British Overseas Territories: Transport and Infrastructure

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Bates]

This is a debate we are having here. I thought it would be helpful for noble Lords to hear what HMG are actually doing in these areas. Discussions with the United States Government are of course ongoing under the terms of the agreement about how this will operate. I am very happy to write to and update noble Lords with the outcome of those.

The majority of those on Ascension are from St Helena. The new once-a-month air service to St Helena, with onward travel to South Africa, will drastically improve travel times, allowing Saints to return home to visit their families and friends, as the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, requested. The Government are clear about the importance of continued access to Ascension before and during the planned runway repairs. My noble friend Lord Ahmad spoke to the Ascension councillors on 7 July to hear their views, and the FCO is in close contact with the Ascension Government, employing organisations and representatives of the people of the island. Ascension continues to have a role in delivering a number of strategic priorities for the UK and our allies. The UK Government are committed to working with the Ascension representatives to find a sustainable operating model that works.

Travel to and from the UK to the Falkland Islands has been maintained by rerouting the South Atlantic Airbridge through Cape Verde, for which Her Majesty’s Government are very grateful. The responsibility for infrastructure investment on the Falkland Islands is a devolved matter to the Falkland Islands’ Government, which I know the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, is interested in.

I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, for calling this debate and to all who have contributed. It shows the depth of support in this House for the people of the overseas territories, to whom we have a special responsibility. I hope the House can continue to support the work of the UK Government in discharging this responsibility to some of the most remote and challenging places in the world, and that the investment which we have placed already and the communication which we have already invested within this House can continue into the future for the benefit of the Saints and other organisations elsewhere.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

The first debate has now concluded and the Committee will stand adjourned until 2 pm.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Friday 6th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

I must advise the Committee that if this amendment is agreed, I am not able to call Amendment 7 by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for keeping his word this morning when he said that his subsequent contributions would be brief. I am not willing to accept his amendments because I do not think that the OBR is the appropriate body to carry out this function. The OBR has four main objectives, which are perfectly clear: to provide five-year forecasts on public finances, to use public finance forecasts to judge the Government’s performance on fiscal targets, to scrutinise costings of tax and welfare plans, and to assess the long-term sustainability of public finances. It also has an additional role: to assess the performance on the welfare cap.

The fundamental role of the OPR is for future forecasting and to have a relationship with, and report to, Parliament on that basis. However, thanks to the Independent Commission for Aid Impact—reporting to Parliament, as has been indicated previously in today’s proceedings—we now have a wealth of 40 reports, informed not least by the more recent work of the Office for National Statistics. Indeed in the latest report, which I am sure my noble friend has looked at, the ONS is quite clear that there is now a straightforward way of the ONS doing its work, informed by information from the Treasury and DfID and having clear reporting as to whether the UN target has been met. Reporting mechanisms have already been established in law. In addition, the International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Act 2006 is already on the statute book, providing, I hope, much of the satisfaction that the noble Lord seeks.

Given that explanation, and the fact that not only does the Bill offer a framework to be used but existing statutory reporting mechanisms have been in place for nearly a decade, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, it will not escape the Committee’s notice that Amendments 263 and 264 are cross-party and Cross-Bench amendments and follow the precedent set by the introduction of smoke-free legislation in 2006, which your Lordships will remember was passed overwhelmingly on a free vote in both Houses of Parliament. Tobacco control should not be a party-political matter but the common concern of everyone who cares about the health and well-being of the public. To prove that point, the House of Commons held an excellent Back-Bench debate on the very issue of standard packaging the week before last, initiated by the Conservative MP for Harrow East, Bob Blackman. The Hansard report is well worth reading, not least because the case for standard packaging was widely supported by speakers in all parties.

