Universal Credit

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Farmer for giving us the chance to debate this important topic. I would like to take the first of my three minutes to add my thanks and congratulations to my noble friend on the Front Bench for his sterling work across the whole field of welfare and social security reform. The role of a Minister in your Lordships’ House is not an easy one. Having mastery of a brief is essential. If not, another Member of your Lordships’ House will almost certainly stand up and put you right. However, mastery of the brief is not enough. Because of the make-up of your Lordships’ House—the make-up of the political parties and the presence of the Cross-Benchers—a successful Minister must know how to put a case across, not stridently and didactically, as that will not win over the uncommitted, but calmly and persuasively. My noble friend is a master at this and has been a centre of calm reasonableness, no matter how strong and fierce the criticisms.

I turn to universal credit. Many Members of your Lordships’ House will know of my involvement in the charity and voluntary sector. One of the areas where charities play a major role is in getting people back to work. Work in the charity sector can be an important first step in recovering self-confidence and learning to live with the disciplines of the workplace.

Charities and voluntary groups used to tell me about the two main drawbacks of the pre-existing system. The first was its complexity and the fact that a multiple range of benefits, some of which overlapped and some of which required quite sophisticated form filling, were a major challenge—the impenetrability issue to which my noble friend referred in his opening remarks. The second was the way that benefits were withdrawn as the individual began to earn, which led to perverse disincentives to work only so long and no longer, and to earn so much and not more because of the way the system worked. For me, the universal credit plan offered a way to tackle these two challenges, and in large measure it appears to be succeeding. Have there been setbacks which have necessitated changes? Of course, there have. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, referred to one. But with a wholesale change in approach covering 5 million to 6 million households, it would have been a miracle if the system had proved pitch perfect from the outset. However, overall, the system seems to be working, and working well. Perhaps the final link in the chain will be to improve the help offered to those who are less confident and experienced in dealing with a primarily online approach. But overall this has been a success, and one on which the Government, and especially my noble friend, should be congratulated.

Life Chances Strategy

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Farmer for having given us the chance to address this very important issue, which will be a major ingredient in the maintenance of our social cohesion over the next 20 or 25 years. I thank him not only for having given us a chance to debate it but for introducing it in his characteristically self-effacing but highly personal style. In the few minutes that I have, I would like to address two specific points: the role of the apprenticeship programme and the role of the voluntary and charity sector in delivering the life chances strategy.

I strongly support the Government’s ambition to create 3 million new apprenticeships over the life of this Parliament. These can provide a practical, technically focused pathway to a well-paid, long-term job which may be better paid and longer lasting than one resulting from—dare I say it?—a 2.2 in media studies. When we first discussed this policy during the Committee stage of the Enterprise Bill, we were concerned that the scale of the ambition might mean that there could be some problems in maintaining quality standards, so I was very glad to see that the Government have now introduced a regulator charged with ensuring that an apprenticeship provides what it says on the tin. It would be helpful if my noble friend, in winding up, was able to update us as to developments on this point. In particular, are there any plans to establish a confidential hotline so that, if young men and women do not feel that they are receiving the training they have been promised, they have some potential avenue for redress?

Among the disadvantaged, those who are disabled face a particularly steep climb. I hope that they will be given every opportunity to participate in apprenticeship schemes. Perhaps the Minister can also reassure us on that.

We must not lose our focus on improving general educational standards. In our earlier debates on apprenticeships, it was depressing how often we heard about candidates for apprenticeships having inadequate English and maths. To fulfil the Government’s policy, apprenticeships need to be seen as something special leading to a valued, worthwhile qualification, not just a continuation of education by another name.

I turn now to my second point: the role of the voluntary sector, a sector in which I take a particular interest and about which I have written several reports for the Government. The localised nature of many voluntary groups makes them particularly well suited to address the challenges of implementing the life chances strategy. For example, creating family stability, which underpins the strategy, will not be achieved in Whitehall; it will be achieved by the hard yards—door by door, case by case. A local voluntary group often may be best placed to provide the flexible, personalised approach that is needed.

How can the Government help these voluntary groups become more effective? One important way will be to review and improve the process by which services are commissioned. Commissioners are, by their very nature, risk-averse. It is much easier for them to use safer and bigger organisations.

How can we address this imbalance? First, commissioners could be reminded that, while they have a duty to ensure value for money, the number of tenders called for should reflect the size of the contract. For example, asking half a dozen organisations to tender for a contract worth, say, £200,000 represents a huge wasted investment for the five inevitable losers. Dare I say it, for some very small contracts, a grant may be more effective than a contract.

