Newcastle Upon Tyne, North Tyneside and Northumberland Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2019

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Beith

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests as a Newcastle city councillor and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

For an area such as the north-east with high levels of unemployment, enhancing the availability of adult education is an important objective. The more our residents acquire skills and education, the greater will be their confidence and that of employers in the region or contemplating investing in it.

It is a matter of regret that this order is confined to the three North of Tyne authorities, given in particular the proximity of Gateshead and South Tyneside—that is not a choice of government; it is unfortunately a factor in the local government world of the north-east. Ideally, the authority should include the whole north-east region, sharing as it does many of the same needs, not least given the likely impact of Brexit should we be unfortunate enough to suffer the Prime Minister’s resolve to leave without the deal that he purports to be pursuing.

The current adult education budget for the authorities concerned is £22.7 million. Do the Government envisage increasing that budget and, if so, by how much and over what period? How does it compare per capita with other combined authorities or other individual local authorities providing adult education?

The North of Tyne Combined Authority intends to use the opportunity to make its own decisions in targeting resources and providing its residents,

“with the skills, education and confidence to benefit from the opportunities that will follow”.

Drawing on the adult education budget, it aims to drive up educational standards by working with post-16 pupils and skills and training providers, and it sees it contributing to the north-east strategic plan and the local industrial strategy.

The combined authority has developed a strategic skills plan and is engaging with the providers of adult education. It has declared its expectation that providers will develop the curriculum and support they offer and focus on learning progression. The combined authority would like to see the Government go further, with a commitment to devolve other functions, especially an educational achievement challenge for the area, as exemplified in London between and 2003 and 2011. Perhaps the noble Lord will indicate whether that is something he would regard as worth pursuing.

The combined authority also seeks greater flexibility in the local provision of skills for residents and businesses. Will the Minister look sympathetically into these suggestions? Can he confirm that budgets will be maintained or, even better, enhanced, given the needs of the area, and will capital funding be protected or enhanced? Will the apprenticeship levy be reformed with a view to regional oversight of a more flexible skills levy?

Important though the provisions of this order are, we must not forget the enormous pressure our schools are under following years of cuts and the effective displacement of local authorities from the provision of the education service, and the enhanced role for academies, many of which have proved to fail their pupils and the communities they were supposed to serve. This was highlighted for me earlier this year when I approached a school in the ward I represent on the city council about a possible grant from a local charity. Expecting a request for something extra, I was dismayed by a request with which to buy books.

School budgets are under enormous pressure, as are staff members. The ratio of staff to pupil numbers has fallen, the proportion of staff making it to retirement has halved and working hours have lengthened. In Newcastle, in the period 2015 to 2019, 74 schools out of 85 have suffered cuts to per-pupil funding of £24.4 million, or a loss per-pupil average of £259. Unaccountable academies, many of which have failed abysmally, dominate the provision of the service in the area.

Welcome though the provisions of this order are, the Government have failed for nearly a decade to protect a key service—key to the life chances of our children and to the future of our economy and our country. Adult education should not be seen as a means of repairing the failings of an underfunded and overstretched school system. Having said that, I repeat the welcome for this provision, but it has to be seen in the context in which it takes place.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I support this order but, as has been indicated by the speech your Lordships have just heard, it is founded on a far-from-ideal devolution scheme for Northumberland, Newcastle and North Tyneside. It was a scheme with the wrong boundaries, because it excluded Gateshead and South Tyneside. It had the wrong name; it was referred to, not even colloquially but officially, as North of Tyne, when two of the main towns in Northumberland are south of the Tyne—Hexham and Prudhoe. It came with an unwanted elected mayor, which was a price that Cornwall did not have to pay but we did in order to get any devolution at all. But it is what we have, and I hope that the additional control of resources for FE, which this order provides, will be put to good use.

I want to refer to the basic problem for rural and remote areas. Colleges, the main centres, are concentrated in the south-east of the combined authority’s area, in Newcastle, Tyneside and Ashington. There is some FE provision in Berwick, in Hexham and at Kirkley Hall—where my son was an agriculture student. Berwick also has provision in areas, for example, related to the construction industry and in hairdressing, and there are now new initiatives for the performing arts centred on the Maltings theatre in Berwick. But for so many other courses, a 50 or 60-mile journey each way is a severe disadvantage and deterrent to taking part in further education. That is what students in Berwick or Bellingham face to get to Northumberland College or Newcastle College. Northumberland College has now merged with Sunderland College, which, of course, is outside the area—a merger that was pressed upon it by Ofsted in its very critical report.

