Covid-19: UK-wide Discussions

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True [V]]

My Lords, I cannot add to what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health said, but I can underline one’s concern for every resident of care homes. As my right honourable friend said, that testing is available. He announced yesterday evening that the testing will be extended to a wider range of care homes, not only those for the elderly.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab) [V]]

Following on from my noble friend Lady Andrews’s question, the Minister might take on board that there are some definite communication difficulties from the centre to Wales. What specifically will the Government do to ensure that people living on the long border between England and Wales understand and abide by the different lockdown rules?

[Lord True [V]]

My Lords, regardless of where a person lives, if they are in Wales, they are subject to Welsh rules, and vice versa if they are in England. That is a clear position and one that I reiterate.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

It is of course a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I did not agree with very much of what he said, but I was trying to imagine him out on the streets, which gave me pause for thought.

Being No. 54 of 190 speakers, there is a possibility that I have might say something that has not been said before. We have heard some wonderful speeches about the defects and gaps in the Bill, and I bow in deference and gratitude to the recommendations of the Constitution Committee, whose report will help us enormously in the next stages of the Bill. But as we all know, only when legislation is applied to real-life issues—the consequences for people, their jobs, families and well-being—will we identify the gaps and unintended consequences. In many ways, like my noble friend Lady Drake, I want to talk about people’s issues. However, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, is quite wrong when he says that the Northern Ireland border issue is being exaggerated. My family in Cavan do not agree with him at all. Why would we put in jeopardy the Good Friday agreement?

As the Labour health spokesperson, I will address my remarks to the realities of Brexit for our NHS and research. Like many noble Lords, I too have received briefings from many different sectors and many say the same thing—that their sector needs to remain within European Union regulatory regimes to thrive, and they plead for clarity and certainty about what will happen. That plea echoed around this Chamber in speech after speech today. I am grateful to Cancer Research UK and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry for their work on clinical trials regulation.

The UK has been heavily involved in developing the existing regime, which will harmonise the assessment and supervision process for clinical trials via a central European Union portal and database, currently being set up by the European Medicines Agency. In 2019, the new regime kicks in and this presents a problem of great uncertainty. This means that the clinical trials regulation, the CTR, will not automatically be captured by this Bill. It is not clear whether the UK Government will look to align with the regulation or seek access to the EU portal and database, and in what timescale. As a priority, the Government should immediately provide greater clarity on plans to ensure UK alignment with the EU clinical trials regulation. What specifically will be the mechanism for UK access to the portal and database?

I cannot think of a more potent issue than alignment with the clinical trials regulation when discussing access to innovation and new medicines. Cures for rare and childhood cancers, for example, and rapid UK access to them are at stake. Similarly with drug regulation, when will the Government offer certainty that the UK will have agreement with the EU to ensure we can continue to take part in the EMA’s centralised procedure for drug licensing? Any future drug-licensing system must not exacerbate delays in access to the most innovative treatments for patients in the UK and across the EU. Again, certainty is needed.

Equally, people are at the heart of this Bill—people who work in our health service, both the scientists and the medical staff, who move across the European Union with ease at present. Can we be confident that the Home Office will design a future immigration system that enables us to attract, recruit and retain global scientific talent at all professional levels, regardless of their nationality, and the nursing and other medical staff who enable our NHS to function?

And what about the patients? I know and welcome the good intention of the Government to continue some version of the European Health Insurance Card, which symbolises the many benefits that the European Union brings to all its citizens. However, even my inexpert reading of the Bill suggests that this will be an extremely difficult or impossible thing to obtain. As one expert said in his evidence to the House of Lords European Union Select Committee:

“European governments did not adopt mechanisms to allow their citizens to access healthcare elsewhere for reasons of altruism. The welfare of a drunken participant in a stag party in Prague or Krakow never entered their thinking. Instead, their goal was to support one of the European Union’s four fundamental freedoms, the freedom of movement of people. Quite simply, a single European labour market would be impossible if those moving for employment, either permanently, or … on a daily basis, could not be assured that they would be looked after if they became ill”.


The same applies to those who live in Europe. This flies in the face of this Bill and the Government’s stated intentions, and it leads me to my last point—honesty.

When will the Government be honest with the people of the UK about what they will lose post Brexit in their access to healthcare if they travel and work in Europe, and indeed in many other matters revealed today in the leaked impact report? Almost every sector of the British economy included in the analysis would be negatively impacted in all the scenarios, with chemicals, clothing, manufacturing, food and drink, cars and retail the hardest hit. Just when will the Government come clean about how this will affect people and their families?

Clinical Pharmacologists

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I first congratulate my noble friend on securing this short but very important debate. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, I also went to Wikipedia as well as the British Pharmacological Society. I do not think it is an academic area at all. It is a vibrant area of biomedical science that studies drug action: how medicines and other drugs work and how they are processed by the body. That affects all of us in one way or another, whether it is about taking paracetamol, the effects of alcohol and caffeine consumption, the inadvertent exposure to poisons and environmental pollutions or many other aspects of modern life, such as drug addiction and abuse and the abuse of drugs in sport.

Clinical pharmacology has added focus to the application of pharmacological principles and methodology in the clinical setting, including patient care and outcomes. It is crucial for the discovery of new medicines to help fight diseases such as cancer, depression, heart disease and infectious diseases. It is essential for improving the effectiveness and reducing the unwanted side-effects of medicines and understanding why individuals—such as women—differ in the way they respond to certain drugs. The response of children to drugs is a growing field of examination for the Pharmacological Society.

As a scientific discipline, pharmacology dates back to classical Greece and, in our country, to the Middle Ages and it lies at the heart of biomedical science. As the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, has explained, pharmacologists work closely with a wide variety of other disciplines. Their knowledge and understanding improves the lives of millions of people across the world by providing vital answers at every stage of the discovery, testing and clinical use of new medicines. This is a unique contribution to today’s science and tomorrow’s medicines, in universities, government agencies, the health service and the pharmaceutical and bioscience industries.

The most recent example was an announcement made last week when Professor David Webb, president of the British Pharmacological Society and professor of therapeutics and clinical pharmacology in Edinburgh, said of the study of statins:

“In recent years, those of us who manage the large number of patients at excess risk of heart disease and strokes have been fighting an uphill battle to persuade them to take statins, a class of medicines that have been repeatedly shown to save lives”.

He went on to say:

“This comprehensive review, by a broad group of leading international academics, of robust and unbiased evidence from randomised controlled trials and systematic reviews, confirms that statins are both effective and cost effective”.

We need pharmacologists to thrive and we need their futures to be assured—the whole of the NHS needs them. As my noble friend said, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that every pound invested in clinical pharmacologists could save £5 through more efficient use of medicines and fewer adverse drug reactions. This research, which is pending publication, has been commissioned by the British Pharmacological Society, and is in the very helpful briefing which it provided. Savings could be on a significant scale. Medicines spending accounts for around 10% of the overall NHS budget and now costs in the region of £16 billion, up from £14.3 billion since 2013. The Department of Health has estimated that £300 million is lost every year due to medicine wastage, at least half of which is avoidable, so savings could be felt across the NHS.

Surely those savings should at least justify a strategy to make sure there are enough clinicians and consultants and a better career pathway in this very important discipline. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, asked a pertinent question: why is there a problem? I think the answer is that, as with so many specialist areas in the NHS, no one has provided a strategy and picked it up and run with it. My noble friend has outlined the need for workforce planning. I hope the Minister will reassure the House that the Government are taking these concerns very seriously indeed and will bring forward solutions for us to consider. I very much look forward to her remarks.

Electoral Conduct

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, on putting down this Question for debate and thank those Members of the House who have taken part in the inquiry and have spoken today.

As we have all agreed, the report that they have produced is an excellent document, and its recommendations give all political parties and the Government issues to reflect on. The need to address the recommendations and conclusions of the inquiry is as urgent as other noble Lords have said, as we are coming up to the general election. As my honourable friend Sharon Hodgson said in the debate in May in the Commons, we support the report’s recommendations.

As noble Lords have said, the inquiry was chaired by my honourable friend Natascha Engel. In addition to the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, it also included my noble friend Lord Beecham among its members. I was very struck, as were other noble Lords, by some of the things that are in the report. Natascha Engel said in that debate:

“Our inquiry found that people in some areas were not putting their names forward as candidates out of fear for their lives, which happened across the board. Whether the tensions were religious, ethnic or based on their sexuality or gender, we found that people who would have been good candidates for elected office at any level were not putting their names forward”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 97WH.]

