the actual improvement of services.
Education and training for all prisoners do need real attention, but this is not new. When my late father was a Member of another place, he gave me the Second Report of the Education, Science and Arts Select Committee in the 1983-84 Session, on prison education, which says:
“The previous Committee concluded that there existed a profound confusion and lack of clarity throughout the Prison Service as to the purpose of the regime in general and education in prisons in particular”.
It goes on to say:
“The previous Committee clearly found that the prison service was in a state of crisis. Concerned as it is with education, this Committee believes that existing prison education departments, because of the fundamental indecision about objectives found by the previous Committee, are unable to operate with full effect and make their proper contribution to a rehabilitative prison regime. The consequence for public expenditure is waste”.
I have quoted that report at length because hidden behind the public reports of the current crisis in the general running of the Prison Service lie decades of crisis in education and learning in prisons. When I was a director of UFI learndirect about a decade ago, we had a large contract to deliver prison education. In many instances it was almost impossible to achieve this because the day-to-day regime conflicted time and again with the idea of any prisoner successfully completing a course. For example, prisoners had no access to internet exams, and records did not follow them when they moved quickly from one prison to another. I thought those days were long over, but I recently talked to a former prison tutor who finally resigned a few months ago after what they saw as deliberate blockage, with the day-to-day prison regime being used to prevent learning or to punish an individual prisoner or, worse, to prevent the education staff being able even to offer the training by there being no one to take them through security at the beginning of the day.
On their own, new buildings and new structures will not change anything at all. Unless there is a clear national learning entitlement for prisoners—with responsibilities on their part, too—and proper funding, which was asked for by the 1984 Select Committee, this clash of cultures in our prisons will not change and the learning attainment as a key part of rehabilitation that we all seek will not happen. Worse, this Parliament will still be debating this issue in 2045.
Mind you, with the speed of reforms in your Lordships’ Chamber, I may still be here to debate it. I am mindful of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, about the primacy of House of Commons. I am sure that we will still be recognising the primacy of the House of Commons then.
On the Higher Education and Research Bill, the devil will be in the detail—as ever—but there remains a stubborn conflict in the Government’s approach to the sector, absolutely captured in the name of the White Paper: Success as a Knowledge Economy: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice. As a nation, either we want flexibility—both of subject and study mode—and priority for student choice or we want an HE sector which will supply our knowledge economy for the next 30 years. The lack of graduates in STEAM subjects—not just STEM, as the arts are vital in the knowledge economy—means that we risk losing that critical leading edge that brings major returns, not least profitability, to UK plc until we resolve this conundrum.
There has been talk of expanding privatisation. The newer private organisations that have moved into the university sector have been very restricted in their choice of subjects, such as law and accountancy. The White Paper relaxes much of the protective structure to ensure quality that has been one of the key reasons the UK’s institutions have an enviable reputation. The new degree-awarding powers mechanism must maintain that protection. We await the detail, to see how this will operate, but I have concerns that allowing start-up universities to set up quickly might not provide the security that students deserve. We already have a large number of institutions that need support, and we need to ensure that institutions offer decent teaching, are financially secure—along with the students—and provide new opportunities to their graduates.
Although I am encouraged by the reference to support for excluded pupils in the education for all Bill, there seems to be little in there about support for children who cannot attend school because of severe bullying. At present the mechanisms for the funding to follow these pupils into specialist support are woeful and based on very patchy local provision. We cannot have a position where only children who bully or have challenging behaviours get help, while the pupils who are traumatised, and often clinically depressed, through bullying get no support and, worse, their schools can hold on to them, over medical advice to move them elsewhere.
In the remaining short time, I want to speak about social care, but I cannot find a Bill or proposal in the Queen’s Speech that permits that. So I make my first point about this Government’s approach to social care: it is invisible. Worse than that, it is an invisible elephant in the room. My noble friend Lady Walmsley referred to the seven-day NHS and the increasing crisis of delayed discharges. What sits behind that is a social care system absolutely at breaking point. It is an almost perfect storm: increasing numbers of elderly people requiring care; local government facing the worst crisis in funding from central government for generations; and then the introduction of the living wage. The latter is essential for the employees, and generously set by the Government, but there is no funding for local government which would enable it to raise its rates to social care providers. Finally, slightly at a tangent, even some GPs trying to find cash have scrabbled around to find money and are now charging some residential homes for standard GP services to the residents, who should not be charged twice.
In coalition, we established the better care fund, as a pilot, to see if we could cut the Gordian knot between delayed discharges and social care, and make sure we could get people back home from hospital and prevent them from getting there in the first place. There have been some shining examples of success, but too many projects have sunk without trace since last year’s general election. The Government may not feel the need for a social care Bill, but the omission of social care from the gracious Speech as a priority should set alarm bells ringing everywhere, as A&E departments struggle and delayed discharges rise. This invisible elephant in the room requires funding and a joint commissioning approach, urgently. Without it, the system will collapse and we will fail our older generation.
Lord Freyberg (CB)
My Lords, I will address my remarks today to education. The Queen’s Speech primarily focused on traditional academic subjects and pathways, but the Government’s refocusing on vocational pathways for 16 to 19 year-olds also has a massive potential for increasing the life chances of those who would flourish in careers that a traditional academic curriculum might not directly lead to. But there is a real concern that the EBacc—taken from 14 to 16—is aiming to encourage 90% of students to take a roster of traditionally academic GCSEs that will not best prepare them for these pathways and which are only truly core for some industries and higher and further educational institutions.
It is worth underlining that no one disputes the value of these core subjects. Indeed, in different combinations, they are essential for the prosperity of those vocational students. However, this focus is contributing to the sidelining of creative subjects. Although students may do more GCSEs than required by the EBacc, at the moment one-third of students in academies take only seven, and so would have all of their GCSEs filled by subjects including languages, history and geography but excluding design and technology, art and design and other creative subjects. This emphasis on core subjects has led to a rapid erosion of subjects such as design and technology, and many schools are already cutting back on creative and arts options, which the EBacc measure does not include.
Focusing on a group of subjects that benefits one group of students might diminish the life chances of another: those who are less likely to perform well on these measures. Critically, students taking fewer academic subjects are likely to be the very same students who could benefit from going into careers in engineering, which has a skills gap worth £27 billion; the creative industries, including flourishing sectors such as design, video games and film; or construction, through the relevant colleges set up by the Government. The Creative Industries Federation and engineering bodies such as the Institution of Civil Engineers, have publicly voiced their concerns on this point.
I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, that the introduction of the EBacc as a headline attainment measure sends a worrying message that the creative subjects are not a central and essential part of schooling. This is borne out by the statistics: when design and technology is included, there has been a fall of more than 60,000 entries to all visual art and design GCSEs in England since 2009-10. When countries such as China, South Korea and Brazil are investing heavily in their creative education because they can see the economic value of culture, it is very worrying that we are marginalising ours. I fear that in years to come, we will pay a very heavy price if we do not reverse this short-sighted thinking. I am not alone in this. A letter in today’s Daily Telegraph, signed by 97 creative industry leaders—artists, actors and musicians —urges the Government to rethink their policies.
In closing my remarks on this gracious Speech, my question to the Government and the Minister is: how can they ensure that the EBacc does not infringe on the life chances of those who might not be naturally gifted in some of the core subjects, but would excel in careers in these other sectors?
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I am going to mention some points on the Bills that relate to my brief and then touch on the BBC charter review, as a number of noble Lords have done before me. The Higher Education and Research Bill is, to my mind, six years too late. Since 2010, we have been passive witnesses to a radical experiment across our higher education system. In that time, it has been transformed out of all recognition with its vouchers for borrowed fees and maintenance, financed by hugely increased personal debt. None of the policy implications of this was ever exposed to full scrutiny in Parliament.