A few years ago, the Liberal Democrat administration in Northumberland introduced free transport to Newcastle College, which was ended when Labour took over. I am glad to say that it has been reintroduced in a form by the current administration. This has led to a sevenfold increase in travel to further education on public transport. However, it is a scheme with limitations because there is a requirement to go to the nearest college. That does not really make sense if you can go to Newcastle in 45 minutes on the train or, slightly nearer, Ashington in about three hours by a series of buses. I also point out that Northumberland College does not offer A-levels or GCSEs at all, so a student needing A-levels not provided locally in order to get into higher education has to go to a more distant college.

These examples illustrate my concern that the combined authority, with its enhanced control of resources, must put behind it the competition and rivalry between neighbouring authorities and neighbouring colleges and set out to provide boundary-free access to further education, with particular regard to the transport needs of those in rural areas and more distant parts of its area. That should also include cross-border transport to Scottish institutions such as Borders College, which is much nearer to those in the north of Northumberland. There are serious inequalities in access between rural areas and the urban south-east of the area which need to be addressed by the combined authority.

The Explanatory Memorandum points out, at paragraph 14.1, that the authority has to engage in,

“an extensive programme of monitoring and evaluation”,

which has to be agreed with Ministers. Has that programme yet been agreed by the Government, and if it has not, will it soon be agreed, and will it involve the department making sure that rural needs are addressed?

I support the order, but I want to make sure its powers are used to tackle the weaknesses in our present FE provision and in access to it.

Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Beith

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Beith]

There is one thing the Government have not made clear. The impact statement, brief as it is, is structured around there being two options—the other option being not to change retained EU law. As I understood it, that option implied that in a no-deal situation, if we did not have this instrument, the courts would be left behaving as they had previously and hoping that courts in other countries would do the same. One of the things that was not explained very well in the impact statement—perhaps the Minister can clarify this later—is what the other option the Government rejected was.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I have practised law for a long time—fortunately none of it in relation to the EU and the complications we are debating today. I defer to the more qualified Members of the Committee today, some of whom have already addressed us.

These regulations might best be described as a hors d’oeuvre to the four-course Brexit banquet we are being served today—although, curiously, neither the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments nor the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has raised any concerns.

In addition to reverting to the pre-EU membership system, the statutory instrument repeals a decision that currently allows the UK to co-operate on civil and commercial matters in the EU judicial network. What estimate have the Government made of the impact on the UK of that change, and what consultation took place with industry or other potentially interested parties given that the so-called Brussels regime operated on a reciprocal basis?

The Law Society, which is generally supportive of the statutory instrument, is concerned about the loss of the existing framework for determining which national court has jurisdiction and for recognising whether or not there is a choice of court between the parties to disputes.

The impact assessment contains a disturbing paragraph which states:

“Businesses and individuals litigating in the courts of EU countries will have an advantage over those litigating in the UK as UK litigants cannot guarantee the judgment they get from the UK courts is enforceable in the EU but litigants who get a judgment from the EU courts, will almost always be able to obtain enforcement of it in the UK”.


It is a one-sided deal, as it were. The English legal system has prospered remarkably through its participation in the EU but that looks to be one of the costs and losses that it will incur.

The Law Society notes that hitherto the existing system has fostered cross-border trade and encourages litigants to use the UK courts in the knowledge that their judgments would be enforceable across the EU and calls on the Government to accede to the Lugano convention—which, as the noble and learned Lord has indicated, is not an EU organisation although the EU is a party to it. Can the Minister indicate the Government’s response to that suggestion?

Sub-national Transport Body (Transport for the North) Regulations 2017

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Beith

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the authority that is being given to Transport for the North by these regulations and, indeed, welcome the work that Transport for the North has done so far, even without the status that the regulations give it. It is my hope that the strategic planning that it does will lead to some of its advice being taken by the department and some correction of a very serious imbalance to which other noble Lords have referred in levels of transport infrastructure investment in the north as compared with the south-east of England. That area has recognisable problems that require some fairly expensive solutions—but not at the expense of ensuring that we have the kind of transport system that encourages prosperity, business and innovation in the north of England.

