Universal Credit

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Clearly, as we roll out universal credit in the years to come, we will be pulling in people who are more vulnerable than the groups we are currently pulling in. We are looking to support them in a number of ways. That is one of the reasons why we are doing this careful rollout with a test-and-learn strategy. But the specific things we are looking at in this area are help with personal budgeting support and the development of universal support delivered locally, where we are in partnership with local authorities throughout the country. We are trialling that and the results will inform the future rollout.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Is it not also true that the system is simpler to understand for cybercriminals? Given the fact that universal credit is going to be such a large percentage of government spending, what preparations are the Government taking to make sure that this system is clear and safe from cyberatttack?

[Lord Freud]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that this is potentially a major target for cybercriminals. We have made an enormous effort in developing the digital system, which is a two-way system, unlike the live system that we are currently rolling out across the country. We are making sure that that is safe from cybercriminals, and the first group of people are looking at security operations, because it is not a question of just building a system; you have to maintain it with a big team to make sure that nothing of that nature is going on.

Pensions: British Pensioners Overseas

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

This is the reason why this is a complicated area: it is about a bilateral agreement with another country. In practice, to take the example of Australia, I estimate that for any extra amount that we paid to ex-UK pensioners or UK pensioners living in Australia, more than 25% of that money would go straight into the Australian Treasury.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I fully accept the position that the Minister is in by answering this Question, but how often do the Government check and audit that the recipients of these pensions who are thousands of miles away are still alive?

[Lord Freud]

The noble Lord will be very pleased to know that we now have a system, which has been introduced reasonably recently, of checking that rather more regularly than it used to be done.

Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I have answered the question. I will re-emphasise that we do not have targets, we have management information. I may not have convinced noble Lords on the other side, but they should be very familiar with running targets because that is how they tried to run the economy. We do not run targets because they create perverse behaviours. We collect information in this area, not least because it is required for public purposes. Furthermore, we need to run a business and we need to understand what different areas are doing in order to do that.

Referrals for sanctions are made on the merits of each case. Decisions on sanctions are based on evidence presented that is independently reviewed by decision- makers. The fact that only three-quarters of decisions made are upheld by these decision-makers proves the robustness of the process. Furthermore, there is an independent appeals process against decisions, so even if a target regime were in place, which it is not, claimants who were wrongly sanctioned could successfully appeal.

The flexible business model means that managers need to understand the reason for outliers. While differences can be for good reasons such as local labour market conditions, senior managers need to monitor the overall situation in order to spot and correct anomalies.

Given what I have said, it would be odd to require the independent report to cover a sanctions target that does not exist. However, we are happy to give reassurances that we will make clear the position in respect of targets and league tables. I have done my best today, but clearly more may need to be done for some noble Lords.

[Lord Rooker]

At the risk of upsetting the Whip, I have a question. The Minister does not seem to have addressed one of the examples given by my noble friend. Will he give a personal guarantee that no office will open and call people in on Easter Sunday? How many offices are opening on Sundays? Are they in England, Wales and Scotland? What is the policy of offices opening on Sundays to call in people in the way we heard in the example earlier on? He must address that because this is obviously something quite new.

Leveson Inquiry

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I have not spoken on this issue previously. I am in favour of a free press unshackled by Parliament or government. In fact, I want an even freer press, but where privacy laws are not needed. Privacy laws will be misused by the rich and famous to cover up. We should not have laws that look like they are only for celebs to be able to collect loads of money.

We need to respond on behalf of the majority of people living in an alert democracy who want facts, opinions and lots of open comments. They are not fools and can make their own minds up, but they need to be able to complain and not be fobbed off. If they are on the receiving end of an untruth, they want the chance for an apology and a correction. If they see an untruth they should be able to complain. They need someone to listen. They want someone to go to who is not owned and controlled, lock stock and barrel, by those they complain about. A regulator that is both independent and objective will help people with a complaint and, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, decent journalists who themselves want to be held to high standards. Over the next 18 months or two years, we will witness a great number of court cases where journalists, the police and others are held to account under the existing law. Everything we will witness came about under the existing, press-owned self-regulation process.

In preparing these few words, I read the 2012 Hugh Cudlipp lecture given by Jon Snow of Channel 4. Jon said that he never met that giant of post-war tabloid journalism but he mused about what Cudlipp would have made of today’s tabloid leadership: not a lot, I suspect. I met Hugh Cudlipp and his team in 1962, when he came to talk to the annual student journalist conference, and the year after when we persuaded him to address students at Aston University. He electrified us to go for those in power, search out what they were about and what they were up to, and remember that newspapers are about the people. Today, it appears that some press barons and journalists have removed themselves from the real world where the majority of people live. They have contempt for those they write about and take their readers for fools. Jon Snow said that the hacks in question who brought about Leveson,

“took some weird pleasure in urinating on our world”.

We need a regulator that people and journalists can trust; a regulator that above all knows what it is doing; a regulator that is objective, trustworthy and independent; and a regulator that editors do not fear if they print stories that are right in truth and justified. Snow pointed out—not much has been made of this—that the cutting edge of TV journalists are subject to regulation that seems quite effective. They can work within the so-called constraints that might be there. He also spoke about not wanting to find his own editors somewhere in the mix. Decent journalists want a system with an objective regulator but they would not want it presided over by their own editors.