There is considerable concern about the White Paper and the Bill for the following reasons. The supply-side changes now being proposed for the establishment of new private and company universities constitute a policy that seems to lack any evidence base except in the United States, where the evidence is not inspiring. The policy might impact adversely on many existing institutions, particularly those which currently do most for widening participation and social mobility. The new teaching excellence framework is a welcome initiative, but it needs a lot of time and very careful consideration before its introduction, so as to minimise unintended consequences, not least through the explicit linking of fees with what seems to be a very narrow range of indicators of teaching excellence. While the legal protection for the dual-support system for research in England is welcome, as is the speedy implementation of Sir Paul Nurse’s far-sighted report, the reservations mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Rees, in his powerful speech will need to be borne in mind as these proposals are taken forward.
We on this side have wider concerns, which do not seem to have been addressed, including how to reverse the disastrous collapse in part-time degree enrolments; what is to be done to grow postgraduate work and research studentships; how we can provide better entry routes for adult students and those who want to retrain; and what links will need to exist with the new apprenticeship schemes, particularly for levels 4 and 5 and the institutions that provide these courses. What is the role of the IFA, and how will it interact with the new HE infrastructure architecture?
My noble friend Lord Mendelsohn mentioned our concerns about the digital economy Bill, and the worry that the Government are repeating the problems of the past, and being unambitious about the future and the new infrastructure that is required. We also need to know exactly what is on offer under the USO; there seem to be too many get-out clauses. However, we will be supporting strongly the clauses implementing the EU directive on parental controls, in line with our support for the Bills over successive years introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe.
We strongly support the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill, and we welcome the news that there is to be another intellectual property Bill, as last year we had to make do with some secondary legislation—and for IP aficionados such as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that simply is not enough.
A significant number of the contributions made today have dealt with the BBC White Paper, and the continuing unease which many Members of your Lordships’ House feel about the proposals. The excellent speeches by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, my noble friend Lord Macdonald, the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, and others have set out the main issues. The key issue here is whether the Government discharge their responsibility to the nation to set out the role and financing to be allocated to the BBC for the period ahead in a consensual or in a partisan way. It is welcome that the Culture Secretary has been forced to back down on some of the most damaging proposals, which his department had apparently trailed in the press. But on a number of key issues there still seems to be evidence of political motivation, which will not only undermine the BBC’s long-term ability to fulfil its role, but will also destabilise the broader broadcasting ecology of the country.
On the unitary board, for example, there must be a guarantee that the non-executive appointments should be appointed by an independent appointments committee, established by the Commissioner for Public Appointments, under Nolan principles. The power to review the new charter after five years is inappropriate, at variance with the agreement to an 11-year charter period, and will undermine the BBC’s ability to plan and invest for the long term. As others have said, it also cuts across the role of Ofcom, and the proposal should be dropped. The move to accelerate the opening up of in-house production activity to contestability in all areas except news and current affairs may have unforeseen consequences, and the BBC should be trusted to do this at the appropriate rate. More generally, the Government should steer clear of being seen to try to influence programmes or scheduling. The call for the BBC to become “more distinctive” surely reveals that the Secretary of State is both commercially and ideologically opposed to the BBC. As my noble friend Lord Cashman said, the charter review should not be used to make the BBC output so minority-interest and “distinctive” that hardly anybody likes it, so that in time few people would miss it and it can be privatised.
Finally, on a minor point, but one that is still important and which may be illustrative of the whole, I notice that in the existing charter the BBC has the responsibility to bring the UK to the world and the world to the UK across all genres of programming. Can the Minister explain why the White Paper has dropped this wider purpose, relegating the role of understanding the UK and the world to being delivered only by news and current affairs? The BBC is the linchpin of the UK’s PSB ethos, and the envy of the world. The overwhelming majority of the public want the BBC to continue to inform, educate and entertain, and to survive and thrive. I hope the Government will listen to the people who use the BBC’s excellent services, menus and all, and do the right thing.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the focus in the gracious Speech on life chances and help for the most disadvantaged. My focus today is on some of the key components of an all-encompassing life chances strategy and on mental health. As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has said, we had a very good debate on life chances in this Chamber only last week, and I look forward to the Government’s forthcoming life chances strategy and the associated indicators that will be developed to assess its progress. It will be important that those indicators are broadly drawn, a point on which this House has much expertise to offer. A key point emerging in our debate was that any life chances strategy worth its name must look at all life stages, but starting of course with investment in young people through measures such as high-quality early-years education and the pupil premium to ensure every child has a fair chance in life. In addition, we need to support strong family relationships, which are the bedrock of nurturing the next generation. So I will be looking closely for evidence that investment in relationship and parenting support is a key component of the life chances strategy.
We must never overlook the life chances of the majority of young people—some 53%—who do not pursue the traditional academic route of A-levels and higher education but pursue vocational routes instead. Too often they have received scant attention from Ministers and policymakers, so I join the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and my noble friend Lady Sharp in eagerly awaiting the Government’s response to the Lords Select Committee on Social Mobility’s report on improving the transition from school to work. It was a great honour to serve on that committee, and I very much hope that the forthcoming education for all Bill will focus on the need for coherent, properly resourced, easy to navigate and high-quality vocational routes. As well as looking at fair funding for schools, I hope the Bill will address the substantial inequalities in funding between schools and FE colleges for 16 to 18 year-olds. While I am not holding my breath, perhaps the Minister will surprise and delight me in her response.
So, yes, we must ensure that every child has the best possible start in life, but that is not the whole story. A comprehensive life chances strategy must also ensure that co-ordinated support is available to help people of all ages address the barriers that are preventing them getting on in life. It is well known that many of the problems that people face today, including homelessness, substance misuse, mental ill-health and contact with the criminal justice system, stem from trauma and abuse in childhood, long-term poverty and the repeated failure of state interventions. A staggering 40% of people with severe multiple needs ran away as children, 24% have experienced abuse and 18% were in the care system. That is why I welcome proposals set out in the Children and Social Work Bill to strengthen the support that local authorities, as the corporate parent, offer to children in care and care leavers up to 25, and to improve standards across the social work profession. We must also use this opportunity to make sure that children’s mental health is properly assessed on entry into care and throughout their time in the care system and, critically, that that assessment leads to appropriate and timely support so that children and young people do not have to reach crisis point before help is at hand. As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, argued so compellingly, this assessment cannot just be the current paper-based method of assessing a child’s mental health. I strongly agree with the recommendation of the Education Select Committee that all children have a specialist mental health assessment. Charities such as the NSPCC have been calling for improvements to the therapeutic support received by children who have experienced abuse and neglect to help them rebuild their lives. Given their early traumatic experiences, it is hardly surprising that children in care are significantly more prone to mental ill health.
Another group crying out for better mental health support are young carers, given the distress too many of them are experiencing in looking after their loved ones. As a starting point, the Government must meet their duties to support young carers under the Children and Families Act 2014 and the Care Act 2014. Given the concerns that have been expressed in this area, a review of the impact and resourcing of these Acts is urgently needed. Mental health services must be able to identify young carers, give them the right information and provide them with support and increased access to mental health services. Schools have a very important role to play here, and am I very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, is in his place to hear me say this. I strongly support the proposal for schools to act as hubs for mental health support, working in collaboration with CAMHS and the voluntary sector. When the Government’s carers strategy is published later in the year, it is essential that young carers’ mental health needs be centre stage.
Turning now to adults, my experiences as chair of the Making Every Adult Matter coalition of charities—I refer to my declared interests in the register—convince me that we must find more effective ways of supporting adults already in crisis. Too often these individuals receive a poorly co-ordinated and ineffective response from local services, resulting in poor outcomes and significant cost to the public purse.
