Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Debate between Lord Lansley and Steve Brine(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
I am now 46 minutes into my speech and I am not going to give way again, because I am going to explain the remainder of the Bill’s provisions—[Interruption.] I apologise to colleagues, but I have to complete the description of what the Bill will achieve.
The Bill also introduces a provision whereby third parties will be permitted to spend only up to a certain amount of their controlled expenditure in individual constituencies. That is to prevent a third party from directing a large proportion of its national spending limit at only a small part of the UK, thereby focusing the full force of the considerable spending available to it on a small geographical location. That would, and indeed does, allow disproportionately large amounts of money to distort election campaigns and the political process.
A number of third parties campaign in a way that supports a particular political party or its candidates. That is entirely legitimate, but it must not be allowed to become a vehicle for evading party spending rules. We believe that it is right that the political party should be able to oversee which organisations offer it significant campaign support. The Bill introduces a new measure that will require third parties that spend significant sums campaigning in a way that can reasonably be regarded as supporting a particular political party or its candidates to be specifically authorised by the political party to campaign in that manner. That spending will then be counted towards both the third party and the political party’s spending limits.
The transparency of the regulatory regime is enhanced by the Bill. When third parties campaign to support political parties, expenditure will now be more fully recorded and disclosed. Donations to third parties will now have to be published in advance of an election, rather than after it. Third parties will have to provide a statement of accounts. Those measures can only be good for maintaining public trust in our political system.
The Bill also clarifies the importance of the role to be played by the regulator, the Electoral Commission. The commission will now have a clear duty to monitor spending and donation controls and to ensure their compliance with the law. We want to prevent our political system from becoming one in which unaccountable groups spend millions attempting to influence the outcome of an election. The Bill is an important step towards achieving that, without undermining the ability of third parties to engage more broadly in the political process.
Let me now turn to part 3. Trade unions are influential participants in public life. They have an important role representing members’ interests both with specific employers and in wider public debate. The Government support that role. We also believe it is important that the public is confident that, when a union decides how to exercise its influence, all union members may choose to play a part. That is what the third part of the Bill is about. It will require trade unions visibly to demonstrate that they know who their members are and can contact them. The principle that unions must be able to contact their members is well established in legislation. We are building on an existing duty for unions to maintain an accurate and up-to-date register of members’ names and addresses.
Steve Brine
It seems perfectly sensible to ask the unions to keep a register of their members, but will my right hon. Friend assure the House that there will be no undue administrative burden on smaller trade unions as a result of the measures in his Bill?
Mr Lansley
I am confident that the burden on trade unions will be very modest. As far as the certification officer is concerned, we are talking about only three additional members of staff as a consequence of all this. In future, unions will provide a membership audit certificate to the certification officer alongside their annual financial return. Unions with more than 10,000 members—this helps to answer my hon. Friend’s point about the smallest trade unions—will be required to appoint an independent third party, an assurer, to provide the certificate, which will state whether the union’s systems for maintaining the register meet the statutory requirements. That independent assurance will be important to provide confidence in large and complex membership records.
It will be the responsibility of the certification officer to make inquiries and to appoint an inspector to investigate possible discrepancies, if there are circumstances suggesting that a union has not complied with those requirements. That will complement the existing responsibilities for investigating complaints made by individual members. We expect that in most cases the inspector will be a member of the certification officer's staff, but it could be an expert third party.
The Bill sets out how assurers and appointed inspectors will be bound by duties of confidentiality in their handling of member data. Of course, existing safeguards in data protection and human rights legislation will apply in this case as they do elsewhere. Should the certification officer find a union to be non-compliant with these duties, he will make a declaration to that effect specifying where the union has failed to comply and the reasons for the declaration. In addition, he will be able to make a civil enforcement order, requiring the union to take steps to remedy the issue. However, prior to making a formal declaration and order, the certification officer will give the union an opportunity to make representations.
This is not about making it harder for trade unions to operate. We are not requiring unions to collect more data or change the way in which they keep membership registers. Nor are we amending the requirements on industrial action ballots. The requirement to keep a list of member names and addresses is distinct from information that a union must supply to an employer when balloting for industrial action.
Business of the House
Debate between Lord Lansley and Steve Brine(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I welcome the new Leader of the House to his post. I know he will do well for the House, as he did day in, day out for the health service in the last two-and-a-half years in government.
My right hon. Friend was present for the end of Department for Business, Innovation and Skills questions, and he will have heard the representations made about the Post Office. May we have a statement from the new Minister with responsibility for the Post Office about the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency contract? The Government say they support post offices and making them viable front-office businesses. We need to put our money where our mouth is, so we are not at the mercy of a Europe-wide tendering process. Kings Worthy post office and its customers have made many representations to me over the summer, and this decision could very well close the business.
Mr Lansley
I did, indeed, hear the answer rightly given by the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Minister. I should put this matter in context. The post office local model is an excellent model, and we are seeing substantial take-up, which is in many instances reviving post office services. The Government are absolutely clear that we will not entertain a process of post office closures, which is what happened under the last Government. On the specific point, this contract process is currently live and it would not be proper for Ministers to comment or interfere during the course of that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Lansley and Steve Brine(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
The hon. Gentleman should go back to last year and recall that not only did we consult on the White Paper, but—following the listening exercise last year with dozens of independent health professionals, who conducted hundreds of meetings with thousands of professionals across the service, who made a substantial series of recommendations, and with the Future Forum clear that the principles of the Bill were supported, just as many organisations continue to say that they support them—we took on board and accepted those recommendations. That is why the Bill, which is in another place, was supported by a majority in this House and was supported by a majority there.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
There has been much talk today about improving outcomes of patient care—when we move beyond the politics—so will the Secretary of State commend the excellent hyper-acute stroke service that he saw with me in Winchester just a few weeks ago? As he knows, the service rightly enjoys the support of the emerging care commissioning group. Indeed, he also met those in the group and saw how positive they are about the changes.