I think that we would agree that this is unacceptable in a modern UK and a modern, mature democracy.

We can all cite, as did the noble Lord, Lord Rennard—although I notice that he cited only Labour cases—examples of malpractice.

[Lord Rennard]

I referred also to the Liberal campaigns in the Brecon and Radnor by-election and in Tower Hamlets. I was not being one-sided. I cited examples of bad practice by both my party and the noble Baroness’s.

[Baroness Thornton]

I accept that rebuke, although I have to say that the noble Lord went into some detail.

I remember being Harriet Harman’s “minder”—as they are called these days—during a by-election in 1982. She was pregnant with her first child, and the Liberal candidate, who is now a Member of your Lordships’ House, used the fact that she was pregnant all the way through the campaign as an argument for her not being fit to be an MP. As we all know, Simon Hughes has apologised for the campaign that was mounted against Peter Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner, during the by-election in Bermondsey. We all have issues that need to be addressed. Even today, none of us can cease to be vigilant as party politicians to ensure that every single word that we utter and every single word that is printed in our name is appropriate.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, that, as far as I can tell—and it was certainly what I was taught as a Labour activist and someone who has run lots of elections—that you have the responsibility to make sure that every single word that is published and every single leaflet that is put out in the name of your party is proper and correct, and does not contravene any rules. That is difficult, and people will make mistakes, but there is no doubt where the responsibility for those things lies. It is true that we have a proud history in the UK of fair and free elections with proportionate regulation, and broad agreement that discrimination and racism have no place in society in general, and certainly not in our democratic processes. However, as we all have agreed, we know that racist, homophobic and other discrimination takes place during election campaigns.

The committee produced a series of recommendations and we give our full support to those, tackling, as they do, discrimination as it affects our democratic process. Like other noble Lords, I am puzzled as to why the Equality and Human Rights Commission has to be urged in the way it is being in this report—and by noble Lords—to produce a plan for engaging with electoral conduct, which is clearly an excellent idea. It would pick up on the work carried out by the former CRE. This should be done as a matter of course. It makes sense that the EHRC, the Electoral Commission and the police should work together to make sure that the guidance produced for our elections and election procedures is clear; makes it easy for people who are running elections, particularly in local elections where it is being done by volunteers; makes it clear what our responsibilities are; but also tells everyone how to deal with issues of redress.

Since the political parties’ annual briefing from ACPO and the Electoral Commission focusing on voter fraud takes place, the report is right in asking: why not expand that sort of event to include discrimination? I think the Electoral Commission trialling an online briefing for candidates seems an excellent idea and, where possible, should be integrated into the work political parties are undertaking with their candidates. However, as the report rightly points out, it is new parties, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, mentioned, and independent candidates, who are the ones who may not know their responsibilities and what they should or should not say. Of course, parties from a racist background are the ones we need to be particularly wary of and which need to be watched most carefully.

All police forces appoint a single point of contact for matters concerning electoral fraud. This has proved invaluable. Expanding that role and appointing a second officer may be one way to deal with these issues. One of the other issues not referred to in quite the same way in the debate is the code for parties to work within concerning non-broadcast media. While it is the case that generally parties and candidates have behaved responsibly, surely there will be those who have pushed the boundaries. What does the Minister think should happen in those cases?

I turn to new media. We face an election where social media and online campaigning will be present in a way that it never previously has been in our general elections. I remember a few years ago being targeted by the online discussion in our local newspaper in Bradford—I think it was by UKIP, to be honest—in a vile and horrible way. The problem was that the newspaper was not mediating the online discussion properly. When eventually it was pointed out to the editor that they had a responsibility not to allow people to be vilified in this fashion on the website of their newspaper, they took action. Multiply that by hundreds and hundreds of other incidents and I think all noble Lords would agree that we potentially have some very serious problems.

It will take concentrated and co-ordinated action to deal with such issues. I believe the Government have a responsibility to make sure that those things are pulled together. Every single political party has a responsibility, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, for the behaviour of its own candidates. Certainly in the Labour Party we take this extremely seriously: we have no hesitation in referring people to our disciplinary committee. We carry out the appropriate punishments, including expulsion from the party, and occasionally involve the police. We have no doubt that those are our responsibilities as a political party, but also that we all need to work together to ensure that our free and fair elections continue to be so.

Deregulation Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendments and I concur with the comments of my noble friends Lord Rooker, Lord Rosser and Lord Grantchester. I would like the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, when he responds, to clarify how the clause applies to the Legal Services Board, which came into force in 2009. Its overriding mandate is to ensure that regulation in the legal services sector is carried out in the public interest and that the interests of consumers are placed at the heart of the system. It oversees 10 separate bodies, the approved regulators which directly regulate practising lawyers.

The board oversees the organisation that handles consumer complaints about lawyers, the Office for Legal Complaints. It works to eight regulatory objectives, which are: protecting and promoting the public interest; supporting the constitutional principle of the rule of law; improving access to justice; protecting and promoting the interests of consumers; promoting competition in the provision of services in the legal sector; encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession; increasing public understanding of citizens’ legal rights and duties; and promoting and maintaining adherence to the professional principles of independence and integrity, proper standards of work, observing the best interests of the client, complying with the duty to the court and maintaining client confidentiality. Will the Minister confirm that, whatever comes out of this, the Government do not see that this new duty in any way overrides the regulatory objectives to which I referred, that nothing would change in that respect, and that all that it would do is re-emphasise competition in the provision of service in the legal sector?

We are talking about growth, but I hope that at the end of all this we are not just creating more work for lawyers. As other noble Lords have said, it is certainly confusing, and that cannot be the Government’s intention. I hope that the Minister, if he cannot accept my noble friend’s amendment, will respond very carefully to the points raised. These are serious matters, and it cannot be the Government’s intention to create more work for lawyers and more expense for business.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. My noble friend Lord Hunt cannot be with us this afternoon, so I shall expand on the issues around the CQC which he raised in Grand Committee last time. He asked for an explanation of why the CQC would not respond to a request that sought its views on this matter. We asked it for its views on the clause and were informed by the Department of Health that it had told that CQC that it was not appropriate for it to respond to our inquiry. Indeed, my noble friend forwarded to me a copy of the letter that he received from the department as a result of his exchange with the noble Earl, Lord Howe. The letter says:

“CQC sought views from the Department of Health and Cabinet Office before responding to the request. The CQC is a non-departmental public body, and is part of the Government landscape”—

whatever that means. It goes on,

“As such, it was not considered appropriate for the organisation to give its views to the Opposition on a piece of legislation. This is in line with the civil service code. I understand that the CQC replied to confirm it would not be appropriate for them to comment and suggested that the Office of the Leader of the Opposition contact the Department directly should there be any further queries”.

So we might take that one up anyway.

This letter raises more questions and concerns than it answers. Given that today marks the publication of guidance for NHS organisations on the duty of candour and the fit and proper persons requirement, it seems rather ironic that a press release from the CQC says:

“One week to go before new NHS regulations to improve openness and transparency”.

Well, yes.

I shall ask the Minister for some further points of clarification in this context. If the CQC cannot answer the questions directly that we want to put, I would like to know what we should do. These are the questions that we think that it would be legitimate to ask. I quote from the CQC’s website on the principles of that body. It says:

“Throughout everything we do, we always … put people who use services at the heart of our work … have an open and accessible culture … are independent, rigorous, fair and consistent … work in partnership across the health and social care system … are committed to being a high-performing organisation … promote equality, diversity and human rights”.

As those of us who were involved in the legislation two or three years ago know, the CQC is accountable to the public, Parliament and the Secretary of State for Health for the regulation of most of England’s healthcare provision, including hospitals, both NHS and private, GPs, dentists, care homes and other institutions. It does a very important job. Surely we have to be confident of the CQC’s independence and that it will have only patients’ interests in mind in all the work that it does. How will this work alongside the duty to consider economic growth? I really do not expect to hear soothing sounds from the Minister about this because the House needs to know that this has been tested in some way and that questions have been asked and hypothetical cases have been put, such as a care home whose business interests are at risk because of the work of the CQC, with a loss of jobs, meaning that economic growth is therefore in jeopardy. Those are totally legitimate questions to put about the duty being imposed on the CQC. Those are the unintended consequences that my noble friend referred to in his opening remarks. We need to know whether the CQC would find itself in a policy clash situation. Does the Minister accept that any danger that the economic growth regulation might have a chilling effect is actually disastrous when talking about the country’s foremost health regulator? It is completely legitimate that the Committee should want to know the answers to these questions before the CQC is included in this legislation.