The Committee will be aware that earlier this year it appeared that the Government would themselves legislate for standard packaging, as both the then Secretary of State for Health and the Minister for Public Health were convinced of its value as a means of discouraging children and young people from taking up this lethal habit. For reasons which I still do not fully understand, no government Bill has been forthcoming. However, fortunately, with the help of the Public Bill Office—to which I am most grateful—it proved possible to propose a new clause for the Bill on the basis that this is a measure that will improve the health of children and families.

Let us briefly consider the facts about youngsters smoking. First, most smokers start when they are teenagers. Two-thirds of existing smokers report that they started before their 18th birthday, and about two in five before they were 16. That is despite the fact that the direct sale of cigarettes to minors is now unlawful. Using official data, Cancer Research UK statisticians have calculated that, in 2011, more than 200,000 young people under the age of 16 started to smoke. Secondly, the younger the age at which smokers start, the greater the harm is likely to be, because early uptake of the habit is associated with subsequent heavier smoking, higher levels of dependency, a lower chance of quitting and a higher chance of death from smoking-related diseases. Thirdly, smoking rates are higher among poor communities and vulnerable groups.

Critically for this Bill, among the most vulnerable groups are children in care. For example, a 2002 study for the Office for National Statistics of 1,000 looked-after children showed that almost one-third were current smokers. This rose to more than two-thirds for those in residential care, reflecting the greater proportion of older children in these placements. I know that the Minister will agree with me that these figures are shockingly high and that it should be a high priority for the Department of Health to try to reduce them drastically. It is our view and the view, I think, of most experts in the field, all the charities, the BMA and other medical bodies that the introduction of standard packaging for tobacco products will make a real difference and will address the issue of young people smoking.

I could say a great deal more about the behaviour of the tobacco industry and its appalling attempts to frustrate this legislation but I shall reserve that for Report, when I promise the Committee that the issue will be put before the House, which will be given an opportunity to come to a definite decision. I hope very much that it will have the support of all parties in the same way that I will remember it did tonight.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I know that other noble Lords want to speak, but perhaps because my noble friend and I have amendments in this group it might help if I speak to them first and we can get everything on the table.

I shall speak to Amendments 265 and 266, which would make a small but significant amendment to Amendment 264, which was spoken to by my noble friend Lord Faulkner. I also have a great deal of sympathy with Amendment 263. The arguments in favour of standardised packaging for tobacco are now self-evident and hardly need to be rehearsed. Similarly, there are no credible arguments against implementing standard packages for cigarettes that are not just plain but which, as we have seen in some of the briefings, are such that they may deter take-up of smoking and convey in stark terms the dangers of doing so.

The effects of smoking are well known. It is the largest preventable cause of cancer, causes 100,000 deaths a year and is a big factor in heart disease, cardiovascular illnesses, strokes and so on. Despite progress in reducing smoking, one in five adults still smokes. My noble friend Lord Faulkner has just reminded us of the fact that it is often in childhood and teenage years that people take up smoking; a significant number of youngsters aged between 11 and 15—an estimated 200,000, as he said—take up smoking. It is therefore a significant issue, and the more young people we can deter from taking up smoking in the first place and becoming lifelong addicts the better. We have to take seriously anything that makes smoking less attractive.

Especially since the advertising ban, cigarette packaging is the most important opportunity for tobacco companies to do exactly the opposite: namely, promote smoking as a cool, attractive and grown-up thing to do. That is why they spend millions on developing their packaging by testing its attractiveness to potential new customers and adding novel or gimmicky features that will attract interest. It is patently obvious that the companies believe that packaging is crucial to promoting their products and giving themselves a market edge. Indeed, research among young people by Cancer Research UK and other charities confirms the positive impressions conveyed by packaging in the minds of young people. One view was, for example, “It looks too colourful to be harmful”. We therefore have to use any means possible to protect young people from tobacco and deter them from taking up smoking. That is of course why the industry is resisting standardised packaging.