When I say the north of England, I think particularly of the north of the north, not simply of the Hull-Manchester-Leeds-Liverpool corridor, important though that also is. As I have done previously, I want to encourage Transport for the North—given the powers that it now has—to address some of the issues that are important to us in the far north. That includes, of course, the franchise problems to which the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, referred. I say “problems”, but the reality is that every single commercial operator that has taken on the east coast franchise has been unable to deliver the terms of the contract and has left it—in the most recent case—on terms that are extraordinarily favourable to the contractor. In earlier cases, the terms were not so favourable to the contractor. This is the most important transport link for the north-east of England, as well as Scotland, and that issue will clearly require further attention.

Among the issues that I hope Transport for the North will be able to give the department strong advice on are issues which it has worked on for some time but which we want to see come to fruition. These include the extension of the trans-Pennine route through to Edinburgh, up the east coast main line; the reopening of services such as the Ashington rail link; and the development of commuter services into Newcastle, such as the one from Chathill, which is a small, Cinderella service. Newcastle has its own requirements for transporting people into the city centre and problems with excessive use of cars for that purpose. There is a lot of work to be done and I am glad that Transport for the North has been given the authority to get on with it.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a resident of Newcastle and a member of the local authority. I also have the misfortune of being a regular traveller on Virgin Trains East Coast. I had the pleasure of sitting in a train outside Spalding for four hours recently while the train ahead of us had broken down. The relief train that was sent to deal with the problem also broke down. That is only one of the more dramatic examples of Virgin’s failure. As my noble friend Lord Liddle and the noble Lord, Lord Beith, have referred to, Virgin is now withdrawing, five to six years ahead of the date by which the contract should have ended. It is known that it had pledged £3.3 billion. I do not know whether the Minister is in a position to say how much it has benefited—or will benefit—from its decision to withdraw. Looking to the future, I join other noble Lords in welcoming the new organisation. Will it have a role in deciding—along with others, of course, because the train service runs from Scotland down to London—who will obtain the next franchise and on what terms? That is really important.

I mentioned Scotland. The north does not only look south; it also looks north. We need better road connections. A certain amount was done shortly before the general election, which was some time ago. That no doubt assisted on a political level, but it has not yet provided the improvements required. I trust that TfN will have the opportunity to press the Government on that.

Another aspect of the relationship with Scotland, to which I have referred from time to time in your Lordships’ House, is the question that still hangs over the future of air passenger duty. It is thought that, given the opportunity, Scotland may well exercise its right to abandon that duty. That would have a very adverse effect, certainly on Newcastle Airport and, I suspect, on other airports across the northern region. I have yet to get an indication from the Government of what their attitude would be if Scotland exercised its apparent right to abandon the duty. I would hope that, in the interests of the whole of the north, they would be able to follow that decision and apply it to the north of England. It may be that the Government would wish to see the whole thing gone, nationally. One way or the other, it would be extremely disadvantageous to the north if Scotland was able to do away with APD and the north was stuck with it. I am sure that TfN will have views about that, and I hope the Minister and her colleagues will take note of them, should the situation arise.

Serious Disturbance at HM Prison Birmingham

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Beith

Monday 19th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, another week, another crisis for our underfunded, understaffed Prison Service, this time of a magnitude unmatched since the Strangeways riots 26 years ago. They prompted the seminal Woolf report. Last week I suggested that we needed another Woolf Report and I repeat the suggestion today. Thankfully, we still have the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, among us, although I am unsure whether he would be willing to undertake the task, especially if there is to be no commitment by the Government to implement any recommendations which might emerge.

As matters stand, we have an unprecedented level of violence, self-harm and drug abuse, and several riots or near-riots occurring in what should be and must be quintessential places of safety. We are told that the Secretary of State was warned two months ago of the risk of a riot at Birmingham. Was she, and if so what action if any was taken to forestall trouble? For that matter what is the Government’s response to the charge of Nick Hardwick, the former Chief Inspector of Prisons and now chair of the Parole Board, that:

“Successive ministers cannot say they weren’t warned about this”,

adding that he had been sounding warnings for several years?

Birmingham, a once renowned establishment, has been made a dangerous laughing-stock by the vacuous ineptitude of G4S, fully illustrated by the removal of a third of the prison population back to a state-controlled establishment away from the indiscipline and naive ideology of G4S and its hopelessly over-promoted and inexperienced management structures. These are not my words, but those of Michael Kelly, a retired senior manager who worked at Birmingham for nearly 30 years.