I was not at all comforted by reading the draft guidance. Point 5 on page 7 says:

“The impact that regulators can have on sector-level economic growth will depend on the context and/or sector(s) within which they operate. In order to understand sector level impacts, where possible regulators should consider how their actions impact on indicators such as consumer confidence and fair competition”.

In the context of the health service, where competition is being put at the heart of service delivery by the Government, that seems to be an extremely important point and raises questions about the problems that the CQC might face. We know that the health service—which we face having to save yet again after the general election—is already a lawyers’ playground. How much more of a lawyer’s playground will it be if these issues are not resolved?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Writing common sense into law is one of the most difficult things that we all spend our time on, however.

[Baroness Thornton]

I was not particularly surprised at the Minister’s response on the CQC. Given that we know that the CQC cannot answer the Opposition’s questions about this, why would we be surprised to hear that the CQC said that it is fine? The Department of Health has said that it has to say that it is fine. We now know that it is being told what to do by the department, which is worrying. As for the questions I asked, which are those that need to be asked in order to test this legislation, the Minister cannot tell me that those questions have been asked and what the answers were, and we therefore need to pursue that further.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are all very conscious that we are talking about a range of regulatory bodies which, as has already been said, have different relationships with Governments. Some are entirely independent, some are agencies of departments, and that is part of the universe with which we need to deal. I have already offered to discuss this between Committee and Report and I recognise, as I have already said, the concerns which have been expressed in this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

Of course it is not mentioned in the Bill. Only one of the regulators is in fact part of an international scrutiny and accreditation process. The longer the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, stayed in office and had responsibility, the more a stickler he became for the rules. I am saying that this is an exception. I have already heard one argument that this would open the floodgates, but this is an exception, and a very important one. My amendment makes it very clear that it may be the only organisation mentioned in the Bill, but I assure the Committee that it is the only organisation where a great deal of work was done to get its A status accreditation with the UN. That A status accreditation is very important for the status of the organisation.

The letter from BIS is very welcome and very timely. I urge the Minister to consider accepting the amendment, although it concerns the exception that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, referred to. Indeed, it is almost the kind of declaration that I want: that we are determined to declare beyond peradventure that this important international body, with its A status in the UN, is not part of this domestic legislation. That would most certainly remove any unintended consequences. I fully accept from conversations with my noble friend that these are unintended consequences, but those who are involved in this area believe that it is a real threat and could cause real damage, and I believe that my amendment is a very simple, quick, clean way of handling the situation. I beg to move.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I have put my name to this amendment for the obvious reasons outlined by the noble Lord, Lord McNally. I very gently say to the noble Lord that it was my Government who set up the EHRC. In fact, the threats to it have come from his Government from time to time, the first time being in 2010. The review of the EHRC as an A status body is next year. The noble Lord is completely right to say that its inclusion in the list of regulators which have to have regard to economic growth in their regulatory functions would jeopardise its independence. There is no doubt about that.

The United Nations International Coordinating Committee, which is responsible for the accreditation of human rights bodies, wrote to the Minister for Equalities. It said that independence from government is an essential element of an NHRI—a national human rights institution. In considering whether an NHRI is independent, the ICC looked at all the ways in which the NHRI is subject to control or direction. The Bill may not intend to affect the independence of the EHRC but attaching an additional duty which could be seen as competing with or limiting its existing duties or core functions would have a direct effect on its decision-making. Being subject to ministerial direction and the possibility of legal challenge to its work could have a detrimental effect on its ability to make decisions in relation to upholding human rights. These clauses, combined with the existing connections and accountabilities to the British Government, would raise questions about the compliance of the EHRC with the Paris principles. That is absolutely right.

I shall add only one other matter to this debate. There is another reason why you would not want to have the EHRC included in this list, which is not just to do with its international status as a unique body. Part of its reason for existence is to make businesses behave better and make people behave better towards each other. That is good for business and you would not want to jeopardise that.

I am pleased to support the amendment. I realise that the Government have a dilemma. Do they include the amendment in the Bill and therefore mention the body or do something in another way? Whatever they do, they need to remove the EHRC from that list.

Deregulation Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 6th November 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Thornton]

69B: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Schools: establishment as Industrial and Provident Societies
(1) The School Organisation (Requirements as to Foundations) (England) Regulations 2007 are amended as follows.
(2) At the end of Regulation 3(b) insert “or;
(c) A Co-operative Society as defined in the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for giving me time to get here from the Chamber, where we had an excellent three-hour debate on violence against women. I am now very pleased to join the deliberations in Committee.

Amendment 69B concerns co-operative schools. We believe that there is scope within the Deregulation Bill’s intention to,

“make provision for the reduction of burdens resulting from legislation for businesses or other organisations or for individuals”,

to correct two specific burdens on the development of co-operative schools and co-operative school trusts. Amendment 69B would insert a new clause to ensure that co-operative schools are able to establish an industrial provident society, should it be desirable, to bring them into line with other types of co-operative organisations.

The background to this is that the first Co-operative Trust school was established just over five years ago. Few would have anticipated the extent of their growth. There are now 700 co-operative trust schools, and that number is expected to increase to 1,000 by the end of 2015. More than a 250,000 pupils in England now attend co-operative schools. The values of these schools are drawn from the global Statement on the Co-operative Identity, which is recognised by the United Nations and forms the basis of co-operative law throughout the world. The co-operative values of self-help, self-responsibility, equality, equity and solidarity, together with the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others have been seen by the governing bodies to resonate powerfully within their schools, including with staff and pupils.

In fact, moving to a co-operative model provides a framework in which everybody with a stake in the school’s success—parents, teachers, support staff, local community organisations and pupils—have the opportunity to be involved in running it. There is a growing recognition that working co-operatively brings clarity, allows school leaders to concentrate more on the effective leadership of teaching and learning, and raises standards. The value of this kind of collaboration and partnership working between schools was recently highlighted by the Education Select Committee, which highlighted in its report the benefits that collaboration between schools brings, particularly where it is on the basis of mutual benefit.

Examples of these trusts can be seen in Cornwall, where more than 100 schools have become co-operatives and are part of 13 trusts. Most of these are geographically based clusters, enabling small village primary schools to be part of a learning community with a secondary school that most of their young people will move on to. In Leeds, a significant proportion of the city’s schools are already in co-operative trusts, and others are in consultation. The remarkable growth in co-operative schools has happened despite, not as a result of, the current Government’s policy. This demonstrates that the models developed under the pathfinder scheme programme following the 2006 Act under the previous Labour Administration are enormously attractive to schools.

The case for the changes proposed in the amendment was first made by my honourable friend Meg Munn MP within a 10-minute rule Bill, the Co-operative Schools Bill, in 2013. The proposals then formed part of an amendment tabled in Committee on this Bill in the Commons when it was debated on 27 February 2014. After the debate, my honourable friends on the Labour Front Bench withdrew their amendment on the basis that the Government had indicated that they were willing to work with the Co-operative Party to adopt the changes into the Bill as government amendments. My honourable friend Meg Munn, with the Co-operative Party and co-operative schools experts, then sought to work with the department over the next few months. While the then Secretary of State Michael Gove MP was personally supportive of the proposals, he indicated that the department lacked the expertise and resources to adopt the changes. I understand that in meetings, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, has, however, expressed very limited support for co-operative schools. Subsequent to the Government’s reshuffle, we were told that the department and new Ministers would not seek to adopt our proposed changes.

I raised this issue in a meeting with the Minister before we started discussing the Bill, and again at Second Reading. The Government need to explain their opposition to these proposals because they are in line with government policies, first, on co-operatives and mutuals; secondly, on schools and their freedom to operate; and, thirdly, on deregulation and creating fair circumstances in which organisations and individuals —in this case schools—can operate. It is a complete mystery why the Government refuse either to accept these amendments or to bring forward amendments of their own. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I was slightly shocked to discover, when I asked for a list of how many co-operative schools there were in West Yorkshire, that there are nine in Leeds, eight in Wakefield but only one in Bradford.

[Baroness Thornton]

More are coming.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I look forward to talking to the noble Baroness about what else Bradford claims, but I am sorry to hear that we are a little behind in this respect. As the noble Baroness said, few would have anticipated the rise of co-operative schools. Indeed, there has been considerable development of them.

The Government are not persuaded that this amendment is needed. We understand the argument that has been made for co-operative schools forming a part of developments under the current school models, which include maintained co-operative schools and co-operative academies. They should do so without weakening school accountability or adding complexity to an already complex system. Some co-operative schools are very impressive but others are rather less impressive. They do not stand out in any particular way.