Like my noble friend, I could say more but I will not do so. This is essentially an issue of child protection. The public support standardised packaging. Children and young people find standardised packaging less attractive, more of a deterrent and more effective in conveying health warnings. Health professionals across the disciplines support standardised packaging. Other Administrations in the UK, and other countries abroad, are moving in this direction. I very much support Amendment 264, which sets out very well the detail that regulations on standard packaging should include, and I congratulate my noble friend and other noble Lords on bringing forward the amendment. However, our Amendments 265 and 266 would strengthen it by requiring the Secretary of State to make regulations rather than simply allowing them to decide whether to do so.

Transport: HS2

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, this is a very high-speed debate and I am pleased to have the opportunity to repeat my wholehearted support for High Speed 2. I, too, am going to make just two points.

First, we are not in uncharted territory. HS1 has given us experience of the environmental and social impact of high-speed railways. Noble Lords have recalled the furore that greeted British Rail’s proposals to build the high-speed line across Kent in 1987. Protest groups were formed and scare stories circulated, so why do we not hear more about the environmental and social intrusion of HS1 today? Kent lives happily with its high-speed line, and for the county council and local businesses it is a major asset as it encourages inward investment and visitors. The reason is that the line was engineered carefully to minimise environmental intrusion, as the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, said. The use of tunnels, cuttings and noise barriers all help to reduce the sound, which is low anyway because the new track is laid on deep ballast, and the new trains minimise noise that would otherwise be created at the point of contact between wheel and rail. It is far less than that created by motorway traffic, which is intrusive 24 hours a day. Today, the Kent transport network could not function effectively without the high-speed line.

My second point is about how high-speed rail changes the way Britain does business. We tend not to be very good at assessing the benefits of new rail schemes. A cost-benefit approach has been adopted to satisfy the requirement for analysis where public policy or public money is involved. However, cost-benefit appraisals for rail schemes have consistently underestimated the benefits that they bring. The growth in passenger numbers is often achieved much earlier than forecast. Total passenger numbers in 2012 were higher than at any time in our country since 1922, and parts of the railway are already full.

Cost-benefit ratios are only part of the story. The railway will transform the way we do business in Britain. It will offer benefits that we are only beginning to understand, just as it has for high-speed lines in countries all over the world. Its speed will link the south-east economy with other parts of Great Britain and help to encourage economic development in every part that it touches—a point made by the heads of the chambers of commerce in their briefing to us yesterday. It will attract significant numbers of people from road and air, just as Eurostar has between London, Paris and Brussels, and as high-speed rail has in continental Europe. It will release capacity on the classic rail network, which can be used to provide more trains to towns not well served currently, and, in particular, carry more freight.

I congratulate the Government on their commitment to stick to, and indeed expand, what my noble friend Lord Adonis set in train when Secretary of State for Transport, and I hope that they succeed in accelerating the legislative timetable. I want HS2 built in my lifetime, and I want my grandchildren to benefit from the new railway age of the 21st century.

Universities: Impact of Government Policy

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Giddens for initiating this important debate. I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria. I agree, I think, with every word of his speech and I shall follow some of his themes. I have two non-remunerated interests to declare: I am an honorary fellow of my old college in Oxford and I am also a fellow of the University of Worcester, which in recent years has been Britain's fastest-growing university. There was an interval of 850 years in the start of teaching at these two universities, but each is an important member of the British higher education sector and both are being badly affected by government policies.

I can think of no other part of the United Kingdom economy where organisations are fined for being popular and successful. I wonder how many people realise that not only are the Government next year withdrawing 10,000 people from universities altogether and putting a further 20,000 into a competition, they will also fine universities £3,700 for each student they recruit over the so-called control number. That is despite the fact that more than 200,000 people were unsuccessful in securing a university place both last year and this year.

Quite apart from the distress and disappointment that this policy will cause for individual students and their families who had set their heart on a university career, this is an incredibly short-sighted policy for the British economy, particularly with unemployment for 18 to 24-year olds having reached almost 1 million. The CBI is predicting that by 2017, 56 per cent more jobs will require people to hold graduate-level qualifications, while the demand for people with no qualifications will fall by 12 per cent.