During the recent life chances debate, I called on the Government to develop a national cross-departmental strategy to support and incentivise local areas to develop better responses for adults experiencing multiple and complex needs, or who are at significant risk of doing so. That should be an integral part of a life chances strategy, and it is a really important opportunity to say more about how entrenched and interconnected social problems can be tackled and, importantly, lives transformed. I again urge the Government to do this, and ask the Minister if she will respond on this point in winding up.
To illustrate how joined-up these problems are, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has estimated that up to 90% of prisoners experience a mental health issue. I therefore welcome the focus in the prison and court reform Bill on education, healthcare and the provision of better mental healthcare for prisoners. However, it is no exaggeration to say that mental health for all age groups and all sections of society has become one of the defining challenges of our age. Missing from the gracious Speech was a strong commitment to mental health across the piece.
I was disappointed not to see an equality for mental health Bill to deliver genuine parity of esteem between mental and physical health. There is so much to do to deliver on the commitments the Government have already made in response to the Future in Mind report on children and young people’s mental health, the Crisp report on acute psychiatric care for adults and the recent Mental Health Task Force report. The real concern here is that despite all the fine words and good intentions, which I strongly support, the money promised is not getting through to the front line where it is most needed or translating into new mental health practitioners, and that the amounts of money allocated, welcome though they are, are simply inadequate for dealing simultaneously with both historic underfunding on a grand scale and the new initiatives that have been announced, not least in relation to waiting times and access standards.
The recent report from the Mental Health Finance Faculty and NHS Providers has highlighted that parity of esteem is nowhere near being achieved consistently at local level. It makes for sobering reading. In short, commissioners and providers do not share the same understanding of parity of esteem. All CCGs signed up to the principle of parity of esteem, and underline that they have increased their real-terms investment in mental health services. In practice, though, only half the services reported that they had received it, hence the need for an equality of mental health Bill.
Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)
My Lords, I welcome much of what was announced yesterday in the gracious Speech. It is some years since our current Prime Minister declared that he wanted to heal the broken society. I fully supported that aim and still do, but there is much to be done to achieve it. This legislative programme would make a real difference to life chances through the promised changes relating to childcare and those excluded from schools, along with the much-needed radical prison reforms.
Who could fail to be excited by a Queen’s Speech that promised to give the UK the first commercial spaceport? Earlier this year I was lucky enough to meet Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut who commanded the International Space Station. It was not his rendering of “Space Oddity” that stunned his audience, even though it was remarkable, but his conviction that within 20 years earthlings would be colonising the moon. So commercial spaceports to get people back and forth may not be the stuff of science fiction that they currently sound. Innovative business is already investing in developing space technology, and it is on business that I want to concentrate today.
Several measures were announced yesterday that could help business to thrive. In particular, we need to nurture our smaller businesses and help them to become big world-beaters. The digital economy is crucial to that. Fast broadband is not a luxury but an essential. If a business loses its internet connection or is slow in being able to respond, it does not just lose a connection; it loses a customer. So I welcome the commitment to a universal service obligation for fast broadband, a move that could benefit over 1 million households and business premises. However, we have to be sure that fast broadband becomes faster.
The Bill also commits the Government to supporting new digital industries. We have heard much praise already for our remarkable creative industries, which are in a world-beating class, but it should not be forgotten that the inventor of the world wide web was a Brit. Sir Tim Berners-Lee did not make the fortune that the founders of Google, Apple or Facebook made, but he gave the world an extraordinary benefit. Now we must encourage the new pioneers of digital development, and if we can link them, the technological wizards, with the creative minds that we foster, we could generate huge growth.
The local government and jobs Bill could make a big difference to business. Giving local government full control over business rates should encourage creative thinking as to how to attract the businesses that councils need in their areas. It could generate new life on high streets, which in so many towns have suffered a blight of shop closures and desperately need reinvigorating. Differential business rates could be the way to do that.
For regions that have grasped the localism agenda, there is even further scope to engage with business. The new mayors are being given a power to make a levy to fund infrastructure projects. Infrastructure is still woeful in parts of the country, and it is good to see a determination to put this right, both nationally and locally. Incidentally, the modern transport Bill pledges to reduce the congestion that currently costs the UK economy £20 billion a year. I wonder whether that means examining the utilisation of the swathes of the capital’s highways now set aside for the use of that most modern mode of transport, the bicycle.
Before mayors can make the levy, the proposed project will have to have the support of local businesses, which is to be ascertained through the local enterprise partnerships. LEPs can be a force for good, and undoubtedly in some parts of the country they are, but the anecdotal evidence is that the quality differs hugely. It is vital that the Government ensure that the LEPs provide the support that businesses, particularly smaller businesses, need. This is really important when it comes to exporting. For a great trading nation, we are pretty bad at exporting. Four out of five small businesses do not export.
If the Government are to stand a chance of reaching their target of taking exports to £1 trillion of goods and services every year, that proportion has to change. BIS and UKTI can offer much support for exporters, but too often it is very difficult for customers to ascertain exactly what is on offer and how to make the most of it. There has been a lot of talk about simplification, but not a lot of simplification. LEPs could help companies to navigate this maze. They could also be instrumental in one of my hobby horses, encouraging big businesses to help smaller ones in the export effort, providing mentoring and contacts and probably even financial support.
Apart from finance, business needs skills, and I hope that the details of the higher education and research Bill will show that skills will be enhanced by it. It promises a new range of universities, but I hope that we are not reverting to the belief that a university education is right for everyone. Apprenticeships offer many school leavers a wonderful chance to acquire the skills that industry needs without acquiring the heavy burden of student debt. Many universities are still failing to offer their students the acquisition of skills and are offering merely the debt.
The target of 3 million apprenticeships by 2020 is admirable, and I hope that the Minister can reassure me that the target remains in place and that the new universities that the Government wish to encourage will be allied to the skills agenda. Sheffield Hallam, for instance, is partnered with some major companies in delivering a chartered manager degree apprenticeship, and given that the Chartered Management Institute reckons that bad management costs the UK £19 billion a year, that must be welcome.
Business has an important role to play in the new plan for prisons. If people walk out of jail and into a job, their chances of reoffending are hugely reduced. Some companies already do marvellous work to ensure that this happens, National Grid and Pret A Manger among them. It would make a huge difference if every company joined them and concentrated on taking a few ex-offenders into employment.
Finally, I was not going to mention the referendum but my noble friend Lord Trenchard has persuaded me to do so. If the Bank of England, the IMF and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, among many others, think it would be deeply damaging for the UK to leave the EU, I cannot help but feel that we should listen to them.
Baroness King of Bow (Lab)
My Lords, I echo those last comments on the EU, but apart from an opening comment on adoption I will concentrate my remarks on public sector broadcasting, culture, and my perennial obsession with diversity in British media.
As the mother of three adopted children I warmly welcome the Government’s efforts to increase adoption—when it is in the best interests of the child—through the introduction of the Children and Social Work Bill. But if the Government are so intent on removing barriers to children being adopted, can both Ministers reflect on the contradiction between the Government’s stated aims in the gracious Speech yesterday and their recent legislation on the child benefit element of the welfare Act? Child benefit will be limited to two children per family except for certain exemptions, such as adopted children. I should think so, too, because otherwise, prospective parents would face a financial disincentive to adopt, which is the exact opposite of what the Government want. But it transpires that the Government will exempt adopted children only if, for example, they are in a sibling group and not if, like my adopted children, they are not genetically related to each other. This makes no sense. Given the Government’s priorities in the gracious Speech, will the Minister raise this issue with her colleagues in the other place?