In line with the Government’s earlier undertaking, given in the other House, to investigate the proposals further, my noble friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education met interested parties earlier this year, as the noble Baroness said, to discuss their concerns but was not entirely persuaded of the merits of their case. The Government are determined to continue to remove the barriers and obstacles that prevent schools delivering the best education possible for their pupils.

The department recognises the general aim behind this amendment. We welcome further discussions and assurances on how these changes can be achieved without changing primary legislation or adding to the complexity of the system. Officials have been engaged with representatives from the Co-operative Party for some time now, and we are yet to see any compelling evidence of clear educational benefits that these changes would introduce.

[Baroness Thornton]

This amendment is about allowing co-operative schools to have the business form that makes them co-operatives. Given that the Government allow other schools to have the business form that allows them to operate in different ways, such as companies or charities, with religious freedoms and all that, why is this discrimination in place against the co-operative form of doing business?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the fact that there are now some 700 co-operative schools suggests that they are not suffering from systemic disadvantages in this respect. I was interested to hear from the noble Baroness that the expansion is continuing. If there are strong arguments to make that the current structure is discriminatory, I look forward to hearing them and perhaps we can continue this discussion, but at the moment I hope the noble Baroness has been sufficiently persuaded by my response to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Thornton]

Of course I will withdraw the amendment, and I thank the Minister for the offer to continue these discussions because that is exactly what we need to do. I will bring my co-operative school experts with me because I think the Minister will be persuaded by what they have to say about this. This is an issue that needs to be solved one way or the other. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 69B withdrawn.

Moved by

[Baroness Thornton]

69C: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Nursery schools: inclusion in schools trusts
In section 18 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 (alterations that may be made under section 19), omit subsection (4)(f).”

[Baroness Thornton]

This amendment concerns nursery schools. The case for the change is that nursery schools would be able to become full members of existing trusts, enabling an all-through vision of education and potentially strengthening most nursery schools—which, by definition, are small—by enabling them to access mutual support from the schools they feed as well as avoiding duplication of effort. It allows for the formal clustering of nursery schools within a local authority, helping them to become more sustainable by co-operatively and mutually working together and avoiding duplication of effort. Both these factors will significantly help nursery schools to become market-ready in an increasingly commissioner/provider-driven early years environment.

Around half a dozen nursery schools are already operating as partners in co-operative school trusts in Bristol, Cheshire East, Devon, Norfolk, Staffordshire and West Yorkshire. They would prefer to change category, make the trust their legal foundation and play a full role in developing their local school co-operative trust. Indeed, the Co-operative College believes that it already knows of at least 60 nursery schools that would look to make use of this legislative change were it to go ahead. They include individual nursery schools looking to link formally with their local mainstream schools, as well as those that wish to cluster with other nursery schools in their local authority.

There is also a growing desire among some local authorities to see local authority-wide nursery school co-operative trusts, akin to the local authority-wide special school trusts that initially emerged in Devon and are now in Norfolk. Other local authorities have also indicated an interest in such a change, including Bradford, Bristol, Devon, Leeds, Plymouth, Middlesbrough, Sunderland and Wiltshire, plus a number of London and south-east local authorities.

During the discussions that I referred to in my remarks on my previous amendment, there were also discussions with the department about these issues. My colleagues were told that the department would like to work with co-operative schools to produce data on performance and would look to utilise a power to innovative to unlock the nursery school ask. If successful, the power to innovate would have the ability to suspend a relevant piece of legislation for a three-year test to see whether nursery schools wished to join co-operative trusts. Since this offer was made, the department has now gone silent and has not responded to repeated inquiries. Can the Minister help us to restart those discussions? This would not require primary legislation if they took place. In the mean time, I beg to move.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lady Thornton. I declare an interest: I am president of a co-op trust school, St Clere’s School, which is a cluster of schools. It has one secondary school, formerly known as St Clere’s, and two primary schools: one junior and one infants. The ethos of that school is very much community-based. It was set up to extend its facilities and to work with the local community to get the best support from the assets held by those schools. St Clere’s has also been successful at ensuring that those pupils who came from feeder schools and potential feeder schools would want to be part of the school and its success before they joined. As noble Lords will remember from their school days, having some contact with a secondary school before joining it can make it a less frightening experience. That seamless trust that co-op schools provide has been excellent.

What surprises me about the amendment is that my noble friend has had to table it. It seems to me quite logical common sense that, if a nursery wishes to be part of a co-op trust, it should be able to do so. It is a matter of choice for the nursery. To deny it that opportunity is something that some parents may feel is rather unfair. I was really encouraged when the Department for Education, under the leadership of Michael Gove—I probably did not agree with very much when Michael Gove was Secretary of State for Education, but on this I did—seemed willing to open up discussions so that, if nurseries wanted to be part of a co-op cluster, they would have the choice to do so. It seems that that has been taken away and no progress has been made. For me, it is a simple matter of that ethos of the co-op: if parents of children in those nursery schools who then go on to primary and secondary schools in the same area wish for them to be part of that trust and choose to do so, they should be allowed that opportunity. It is hardly a radical or striking move, but it seems to be very much a common-sense one.

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[Baroness Thornton]

I thank the Minister for that reply, and I do indeed think that we need to meet to discuss this. This is not about creating nursery academies, but about allowing nurseries to take decisions about their future. Again, as with the previous amendment, it is about the particular form of organisation that they wish to have. This will need discussion with not only the Minister but his colleagues from the Department for Education. I would be grateful if we could proceed on that basis before the next stage of the Bill, and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 69C withdrawn.

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[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I shall defend paragraph 3(3) for many reasons. First, it is only right that maintained schools should have the same freedom as academies and free schools. A vast number of secondary schools and an increasing number of primary schools already have the freedom to determine their own term dates. It seems quite invidious that we are not allowing maintained schools to have the same freedom.

Secondly, my noble friend made an impassioned plea on behalf of the tourist industry, and we have all seen the lobbying material it has sent. I should like to make an impassioned plea on behalf of parents. As we all know, there is plenty of evidence that if parents can take holidays only in the one prescribed period when all schools are closed, they end up paying two, three or, in some cases, four times what it would cost them to have the same holiday at a slightly different time. I am just as interested in the finances of parents and their wish to be able to take their children out at different times because schools would not all be taking their holidays at exactly the same time.

My noble friend mentioned that it would be chaos for parents if they had children in different schools. For those of us who live in London, that is already the case. Different boroughs in London have slightly different term dates and many parents have children in one borough for primary school and in another for secondary school and they cope with that. It is not chaos; it is a perfectly simple thing that parents deal with in the small amount of time for which the schools coincide.

Over the years, various learned think tanks have come up with all sorts of suggestions about changing school terms. Some have suggested that we should go to four terms or that we should split the year into two semesters, each with a break, rather like American universities. They have adduced all sorts of psychological learning reasons for why this would be better for children than the very long gap that we currently have in the summer. I should like to think that this freedom given to schools would enable some of them to experiment in that way, based on very good pedagogical evidence.

I am for freedom. I think the tourist industry would not only cope very well—as it does; I have great confidence in the tourist industry—but would find that its period of busy activity would be extended if there were slight overlaps with some schools closing early in July and others going on to early August and so on. The freedom would enable parents—who, heaven knows, are strapped enough at present in the very grim times we have been going through—to take their family holidays over a slightly more extended period when the prices would not be double and treble what they are in the very compressed period when all schools take their holidays at the same. I think the tourism industry would adapt, and perhaps prosper, in this country.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I shall take the opportunity of this amendment to ask two other questions. What was the problem that the Government felt needed to be remedied with these provisions? Is it to reduce administrative costs to schools? I should also like to ask the Minister about reports and the dissemination of information by electronic means, particularly websites, which is included in this part of the Bill. What do the Government think will happen to streamlining the information that is available to parents from schools in areas where there is a digital divide? For example, in Bradford, there are lots of people who are not online and would not be able to receive those reports.

Term times is one of the really difficult problems that I know my Government struggled with, but I would like to know whether the Minister has consulted organisations in the education sector, including teachers, trade unions and head teachers’ representatives, to see what they feel about this.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am conscious that the issue of school term times and summer holidays is particularly acute, especially for the leisure sector. I have heard a lot of people say that it is absurd that we still have long summer holidays because people went out to help with the harvest. When I was a teenager, that is precisely what I used to do during my summer holiday. I worked on a farm for four to six weeks. When I went back to visit the farm 25 years later, almost all the jobs that I had done had been mechanised. That is part of what has happened. Farmers do not need the labour, and they did not need that much labour then.

