Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme Order 2014
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the Grand Committee do consider the Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme Order 2014.
Relevant documents: 9th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the Grand Committee do consider the Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014.
Relevant Document: 9th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Strategic Defence and Security Review
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Alderdice
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they plan to re-examine the Strategic Defence and Security Review.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, in January the Prime Minister informed the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy that work was beginning on the next strategic defence and security review—SDSR. This work is in its preparatory stages and will intensify after the general election for the post-election SDSR.
Lord Alderdice (LD)
I thank my noble friend for that information. The last SDSR took place in the context of a Westminster election and the global economic crisis. From the point of view of many of us, it was overly impacted upon by those things. Since then the situation has changed. The Middle East is dissolving into chaos; the European Union is in disarray; cyberaggression has increased exponentially; and in our relations with Russia, we have not only found difficulties over Syria, Crimea, and Ukraine, but also an increasing statement by Mr Putin of the strength of its nuclear weapons. In the light of this, can my noble friend assure me that during this review, this House will be given an opportunity of having a number of serious debates on the question before the completion of the review, not merely a post-hoc debate after decisions have been made and a posture adopted?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I cannot of course commit the next Government in terms of managing the business, but there is time for this House to have a debate on one or two of these issues before then. Since the 2010 SDSR was published, we published in 2011 a cybersecurity strategy, in 2012 a climate change risk assessment and in 2013 the Ministry of Defence’s report on global strategic trends. We are keeping pace as far as we can with all the expected and unexpected developments that the noble Lord mentions.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
Has it occurred to the Government that the cuts by many NATO countries in defence expenditure, in which this Government—our Government—unfortunately led the way, might just have had something to do with the much more aggressive policies pursued by Mr Putin over the past couple of years?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That is a slightly unfair question in many ways. Britain remains the second largest member of NATO in terms of the amount spent on defence. We are currently deterring Russia through the use of sanctions at least as much as through defence. So when we talk about national security we do not only mean defence in strict terms.
Lord Trefgarne (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that if by some cruel mischance the Labour Party wins the next general with the assistance of the Scottish nationalists, it will have to find the money to move Trident, not to mention covering all the unemployment in that part of Scotland?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I find it very interesting that the noble Lord should describe the possibility of the SNP taking a very large number of seats in Scotland away from the Labour Party as assisting the Labour Party.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, coalition at the end of a fixed-term Parliament is a difficult beast. I would like to know what the Government’s policy is on having a strategic defence review in every Parliament as a statutory review. It is very difficult to ask a member of the Liberal Democrat Party because that is not, I think, its policy. I wonder whether the noble Lord could answer on behalf of the Government.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
The coalition Government promised in 2010 that there would be moves towards a regular SDSR. The noble Baroness will well understand that this is because the Labour Government did not have a strategic review between 1998 and the end of their 13 years in office. It is our intention that the next Government—however they may be constituted—should conduct a post-election SDSR as a matter of urgency.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
Could the Minister give the House the government assessment of the security risks from terrorism that will be included in the review?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, terrorism, just like transborder organised crime, is clearly one of the major threats that we have to consider. There is a domestic dimension as well as an international one, and the Government are devoting considerable resources to both those overlapping issues.
Deregulation Bill
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, Schedule 18 amends the Poisons Act 1972. It introduces a common licensing system for the acquisition, importation, possession and use of poisons as well as of chemicals that can be misused to make explosives—termed explosives precursors—within Great Britain.
Current poisons controls are outdated and ineffective. In 2012, the Poisons Board made a number of recommendations after being reconstituted to review the Poisons Act 1972 as part of the Red Tape Challenge retail theme. These included that the Poisons Act 1972, the Poisons Rules 1982 and the Poisons List 1982, which are owned by the Home Office, should be amended to reflect current retail market practices. It also recommended that greater clarity should be given regarding inspection and enforcement of retailers and businesses involved in the trade of poisons, which are very often of course for household use. Schedule 18 does that.
In making these changes, we are aligning controls of dangerous poisons with new regulations that control the sales of explosives precursors that are susceptible to being used to create explosives to commit terrorist attacks. The Control of Explosives Precursors Regulations 2014, which implement EU regulation 98/2013 on the marketing and use of explosives precursors, came into effect on 2 September 2014. The amendments to the Poisons Act 1972 will create a streamlined, cohesive regime that will make it easier for retailers to implement and reduce costs, because there is only one regime to follow.