To say that the Government are sending mixed messages is a huge understatement. On the one hand they appear to be saying that student numbers can be switched on and off like a tap, according to national economic conditions at the time. On the other, they are telling parents and young people that a university education is such a great investment that it is worth taking on huge piles of debt to cover the tuition fees that, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said, are nearly tripling to up to £9,000 from September next year.

The truth is that by investing in students and in universities, you are investing in the country's future. Fewer graduates are unemployed, compared to people without a degree, they are generally more productive, they are more likely to start new businesses, gain professional qualifications, and provide more employment for others and, over a lifetime, they will earn more and pay more tax.

The assertion that there are too many students and too many universities is nonsense. I get very angry when people talk about Mickey Mouse degrees from some of the newer universities. Let me give the House just one statistic from the University of Worcester, still a new university and, as I said, the country's fastest growing. Last year 93 per cent of its graduates went straight into jobs—putting Worcester ahead of its rather grander Russell group neighbours, Birmingham and Warwick. It has even done better in this regard than my own university of Oxford.

I will say a word about just two subjects, nursing and midwifery, although there are others I could mention. Before the general election, David Cameron promised to increase the number of midwives in England by 3,000. He described them as “overworked and demoralised”. The University of Worcester has a really successful nursing and midwifery school. The Nursing and Midwifery Council rated the university's provision as “good”, the best possible grade, in all five areas of its annual monitoring review, particularly noting that the university attracts excellent applicants to train in midwifery. The 30 per cent rise in applications in 2009-10 was followed by another 30 per cent rise in 2011. There are now 40 applicants per place for midwifery and more than 10 per place for nursing.

In partnership with the hospitals, trusts and healthcare providers, the University of Worcester is the only educator of midwives in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The quality is excellent and it gives thousands of mothers and their babies the best possible professional help before, during and after childbirth. You would have thought that the authorities would wish to build on that success and provide for growth in the number of places, especially given the Prime Minister's pre-election promise and the call by the Royal College of Midwives for an additional 5,000 midwives to be trained. The college says that that is necessary because services are at breaking point and both the quality of care and the safety of mothers and babies are threatened.

What has happened? The number of midwifery places the university is commissioned to offer has been cut by the strategic health authority from 52 in 2009-10 to just 45 in 2010-11 and 47 in 2011-12. Nursery places were reduced by 40, from 228 in 2010-11 to 188 in 2011-12 and the same percentage cut of 17.5 per cent has been applied to nursing for all universities in the West Midlands. That makes no sense at all. Cutting university places is short-sighted and it is damaging the country's economic recovery. The cap on student numbers has to be removed and those universities that wish to plan for growth and can demonstrate that they are popular and successful must be allowed to grow.

House of Lords Reform Bill [HL]

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, it is not very often that I get the privilege of following a maiden speaker in your Lordships' House and to be given the opportunity to pay a tribute to him. It is even rarer to follow a new Member of such exceptional talent and distinction as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield.

The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, is known to all of us as a broadcaster and writer; and, in the case of my noble friend Lady Hayter, as her PhD supervisor. For 20 years he was a journalist, working as a leader writer and Whitehall correspondent on the Times, and lobby correspondent on the Financial Times. We listened to him as the presenter of the “Analysis” programme on Radio 4.

In 1992 he joined the department of history at Queen Mary in the University of London and, since 2001, has been the Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History. In 2008 he won the Times Higher Education's lifetime achievement award, when he was described by the acting principal as,

“an inspiration to all those students fortunate enough to have been taught by him and a hugely supportive colleague. He has the unusual combination of intellectual rigour and media know-how, which he exercises to full advantage as an independent critic of the government and establishment”.

The Guardian, in a leader column in 2007, said:

“Prof Hennessy is not like anybody else … He is simultaneously both scholar and journalist, traditionalist and radical, conservative and liberal, patriot and subversive”.