I am also conscious that the speech that Mr Gove made about reducing the length of summer holidays has rung a number of alarm bells. This clause does not give the department the power to reduce summer holidays, and the department has no plans to reduce summer holidays. It is very much intended to push down to the local level where the length of holidays should be agreed. Schools’ term dates are already determined locally, but in many cases an individual school’s flexibility is constrained by the fact that Section 32 of the Education Act 2002 places responsibility for determining term dates on the local authority. This measure will enable all schools to vary term dates to help pupils, rather than simply following tradition, where there is a compelling need to do so.

Deregulation Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Deben: it rather looks as if the Government put a call-out to each department to offer up two or three regulations for abolition, without much thought about the priority and importance that they might have. I support the stand part debate on Clause 2. Indeed, I put my name to the intention to oppose it, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey. It seems hard to find anyone who supports the inclusion of this clause in the Bill, with the obvious exception of the noble Lord, Lord Curry, and Oliver Letwin.

As noble Lords have said, Clause 2 would remove the power of employment tribunals to issue wider recommendations to employers found to have unlawfully discriminated. I was party to passing that legislation in the Equality Act 2010. Indeed, on my side of the House, the Government of the time would have liked to have had some sanctions attached to this. However, there was a process of negotiation which the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties agreed to. I make the point to the Committee that this is why we had that recommendation; it had all-party support from all parts of the House at the time.

The EHRC has said:

“We consider that the power to make wider recommendations is an effective way of preventing unlawful discrimination from occurring and helping employers to comply with their duties to treat their employees fairly. The case for … abolition has not been made. Clause 2 of the Deregulation Bill should therefore be removed”.

The Minister needs to explain to the Committee what is wrong with these recommendations. What is his message to the people who went through all the stress and trouble of going to an employment tribunal to right an injustice, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and other noble Lords, won there and then find that the employer is not being encouraged to do anything about those of their work colleagues suffering the same wrong? Does the Minister think that they should all go to the tribunal? What does he think should happen?

Finally, regarding the business perceptions referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Curry—it is the second or third time that he has mentioned them in these debates—I have to cite three cases. In Stone v Ramsay Health Care, the tribunal said that there was a “thorough and abject failure” by the employer,

“to have protected the claimant from pregnancy and maternity discrimination”.

It recommended training for senior managers and HR on pregnancy and maternity rights. In Crisp v Iceland Foods, the HR manager’s awareness of mental disability was “no less than woeful”, according to the tribunal. It recommended that those with HR responsibilities and area level managers be trained on disability discrimination rights. In Austin v Samuel Grant (North East) Ltd, the managing director had a long history of sending racist and sexist e-mails and the human resources manager had failed to deal properly with that issue. The tribunal recommended that the employer updated its policies on discrimination and that the directors and managers received diversity training. I cannot quite see what the overwhelming burden on industry is through those recommendations.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this has been a useful and serious debate. I listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, as he always does his homework extremely seriously—although the suggestion that you could find even a cigarette paper between the approaches which Oliver Letwin and I take to the Bill is one that I find quite remarkable. As a coalition Government, we are absolutely solid and arm in arm.

The noble Lord raised a number of serious questions. First, on the GEO inquiry, the 26 companies were of course under no obligation to reply; those that had the most interest replied. The GEO had taken the need to collect evidence seriously by contacting every employer at that time but there is also a question about the burden on industry and companies that one provides by pushing harder on those issues. Secondly, he raised the question of equal pay audits and how those are compared. As I think the noble Lord may know, an equal pay audit ordered by an employment tribunal is a precise and mandatory requirement, with sanctions for non-compliance, to advance equal pay in the small number of organisations where a breach of equal pay has been found. It is also directly a transparency measure, as it has to be published. By contrast, as has been stated in this debate, wider recommendations in other discrimination cases are effectively discretionary for employers and cannot be imposed.

On the question of how much evidence we have on all this, these wider recommendations have been handed down in fewer than 2% of all successful tribunal discrimination cases since 2010.

On the Red Tape Challenge, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, that the presumption is that if the legislation does not serve a useful purpose then it should be removed. The fact that it is not terribly useful but confuses people as it stands is not a reason for leaving it on the statute book.

The noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, in a very helpful and powerful speech, raised the Howard case, which we are all well aware is one of the most difficult cases in this area. I should point out that the wider recommendation was intended for use in those cases where the complainant has left the relevant employer. In this case, as it happens, Miss Howard was still a Metropolitan Police employee, which would mean that the tribunal would still be able to make recommendations that benefited both her and her colleagues in the continuing workforce. Of course, even if Miss Howard had left the Metropolitan Police when the case was brought, it would remain open to the tribunal to express the same criticisms as observations in a non-statutory context.

What the Government are proposing will not result in any reduction in either the rights of complainants or the effective powers of tribunals, nor does it reduce the rights of other employees in the businesses concerned as the wider recommendation cannot be enforced on their behalf. Nevertheless, under the Red Tape Challenge the Government are committed to removing legislation that does not serve any clearly defined purpose, particularly where it none the less creates a perception of burden and unfairness. It is not just a question of those who, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, powerfully put it, have broken the law; we are concerned about the perceptions of unduly onerous legislative demands.

The power to make these wider comments, a somewhat anomalous one in a claimant-based adversarial system, came into effect four years ago. It has proved problematic. It is rarely used—we are aware of around 40 cases, as has been said, where they have been made—and trade organisations have told the Government that the power has led to additional cost, and that it is confusing.

Most of the wider recommendations made by tribunals are generic. Of the 40 or so that we are aware of, over 90% concern training for management or the updating of company diversity policies. However, as I have said, tribunals do not have the power to enforce such recommendations. Post-tribunal action is largely taken voluntarily by employers that have lost a discrimination case. Unless it was a one-off incident, business sense would drive changes in workplace practices to avoid a similar case being brought against them in future.

Perhaps I can give a few numbers in the areas that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, raised. In 2012-13, the Government Equalities Office partnered the British Chamber of Commerce in events across the country, explaining the Act to small businesses. Around 300 businesses attended the events, and a follow-up booklet, Business is Good for Equality, was more widely distributed by regional chambers to their members, which altogether employ around 5 million people. Some 300 businesses attended the 10 short sessions to learn first hand about their obligations under equality law; that is more than seven times the number of employers that have received a wider recommendation in the four years since 2010. I hope that that provides some more detail of the sort that the noble Lord was asking for.

I know that concerns have been expressed that this repeal will reduce protections against discrimination in the workplace. That is not the Government’s intention and it will not be a result of this reform. Tribunals will continue to have the power to make recommendations and observations on their behalf. The question is: has this power done its job? I would say that for the employer, the wider workforce and the business in general, the answer is that it has not. There is instead a very small and unenforceable benefit balanced against the larger cost and the problem of uncertainty for business. I therefore urge that this clause remain part of the Bill.

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Moved by

[Baroness Thornton]

3: Clause 6, page 4, line 5, leave out subsection (1)

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is important that I say from the outset that these Benches are not opposed to these amendments to remove the anomaly that currently exists in law which provides turban-wearing Sikhs with an exemption from having to wear safety helmets on construction sites but not in other workplaces. This is a probing amendment.

Noble Lords will know that keeping uncut hair and wearing a turban are an integral and mandatory part of the Sikh faith. Both male and female Sikhs wear turbans, and it is an integral part of the body to devout Sikhs, who will not wear anything in place of, under or over it, such as a cap or a hat. The compulsory wearing of turbans for Sikhs is a unique aspect not only of their faith but of their racial and cultural identity. I thank the Sikh Council UK for discussing this matter.

There are some remaining issues that I would like the Minister to address, although he does not have to answer them right now. I would be very happy to have these questions answered in writing and with a meeting, but I think that there are some quite serious issues. What is the reason for excluding the Armed Forces and emergency services from the provisions exempting turban-wearing Sikhs from having to wear their safety helmets? I remind the House of the role that the Sikh community played in both world wars; if you look at the pictures, they are there in their turbans. Indeed, there is a picture of Sikhs in their turbans at Sandhurst dating from 100 years ago. Would the Minister please place copies of the responses to the consultation that was carried out earlier this year in the Library? That would give noble Lords an insight into the issues that I am about to raise.