On culture and broadcasting, I draw attention to my roles as Channel 4’s Diversity Executive and as a governor of the British Film Institute. I also draw attention to my debate last week on diversity in the media, and in particular to the fact that my remarks were not as well-timed as the superb speech by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, from the Conservative Benches. The noble Lord has an extraordinary nine Paralympian gold medals. I would like to award him another gold medal in his absence for brevity and concision in a parliamentary debate. I recommend that everyone look at his remarks in Grand Committee. He said:
“For decades a lack of diversity in British broadcasting has been a stain on all broadcasters”.
He also said that broadcasting,
“is absolutely a meritocracy if you are a white, middle-class, middle-aged man”.—[Official Report, 10/5/16; cols. GC 83-84.]
I was honoured that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, described Channel 4’s 360° Diversity Charter, which I wrote with the fantastic team at Channel 4, as “a phenomenally significant document”. I and my colleagues at Channel 4 sweated blood to put together something we hoped would be a game-changer. It is a game-changer but the game must change a whole lot more.
Now, difficult though it is, I must stop quoting the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and move on. But I will refer to just one more of his great quotes, which is relevant to our discussion of the gracious Speech. He said that we must absolutely ensure that change is transformational. That is the ambition we all have for the BBC—it is just that the Government want it to be transformed in one direction and many of us would prefer another.
I remind noble Lords of the principles that we need if we are to have distinctive broadcasting in terms of diversity. Those principles include transparency and accountability. We must be data driven; we must implement systemic change, which for broadcasting must be genre specific; and we must bring adequate resource to bear. Underlying all those is the principle that without leadership from the top, nothing happens.
I will mention one fact that possibly trumps everything else I have said so far. Some people will say that it is not a fact but a subjective opinion, but after seven years as a diversity executive, I view it as a non-negotiable fact: “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Some of you will have heard that before; it has been quoted quite widely. I came across it in the illuminating book from Google’s head of people operations, Lazlo Bock, entitled Work Rules!. It has been generally accepted in the broadcasting industry that we have not in the past been able to live up to the ambitions in our strategies. Why is that? It is because culture eats strategy for breakfast. So I hope that the Government and the broadcasters will look to this important aspect of culture. I will be pushing that and the Creative Diversity Network is working hard on these issues.
It would be fantastic if broadcasters could learn from each other and benchmark progress. We will be able to benchmark progress through Diamond, the new diversity analysis-monitoring data tool that the broadcasters are bringing together. Essentially, Diamond will switch the lights on. Then we will be able to know whether the BBC’s diversity strategy, mentioned by other noble Lords today, is working. We will be able to know whether Channel 4’s strategy is working and those of all the other broadcasters. We can all learn from each other. For example, ITV has done some truly fabulous work in bringing on diverse writers in some of its soaps, and Sky was excellent in being the first out of the blocks to mention targets around ethnic minorities on screen.
I congratulate in particular the BBC on one area where it was incredibly bold: gender. Its statement is that by 2020, 50% of all those in on-air lead roles and across all genres, from drama to news, will be women. Thank goodness for that. That is bold, but given that we are Britain and not Saudi Arabia, it is about the least we should expect. It is simply unacceptable that women in general, and older women in particular, are always, always underrepresented on screen in relation to men. Just yesterday, another report was published showing that the mismatch we see when we switch on the screen or hear when we turn on the radio is as bad as it has ever been—sorry, that is not strictly true; there has been some progress over the last year. But the figures show that on screen we have not made enough progress. I draw the attention of the House to Channel 4’s recent gender report, which can be found on the channel’s website. It was extraordinarily illuminating in this area.
Lastly, will the Government really look at the issue of the BBC’s board? The Government are going to pack the board. That is great. I say, “Go ahead and do that, but could you pack it with a little bit of diversity while you’re at it?”. Maybe there could be two ethnic-minority members; is that too much to ask? Obviously I am not asking for anyone to be appointed because they are black, a woman, from a less advantaged background or disabled. But do not tell me that, having looked around Britain, you cannot find anyone with any of those characteristics who could contribute meaningfully to the BBC board.
If the Government honestly cannot find that diverse talent, I can give them the name of a man who can. Raj Tulsiani of Green Park Interim & Executive Search works very closely with my noble friend Lady Royall. He has just published a list of the top 100 board-ready ethnic-minority British businesspeople, who are truly extraordinary in the breadth and range of their talents. They are ready. They are waiting for their skills and talents to be included in the success story of Britain’s creative industries. If we continue to lock them out, over time we will lose our competitive edge for the same reason that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, gave—because diversity is about a creative and competitive edge. So let us get the data; let us combine it with leadership; and let us change the culture inside our organisations so that we embrace diversity instead of eating it for breakfast and then spitting it out.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak from these Benches at the end of this first day of debate on the gracious Speech. As my noble friends have said, including my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness yesterday, we regret that many of the measures included in the gracious Speech demonstrate a real lack of ambition and drive for this country.
With regard to my own area of education, the Liberal Democrats are clear that we should be investing in our young people and giving teachers the resources and support they need to deliver real improvements for pupils. We propose a new education charter that will have at its heart consensus to provide every pupil with a qualified teacher, to have a balanced national curriculum for all children to ensure that sport, music and the arts are not marginalised, to change the culture from excessive testing and inspections to more teaching and less testing, good-quality careers education, and a royal college of teaching to ensure that standards and support are maintained.
The Queen’s Speech talked about excellence in education, which is a sentiment that we could all subscribe to, but how can you have excellence when some of the fundamentals in our education service now face a real crisis? The supply of teachers in specialist subjects is near to breaking point—try getting a physics or chemistry teacher—and there are schools that have advertised for head teachers and nobody has applied. That is not excellence; it is downright poor planning of teacher supply.
The shortage of school places in parts of the UK is a national disgrace. How difficult is it to know the birth rate requirements and plan with local authorities to provide the places needed? We seem so obsessed with hitting our promised free school targets that we desperately try playing catch-up by adding on to existing schools and making them bigger and bigger. Is a school of 2,000 places the most conducive environment for pupils to be educated in? The admission procedures are fast becoming a nightmare for parents, who are increasingly not getting their first, second or even third choice of school, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, rightly said, we need an admissions procedure that is uniform and has been simplified.
The second crisis that we face is over school finance. The Government promised that there would be no cuts to school budgets, but a stand-still budget takes no account of the rising on-costs that have to be absorbed by the school budget. Employer on-costs in the past three years have risen by 69.4% and there has been no extra finance, so those costs have had to be absorbed into the school budget. The cost of brought-in services has gone up and up, and again the costs have had to be absorbed by the school budget. What we have seen in the health service, with hospital trusts piling up huge deficits, is likely to be a foretaste of what will happen in our schools. There is little wonder that head teachers in the Prime Minister’s constituency sought a meeting to highlight the financial difficulties that they were facing, with head teachers even talking about schools facing bankruptcy. Is now a good time to bring forward a so-called national fair funding regime in England? Yes, there will be winners, but there will also be losers and that can only compound school budget difficulties.
The party of parents and family values is increasingly ignoring the views of parents—whether it be on compulsory academisation, schools not having a governing body or the primary testing regime—and parents are increasingly voicing their opinions. A parent in the Isle of Wight even went to court on the principle of having a family holiday in school term time. Of course, it is important that children attend school, and days missed from school can affect a child’s education. But some parents have no choice over when they receive their holiday entitlement. Indeed, some factories close down for a holiday period during school time. Parents wanting to have that all-important family holiday together are faced with the agonising choice of holidaying together as a family or facing the approbation of the LA and a possible fine. Come on: let us use some common sense and, rather than penalise parents, give the responsibility back to head teachers and governors to agree in certain circumstances leave of absence from school. Would it not be a good idea if the Government tackled the outrageous practice carried out by the holiday industry in massively increasing costs during school holiday times to the detriment of families, hitting those in the lowest income groups the hardest?