Mr Lansley
Yes, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the invitation that he extended to me to visit Winchester, which is now forming part of the Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and looking to do so very successfully. I share with him the optimism derived from a meeting with the members of the West Hampshire clinical commissioning group. They, like others across the country, are demonstrating how they will use the responsibilities that they will be given to improve care for patients.
Breast Implants
Debate between Lord Lansley and Steve Brine(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. As he knows, I co-chair the all-party group on breast cancer and we will want to monitor how women are treated by the NHS and private providers, and we will certainly feed that into the Department. For women who have fought breast cancer and been through the trauma of reconstructive surgery, this will bring it all back and be tremendously upsetting. Does the Secretary of State therefore agree that speed is of the essence in respect of replacement surgery where it is wanted, so that those women can again put this nightmare behind them?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I completely recognise the points he makes. As he will know, the overwhelming majority of the approximately 3,000 women who had PIP implants through the NHS will have had them as breast reconstruction surgery following mastectomy. From day one, we were clear that we wanted all those women to be able to get advice, investigation and remedy, and removal and replacement, should they wish. If the NHS was responsible for the original operation, we will be responsible for the replacement with new implants, if that is what is wanted.
The NHS is very clear about this issue in the advice that was presented. I welcome the fact that my professional colleagues in the associations are making it clear that, through the NHS, replacement procedures for these women should be possible rapidly, but it should not prejudice the availability of urgent referral for cancer, which will continue to be an operational requirement in the NHS.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Lansley and Steve Brine(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
Yes, I think my hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. What has been interesting in the listening exercise is the clear expression—on the part of front-line clinicians, general practitioners, doctors, nurses and other health professionals—of a desire to take greater responsibility for commissioning. They are only too aware of a decade of decline in productivity in the NHS, in which administration costs and staffing ballooned while front-line staffing did not increase to anything like the same extent. They want to deliver better clinical services for their patients, and to have the responsibility to do so. We are determined to give that to them.
Mr Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
14. Whether his Department has considered the merits of introducing a supplemental ultrasound breast screening examination as part of the NHS breast screening programme.
NHS Reform
Debate between Lord Lansley and Steve Brine(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
No, I will not, because we are very clear about the strategy and the principles of the Bill. We are equally clear that now we have the opportunity to work with the developing GP pathfinder consortia, the health and well-being boards in local authorities and the wider community to ensure that the implementation of the Bill and its structure support those developing organisations.
Mr Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for his helpful and useful update this afternoon, and welcome his assurances that the coalition wants to reform and modernise our NHS, right in line with its founding principles. He knows that I will continue to argue for greater transparency for the new GP consortia, and I hope we can still find a way to do that, but I warmly welcome his listening exercise, the measures contained in the Bill and the way he has made himself freely available to colleagues since taking up his post last year. May I urge him to continue doing that both in the House and, of course, outside it?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We will do that, not only formally across the country but in the informal manner that we do in the House. His point of view exactly illustrates the purpose of my statement. He served on the Committee that debated the Bill. Notwithstanding the good progress that the Bill has made and that we are making around the country, people have legitimate concerns and questions. They want to raise those and to know that we will listen and act on them.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Lansley and Steve Brine(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
We are going to improve the effectiveness of our public health services. As the right hon. Gentleman will know from past debates, I entirely recognise the extreme importance of reducing tobacco use. After the introduction of legislation on smoking in public places, there was a reduction in prevalence, but at the moment there is no continuing further reduction, especially among manual workers and young people; we need to achieve that reduction, and we will continue to look at measures to do that. We will say more about the issue in our public health White Paper.
Mr Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
Many of my constituents, and indeed many practitioners, have grave concerns about the pending closure of Winchester ambulance station. Will the Minister assure the House that no changes to static ambulance bases will take place until local consortiums, when they are formed, are happy that a suitable alternative is in place?
NHS White Paper
Debate between Lord Lansley and Steve Brine(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
No is the answer. I set out on 21 May criteria on listening to patients and understanding what patient choice will be in future; on engaging the public, including local authorities, which are now following through on that accountability; on following the clinical evidence of what can best deliver outcomes; and on ensuring that GPs, as we have made clear, must be supportive and engaged. If any proposal in London is made at local level, such as the one the right hon. Gentleman refers to in Oxleas, that satisfies those criteria, which are bottom-up and locally led, there is no difficulty in its proceeding.
Mr Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his statement, which many people outside the House will recognise is a breath of fresh air for our NHS, unlike the flagging leadership bid we heard earlier—the second this afternoon—from the Opposition.
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the new consortiums of GPs can regain responsibility for out-of-hours care, the provision of which is a great worry for many of the people I represent across Winchester and Chandler’s Ford?
Mr Lansley
Yes. The commissioning responsibility will include urgent and out-of-hours care. I commend to my hon. Friend what the White Paper says about how we can deliver improvements in efficiency and effectiveness in terms of urgent care, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.