Secondly, the cost of completing a tender should reflect its size. I have suggested in the past that the cost of completing a tender document should not be more than 2% of the contract value up to half a million pounds, and 1% thereafter. A similar guideline could be set out for complying with the monitoring requirements. Of course the taxpayer needs to know that his money is being well spent, but onerous and, above all, frequently changing methods of measurement weigh heavily on the smaller organisation.

Finally, commissioners need to be reminded that, if they do select a large group as the main contractor, it is not right for those large contractors to take the easier, vanilla-flavoured cases for themselves and pass on the more challenging cases to the voluntary sector.

To conclude, if the Government believe that the voluntary sector has a useful role to play in delivering the life chances strategy—and I certainly think that it has—something along these lines would be very encouraging for the sector to increase its participation.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

I accept everything the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, have said. The last time this Committee sat, noble Lords touched on the question of how we can learn lessons if we do not put reviews in place. If we do not review sanctions, how will the Government assess whether they have been effective or whether they can be adjusted to get people back into work? That is surely what it is about and why sanctions have been put there in the first place. We must have an independent review and I hope the Minister will look seriously at this issue.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I do not object to reviews in principle. I have done some for the Government and I am now doing the official review of Part 2 of the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act, which covers the impact on non-party political campaigning. They have a useful role and, in light of the work I have done for the Government, it would be strange if I objected in principle to what the noble Baroness and the other noble Lords proposing these amendments are saying. I leave aside the question of whether there is a real purpose here: the noble Baroness rather disregarded the Oakley review and other things as being of little value. If reviews are to have worthwhile purposes, they need to meet certain tests. Other noble Lords will have their own tests, but I will share three with the Committee this afternoon.

First is the question of timing. The full impact of legislation takes time to emerge. In these circumstances, we are obviously seeking to change people’s behaviour. Their first reaction may not be their last and further reactions—good or bad—may emerge over the months and years after the legislation comes into effect. The amendment suggests 31 March 2016 as the date by which the review must be set up into whether sanctions are an,

“effective and proportionate means of meeting the Government’s objectives”.

I doubt whether it is possible to adhere to that timescale and reach meaningful outcomes, given the complexity of the subjects we are discussing and the likely evolution of events and behaviours. I am therefore concerned about the timing.

The second question is about the remit, which is too narrow. Each statute contains a number of pieces, as in a jigsaw. If one piece of the jigsaw is moved, all the other pieces have to move as well. The amendment looks at just one piece and does not pay enough attention to the wider implications, strategic aims and objectives of the Bill as a whole. Its benefits and value suffer as a result of its proposers making it so narrow.

The third question is the terms of the review. To be worth while, a review has to be reasonably even-handed as it sets out. I notice that the word “sanctions” is used four times in the amendment. By no stretch of the imagination can “sanctions” be said to be a neutral word: it is a pejorative term. The review sets out with these terms in order to arrive at, and find, a particular outcome.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, does the noble Lord not agree that the word “sanctions” is employed in my noble friend’s amendment because that is the word the Government choose to use?

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

In these circumstances, a word such as “provisions” would be a better and more even-handed way of looking at the measure.

From my point of view, the timing proposed in the amendment is too soon, the remit is too narrow and the terms of reference are designed to achieve only one result. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend will reject it.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I also have a slight reservation about my noble friend’s amendment, but it is not the kind of semantic quibble which the noble Lord has just advanced, if I might term it that way. I would like to see the review of the out-of-work benefits regime and sanctions, which she rightly calls for, extended to certain other aspects of the welfare system as it is now operating.

In debates in your Lordships’ House, I have referred before to the area in Newcastle I represent as a councillor. It is a ward in the west end of the city with high levels of deprivation and a life expectancy 12 years lower than that of the area where I live, some 12 minutes’ drive away. The ward has six primary schools, two of which are Roman Catholic schools. All the schools, together with the Excelsior Academy, founded by a Conservative philanthropist, provide breakfast clubs for their pupils. The ward is served by the largest food bank in the country and poverty is a very real local issue.

On 26 November, I was contacted by a constituent, a single parent with two very young children, whose child tax credit payments had been stopped for eight weeks. The family was left with £33 a week child benefit and £117 a fortnight income support. The children’s milk tokens had also been stopped, and formula milk needed by one child who suffers from asthma could no longer be afforded. The parent of these children could not top up the gas meter, when required, to the usual extent.