The Education Act 1944 enshrined the need for every child to be given full-time schooling and for every school to be legally approved to provide that schooling. Now, 72 years later, Ofsted has found and reported on 100 unregistered schools, but the scandal of children being taught in unlicensed schools is only the tip of the iceberg. We have no central figures on how many children are missing from our schools and no central figures to show how many children are being educated at home. Let us show the same zeal that we have for pupil school attendance to keep an accurate and up-to-date record of those children who go missing from the school system. After all, births are recorded and pupils entering school are given a UPN—a unique pupil number—so why are we allowing pupils to go missing from the school system?
In all our education and social policies, the safety, well-being and protection of the child should be at the heart of all we do. In 2004, a report was published called Twenty-nine Child Homicides by Women’s Aid. It detailed 29 children who had been killed by abusive fathers. The killings happened between 1994 and 2004 and were committed by perpetrators of domestic abuse in circumstances relating to child contact. Its findings prompted a review of judicial practice and the inception of a new practice direction which prioritised the safety of children and non-abusive parents in child contact decisions in the family courts. If we now move the tape forward, the very same group has produced a further report which uncovers the details of a further 19 children in 12 families killed by perpetrators of domestic abuse in circumstances relating to child contact. In addition, two children were seriously harmed and three women were killed. All the perpetrators were men and fathers to the children they killed. A study of 203 child contact orders found that only one order prohibited any contact by the father who had been committing domestic violence, and only 3% of contact orders were for supervised visiting. We cannot continue to put the lives of innocent children at risk. In all cases of alleged domestic abuse, there must be robust and effective assessments by experts of the implications for the child and of the non-abusive parent’s safety and well-being. It is only by doing this that what are now unavoidable deaths will be prevented in the future.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, from these Benches we do wish that the content of the gracious Speech was more ambitious. For so many reasons which we are all well aware of, the next few months will be pivotal to the future of this country. We have heard lots of talk about the referendum. I am reminded that in my own city of Liverpool, it was Objective 1 European funding which turned around the fortunes of the city and city region, and of course being the European Capital of Culture changed perceptions of Liverpool once and for all. The Government can expect a long ride ahead during this legislative Session, but rest assured that we will always scrutinise in a constructive and challenging manner with neither fear nor favour.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, several noble Lords have suggested today that the Government’s legislative programme is rather thin and even timid. I have to say that I find it interesting to read some political journalists describing the gracious Speech as a small “l” liberal programme while others see it as a series of social reforms designed to reunite the Conservative Party in the aftermath of the referendum— I say to the Prime Minister, “Good luck with that”, especially should the separatists prevail. I hope very much that they do not, although I know from today’s debate that the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, will not agree with me.
The Government’s education policies remain obsessed with structures rather than what matters most, which is what works in terms of educational outcomes. Under this Government, school budgets are falling, there are chronic teacher shortages about which the Department for Education remains in denial, inhabiting a world of its own, and not enough good places are available. Despite being forced to make a tactical shift—I believe that it was tactical rather than strategic—the Government are continuing to force good and outstanding schools to become academies against their wishes. As I have said many times in your Lordships’ House, there is simply no evidence that academy status automatically raises school performance; in fact much of the evidence points in the opposite direction, as highlighted by my noble friends Lord Griffiths and Lord Murphy. Yet the Government plough on regardless.
My noble friend Lady Massey spoke eloquently on the question of academisation, but it has been widely reported that the Government have retreated from the mass academisation programme in the face of widespread and vociferous opposition. They have not fooled many in the education community with their apparent U-turn. The notes that accompanied the education for all Bill said that the Government would:
“Convert schools to academies in the worst performing local authorities and those that can no longer viably support their remaining schools, so that a new system led by good and outstanding schools can take their place”.
There already is a system led by good and outstanding schools—the local authority system. Is there room for improvement there? Of course: there always is, just as there is room for improvement in the academy and free school sectors. Is there any basis for binning the entire local authority sector in favour of the other two sectors? Absolutely not.
Just yesterday I visited Tollgate Primary School in east London, a teaching school that leads an alliance of 30 schools across seven London boroughs. It was already an outstanding school, and in 2013 its executive head also took on that role in nearby Cleves Primary, which had a “requires improvement” rating from Ofsted. Within just 18 months, Cleves joined Tollgate in being judged as outstanding in all areas. To achieve that in 18 months is very rare, and it was made possible by the schools working jointly in a federation. But the Government have effectively outlawed any new federations of maintained schools and Tollgate is now considering becoming an academy because, if it does not, it will be unable to progress from its current position as a teaching school.
That is an example of the covert pressure applied to outstanding maintained schools to make them bend to the will of the Government. I suspect that we can expect more underhand tactics when the Bill announced yesterday is rolled out. The Minister did not spell out how it would define local authority “viability” or a “minimum performance threshold” for local authorities, but it is to be hoped that there will be consultation on these definitions.
The independent think tank CentreForum has done some calculations on this. Working on the basis that a local authority is “unviable” if less than half of pupils in the area attend local authority maintained schools, and a local authority is “underperforming” if its maintained schools at either key stage 2 or key stage 4 are below the current national average, CentreForum has calculated that as many as 122 local authorities responsible for 12,000 maintained schools meet these not unreasonably assumed criteria for defining “unviable”. Forcibly converting those 12,000 schools to academy status would result in around 85% of all schools being academies, which, along with those converting voluntarily, would in turn render most remaining local authorities unviable.
Hey presto: the Government are within touching distance of their wish for all schools to become academies and so, by smoke and mirrors, the apparent pulling back from mass-academisation is not what it seems at all—not so much a U-turn, more a Z-turn. If I am wrong or this analysis is overly pessimistic, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, will write to me pointing this out. At a cost of around £1 billion the mass conversion of schools is simply not good use of public money, particularly at a time of huge funding pressures on schools.
We welcome the improvements to support for care leavers outlined in the Children and Social Work Bill. I listened closely to the wise words of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who regularly demonstrates his knowledge of and commitment to issues associated with children in care. Approximately 10,000 young people leave care in England every year, in many cases before they turn 18. Research shows that they are more likely than their peers to have poor outcomes later in life. This includes education and work, homelessness, contact with the criminal justice system and mental health problems.
It will also be important for this Bill to make up for the missed opportunity in the Education and Adoption Act by ensuring that, this time, provisions are introduced to ensure that children’s mental health is properly assessed on entry into care and then throughout their time in the care system. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham said, leaving care is often traumatic, yet the Government have failed to provide adequate adoption support, and cuts to services are putting pressure on the system. Measures that will increase adoption are welcome, but it is vital that action is taken that is in the best interests of the individual child. It is unacceptable that the Government have not yet developed a strategy for the wholesale improvement of the care system that delivers for all, not just those children being considered for adoption. As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, told noble Lords, social work should be seen as an honourable profession, yet often it is not. It is certainly a vital one. It is essential that other forms of care, such as kinship care and fostering, are not marginalised, because that will prevent the step change we need to see in outcomes for looked-after children. This Bill invites more than a few questions for the Government, but rather than list them now I will wait until 14 June when the Bill will have its Second Reading.
We believe that the digital economy Bill should detail a comprehensive approach to address the digital skills challenge in the UK and improve digital inclusion, improve the communications infrastructure and connectivity and make the UK the best place to start and scale up a high-growth tech business. As my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn said what seems a very long time ago now, the Government are letting down millions of households and businesses over the rollout of high-speed broadband. Six years after abandoning Labour’s fully-funded commitment to universal broadband, the Government’s superfast broadband rollout is still suffering delays. Many noble Lords have either outlined problems that they have experienced personally or talked about it in general terms. As the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, said, they simply must do better because the economy as a whole is suffering.
We welcome the focus on the age verification of websites containing pornographic material. However, in the knowledge that children’s digital lives play out across various social media platforms as well as websites, we remain concerned that unless we extend age verification measures to these platforms, children will continue to be exposed to pornographic and age-inappropriate material online.