Public trust is crucial. Lord Justice Leveson showed the way to engender that. Like him, I favour independent, objective self-regulation to maximise the buy-in. It is crucial that the buy-in is maximised but there is a need to give the regulator the kitemark from time to time to engender and preserve public trust. Who is to award the kitemark that the regulator is indeed objective, trustworthy and independent? Leveson also gave us the answer to that, which is dawning on people slowly. Contrary to the claims of editors and some Ministers, no parliamentary or government regulation of the press is required to achieve the solution in which the public will find trust. I will support the proposed recognition commission. Its only remit is to certify the regulation process—nothing to do with the press process, nothing to do with press content and nothing to do with the management of complaints. Therefore I support recommendations 1 to 24 of Lord Justice Leveson.

Health and Safety: Common Sense Common Safety

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of the board of the Food Standards Agency. I do not speak for the agency in this House—we are a non-ministerial government department and we have Ministers in the four Parliaments of the UK who do that—but I will say, on behalf of the board and staff, how grateful we are for this report and for the care and attention to detail that the noble Lord, Lord Young, has given to our proposals for the food hygiene rating system, which is covered at length in the report and is due to be launched next week. We had a short telephone conversation about aspects of the system in the summer. I hope that the rest of the report’s recommendations will also be implemented, but I will come to that in my final points.

I take second place to nobody on health and safety matters. I made my maiden speech in the other place in March 1974 on health and safety; I served on the standing committee for the current health and safety legislation; and, as a manager in manufacturing, I was red-hot on health and safety matters in all of the companies in which I worked. As a Member of Parliament, I used to get complaints about health and safety matters—indeed, the former coroner of Birmingham drew my attention to some of the construction difficulties—and I gave attention to those issues. We have heard some examples of such difficulties from these Benches today, but we have not heard about the catastrophic rate of accidents in the farming industry. I make these points because my noble friend Lord Jordan laboured the point that the report deals with some issues but ignores other areas that are fundamental to the health and safety of people at work. I see no contradiction whatever between the contents of the report and the need to take health and safety matters incredibly seriously in manufacturing, mining, construction and farming. In fact, you could implement the report as a way of being much harsher on sectors in which people are being killed on a daily basis. Those are the sectors in which the risk is high but sometimes ignored.

I will draw your Lordships’ attention to three items. First, the noble Lord produced his report, as I understand it, as a one-off before he became the business tsar. I looked at those two roles quite separately. However, if No. 10 has problems with noble Lords saying things, I invite your Lordships to check what Howard Flight, who has not yet joined us in the House, said this morning—these things happen. You can tell the truth of a story, but you may not tell the whole story. Why be hanged for telling only half the story? There are some people for whom things have never been worse and will get worse still, but it is also true that, for some people, things have never been better. Telling half the story cannot be a hanging offence—that is my defence of the noble Lord, Lord Young.

The noble Viscount, Lord Younger, has been the only speaker to mention the good Samaritan issue. Given that almost half the country is currently covered in snow, in my local town of Ludlow I have flashed the noble Lord’s report in front of the local council because of this nonsense about the clearing of snow. The report makes it absolutely clear that there is no evidence from the Lord Chief Justice that anyone has ever been done as a result of snow clearing. If you clear the snow and wash it out with water that freezes, that is negligence. If you clear the snow, sweep it away and it is dry, that is a voluntary Samaritan issue that you cannot be prosecuted for. I do not deny that we need clarity in the law. The issue of local authorities and their inconsistent approach, which is covered on page 26, must be dealt with.

I turn to the issue of low-risk establishments. A place may look low-risk, but just because people are not wearing boiler suits does not mean that things are not dangerous. Laboratories, shops and offices can be dangerous, depending on the nature of the equipment and the substances that you have to use. You have to be careful and use common sense. That is not the same as what we know are high-risk establishments. A drilling rig is a high-risk establishment. Do not lecture us about big blue-chip companies taking everything really seriously—go and talk to the directors of BP. These things must be looked at in the round to see where the risk is. We must assess the risk and then manage it proportionately. The point made in the report is crucial.

My final example from the report that I have not heard mentioned so far—I missed only two contributions when I had to leave the Chamber—relates to the important issue of voluntary activities, which are covered on page 29. I have a message for the Minister and the Government. Left as it is, the big society agenda will go straight down the plughole unless something is done. The Stalinists in local government, who do not want the big society agenda because they want to do everything themselves, will try to snuff out every local initiative that comes from residents and will hide behind health and safety legislation to stop the operation of the big society. If that is the Prime Minister's big idea, he must do something about that because such initiatives will disappear if this report is not implemented.

That leads me to my final point. The noble Lord, Lord Young, says in his introduction that these reports gather dust. From my experience of Whitehall, which lasted only 11 years and was very short, I say that his report will gather dust. The report cuts right across the piece, so nothing will happen unless somebody with get-up-and-go is charged with dealing with it. The noble Lord was supposed to be dealing with it, but the issue is quite separate from that of his role as business tsar. I say to the Prime Minister that letting the noble Lord, Lord Young, go is a sign of weakness. I am not accusing the Prime Minister of weakness; it is a sign of weakness in the Government. If the report is to be implemented, that will not be done by saying to each department, “Will you and your Ministers play your part, please?”. In my experience, such reports are not implemented but must be driven forward in a positive way. It will not cost a lot to do that, but everyone will benefit if it happens. Society will benefit, regulation will benefit and we will have a happier society, which was mentioned in the speeches this morning. However, if nothing is done about the management of this report, I say to the Minister in all sincerity that it will not get implemented. My central plea is that someone should be put in charge of ensuring that the report is implemented, because that is the desire of everybody.