Concentrix, the firm dealing with my constituent under contract to HMRC, had initially stated that it would take six weeks to check the eligibility for child tax credits. I forwarded the details and my reply to the constituent to the local Member of Parliament, and advised my constituent that I had done so and would also endeavour to take up the matter with the Minister. However, three days later, on 1 December, I was again contacted by my constituent, who told me that a further telephone conversation had taken place with Concentrix. The initial response—now nine weeks after payments ceased—was that inquiries were ongoing. A request was then made to speak to a supervisor. Initially, that led only to an assertion by the supervisor that the mandatory reconsideration was being carried out by another department which did not accept calls from claimants. However, after it was said in the course of this telephone conversation that the local Member of Parliament had been informed about the case, the problem was miraculously resolved and payments immediately resumed, even though for weeks Concentrix had claimed that this could not be done by the department to which the calls had been made.

This sorry saga raises serious questions about the administration of the child tax credit system in general, and by Concentrix in particular. Of course, it is right that claims should be validated, but your Lordships might think that even six weeks seems like a long time for payments to be suspended, let alone the nine weeks which had elapsed in this case and the even longer period which, but for the mention of the Member of Parliament, would otherwise have ensued.

There are also issues about the approach taken by Concentrix in dealing with the matter, not just the length of time taken. This US-owned company, another beneficiary of the passion for outsourcing these services, was featured in an article in the Independent in February. Staff claimed they were under pressure to start 40 or 50 inquiries a day into possibly fraudulent claims without any initial cause. In effect, they were asked to fish for fraud. As of August, the Mumsnet website carried 91 cases of applicants complaining about how they felt intimidated by the company’s approach and its demands, for example, for original documentation such as bank statements, rent payments or catalogue, fuel and other bills, which were often prefaced by unsubstantiated and false assertions that claimants were not lone parents but were living with someone.

All of this is symptomatic of a deeply troubling approach to an important component of our welfare system, or, as I prefer to characterise it, our system of social security, which in so many ways the provisions of this Bill threaten to undermine.

A week last Friday, I watched a recording of JB Priestley’s powerful and moving play “An Inspector Calls”, set more than a century ago, which deals with the tragic history of a young woman driven to suicide by poverty and the withholding of what was then known as poor relief. I am not, of course, suggesting that we are in a similar position today or that this Bill, however imperfect, will take us back there. But I believe it is time for an inspector to call not only on Concentrix but on HMRC, the department and the Government as a whole to review not just how the system is administered, but the implications for those in need of the policies embodied in this Bill.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, there have been 27 speeches so far and I want to avoid ploughing or reploughing ground that has probably been pretty extensively tilled already. Therefore, my contribution will draw on my experiences in the charity and voluntary sector and, in particular, on the work that I did for the Government in looking at effects on that sector in a report called Unshackling Good Neighbours. The report tried to find ways of removing barriers to the growth of the third sector, and the research for it gave me the chance to see the condition of some of our most disadvantaged fellow citizens. At times it could be slightly dispiriting but, by contrast, the activities of the volunteers in the third sector organisations—and they were mostly volunteers—were almost universally uplifting. Often with very little money and few assets, they set out to tackle some of the most deep-seated and intractable problems in our society. They were trying to provide a ladder up which our unlucky fellow citizens could climb.

It will come as no surprise to the House that one of the main rungs of the ladder was a job—regular, steady employment, often with third sector organisations helping to provide an introduction to the disciplines and self-disciplines that the commercial world requires from people who perhaps have become unfamiliar with them because of a long period out of work. Self-evidently a job provides an answer to some of the economic challenges but it does much more than that, as my noble friend Lord Lupton said in his distinguished maiden speech. It helps to provide an answer to social challenges, because one of the pernicious effects of long-term unemployment is an erosion of self-confidence. By contrast, a job creates self-confidence. It creates a sense of self-worth, a sense of belonging and a sense of having a stake in society—above all, a stake in a society that values the individual. Thus, it contributes to social cohesion—the glue that binds us all together—the creation and maintenance of which I believe is one of the great challenges that we will face over the next few years. I will come back to that in a minute or two.

Therefore, it will come as no surprise to the House that I strongly support the direction of travel of the Bill, and in my few minutes I want to address briefly three issues: the apprenticeship programme, the troubled families initiative and the restriction of certain benefits to two children only.