Despite not meriting a mention in the gracious Speech, the elephant in the room throughout this debate has been the BBC, and understandably so. In fact, the elephant trumpeted loudly on many occasions, to the extent that it would be simpler to list noble Lords who did not mention the BBC than those who did. If I mention in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, the noble Lords, Lord Fowler and Lord Addington, and my noble friends Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, Lord Cashman and Lord Stevenson, I hope other noble Lords who spoke on the BBC’s behalf will forgive me. Although the proposals published in the White Paper last week do not require legislation, it is, of course, very much a hot topic. Noble Lords who spoke warned of the need to be wary of the Government undermining, underfunding or otherwise weakening the great institution that is the BBC. I echo the view of the noble Lord, Lord Foster, that the BBC’s independence and impartiality must be upheld and decisions as to who will form the new unitary board should be the preserve of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. It is also essential that the licence fee should be protected, if the BBC is to continue to serve the whole country, which I and many people believe it does very effectively.
The Higher Education and Research Bill marks a sharp turn away from the established university system and on the face of it will empower more people than ever to access higher education in their local area through a college. So it was perhaps appropriate that it was the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, who outlined with great clarity some of the issues that will arise. It is to be welcomed that the new regime will provide a wider choice of courses linked to employment, but there are two buts. First, as my noble friend Lord Murphy told the House, under this Government and the previous one tuition fees have already trebled to £9,000 and we could see them climb even higher, saddling young people who want to go to university with tens of thousands of pounds of debt. That is likely to act as a disincentive to many would-be applicants and is an issue that the Government must address if they genuinely want to expand the social background from which students are drawn.
Secondly, what the noble Lord, Lord Nash, called a “wide range of providers” sounds like a free-market free-for-all, very much like the US model. As my noble friend Lord Stevenson, said, that is a matter for real concern because any brief examination of that system reveals the dangers, with many degrees next to worthless and students often left no more employable at the end of their course than when they started it. It would be encouraging to hear the Minister tell us that that will not be the case, although I suspect that the detail of the Bill is not yet complete.
On an NHS overseas visitors charging Bill, we will support any moves that are about ensuring fairness in the system and getting a better deal for taxpayers. However, we need to avoid turning NHS staff into border guards and the key test of these proposals will be whether they can be effectively enforced and whether it will cost the NHS more to administer the charges than it ends up receiving. We will also be seeking a guarantee that certain exemptions will remain in place, such as those for asylum seekers and people with infectious diseases.
Since the gracious Speech we have learned of agreement being reached between the Government and the BMA on junior doctors’ hours. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, highlighted some of the contract conditions apparently withdrawn by the Secretary of State, enabling agreement to be reached. That is, of course, most welcome, but it demonstrates what many have believed for some time—that Mr Hunt wanted this dispute, he planned it and he prolonged it. The agreement reached yesterday could have been achieved weeks ago, obviating the need for industrial action. Very few employees in any sector go on strike unless it is the last resort. That was particularly true of the junior doctors. Yet, the Secretary of State’s intransigence left them with little choice because media coverage of cancelled operations and picket lines outside hospitals served his purpose. That is shameful. Now we are at an end point, it should be understood that it is despite the approach adopted by Mr Hunt, not because of it. The priority for Ministers now must be to repair the damage the dispute has done to staff morale and begin the process of rebuilding the trust of the very people who keep our NHS running.
In the weeks and months ahead, the detail of the 21 Bills announced yesterday will emerge. It is to be hoped that, unlike last Session, we are not presented with skeleton or framework Bills which are not even fleshed out fully during consideration in both Houses but are left for Government to fill through secondary legislation at a later date. This is not an acceptable or even responsible manner in which to legislate. As my noble friend Lord Murphy suggested, in perhaps the most perceptive speech of what has been a debate of genuine quality, the Government need to give more thought to the implications and practicalities of proposals that they bring forward. I echo that plea. Will Ministers heed it? We shall see.
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, the gracious Speech is, of course, the second in this Parliament. We have already made good progress in many areas of policy though, at the macro level, it must be acknowledged that the EU referendum—which several noble Lords mentioned—dominates political attention. Matters will not return to normal until it is out of the way.
Today’s debate has been a bit of a marathon, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, hinted in his summing up. It has also been very wide-ranging on many points, some of which the Government will want to respond to on other days during this debate. But it has underlined the vast expertise of this House. As a business and culture Minister, I have hugely enjoyed the chance to go deeper into areas where I do not have responsibilities but which are vital to this country, such as health and education. To give one example of the wide-ranging nature of this debate, I always enjoy the challenging comments of my noble friend Lord Hodgson—which very often are on the subject of the British pub. Today he made a very thoughtful contribution on how people form opinions and how that is changing, and on the implications of population growth.
I did not entirely agree on the issue of automation. I think that driverless cars and so on provide an opportunity for the UK, and they are in our plans for the next Session. Once changing relative wages and new jobs are taken into account, there is little evidence for the reduction in mid-level jobs. Since 2010, our economy has seen employment growth across nearly all the major occupational groups and the digital revolution has been an important driver.
As the Prime Minister said in another place yesterday, with this Government economic security always comes first. We build on strong foundations. The deficit has been cut by almost two-thirds as a share of GDP; the highest employment rate on record was announced this week; and our long-term economic plan means our economy is over 13% bigger than at the start of 2010. We have 900,000 more businesses and 764,000 fewer workless households, and poverty is at its lowest rate in three decades.
In response to the rather grudging comment by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, on the Queen’s Speech, I believe that it sets out a clear programme of reform using the strength of our economy to deliver security for working people and to increase life chances for the most disadvantaged, strengthening national security while living within our means.
I must endorse the comment by my noble friend Lord Suri about our gracious Queen. I was very glad, as he was, to see the proposals for prisons. This is an area that will be discussed on another day but it was one on which I worked when I was at Downing Street. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made some very good points about prison education.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, raised concerns about investment in the north and in the Midlands. For too long, the economy of the north has underperformed compared to the UK average. I speak as a business Minister who enjoys visiting the north. In recent times I have visited manufacturers in Darlington, Catapults and a video games business in Newcastle—and, of course, Durham cathedral, which is a jewel in a UK treasure trove of beautiful cathedrals. The Government are committed to the northern powerhouse. We will spend £150 billion on health, £45 billion on schools and £13 billion on transport across the northern powerhouse over this Parliament. This will be coupled with the Government’s investment in the Midlands Engine, which includes a £250 million Midlands Engine investment fund, and £5 million to Midlands Connect to take forward the new regional transport strategy.
The noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, said that we needed to step up to the challenge of industrial policy. The long-term approach upon which our industrial strategy was formed will continue. It means focusing on policies which boost productivity. It means our 3 million target for apprentices, which I reassure my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft has not been abandoned. It means the promotion of competitiveness and creating long-term investment. This is crucial for the stability and strengthening of our economy, as is enhanced competition and, of course, taking advantage of the opportunity of the digital revolution. I will focus on those areas and then turn to education, welfare and health, including mental health.
Competition is the lifeblood of a healthy economy. Strong competition in markets generates greater choice, lower prices and better-quality goods and services for consumers. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, and the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for graciously welcoming the markets Bill and look forward to working with them on its important provisions. The Government believe that consumers should have quick access to their data and reliable, transparent price comparison websites. The Bill would encourage quicker and easier switching of energy suppliers and other providers in regulated sectors. We want to simplify the whole process of competition investigation to reduce business burdens and improve consumer choice. The Bill will ensure that the CMA has the right and proportionate tools to do its job.