Are the exclusions limited only to the Armed Forces and emergency services—fire, police and ambulance—or can employers in other fields avail themselves of those exclusions, such as the British Red Cross or other early responders? Are the Government agreeable to placing the exclusions of the Armed Forces and emergency services into secondary legislation? Will they commit to consulting the Sikh Council UK before issuing the guidance on the Bill, and can they ensure that relevant bodies for the Armed Forces and emergency response services encourage those services to engage with the Sikh Council UK to review existing practices and formulate new guidance and policies, as appropriate, in the light of the legislative change? Are the Government agreeable to extending the exemption for turban-wearing Sikhs from having to wear safety helmets in the pursuit of leisure activities, similar to the exemptions that are already in place for motorcycles and horse-riding? Technology advances over time and this is not only technologically possible but things may change in future, so would it be prudent to future-proof this legislation and not permanently set out exclusions in the body of legislation?

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[Baroness Thornton]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 3 withdrawn.

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Debate on whether Clause 10 should stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I understand that the Minister has something new for the Committee, which it may be better to hear before we proceed any further.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)]

My Lords, as you will know, the Government introduced three measures into the Bill earlier this year relating to the regulation of taxis and private hire vehicles. Although an extensive review of the legislation has been carried out by the Law Commission and its recommendations are being considered, the Government decided that three measures could be taken forward separately to help reduce burdens on businesses more quickly. This clause is one of those.

Its purpose was to allow the use of private hire vehicles for leisure purposes. Noble Lords will be aware that, outside London, a person who is licensed as a private hire vehicle driver cannot use the family car and therefore has to purchase a second car. At £20,000 or £30,000, or the lease equivalent, that is a barrier which denies people employment. It is an issue that we need to address at some point. It also means in particular that in a number of rural areas there is, frankly, a shortage of private hire cars and taxi services. Bringing in more of those vehicles and their services for local people could be helped by removing this barrier.

However, after the Government listened closely to issues raised about the way in which we have presented this clause, we have decided that listening, as we always do, is important, and concluded that although we can still see arguments for tackling this underlying problem—I think that there is general agreement on that—it would be better done as part of the package of measures recommended by the Law Commission in a broader reform of taxi and private hire vehicle licensing than through this clause.

It is therefore my intent—although I am not sure how the procedure works—to withdraw this clause, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to do so.

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Debate on whether Clause 11 should stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for withdrawing Clause 10 and I hope she will feel that Clauses 11 and 12 deserve the same treatment, given that the Law Commission has been asked to look into the current legislation. We are very glad that Clause 10 has been pulled from the Bill, but Clause 11 has problems and Clause 12 is just as dangerous as Clause 10.

Clause 11 will end annual licence renewal and set a three-year standard duration for licences. The annual licence renewal helps licensing authorities to recognise changes in a driver’s convictions or medical status. The reform is likely to make it more difficult for licensing officers to monitor behaviour, ensure that drivers are fit and proper to drive and take action when necessary. Effective implementation of this clause will require local authorities to sign up to the Disclosure and Barring Service’s updates service and receive information about convictions during a licence term. This is a relatively new service and it is not yet known how it will work in practice. It is clearly important, so I hope that the Minister will explain why this matter cannot also wait.

Clause 12 will enable PHV operators to subcontract a booking to another operator who is licensed in a different area. We and many others believe that passenger safety will be undermined because only licensing officers from a licensing authority where a vehicle and driver are registered currently have the power to take enforcement action. The Law Commission has recommended that licensing authorities would have the power to enforce standards in respect of out-of-area vehicles, which will be crucial for their safety. The public, and vulnerable passengers in particular such as women or disabled people, may call specific operators because they feel that that operator is reliable and safe to travel with. This reform means that the public will lose their right to choose which operator they travel with. If someone calls operator A, their preferred choice, operator B may turn up.

The Law Commission’s work was undermined in January 2014 when the Government announced a 10-day consultation on these three measures of PHV deregulation. In March, they were introduced as last-minute amendments in Committee in the Commons. The clauses aim to meet the Red Tape Challenge. The challenge is not about putting people in unsafe situations and Clause 12 does just that.

Richard Burden MP’s office contacted the Department for Transport on 1 October to ask whether an impact assessment had been prepared. The impact assessment was published online on 2 October and was signed off by the noble Baroness. Page 11 revealed many of the issues that have allowed Clause 10 to be withdrawn. Page 16 of the impact assessment states:

“There has been minimal analysis”,

due to what has happened. The analysis, it continued, was,

“based on the data provided by the PHV trade associations. Due to time constraints there has not been a significant amount of analysis”,

to justify these clauses being in the Bill. The Government have tripped over themselves to fulfil, as I said earlier, the Red Tape Challenge of bringing in deregulation. In this case, it means that they are putting people’s safety at risk.

The reason that Clause 12 is so important has been brought to our attention by a number of organisations, including some student bodies, Milton Keynes Council and Alexis Jay in her report into child sex abuse in Rotherham, in which she highlighted significant concerns about taxi licensing. We have spoken to her personally about this and she is very worried about the implications that these changes have. Her report says that, at a number of council meetings,

“One of the main items for discussion … was safe transport”.

When asked about minicabs,

“there was an immediate and consistent response from … young women and men”,

on all occasions. In fact, all of them avoided taxis “if at all possible”. People do not have any choice in remote areas late at night but to use taxis. If someone finds a safe taxi company—there are ones who focus particularly on women—they do not want someone to turn up whom they do not know and who may not be the appropriate person to drive them.

Our experience in Milton Keynes, where serious errors by a sub-committee of councillors on licensing led to an inexcusable decision to allow a convicted sex offender to operate a private hire vehicle, illustrates the importance of getting the balance of this regulation right. The leader of Milton Keynes Council has written to us personally, asking us to oppose the clause.

Warwick Students Union wrote to us, saying that its primary concern on Clause 12 is the effect that it would have on preferred suppliers. It says:

“We are working with local authorities to put together a tendering document for a preferred private hire service—using our strong collective consumer power to stipulate better standards of service, safety and fares. Lots of other Student Unions do this such as Leicester and Birmingham to protect their members”.

We know that two women students were raped in Warwick because they got into a minicab—possibly they should not have done so, but that is what happened. The student union continued:

“We feel that this Clause would largely undo the work done by Students’ Unions across the country to ensure the safety of their members”.

It is quite clear that the Government need to take this away and think again. That is what we are asking them to do. I am sure that the Minister would not want to have students and disabled people finding themselves in unsafe situations, but this is what we think the impact of the clause will be.

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

I support what has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. Anybody who knows anything about the taxi trade knows that some parts of the trade are of questionable integrity. The annual licensing inspection by the local authority where the taxi is based is the best safeguard that we can have.

On the Minister’s point that this saves people buying a second car, saving them £20,000 to £30,000, I can assure noble Lords that most private hire cars are nowhere near that standard. In fact, I can reminisce about my time in Manchester, when I was being driven to the airport in a private hire car. We passed a very used car depot. I said to the driver that his car was very old. He said, “Yes, it’s got a few months to run on its MOT. When its MOT is up, I just go into the car auction and buy another one with a few months on its licence”. He was talking about spending £200. I think that is much nearer the truth.

I also dispute the view that many rural areas do not or cannot get taxis. I live in a rural area with big rural surroundings and there are plenty of opportunities to get taxis if one thinks about it and phones them up beforehand and that sort of thing.

Students and all women are very vulnerable when they get into a taxi where the driver has not been properly licensed and had his credentials inspected—indeed, if the vehicle itself has not been properly inspected. When I was on Oxfordshire County Council, Oxford City used to call in its taxis or private hire cars every six months because they have a high mileage and the annual check does not show up the defects. If we are talking about people having a licence to operate a taxi, an awful lot of things can happen in three years. Extending the situation so that a taxi could operate in an area where the driver is not licensed is potentially dangerous.

I do not see this as much in the way of deregulation. Local authorities do not spend a huge amount doing this work and the drivers have to pay a fee for it. However, I think it raises considerable dangers, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has referred, and it would be far more sensible if the Minister were to take this away and carry out some more work on it. The Bill has some time to run. The protests I have received from local authorities and organisations that are concerned with the welfare of people—notably, the Suzy Lamplugh Trust but lots of others—are that people are genuinely concerned about safety. That is what I believe should be taken properly into account.

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[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, Clauses 11 and 12 cover separate, different but sensible measures. Obviously, a thought for safety penetrates all of our thinking as we address this range of issues.

To pick up on the issue raised by my noble friend Lord Bradshaw and explained by others, particularly my noble friend Lord Greaves, the amendments do not in any way change the rules on vehicle licences. Those are tough and carried out by local authorities and there is absolutely no change. If my noble friend Lord Bradshaw knows a firm that thinks it can run a £200 car for successful private hire and meet the standards, I suggest that he call the local authority. It would be extremely difficult for a car that has that kind of market value to achieve the standards that are rightly required by local authorities in licensing those vehicles.