The plan to create 3 million apprenticeships seems admirable. There is a pressing need for vocational training, and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, will, I know, follow me on that. It will provide people with more satisfying, better-paid and more secure jobs than—dare I say it?—a 2.2 in media studies. The Sutton Trust and Big Society Capital are only two of the many organisations that provide many concrete examples of the advantages of this policy. It is certainly not a policy that lacks ambition, but I have some concern that, as numbers expand to meet the 3 million target, the quality standards may be compromised and an apprenticeship may too often become not much more than basic training. So some element of quality control will be essential to keep faith with those joining the programmes. On that point, at least, I am happy to agree with the UNISON briefing circulated to Members of your Lordships’ House. The Skills Funding Agency, as the potential policeman, has a vital role to play in this regard. It should also consider establishing a confidential hotline so that those who feel that what was promised is not now being delivered can seek support and redress.

Secondly, I strongly support the initiatives in the Bill to help break the cycle of underachievement, underperformance and deprivation—that is, the troubled families initiative. The troubles faced by each family are unique. Themes there may be but the admixture is unique. Government programmes tend by their very nature to be broad brush—no other approach is possible at scale—but what many of these families need is the detailed attention that can often best be provided by smaller third sector groups. However, their role is often constrained by the commissioning processes. Commissioners can be highly risk averse, preferring to put their faith in large groups, for which smaller third sector organisations can too often become “bid candy”, being landed with the most challenging areas, which perforce carry a higher risk of failure, while the main contractor takes the “vanilla flavour” mainstream cases.

A Second Reading debate is not the place to discuss the details of the commissioning processes but I urge my noble friend to ask his officials to consider establishing some commissioning yardsticks. The third sector deserves a level playing field and a series of yardsticks would help to establish it. It would also provide a means for more effective delivery of the Government’s admirable policy objectives in this area.

I turn thirdly to what I might call, in shorthand, the two children issue, which is possibly the most challenging. In my various visits and trips compiling my reports for the Government I have been struck by how many people, from every sector in every region of our country, emphasise the concept of fairness. It is of course true that the detailed aspect of what each thinks is fair varies according to the eye of the beholder, but the underlying principles are very often the same. This concept of fairness underpins the unspoken and unwritten contract that commits all of us to playing our part in preserving our social model, whether it be pay-as-you-go pensions, the method of funding the National Health Service or the issues that we are discussing tonight. However, the elasticity of the social model is not infinite and should not be taken for granted.

I have of course read very carefully the briefings from a number of organisations on this issue and, in particular, the one from the faith groups, signed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. I understand the point being made and, no doubt, we shall have some robust debates on this point in Committee. However, with great respect to the right reverend Prelate, and indeed to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, who spoke very strongly on this matter half an hour ago, at this stage, I think that with the careful shaping given to this part of the Bill by the Government—for example, that it is a two-child rolling programme and disabled children are exempt—they have got the fairness balance about right.

In the last part of my speech, on the background of the Bill and the issue of social cohesion, I want to turn to a very different point: how we are going to preserve the social cohesion of this country over the next 20 years and the challenges that we face.

This country is undergoing an exceptionally rapid growth in population. I want to make it clear, as I always do when I speak on this subject, that this is not about people’s race, creed, colour or ethnic origin. It is purely about absolute numbers—and the numbers are stark. The ONS figures for 2014, produced in late September, indicated that the population of this country increased by 1,435 people every day—just under 900 from immigration, and around 600 from excess of births over deaths, or the natural increase. That is 10,000 people a week. We are putting a small town on to the map of the United Kingdom every week, 52 weeks of the year.

Think of the consequences of that. Take just one consequence that we always debate in your Lordships’ House, that of housing. Currently, we house 2.3 people per dwelling. I make the assumption that we would want our new arrivals, wherever they come from, to be no less well housed. To house 1,435 people per day means that we need 624 dwellings. That is 26 per hour or one every two and a half minutes, night and day, without any improvements being made to our existing housing stock, which I suspect most of us would believe are necessary.

I am afraid that this is not a temporary phenomenon. The ONS projections indicate a mid-point for the UK’s population in 2035 of a further 10 million people—that is made up of both immigration and natural increase. Twenty years from now, we are going to have to build three new Greater Manchesters. On the same metric of 2.3 people per dwelling, that is 4.4 million homes. If noble Lords do the simple arithmetic, they will see that that is one new house every two and a half minutes for the next 20 years.

I fear that the introduction of 10 million people and 4.5 million homes will pose challenges to our social cohesion that we have not really begun to think carefully about. This is 10 million people in a country that has just overtaken the Netherlands as the most densely populated in Europe, with 425 people per square kilometre—the Netherlands having just under 400 people per square kilometre.