We have committed to a business impact target to reduce regulatory burdens by at least £10 billion. We have already taken measures to deliver more than £300 million in annual savings to hundreds of thousands of small businesses through changes to audit rules, and 800,000 self-employed people no longer have to comply with burdensome health and safety regulations.
The UK’s system of independent economic regulation is a great asset for the economy and supports investment in UK infrastructure. This Bill will make the way they operate more straightforward for investors, consumers and businesses and will maintain focus on the core task of economic regulation.
The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, raised concerns about productivity. Last July, the Government published Fixing the Foundations, which sets out the Government’s plan to tackle the UK’s productivity gap—this long-term gap that we must do something about—and this Queen’s Speech takes that forward.
I am also very glad to be able to tell the noble Lord that I sit next to Estonia in the Competitiveness Council, and I have already met Estonia’s President to discuss the digital single market. We will be working on a trio of presidencies—the UK, Estonia and Bulgaria—to advance the single market and the digital single market, using the influence we hope to have during the EU presidency from 1 July 2017.
We are taking several steps to address late payment, as the noble Lord knows only too well. We are setting up the Small Business Commissioner. There will be new transparency reporting requirements regarding payment performance for larger companies and we are extending representative bodies’ powers to challenge grossly unfair contract terms related to the scourge of late payment, which we have discussed on many occasions. In a related area, I thank my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft for her suggestion that larger exporters should help smaller exporters to move forward.
My noble friend Lord Naseby raised concerns about retailers having to wait for changes to rates. The Government will switch the indexation from RPI as the main measure of inflation to CPI in 2020. We believe that this strikes the right balance between fiscal consolidation, certainty for local authorities and support for business. It is in the pipeline. The Government will also seek to protect the high street from unfair competition from those retailers from beyond the EU selling over the internet and evading VAT.
We made a manifesto commitment to make the UK the best place in Europe to innovate, patent new ideas and set up and expand a business. A clear and fair intellectual property framework is crucial to achieving this. Our work now embraces education, regulatory change and enforcement to reduce piracy and IP theft. I was so glad to hear from the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson, Lord Watson and Lord Clement-Jones, regarding their support for this area. The digital economy Bill will not contain a backstop power to regulate platforms as, later this month, we expect an indication of where the EU is going with its own work in this area. Nor will the Bill contain measures specifically on streaming, although the changes to criminal penalties on online copyright infringement will obviously cross over and help with regulating that activity.
I was asked by one noble Lord whether I would support a pan-EU IP enforcement agency—he has seen our enforcement strategy and I thank him for quoting it. I believe that close work across Europe is absolutely vital in tackling IP infringement. We are doing a lot with a number of agencies and we will do more.
I am obviously delighted that today, we have brought forward the law commission Bill and that we have been able to do something about our frustration with the misalignment in criminal penalties. In the digital economy Bill, there will be a maximum 10-year prison sentence for online crime to equal that available for physical infringement. We are also allowing designers to mark their products with a web link for the first time.
The digital revolution is bringing economic and social change at a faster pace than we have ever seen before. To keep the UK at the front of the pack, we need a legal framework that supports connectivity for consumers, business and government and encourages consumer engagement. It can also help to support and fire up our creative industries, which the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, described with such eloquence, as did my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft, and—in a different industry—the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, rightly talked about telemobile and its potential use in healthcare.
By the end of the year, 95% of UK premises will have a superfast broadband connection; the digital economy Bill will give the final 5% a legal right to be connected on request, so no one will be left behind. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, asked whether 10 mbps was enough—we will keep this under review. It will enable households to stream films in HD, watch catch-up TV, make a video call and browse online at the same time. Ofcom has advised that it is enough for a typical household today. However, the Bill will enable the Government to increase the minimum speed to meet future needs.
The noble Baroness, Lady Burt, asked about fibre. Fibre is obviously only one measure of connectivity, but the UK has the highest level of superfast coverage among EU countries. As of June 2015, more than a third—36%—of UK fixed broadband connections had speeds of 30 mbps or more, a much higher proportion than in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The Bill will enable investment in fibre and other technologies through the reform of the Electronic Communications Code and planning reform. It will aid consumers in choosing the right products for their needs. The noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, seems to have rather a lot of problems with his broadband. I suppose that one good bit of news is that we will require providers to pay automatic compensation, so there will be a new incentive to maintain reliable, high-quality services. I am sure that we will discuss these provisions during the passage of the Bill.
I am passionate about enabling the digital revolution to provide improvements in this country. We are part of it in this country and the Bill will enable us to use government data to deliver better public services.
The UK must also do what we can to prevent any further cultural destruction. Our cultural protection Bill will make it clear that the UK views attacks on cultural property as unacceptable and will establish us as world leaders in the field of cultural protection. I particularly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, along with many other noble Lords, who have given such strong support to the Bill and got it into this House today.
Today it has become clear yet again that the future of the BBC is a subject about which this House cares deeply. I have a long list of those who have spoken on that subject, starting with my noble friend Lord Fowler; we also heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady King of Bow, Lady Bonham-Carter and Lady Benjamin, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson, Lord Cashman, Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, Lord Clement-Jones, Lord Foster, Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Addington. I apologise to anyone I have failed to mention. This will not be the first or last debate on the BBC.
We care deeply about the BBC and, as I set out last week, the Government believe that the BBC is one of our country’s greatest institutions. We have listened carefully to the views of 190,000 members of the public and those put forward by experts, organisations and independent reviews. As a consequence, the Government have set out a new framework. Under this framework, the BBC will focus on providing high-quality, distinctive content which informs, educates and entertains while continuing to serve all audiences.
A number of noble Lords questioned what a distinctive BBC would look like. The BBC is already distinctive in many ways, but the noble Lord, Lord Hall, director-general of BBC, has said that he wants to see,
“a BBC that is more distinctive than ever – and clearly distinguishable from the market”.
The Government support this and want to free up the BBC’s outstanding creative talent to take creative risks and push the boundaries, making sure that its output as a whole is distinctive from the market. Audiences can only gain from this, by getting more choice and outstanding creative programming. Given all that the noble Baroness, Lady King of Bow, said, I should add that diversity is also a key priority.
There has been concern about the role of Ofcom in setting the regulatory framework for the BBC’s distinctiveness record. Ofcom has a strong track record in media regulation, which has resulted in a diverse and creative media sector, and I look forward to further debate about the detail of that in the summer.
The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, also brought up children’s programming, an issue that is close to the hearts of parents across the UK. Children’s programming is a vital public service genre, which Ofcom has recently identified as being in decline. The Government have proposed a small contestable fund for public service content. The proposal is for a small-scale pilot for two or three years. The numbers are small relative to the £4 billion spent on the BBC. The specific detail about how it operates is important, which is why the Government will be consulting over the coming months on the most appropriate body to administer this fund and on the criteria for the scheme.
A further area noble Lords have drawn to our attention is the BBC’s vital international role. The Government believe that this is incredibly important, which is why the White Paper sets out protection for World Service funding. I do not think there were any subtleties in the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, but obviously I will take a look at it. The BBC will also have enhanced editorial and financial independence, while being much more effective and accountable through stronger governance and regulation.
Noble Lords raised the important issue of appointments. We are strengthening the independence of the BBC by giving it a powerful new unitary board, with the BBC able to appoint the majority of board members, unlike the BBC Trust or the governors, which were 100% public appointments. Whether made by public appointment or by the BBC board, all appointments will be expected to follow public appointment best practice, including having independent members on selection panels; those appointments made by the Government will follow the OCPA code; and the BBC will need to follow best practice in seeking public appointments, for those appointments it makes. Peter Riddell, Commissioner for Public Appointments, has welcomed this approach and these principles.