Schedule 18 removes the current requirement for businesses to annually renew a local authority listing that allows them to sell common household products. This will save businesses some £20,000 a year. Paragraph 1 abolishes the statutory Poisons Board, whose constitution is written into the Poisons Act 1972. Abolishing the statutory body would mean that appropriate and specialist advice can be sought.
The purpose of Amendments 82 to 87 is to make minor technical amendments to Schedule 18. Amendments 82 and 83 provide for the reporting duties in new Section 3C of the Poisons Act 1972 to apply to explosives precursors at all concentrations, as required by EU regulation 98/2013, which is directly applicable in the UK. New Section 3C will impose reporting duties in respect of both poisons and explosives precursors, and is therefore wider than the EU regulation. However, the reporting regime in respect of explosives precursors must be compliant with that regulation.
Amendment 84 creates a new power by which the Secretary of State may, by regulations, make provision modifying new Section 3A of the Poisons Act so far as it applies to any supplies that involve dispatch of a regulated substance to Northern Ireland or export of it from the United Kingdom. Currently, the proposed new Section 11(6) of the Poisons Act provides that any reference in the Act to supplying something does,
“not include … export to a person outside the UK”.
Amendment 87 will remove this aspect of the definition. Amendment 84 will enable the Secretary of State to make regulations about export from the UK, and dispatch to Northern Ireland, having regard to EU regulation 98/2013, in particular its territorial scope, and other prevailing circumstances.
Amendment 85 clarifies that the 12-month time limit for commencing criminal proceedings for offenders under the Poisons Act applies to summary offences only. There is generally no limit for triable offences.
Amendment 86 introduces a transitional provision relating to maximum statutory fines in the magistrates’ court pending the commencement of provisions in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which will remove such maxima.
Amendment 87 is purely consequential on the new regulation-making power introduced by Amendment 84. That is to say, it changes the definition of supply for the purposes of the Poisons Act so it does not automatically exclude exports. I beg to move the amendment and that the schedule stand part of the Bill.
Lord Skelmersdale (Con)
My Lords, I have been prompted to rise to my feet on Amendment 84, to which the Minister has just referred. I will ask a very simple question: are there no regulatory supplies from Northern Ireland, given that Amendment 84 refers to,
“any supplies that involve despatch of the substance to Northern Ireland or export of it from the United Kingdom”?
Of course, Northern Ireland is included in the United Kingdom, so I wonder if the Minister could, at some point in this debate, answer my question.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, Northern Ireland has separate legislation that controls sales of poisons and will implement separate legislation that controls sales of explosives precursors and their exports. The reasons for this are entirely clear and that is why this is concerned with Great Britain.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
Then the term “UK” might perhaps be incorrect in terms of drafting.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
The UK is, of course, an integrated market, so it is difficult to say, “exports from Great Britain”. That is the reason why we vary between Great Britain and the UK in different references.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
We are getting somewhat held up: I am sure that this can be resolved very quickly. The point raised first by the noble Lord opposite was that we need to know what the Government are trying to say here. Are they saying that material exported out of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland by definition, is caught by this, or is it meant to mean that there is a separate territorial area called Northern Ireland for which different regulations apply and that therefore, the schedule bites only on Great Britain?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I will write to the noble Lord if I am misinformed, but I think that if this were to read, “Export for the United Kingdom” or “Despatch of the substance within the United Kingdom to Northern Ireland,” it would be entirely clear.
“(3A) For the purposes of section 3C however, and the meaning of “regulated substance” in or in relation to that section, a “regulated explosives precursor”—
(a) is a substance listed in Part 1 of Schedule 1A, and(b) includes a mixture or another substance in which a substance listed in that Part is present,but, in each case, only if the substance or mixture is not excluded.”
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that very detailed and well prepared set of questions. I have to agree with her that in a sense this is a much less deregulatory measure than many of the others in the Bill. It is a revision of regulations more than deregulation. Indeed, in terms of safety, these proposals are designed to strengthen controls over those selling and purchasing dangerous poisons and explosives precursors. We are continuing a long trend of tightening government regulation of poisons and, increasingly, of explosives precursors.