Last week I commended the Secretary of State for her presentation of a White Paper on prison reform, but voiced regret over her stubborn failure to acknowledge that at the heart of the problem lies the fact that we have far too many people in prison and too many of those are jailed for too long. We need to reduce our prison numbers—the fourth highest, in proportion of population, in Europe. This should include reviewing the length of sentences.

Several Members, across the House, have tried to pursue this issue. My noble friend Lady Smith, for example, tabled two Written Questions on 22 November, respectively on drug use and violence, and on the ratio of staff to prisoners. She should have had an answer by 7 December. She has not. There are seven other MoJ Questions beyond their reply date. Nor can the adequacy of any reply be taken for granted. I asked about the number of prisoners on remand and how many of them ultimately did not receive custodial sentences, only to be told that the information was not available and would be too expensive to collect. There remains, of course, the oft-challenged failure of the Government to deal with the vexed question of IPP prisoners held long after the tariff for their sentence has been exceeded. Both these groups contribute to the overcrowding which places such enormous pressure on prisoners.

There is widespread scepticism about the Government’s plan to recruit extra staff. Some 2,500 are promised, but this would still leave the workforce down 4,500 from what it was just a few years ago. In addition, it is estimated that some 5,000 more will have to be recruited to replace officers retiring or securing jobs outside the service—numbers which may well be enhanced by recent events.

Pay for the men and women willing to work in this challenging environment clearly needs to be reviewed. New starters can expect to earn all of £20,544 and qualified officers £21,166. G4S, I understand, recruits on a weekly basis from the jobcentre. In these circumstances, the Secretary of State’s call for officers to be recruited might be compared to the captain of the “Titanic” telegraphing the ship’s owners for additional crew members after the iceberg has struck.

We need to reduce prison numbers. This means looking at sentencing policy with a view to reducing the length of sentences, and investing in well-run probation services—where there are also signs of growing pressures—and health, especially mental health, services. We need the Secretary of State and the Ministry of Justice to exercise greater oversight of the system, listen to the advice of the Chief Inspector of Prisons and the Parole Board and cease to rely so heavily on providers such G4S, with a reputation as providers of everything and masters of next to nothing.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, in thanking the noble and learned Lord for repeating the Statement I ask him to recognise that, but for the skill, courage and day-to-day resourcefulness of prison officers and governors across the prison system, there would have been even more serious and violent incidents than have occurred. The prison system is holding far more prisoners than it is resourced to manage. As a result, rehabilitation programmes are disrupted or not in place at all. To make matters worse, when there are riots those prisoners who want to do their time peaceably, take the courses and train for a job are prevented from doing so and therefore more likely to reoffend when released.

I put two questions to the noble and learned Lord. First, will he say whether G4S had fallen short of its contracted staff numbers at Birmingham? Then, on the wider question, when will Ministers accept and cease to deny that there are offenders in prisons who could be better dealt with by tough community sentences? Unless we use the expensive resources required for prison places more sensibly, as most other European countries do, and unless we address sentence inflation we will build up even more potential for future violence in prisons. Getting the numbers down is not a quick solution to the immediate crisis, but if Ministers do not begin to deal with it now the problems in our prisons and outcomes on release will just get worse.

Civil Legal Aid (Merits Criteria) (Amendment) Regulations 2016

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Beith

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin my response to the noble and learned Lord’s address by doing something quite unprecedented in my brief parliamentary lifetime. I offer twofold congratulations to the Government, first on winning a case in the Court of Appeal when they had been challenged and, secondly on their very constructive response to the situation by making adjustments to the system which had been subject to challenge in the way that the noble and learned Lord has described. It is a sensitive and sensible move and I congratulate the Government on it. I suspect that the hand of the Minister was very much involved in achieving that result.

In the course of the short debate in the House of Commons, the Solicitor-General remarked on the question of reviewing LASPO, as the noble and learned Lord did when I asked a Question this afternoon. The Solicitor-General, Sir Oliver Heald, confirmed what the noble and learned Lord said this afternoon: there is to be a review, given that we are now four and a half years after Royal Assent, but he was not tempted to announce its date today. The noble and learned Lord indicated earlier that he is not in a position to do that either at this stage. Nevertheless, it would elicit further compliments from the Opposition Front Bench if we had an indication, as soon as is reasonably feasible, of the date of commencement of such a review. It would do so even more if the Minister could indicate that the review will look as sympathetically as it has on this issue on others affecting access to justice, such as the difficult areas to contend with if you are not represented —debt, welfare, housing and family law—and equally on the impact of the Act and its restrictions to legal aid on the operation of the Courts and Tribunal Service, given the significant increase in the number of litigants in person.