We have just listened to a brilliant maiden speech full of humour. I am sure that I speak for the whole House when I say that we look forward to hearing from him many, many times in the future, especially when we are debating constitutional issues. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, will be a huge asset to your Lordships' House, and I congratulate the Appointments Commission on making such an inspired choice.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, that leads me neatly into expressing my complete support for the Bill again introduced so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood. I congratulate him on his patience and perseverance.

I reread the Hansard report of the debate on the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, on 27 February 2009. The arguments that he used then in support of it—and those made by the overwhelming number of noble Lords who also spoke in favour, including myself—seem incontrovertible nearly two years on. Indeed, they were so convincing that the previous Labour Administration adopted most of the Bill's provisions in their Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, as my noble friend Lady Royall of Blaisdon reminded us in her speech earlier.

Many noble Lords warned in February 2009 that if there were no provision for retirement, a change of Government would trigger the appointment of large numbers of new Peers, making the membership of the House intolerably large. That is exactly what is happening. Frankly I doubt whether many of your Lordships were reassured by the answers given by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in response to my noble friend Lord Dubs's Question on Wednesday. Perhaps the most extraordinary statement made by the Minister in those exchanges was that the “dilemma”—his word—of too many Members in your Lordships' House has been created by the House itself. I was under the impression that it was not this House which put forward recommendations for peerages, but the leaders of the political parties, plus, in the case of a handful of Cross-Benchers each year, the Appointments Commission.

At the very least, I hope that the party leaders will accept the advice offered by Dr Meg Russell of the UCL Constitution Unit in her paper of 22 November, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, referred in her speech, entitled Time for a Moratorium on Lords Appointments. She takes head-on the argument that the composition of this House should reflect the share of the vote secured by the political parties at the last general election. If we follow that route we will have an intolerably large House with, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, says, almost 1,000 Members. We are already at the point where the Chamber is seriously overcrowded for Questions. We have had to commandeer the use of the Below Bar visitors’ seats. This is before the first of the 54 new Peers joins us. I suspect we shall be taking over the spouses’ seats next. The pressure on facilities if we get bigger and bigger will also become increasingly intolerable. I have a final comment from Dr Russell:

“For as long as the system of appointment for life continues, the proportionality goal must therefore simply be forgotten, before serious damage is done”.

That is a compelling reason for the retirement provisions in the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel.

What is of paramount importance in any discussion of how we change the House is that we do not diminish its effectiveness in holding the Government to account, scrutinising and revising legislation, and drawing on the experience and knowledge of its Members to investigate subjects of national concern through our Select Committee system. Completely absent from the debate about election or appointment is any evidence that an elected House would do that job better. The legitimacy of an assembly can be achieved in several ways. Elections are certainly one route but they are not the only one. That would certainly not be the case if we became just a second-rate shadow of the other place, consisting of a bunch of placemen and placewomen who had got here through being placed high up on a party list.

I would have much more faith in a statutory appointments commission being able to produce a Chamber in which ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, representatives of the regions and nations of the United Kingdom, as well as outstanding leaders of the professions, such as academics, senior police and service chiefs, and all the other distinguished people who make up the Cross Benches were to have a place. That is why I cannot believe that it would be right to go down the 100 per cent elected route. Central to the future of this House and its effectiveness is the continued presence of independently minded Cross-Benchers, such as the noble Lord whose maiden speech we heard just a moment ago.

Women: Public Bodies and Listed Companies

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

The noble Baroness raises an issue that we are looking at very seriously. As I said in previous responses, we are considering how to encourage all departments to take on board the importance of ensuring proper representation not just from women but from other under-represented groups.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, does the Government’s commitment to gender equality extend to great national institutions such as the Church of England? Furthermore, does the Prime Minister intend to have a word with right reverend Prelates and most reverend Primates in order that we may have some female Bishops in this House before the end of this decade?

[Baroness Verma]

The noble Lord takes me into very dangerous territory. I shall reflect and get back to him.