Clause 11 aims to reduce the administrative and financial burdens on some taxi and private hire drivers. The measures we have included in the Bill, which I will address in relation to Clause 12, will also help to improve the experience of booking taxis and private hire vehicles. I join with others in saying that in making his case my noble friend Lord Greaves prayed in aid London. Both the measures in Clause 11 and Clause 12 are already the status in London. Indeed, when we turn to London as the example that we are trying to copy, that is exactly what Clauses 11 and 12 do. It means that we have a good history of the way in which Clauses 11 and 12 function.

Clause 11 will standardise at three years the duration of both taxi and private hire vehicle driver licences; and at five years the licence for a private hire vehicle operator. Shorter periods would be permitted only where there are specific circumstances around a particular application. For example, a local authority might decide that a probationary period was necessary. Typically the duration would be three years for the vehicle driver licence and five years for the operator licence. Frankly, it means that those people will not have to renew their licences as frequently as they do in some areas.

The Department for Transport carries out a biennial survey of licensing authorities. Our 2013 survey showed that nearly half of licensing authorities grant taxi and private hire driver licences for three years, so this is not a sudden revolution. A number of local authorities use a shorter term but we can see by comparing safety records that there is nothing to suggest that those local authorities that grant their licences at three years have an inferior record. That is important to note. When it comes to the operator licences, a number of licensing authorities routinely grant private hire operator licences for five years although the substantial majority do less than five years. Again, there is nothing to suggest that there is a difference in safety between one authority and another on the basis of those differences in licensing terms.

The Government therefore consider that this is an area of taxi regulation that would benefit from deregulation. By setting a standard duration of three years for taxi and private hire vehicle driver licences and five years for private hire vehicle operator licences life will be made a lot simpler and substantially cheaper for licence holders. We estimate that the measure will save drivers around £8 million per year and operators around £1 million per year. People who are in this trade are not wealthy people. They find it tough to make a living and any little help we can offer is valid when it is not putting safety at risk.

I appreciate that some stakeholders have expressed concern about safety implications. There may be a slight misconception. It is now the case that many licensing authorities that grant annual licences actually carry out criminal record checks only every three years. Although the licence is annual, the criminal records checks—the issue that has noble Lords exercised—are typically a three-year process. Of course, we are now saying that the standard for criminal records checks will be three years. That would be a relatively small change for most authorities. They will continue to do those formal checks. As I said, we have examples in London and in the many local authorities that already use that three-year cycle that it is not associated with additional risk.

Clause 12 will allow private hire vehicle operators to subcontract bookings across licensing boundaries. Again, this is a capacity that has been available continuously for London. The noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, made the case extremely well and illustrated the many situations in which this is an extremely important measure and the extent to which car hire companies outside London are put at a disadvantage compared with London operators. One of the main motivators behind this measure is that it is so difficult when people call a taxi firm that cannot provide a taxi and are then turned away. I have a relevant personal experience, which could have turned out to be extremely difficult. I was in Gloucestershire and going to visit an elderly friend in a nursing home. I got to the station and there was no one around. I looked at the board and started calling taxi firms and car hire firms and not one could supply a car. They explained to me that they could not call someone else because they would have to call out of the area and they could not do that. In such cases one would hope to have a mobile phone that is smart-enabled to get on to the web to try to find other firms in the area to call. I was glad that I was not a mother with three children, that it was not getting dark and that it was not raining. It seems unreasonable not to allow the taxi firm to subcontract in order to be able to meet the booking.

We are often concerned about young people out late at night who try to find a taxi to take them home safely. In that situation, we do not want them having to track down one company after another. They should be able to call an operator who they have confidence in who can find them a taxi, even if it is subcontracted from out of area. You can already subcontract in area, and I should make that clear to those people who may have used subcontracted taxis or private hire vehicles and were not aware of it.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said that he was concerned about disabled people. Surely that is the group which has the most to benefit from this change. Most car hire companies have a limited number of wheelchair-accessible vehicles and there may be circumstances where a disabled person needs to travel in a particular kind of vehicle. It is all very well to say that disabled people need to make advance bookings, but I want people with disabilities to be able to live their lives as freely as the rest of us can and not always have to think about things in advance—or, frankly, have to do without. We have a mechanism here which gives an operator the scope to reach out of area and subcontract to someone else who has a wheelchair-accessible vehicle to meet a need. That is exceedingly beneficial.

I want to make it clear that the initial operator who takes a call and makes a booking remains liable to the passenger who made the booking. He is the person with whom the contract has been established. If someone chooses to call a particular operator, that operator retains the liability for the subcontractor, so the terms and conditions, the recording of the booking and the fare, if it has been agreed, all remain with the operator who the customer has contacted.

[Baroness Thornton]

I should like to ask the noble Baroness two questions. First, has she taken into account the fact that enforcement works differently in London, with TfL working in conjunction with the police on street enforcement, yet there is still a huge problem of sexual assault involving licensed minicab drivers? Secondly, how many disabled groups has she consulted about this deregulation and can she tell us what they had to say about it?

[Baroness Kramer]

I personally have engaged more with disabled individuals rather than with groups, which were approached by the Law Commission as part of the consultation. But the Committee will understand the reality of what I have just described. Many Members of the Committee will have friends with disabilities or indeed may themselves have them, and they will recognise what I have just described. It is for the Committee to make its decision, but I think that noble Lords will recognise the particular set of problems and will empathise with those who have a disability.

Enforcement against an operator continues to be the responsibility of the local authority which licensed that operator. Where there is an issue of enforcement against a driver, again it is for the local authority which licensed that driver to enforce. However, to make life easier and help things to work more smoothly, in some places around the country local authorities have concordats between each other so that they can delegate enforcement powers and thus make the process more simple and straightforward. Liverpool and South Bucks already do this, and I would think that it is a logical direction for many local authorities to go, not because enforcement is difficult but because it is even easier if ongoing relationships with neighbouring areas where subcontracting may take place are developed. We already have vehicles from out of area coming into area. When you order your private hire vehicle, you may be sending it out of area, so cross-boundary issues arise on a regular basis even as it is. As I say, some areas have decided that the sensible way to deal with this issue is to work together with a concordat between them.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, raised one issue which I thought was interesting and is one that I will take away and think about, and that is the issue of disclosure; that is, where an operator looks at the cars he has available, cannot find a vehicle available in his own company, and therefore looks elsewhere. That is something I will take a look at. However, I want to make it clear that there are real anomalies which we have to deal with. At the moment we have a silly situation in some parts of the country where related companies cannot subcontract to each other. Although they may be part of the same company, one branch will be licensed in one area and the other in another area. That, quite frankly, is one of the silly anomalies that we want to get rid of. Also, because the company you call and the individual you call is liable throughout, in order to uphold its reputation the company will make sure that the people it subcontracts to meet its own standards and are reputable. We have just heard today that very many people will turn to a company which they consider to be reputable. The notion that such a company would subcontract to drivers who let the company down, drive customers away and ruin its reputation is, I suggest, reasonably far-fetched. Under all circumstances, the driver to whom the business has been subcontracted has to meet licensing standards, and that is something we should not forget.

These are, frankly, two relatively small measures. The subcontracting issue is particularly helpful for someone with a disability who needs to call for a vehicle when many of a company’s cars within the area are already taken. We have to take that seriously. I go back to the issue on licensing. The three-year period is a reasonable standard that is used by many local authorities. It delivers the same level of safety that we see in other local authorities so why not relieve of an extra burden those who function at the margin in terms of income, if there is no safety price to pay?

Deregulation Bill

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, this is even more of a pot pourri of a Bill than the previous regulatory Bill in which I participated in your Lordships’ House. However, there are some continuing themes concerning equalities, a lack of thought about people who need to be considered because of their vulnerabilities, and the fact that regulation is often the way in which public bodies and businesses ensure that protection and fairness.

I will be speaking about three matters. Clauses 83 to 86 concern regulators having regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth. Clause 2 concerns tribunals’ power to make wider recommendations in discrimination cases—I think we have been here before. I will be looking at Clauses 10 to 12, as other noble Lords have, concerning the safety of vulnerable groups in the taxi licensing regime; I will not stray into the detail of licensing. Finally, I wish to speak about clauses that are not yet in the Bill but which I hope the Government might bring forward in their own amendments, which would assist the growth and development of co-operative schools.