I do not expect the noble and learned Lord to comment on that tonight, because I guess he is not in a position to do so, but I hope he will use his influence on his colleagues in the department to ensure that these things are taken into account when the review is launched and conducted.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I hesitated to rise before the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, because I was sure he would have found there was something wrong with this instrument that I had not managed to discover. I am quite touched to find that he agrees with it as much as I do. It is a small but welcome improvement in the legal aid situation which has caused many people a great deal of anxiety. Although I fully recognise that legal aid resources are not—and cannot be— unlimited, their application was not always to the public good. There were many situations in which one party had the benefit of legal aid and the other party could not really afford the costs of privately financing the case. So the position is more complex than it sometimes appears.

The effect of this instrument, as I understand it from the Government’s memorandum, is that about 70 cases a year will attract legal aid which would not otherwise have done so, and about £250,000 has been found from somewhere to ensure that this can be financed. That is welcome news, and it opens up the possibility that there will occasionally be a case which is of real public value—because ultimately it will affect cases brought by other people—or is of fundamental importance to an individual, which would not have got legal aid and would not have been proceeded with, but which will now be satisfactorily dealt with by the courts system. That has to be an improvement, so I welcome the instrument. I also, of course, welcome the review—to which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred, and which the House of Commons Justice Committee, which I then chaired, was particularly keen to see—of a piece of legislation that had such far-reaching effects on access to justice.

Legal Services Act 2007 (Claims Management Complaints) (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2016

Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Beith

Monday 18th January 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government are right to take action in this matter, and I certainly endorse the new arrangements that have been laid out, but it has a rather curious history. Looking at paragraph 4.2 of the Explanatory Note, I can see that it was some seven years after the passage of the 2007 Act before steps were taken to deal with this issue. The paragraph contains this rather curious sentence:

“This provision treats the designated Claims Management Regulator as an approved regulator to be levied in the same way as other approved regulators for the costs of the Legal Ombudsman”.

It goes on to say:

“However, there is currently no designated Claims Management Regulator and the function is fulfilled by the Secretary of State”.

One might have thought that he had more important things to do. Obviously, Mr Gove and his predecessor will not have been involved in this personally, but it is a curious situation that for some years there apparently was no functioning regulator in post.

The position appears to be, as the Minister has indicated, that a £500,000 shortfall has occurred in a very short period. I do not know whether he is able to indicate how many cases there were. He said that there were not many, but £500,000 is a reasonably large amount of money. It will be interesting to know how many cases there were and how many of those were from small companies, which appear to be leaving the market. But the very fact that after all these years there are clear deficiencies in how some of those providing this service are operating raises questions about the degree to which their activities are regulated in advance of the unfortunate outcome, which sometimes leads them to be subject to charges for maladministration or their conduct. Does the review to which the Minister referred encompass looking at the qualitative regulation of the industry? Should there not be a floor above which the resources of these companies should be fixed? If not, we will continue to have a situation in which, quite apart from the financial implications for the Government, people who have consulted these companies presumably are being short-changed. One wonders what has happened to valid claims that have gone astray as a result of maladministration. That side of it does not seem to be touched on at all in relation to this order, but it may be encompassed within the review. I certainly hope that that is the case, but if it is not, perhaps the Minister could undertake to look into the nature and quality of the supervision that ought to be exercised and, if necessary, what improvements should be made to what has gone on recently.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, about the rather curious nature of the regulatory arrangements for claims management companies. The Lord Chancellor left himself holding the baby when the original legislation was taken through. I never thought that this arrangement would last as long as it has. It is quite right that it should be subject to review. It is obviously right that the costs of dealing with what the noble Lord called the maladministration in the industry is visited upon the industry and not the taxpayer. Therefore, I support the order and the principle behind it.

The history of claims management companies has been one of things that go beyond individual complaints. There have been systemic changes to the way the legal system operates and attempts to turn it into an ambulance-chasing activity. We all have some worries about whether, in another area, the necessary referral fee bands have actually brought some of the claims management activities in-house, into some solicitors’ practices, where once they were precluded. This is a very difficult area and the regulatory problems that it generates are not just individual cases being badly dealt with but systemic weaknesses. I hope that when we dispatch this order successfully as an appropriate means of dealing with the costs arising from individual claims, we will not neglect some of the wider issues that this industry has generated.