A hundred years ago, a good many arsenic compounds were available for purchase and they were, on occasion, used for nefarious purposes as well. Over the last 40 years, the European Union has increased regulation and, in some cases, has banned a number of poisonous substances for use not only in the home but in gardens and allotments. Here, we are in part implementing those regulations. We are also concerned, as the noble Baroness will understand, with the use of substances which had not been misused as explosives precursors in the past but which are now widely recommended on the internet for those who wish to make explosives for nefarious purposes—hydrogen peroxide and others. I am referring to substances which, when purchased in large quantities, can be mixed into what then becomes explosives. There have been one or two cases of people being accused of terrorist offences who had managed to purchase large quantities of the same substances that hairdressers, for example, purchase in small quantities.
I note in the extensive list that I was given of the various different substances that there are a number of metallic substances. Their main home uses are listed as metal cleaning, etching, electroplating, painting and soldering. I am told that there are those who even use metal substances and metal complexes at home for extracting the gold from their old mobile phones. This is a delicate issue. Members of the Committee may not do this, but others may wish to do all sorts of things at home. Happily, my children did not get into chemistry particularly heavily. On the question of the Poisons Board’s preferred options, I am told that the Poisons Board accepted our policy approach and objectives in its final note to the Minister for Security and Immigration.
The noble Baroness has seen a summary of recommendations and I am happy to talk further to her about what extra things she would like to know about the replies to the consultation.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
It was not a summary of recommendations, but a summary of the consultation responses, and I identified one or two that were not included in the summary but would have been very helpful in considering this clause.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My understanding is that Appendix A of the report on the consultation had a summary of consultation responses. I have now been deluged with notes that I will attempt to absorb.
The Department of Health was a statutory consultee as part of the Poisons Board and was consulted on the draft legislation regarding any consequential amendments. The Home Office ran an open research call to find research into alternative substances for Part 1 poisons and licensed explosives precursors. Research proposals are currently being evaluated. The Home Office remains the primary enforcement body, although a range of others, including the police, come into play at certain points.
In some ways I rather wish my wife were here. She is much more experienced in poisons for household and garden use. She has strong views about some aspects of EU regulations because a number of poisonous substances, in safe hands, are very useful to use in the home and garden. However, policy in the United Kingdom and in other countries has been moving in the direction of tightening up controls on these because of what can happen in unskilled hands and how desirable it may therefore be to tighten control of them.
On the question of how much a licence would cost, a new licence application costs £39.50 at the moment for a maximum three-year period. Any amendments to current licences are free of charge to encourage compliance with conditions to notify changes in circumstances. Replacements of lost or stolen licenses cost £25. The Home Office has kept costs to a minimum by using existing IT systems as far as possible. A similar background to the checking process for firearms licensing is being followed up, with some differences. No home inspections or face-to-face interviews will be conducted.
Firearms licensing is governed by a different policy and we are looking to full cost recovery in this area, but I will write to the noble Baroness about the comparisons that she has been making with the licensing of firearms. I understand the point that she is making.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
I appreciate that because I have had different responses from different Ministers on the issue. Before the Minister moves on, I asked about the cost of new licences. I am not sure whether that was the figure he gave me. If it was, I thank him. I was not 100% clear about whether it was the new licence for home use that he referred to. Can he clarify that he was saying that the fire service was not consulted? Will he confirm that he will publish the consultation?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I do not have an answer on the fire service and will have to come back to the noble Baroness on that. The costs I was quoting are for new licence applications. I hope that that answers the majority of the questions raised by the noble Baroness, and I am happy to talk further or correspond if necessary on any other questions that I have not followed up. I thank her for the detailed effort she has made to ensure that we have got it right. It is an important area, although I have to say that when I looked at the extremely long list of the various substances that will now be controlled differently, I did not understand what a good many of them were or what their uses are. This is unavoidably a rather specialised field.
There is a regulation-making power in the schedule to vary, add or remove a substance or limit its concentration. After all, chemical substances are changing in terms of how they may be used, and our ability to combine chemicals for various purposes is also changing, so a degree of flexibility is highly desirable.
I have now been told that we have consulted the fire service, particularly on home storage, and that it supports the proposals.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
I am grateful for that, but I am puzzled why, in the list of consultees, the two I asked about were not included, although the Minister has been able to reassure me. It would be helpful to have a comprehensive list of consultees. I have one final point. I asked about the publication of the consultation responses—I made that same point in last week’s debate. Can he confirm that the Government, subject to the normal procedures of ensuring confidentiality of those who have responded, will publish the full consultation responses on the two consultations—poisons and explosives?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That is entirely understood. I will do my best on that, and will write to the noble Baroness with the assurances that she is asking for.