It is easy to put this issue into a box marked “too difficult” because it is difficult. I urge my noble friend on the Front Bench; I urge the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock—this is not a party political matter—and, indeed, I urge the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham to hold this question and its implicit challenges in their collective mind. For, if there are to be challenges to our social cohesion, it will not be those of us in your Lordships’ House who will suffer. It will be the poor, the ill-educated, the unemployed and, above all, the recently arrived—in many ways the people we are trying to help in this Bill—who will bear the brunt.

Twenty years from now, I will probably be dribbling into my cornflakes, unaware of what is going on around me. I believe our successors will be entitled to ask why, on this important issue, we always looked the other way.

Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (General Duties of Self-Employed Persons) (Prescribed Undertakings) Regulations 2015

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann]

I absolutely share the noble Lord’s view that this is very important legislation. The advances we have made in health and safety and the consequent reductions in accidents, along with the measures introduced all those years ago, are a significant achievement and success. However, I am suggesting that certain businesses can be exempted from this provision because they pose no risk to the public. I certainly would not wish to give the impression, and I hope I have not, that everybody who works from home is exempt. One million self-employed people will still be covered by the regulations. They will apply only to certain types of activity and they will be made clear. They will be clarified by the guidance and by the campaign that will be launched six weeks before these measures come into effect.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

Perhaps my noble friend might like to explain to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and the party opposite that what is actually needed here is common sense, not risk assessment. Risk assessment is a formal legal process. People should use their common sense to make sure that they look after themselves. I think that is what my noble friend is trying to drive at and it must be the right way to proceed—to avoid paper form-filling and unnecessary diversion of effort for people who, with common sense, could work it out for themselves.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

But is risk assessment not a matter of common sense?

Health and Safety: Common Sense Common Safety

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, Members of the House may be aware that I chair a task force looking into the red-tape burdens on small charities and voluntary groups. In our work, we come across some of the themes to which my noble friend has referred in his report. Therefore, I congratulate him on at least three grounds: first, for having pulled the threads together of a highly complicated matter in a commendably brief and to-the-point report; secondly, for not just stating the problem, which is the easy bit, but for coming forward with some practical suggestions for solutions and ways forward; and, thirdly, for not showing slavish opposition to regulation because regulation has a place, but equally for dealing with the question of myth busting. Problems can lie not just with the regulator but with the regulatee and the enforcement agencies. However, there is a problem, and my noble friend is right to have highlighted it. Last Friday, on a visit to one of the schools in the Lord Speaker’s outreach programme, I mentioned my role and was told, “We’ve just had all our mechanical pencil sharpeners removed because portable appliances have to be tested every year, ours haven’t been tested, and therefore they’ve had to be taken out of service”. There is a problem.

In the research we are doing for my report, one of the basic questions we are asking ourselves is: what stops a person volunteering or becoming a trustee? There is no simple answer to that. Some people say time, some say family pressures, some say business pressures, but behind them all lies the frequently expressed concern about being sued or becoming involved in litigation. Some will argue that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear and the law will support you in due course, but the fact of the matter is that for the non-lawyer, the time lapse between the offence and coming to court, the potential costs, the psychological pressure—your wife saying, “Darling, is our house at risk?”—and the uncertainty about the outcome remain, rightly or wrongly, major disincentives.

This argument also fails to take into account the inequality of arms that appears to have grown up between prosecution and defence in recent years. While I entirely accept that we must ensure appropriate access to justice for our fellow citizens, the present risk-free approach has played a major role in the growth of what my noble friend and others have described as the compensation culture. For me, the combined effect of conditional fee arrangements, claims management companies and after-the-event insurance appears almost entirely malign. I hope that the Government will follow up the recommendation in my noble friend’s report, at least in this aspect.

The elephant in room, to which some noble Lords have already referred, is a major issue in the background of our deliberations. It is risk. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that zero risk is not only unattainable but, if it were attainable, it would be undesirable. If our society is to have any dynamism or creativity, an element of risk is essential. I do not think I am alone in that view; many commentators support it. We need to have a mature public debate about the level of risk that our society is prepared to accept. We need to have this debate away from the appalling emotional pressure of specific events. As a parent, one can only sympathise with other parents faced with the dreadful injury or death of a child. The regret, sadness and anger lead to media campaigns—and sometimes, I regret to say, to some opposition activity—which place great pressure on the politicians of the day to do something.