The issue of the health check was also raised today. Given the speed of change within the sector and the fundamental reform of the governance and regulatory structures that this charter will make, it would not be appropriate to wait for over a decade to review how the reforms are bedding in and whether any changes at all are needed. The charter will therefore make provision for a review to provide a health check, focusing on the governance and regulatory reforms at mid-term. The review will take into account the relevant findings and the most recent review of BBC performance that Ofcom will have published. There will also be greater scrutiny of the BBC’s efficiency record and stronger transparency requirements.
None of the heated speculation about the fate of the BBC has materialised. Instead, these reforms will mean the BBC can continue to thrive, deliver for audiences and act as an engine for growth. The Government intend to publish a draft charter in the summer, and I look forward to ample opportunities for further informed discussion and debate about the future of the BBC following publication. It is very clear that this House will make a valuable contribution to that debate.
My noble friend Lord Fowler and the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, asked about Channel 4. The Government are looking at a broad range of options to ensure that Channel 4 has a strong and secure future in what is a fast-changing and challenging broadcasting environment. No decisions have been taken, and the Secretary of State said last week that the Government hope to provide an update as soon as possible.
I turn to education. In our manifesto, we committed to ensuring that higher education provides the best possible value for money to students. We said we would introduce a new framework to recognise universities offering the highest teaching quality and to provide students with more data to help them choose the course that is right for them. We also committed to ensuring we are investing strategically in our research base, following the recommendations of Sir Paul Nurse’s review. We will be doing all this through the Higher Education and Research Bill, while respecting institutional autonomy and academic freedom. The White Paper setting out our reforms has been welcomed by business groups, with the CBI commenting that,
“it’s good that the White Paper proposals have taken on board the business view—building on and expanding the diversity of our higher education provision, which already is a brilliant asset”.
We committed to a teaching excellence framework in our manifesto, which will drive up the standard of teaching. It will put clear, understandable information about outcomes in the hands of students so they know where teaching is best and what benefits they can expect to gain from their course. We will make it quicker and easier for new high-quality providers such as the New College of the Humanities or BPP to enter the market and award their own degrees, promoting a diverse and innovative higher education sector where students have more choice. To respond to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 made amendments to allow the linking of education data to labour market data, which will enable us to improve the robustness and coverage of progression following the student journey.
The UK research base is the most productive in the G7. Through our Bill, we will maximise value from our investment of over £6 billion a year in research and innovation. We will deliver on Sir Paul Nurse’s recommendations to establish a single, strategic funding body which will allow the UK to lead the world in multidisciplinary research. Royal charters are not the most appropriate structure in the current research environment, where we are merging multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary funding, which is coming to the fore. However, we believe that it is important to retain the international prestige and standing that the research councils have, which is why they will operate with delegated autonomy and authority as part of UK research and innovation. I hope that that will be some comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Rees, whose views I was very pleased to consider.
Your Lordships have heard that we will bring a wide-ranging education Bill to provide education for all in a school-led system. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, mentioned the importance of collaboration in education, which is central to our academy reforms. Our aim is that all schools will be academies, and funded fairly, although as my noble friend Lord Nash said in opening, we have removed the blanket power to convert schools. I hope this is welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths.
Excellence that comes with more teacher freedom will spread to every community. We have found that collaborative multi-academy trusts both do better and make schools feel better supported. Most of these operate in local clusters very well connected to their communities.
I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ely for his remarks about the importance of strong schools supporting weaker schools. We plan to support rural schools through the new national funding formula, and agree totally with his remarks about the importance of them collaborating together and with his comments about the vital importance of religious literacy. It is well known how good Church schools are at community cohesion. The SACREs continue to play an important role in supporting schools to teach high-quality RE. Local authorities have a statutory duty to support these activities and we do not have any plans to remove the duty.
Our work on academies will complement our programme to raise the quality of teachers, school leadership and governing bodies. I pay tribute to the establishment of the foundation for educational leadership mentioned by the right reverend Prelate.
I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, that the academy programme is against devolution. Devolution is at its heart a school-led system, devolving powers to our great teachers and leaders. We will consult in the coming months on the definitions and thresholds relating to underperforming local authorities so that there is agreement on where the need for action is clear.
The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said that the school admissions procedures should be easy to understand. The White Paper stated clearly that that is our priority. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, asked about our plans on technical education. We are currently planning reforms that will ensure high-quality offers to young people that are simple and genuinely owned, understood and valued by employers. To deliver these reforms, the Government are working closely with an independent panel led by the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury. We will publish the report and response shortly.
It has been an important debate on education; my noble friend Lord Nash will benefit from your Lordships’ comments. The truth is that we lag internationally on education measures. These changes will help to close the major productivity gap between our economy and other economies.
Improved education links into our forthcoming life chances strategy. This will set out our new approach to tackling poverty and transforming the life chances of the most disadvantaged children and families. I believe that everyone should be able to realise their full potential.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham talked about the Joseph Rowntree work. The Government are committed to tackling inequality. The report does not make enough of the national living wage, the higher personal allowance or the extension of free childcare to 30 hours. Our life chances strategy will tackle poverty and disadvantage.
The Children and Social Work Bill is a key part of the Government’s ambition to make fundamental changes to the children’s social care system. The Prime Minister has made his personal commitment clear: he is determined to improve the life chances of some of the most vulnerable children. The Bill will make sure that the state meets its obligations as corporate parent—a long-standing concept—to support those in its care. It will introduce a care leavers covenant to support those making the transition to adulthood; improve decisions about adoption and long-term care, and promote the educational achievement of children who have been adopted. It will also promote professional standards and public confidence in the vital profession of social work.
The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about the mental health of children in care. We are investing £1.4 billion into children’s mental health services over the next five years. We recognise that children in care can be particularly at risk of mental health issues. Local areas are required to factor this into their plans. My noble friend Lord Nash would be delighted to meet with the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, to discuss her concerns about music. I welcome the support of the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, in this area; forthcoming debates in this House will enable noble Lords to see and test the education and health departments’ careful thinking on implementation.
The noble Lords, Lord Cashman and Lord Freyberg, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, all raised the question of arts, drama and the EBacc. I have an excellent response, and I think there might be merit in my writing to the noble Lords, setting out some of the detail on this very important subject, in which obviously, as the Intellectual Property Minister, I am extremely interested.
It is a pleasure to debate the vital issue of health and to continue to work towards a seven-day NHS in tune with the needs of Britain today. Our NHS is now treating more patients than ever before. Our Government are investing £10 billion to fund the NHS’s plan up to 2020 to transform its services—more than the sum that was asked for. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that GPs do a brilliant job. Of course, compared to 2010 there are almost 1,300 more GPs working and training in the NHS. To support implementation of the forward view, which was a concern of the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, by 2020-21 the Government will increase funding for the NHS, as I have already said.
We will bring forward a Bill that will enable us to meet our manifesto commitment to recover up to £500 million from overseas visitors and migrants who use the NHS by the middle of this Parliament. The Government intend to publish their response to the recent public consultation on the extension of charging by this summer.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, talked about childhood obesity, and we will launch our strategy in the summer. It will look at everything that contributes to a child becoming overweight and obese. Of course, the soft drinks changes announced by the Chancellor were but one step in making important progress.
The noble Lord, Lord Foster, asked about FOBTs. The Government understand concerns about this problem. We are continuing to monitor the matter. The last review of the stakes and prizes of gaming was in 2013; we will set out our views on the next one as soon as we can.
This debate has highlighted the many steps that this Government have taken to strengthen business, accelerate digital change, enhance the life chances of our citizens and further improve our schools and universities. I thank all noble Lords for their contribution to the debate. Their valued expertise will be required in supporting a number of challenging ambitions set out by the Government and—I emphasise this point—in scrutinising a number of important Bills. I look forward to many more discussions inside and outside the House. This is a one-nation agenda from a Government who empower people through competition and choice and who put the vulnerable first.