Baroness King of Bow (Lab)
My Lords, I support this amendment which is also in my name. Never has there been greater concern around failures of child protection and greater revulsion about the scale and breadth of the abuse visited on vulnerable children. In light of so many recent scandals, the Government’s position seems at best puzzling and at worst possibly negligent at some point in the future. The amendment would ensure the continued requirement for those providing social work services on behalf of councils to be registered, regulated or inspected. The two key points at issue are the lack of consultation on the one hand and the general opposition from almost all those involved on the other, as well as the fact that we remain unclear as to how this will work in practice for local authorities.
The Minister will no doubt have read with great interest the views of the College of Social Work. The Government’s approach is puzzling because I accept that they want to improve safeguarding services. The Minister will no doubt set out, like his counterpart in the other place, that the Government view registration of providers of social work services on top of their contractual arrangements as a potential duplication. Those of us opposing this view it as a potential extra risk to children.
The College of Social Work points out that earlier this year the Government published a set of regulations to accompany the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 to allow local authorities to delegate almost all their statutory duties. These reforms, taken in the round, could have an extremely significant impact on the delivery of social work services in England. There is a feeling in the sector and indeed elsewhere that there has been quite simply inadequate debate around these very serious and important issues.
The College of Social Work summarised its objection to Clause 71 as follows:
“The new power to delegate social work functions is at the experimental stage and the evidence is not yet available for conclusions to be reached about the impact on the most vulnerable children and adults. It may in future be appropriate to remove this requirement to register with the regulator but it would be risky to remove this safeguard at the present time”.
My main question to the Minister is: why would he want to take this risk at the present time? Why would the Government want to take the risk, given all the problems that we know are taking place at the moment?
As we heard from my noble friend Lady Donaghy, the consultation carried out by the Government did not find support for this—far from it. Even Ofsted’s own consultation found a strong desire to maintain registration checks. Local authorities themselves are calling for external inspection. Why will there be no overview of quality and working practices in some of the key areas, as outlined by my noble friend Lady Donaghy? Why is asymmetry and inequality in the services essentially being written into the Bill?
In summary, if the registration requirements are removed, the Government are essentially dismantling what the CSW describes as the backstop. Will the Minister explain why in these current circumstances the Government would want to remove a safety backstop? Surely, if anything, the Government should be bolstering the backstop and not weakening it. For that reason, I support the proposition that Clause 71 should not stand part of the Bill.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I recognise the passion with which these objections have been made, as well as the experience and expertise of those who made them. I shall be very happy to hold further conversations between Committee and Report to make sure that we can come to some agreement about the balance between regulation and potential risk, to which the noble Baroness, Lady King, rightly pointed. We are all quite clear that children’s services are a very important area where we must make sure that we get the balance right.
The Government’s view after consultation and consideration is that the double layer of inspection provided by Ofsted’s national perspective and the responsibility of local authorities to inspect and to license providers is duplication. Our view is that Ofsted’s existing duty to register providers who may discharge children’s social care functions is completely separate from its duty to inspect and to hold local authorities to account in the discharge of their functions.
I am also very grateful for the correct comment of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that we are talking not just about for-profit providers but about third sector providers, which often provide very good services in this area. Nevertheless, one wants to make sure that those services are always of a consistent quality. She has a great deal of experience in this area. I have very limited experience but I am very conscious that third sector organisations can be absolutely superb but sometimes not superb.
It is argued that the removal of the requirement for providers to register with Ofsted is a benefit to the system because it ensures that there is no doubt or confusion about where the statutory responsibilities then lie. That makes it clear that local authorities are fully accountable for any decisions made by third parties to whom they have delegated functions. The argument here is that it should not be the responsibility of Ofsted to make sure that the third parties to whom local authorities wish to delegate functions are fit for the job.
Under the current registration regulations, Ofsted is required to check on: first, the fitness of the provider to do the work; secondly, the appointment and fitness of the registered manager; and, thirdly, the staffing arrangements and premises. The regulations also include provisions for making changes to any of the above. To cover Ofsted’s costs, providers are required to pay fees for registration and for making changes to the registration once made.