We need to think about the aspects of the risk equation. There is the knee-jerk regulation, the stable door and the bolted horse but, more importantly, there is the referred risk. Noble Lords will be familiar with the idea of referred pain, where you pull your back in one place but the pain shows itself in another place. Risks are transferred. Noble Lords will recall that there was a bad crash at Hatfield in Hertfordshire in October 2000. A train travelling north at 125 miles an hour came off the rails and four people were killed and 70 were injured. Railtrack found that the crash was the result of the fragmentation of the track as the train passed over it, so speed limits of about 20 miles an hour were imposed. Trains were delayed and cancelled and, as a result, people ceased to travel by train and travelled by road instead. Road travel is much more dangerous than rail travel, and actuaries will tell you that as a result of that in the 30 days after the Hatfield crash five more people died on the roads than would have done in normal circumstances, so we need to think about what shutting off one particular risk may cause in another area.

Another aspect of this is the impact on the social fabric of our society, on the giver as well as the receiver of a service—a social service perhaps. Not only is the receiver of the service deprived of something that he or she would like, but the giver, seeking to put something back into society and to do something for their fellow citizen, is equally deprived. We need to find a way to distinguish between systemic risks leading to a need for regulation and what, in that rather unfortunate but nevertheless accurate phrase of Donald Rumsfeld, can be described as “stuff happens”.

Finally, we need to consider the impact of regulation and the regulatory burden on the destruction and undermining of people’s confidence in their own judgment. Someone might say to you, “It has been covered by the Health and Safety Executive; it has been covered by the Criminal Records Bureau”, as if this absolves them of further responsibility. The fact is that it does not change the risk; it has merely altered the responsibility for it. If my noble friend’s report begins to redress that balance and to restore self confidence, it will not have been a report in vain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My noble friend will forgive me for not being able to answer him off the top of my head. I am not absolutely sure about how that abolition will happen. I will write to him and place a copy of the letter in the Library.

My noble friend Lord German and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about the SR settlement of the HSE and the reference to cuts among local authorities in this area. I hardly need to confirm that the HSE faces the kind of spending restraint that is seen in the rest of the public sector. Its current funding of £228.8 million will be reduced by 35 per cent over the SR period to around £150 million. The HSE is looking at how to maintain the position of health and safety in the country within that context and looking at its approach, and will report on how it will manage within that financial environment.

My noble friend Lord German and the noble Lord, Lord Smith, observed that there was a lack of evidence in my noble friend Lord Young’s report. I think I can speak for him in saying that there was wide consultation with stakeholders in the course of his review. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, raised whether we are talking about reality or perception. My noble friend Lord Young’s report said that perception becomes reality at a certain point. The fact that people read silly health and safety myths in the media on a regular basis affects behaviour, has an impact and does not encourage a sensible and proportionate approach to risk. This dialogue about what is perception and what is reality does not properly take that point on board.

Gold-plating was raised by my noble friends Lord German and Lord Vinson. It is at the heart of what the Government are doing in this area. We need to position health and safety as an enabler for business and citizens. The Government strongly support that approach. We know that it is central to the HSE’s new approach in the context of the financial rigours that we are facing.

The noble Lords, Lord Smith and Lord Sugar, raised advertising. The claims management regulator has already agreed to look at the code regarding offering inducements and plans to close this loophole by April 2011. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, in particular, will welcome that assurance.

My noble friend Lord Vinson and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, talked about bureaucracy and the criminal records check system. The clearly excessive bureaucracy adds little to our real safety and has become part of the perception problem. Such checks fall outside the HSE’s remit, but I will bring the concerns on that to the attention of colleagues.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, perhaps I may draw the attention of my noble friend to the fact that 100,000 people in this country are checked 30 times each and every year.

[Lord Freud]

I fully accept the concern of noble Lords on that issue and, as I say, we will push this point. In conclusion, good health and safety, particularly in low-risk areas, should be simple and straightforward. It should be about protecting people from real risks, not trivial risks. I believe that the approach of my noble friend Lord Young will help to put the focus back on managing serious risks and to dispel the myth that health and safety is a killjoy activity designed to place burdens on business, take the fun out of life and stop people from enjoying everyday activities. We will not make the United Kingdom a safer place by wrapping everyone in cotton wool and avoiding all risk. We will do it by being exemplars of a common-sense, proportionate approach to risk management, by giving people confidence to exercise judgment and by ensuring that advice and guidance is competent and fit for purpose. I commend the work and the report of my noble friend Lord Young, and I look forward to the successful implementation of his recommendations.