I will speak about co-operative schools first. Given that the Bill is supposed to be about removing barriers and creating a level playing field for enterprises, and that this Government are to be commended for their support for co-operatives and mutuals, I suggest that this matter is absolutely at the heart of that support. I am aware that the Government have been holding discussions about amendments on this matter and I hope that we might see a positive outcome.

The matter concerns adding two additional clauses to the Bill. The first would remove a clause from the Education and Inspections Act 2006 which is a barrier to enabling nursery schools to become full members of trusts—or, indeed, academies. This would help to provide a vehicle for parental and family engagement in early years. The second would amend the School Organisation (Requirements as to Foundations) (England) Regulations 2007, to ensure that schools are able to establish themselves as industrial and provident societies, should it be desirable, and bringing co-operative schools in line with other types of co-operative organisations.

Despite an all-party commitment to co-operatives and mutuals in the public sector, co-operative schools have had to work around existing legislation because no provision is made in the relevant Education Acts for schools to be established as industrial and provident societies as currently defined in the 1965 Act. My proposed new clause seeks to amend this and ensure that any future legislation provides a level playing field and a more understandable legal framework. I hope the Minister will agree that these new clauses would be a good addition to his Bill.

Clauses 83 provides that while exercising their regulatory function, regulators must,

“have regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth”,

and must,

“in particular, consider the importance for the promotion of economic growth”,

of ensuring that any regulatory action they take is necessary and proportionate. At Second Reading, Oliver Letwin, the Minister for Government Policy, described this as,

“probably the single most important clause in the Bill”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/14; col. 37.]

We need to pay it particular attention, I suggest. Clause 84 would enable a Minister to specify in a statutory instrument which regulatory functions would be subject to this duty; in some cases it might not apply to all the regulator’s functions. Clause 85 would give power for a Minister to issue guidance on how,

“regulatory functions may be exercised so as to promote economic growth”,

and how regulators subject to the duty could demonstrate that they were complying with it. Regulators subject to the economic growth duty would have a duty to regard any guidance. We saw the draft guidance an hour or so before the debate started, and I will return to that in a moment.

I understand that the background to these provisions is the post-implementation review of the Regulators’ Compliance Code, and the independent report of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, No Stone Unturned in Pursuit of Growth, which recommended that the Government should impose such an obligation on regulators,

“to take proper account of the economic consequences of their actions”.

The Government ran a consultation on this in 2013, which maintained that a growth duty would,

“enable regulators to respond more comprehensively to the challenge of stripping back burdens to the minimum necessary and proactively supporting growth”.

The Government stated that,

“the duty needs to be imposed via primary legislation to provide the legal foundation needed”.

On these Benches, we share the concerns that have been expressed by the Joint Committee chaired by my noble friend Lord Rooker, the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which have consistently expressed concerns about the implications of applying the economic growth duty to the EHRC. The Joint Committee believed that the duty in Clause 85 to have regard to ministerial guidance,

“raises serious questions about the EHRC’s independence”,

because of the implications of the proposed growth duty for the UK’s compliance with the United Nations’ Paris principles if the duty applies to national human rights institutions such as the EHRC. They are supposed to be independent organisations which decide which human rights and equalities issues to address. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said:

“Applying the economic growth duty to the EHRC poses a significant risk to the EHRC’s independence”,

and that this should not be pursued in the way that the Government are doing.

The chair of the EHRC, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve, was asked whether applying the growth duty to the EHRC might undermine the Paris principles on the independence of the commission. She said:

“We have tended to agree with this Committee that, prima facie, it would indeed threaten the A-status”,

of the EHRC as an international equality and human rights body. She continued:

“Therefore, it would be proposed that we come under the duty with respect to very specific functions. The debate between us and government at this stage is over how specific it would have to be and whether it is worth the candle when you get to that degree of specificity”.

I think she is probably correct.

I looked at the draft guidance that we received before the debate to see if I could find some comfort from it. Actually, I think it created more smoke than elucidation. What we have to do in Committee—as I intend to—is consider what might happen were this duty to be applied under particular circumstances. So we need to look at, for example, maternity leave where companies have been found wanting and the cost of putting that right, and whether that could be balanced against the economic growth duty.

I will be seeking, as I think other noble Lords will, to look at the proposal to remove the power of employment tribunals under the Equality Act to make wider recommendations in discrimination cases. This is an important power. It is not one that we should throw away. Most companies, when they lose, apply the tribunal’s recommendations to all their employees, but not all do. Surely those employees deserve the same protection as others, so we will be seeking to remove that from the Bill. We will also be asking the Government what the evidence is that this needs to be done because we do not think that the evidence is there any more than it was the first time the Government tried to do this.

Finally, on taxi licensing, we oppose the Government’s proposal to reform taxi minicab law because it will put passengers at risk. My honourable friends in the Commons opposed this when it was inserted late in the Committee stage. We believe that these targets to cut red tape are rushed and risky, poorly drafted and badly consulted on. Where they have been consulted on, safety organisations, the police and industry bodies are warning that the Government’s proposed reforms could have very severe safety implications. These include the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which campaigns for better personal safety and has raised concerns that enabling anyone to drive a licensed minicab will provide greater opportunities for those who are intent on preying on women.

UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Prosser on this debate and, indeed, all the speakers across the House, who, as usual, spoke with passion and expertise about this subject. I also thank Womankind and the Library for the excellent briefings they produced.

Hardly a week goes by without reports of the effect of conflict on women and children, whether it is in Syria, Sri Lanka or Afghanistan. As this debate reflects and as all the speakers have said, the world faces dealing with the normalisation of rape and sexual violence in conflict and, too, the disproportionate impact the conflict is having on women and children. Yet the irony is that women always offer the best hope for building lasting peace in any conflict situation.

Women’s voices should be heard not only because they are the victims of war; their active participation in peace efforts is essential, because they are the most effective peacebuilders. As men take up arms, women hold communities together in times of war. That makes them stronger and better equipped to play a key role in securing real peace. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, said, Ban Ki-moon is to be congratulated on his recognition of the importance of women. As my noble friend Lady Kinnock pointed out, the importance of women is at all levels.

Peacebuilding involves not just political leaders, but all of civil society, including women. I think we would all agree that without their full support and participation, no peace agreement can succeed in the long run. We know from our own experience that women leaders can often be successful in what seem to be intractable situations; we can point to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, in Europe and Iran.

The three-year review is very important indeed. I intend to spend most of the rest of my time listing questions that were in the briefings that we have been given and which have not necessarily been mentioned by other participants in the debate.

The right reverend Prelate was quite right in his question about the importance of consultation with civil society organisations. I, too, seek reassurance about that and on whether the Government are incorporating commitments to ongoing engagement and consultation with civil society organisations, particularly those to do with women’s rights, into the UK NAP to monitor and review its implementation and impact.

On capacity, co-ordination and consistency, will the Government seek a more joined-up reporting approach by departments in the new NAP? How will the Government ensure that desk officers, posts, country offices and the military use the new UK NAP content as guiding principles of their work? Will the new UK NAP link women, peace and security into the wider conflict and human rights work undertaken by the Government? Will there be commitments in the new NAP on how the UK will implement women, peace and security principles within its own security and justice systems, including the police and the military?

The MoD has already been mentioned by other speakers. Will it train UK forces on gender and incorporate WPS in efforts on security sector reform? Will the MoD appoint a gender adviser to take forward its work on WPS? Will it ensure that it includes WPS components when it trains other military organisations?

How will the Government measure the impact of their participation work? How will they work with and support local women’s rights organisations to support their capacity and participation? How will the Government ensure that women make up at least 30% of all negotiation and mediation teams in line with best practice guidelines? Finally, will the UK develop a roster of women whom it can nominate for peace negotiations?

Ethnic Minorities: Ministers’ Statements

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord is referring to the EU balance of competences review, particularly the free movement of persons report. In view of the considerable uncertainty about the impact of the free movement of persons this January, it was felt that we should postpone that paper until the third semester, this coming summer, to make sure that we had accurate figures.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, concerns all democratic parties, and how we ensure that racists and extremists are pushed back into the political margins where they belong. Are HMG committed to ensuring that all their Ministers have a self-denying ordinance not to pander to the racists by echoing their messages for short-term gain? Secondly, how will HMG ensure that our laws to combat racism and xenophobia are reflected in the language that their Ministers and MPs use?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Ministerial Code is entirely clear on the way in which Ministers should behave. I am not aware of many other occasions on which such language has been used. Ministers are extremely careful about references to particular communities, migrants or others. We all understand how very delicate this area is.