These requirements duplicate the “due diligence” that a local authority will perform as part of its procurement of a provider. No local authority would appoint a third party provider to undertake its functions without making such checks. However, the current system creates confusion as to where accountability lies. The requirement for providers to register with Ofsted is separate from Ofsted’s continuing duty to inspect and to hold local authorities to account. How Ofsted inspects local authorities is for it to determine. For other provision—as for children’s homes—it conducts separate inspections, but it has concluded that delegated functions should be inspected as part of the local authority single framework inspection and has published a plan as to how this will operate. The Government consider that that is adequate and that it provides the regulation required without unacceptable risk.
Baroness Donaghy
I apologise to the noble Lord for interrupting but I wish to seek clarification. Clearly, on the face of it, it does look like double accounting, but similar things exist in other areas—for instance, in the construction industry, where there is a pre-qualification system. At the moment local authorities are given confidence in employing a company which might cover a lot of local authorities. There might be a very small strapped-for-cash local authority—as nearly all of them are now—but it is given confidence because the name of that company is on a register. It has already qualified to meet a certain level of standards. I am not sure that in the Minister’s answer so far—he may be coming to it—he has explained how local authorities have the confidence to get to the pre-qualification stage of saying, “Okay, let’s look at these people with a view to hiring them”. I am not saying that they do not have the responsibility to inspect—of course not—but it could save a lot of time and money if there is already in existence a body of knowledge and a body of standards which local authorities can apply.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I understand that point. I am not entirely clear as to the balance between for-profit providers and not-for-profit providers but I am getting some information from my officials. There are some important distinctions here, which I would like to take back and discuss further with them because I recognise that it is absolutely important that we get this right. The Government’s case is that the clause provides the necessary protections without unnecessary duplication. I recognise that we need to provide the reassurance to all those who have spoken in this debate that we have got the balance right.
Incidentally, we did consult in January and February 2013 and got only some 20 responses, which broke on both sides. There were mixed opinions as to whether the registration regime should be removed; 45% said no and 40% yes. A majority agreed that the proposal would reduce burdens; 53% said yes and 32% no. So the answer is that it did not give us a clear set of arguments as to how to respond.
Again, I recognise the great concerns which have been put forward. The Government have argued consistently that removing this extra level of the registration regime preserves necessary protections. I am very happy to have further discussions between Committee and Report to make sure that we can provide those assurances before we return to this.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his remarks, which ranged much more widely than the limited proposals in Clause 72. Clause 72, on the whole, makes technical changes to the governance arrangements for the Electoral Commission. Clause 73 makes similar technical and modest changes to the governance arrangements for the Local Government Boundary Commission.
As the noble Lord said, the Electoral Commission is the independent body established by Parliament and overseen by the Speaker’s Committee with governance arrangements set out in Schedule 1 to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, known to us with great affection as PPERA.
At present, the Electoral Commission has to provide a five-year corporate plan, with the new plan having to be prepared and submitted annually. The National Audit Office is also required to undertake annual value-for-money studies. The Speaker’s Committee has reviewed these governance arrangements, comparing the Electoral Commission with other modest similar-sized organisations, and has recommended the following changes. First, a five-year corporate plan should be produced in the first financial year of a Parliament. The statutory requirement to update this on an annual basis should be removed, although the Speaker’s Committee should retain the right to request updated plans outside the five-year cycle. Secondly, value-for-money studies by the NAO should be linked to the production of the organisation's five-year plan and not on an annual basis.
Noble Lords will be aware that the approach that central government take to the funding of public bodies is through a spending review. These spending reviews are fixed and spending is planned over a number of years. As such, the existing statutory provisions for the Electoral Commission to provide annual updates to their corporate plan seem excessive.
In terms of removing the statutory requirements for annual value-for-money studies, the NAO has said that it supports such a reduction as the current statutory provisions are disproportionate to the size and spending power of the Electoral Commission. Clause 72 simply implements the recommendations put forward by the Speaker’s Committee. The Government see these as sensible and proportionate changes to the governance arrangements for the Electoral Commission
The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, raised some wider issues about whether it is not now time, after 14 or 15 years of operation of the Electoral Commission, to review the overall balance, and whether the current arrangements, including, as he said, a Select Committee as well as the Speaker’s Committee, provide sufficient oversight. That is an interesting discussion to throw out. As he rightly remarks, we will not get very far with this over the next five and a half months. But this House may appropriately return to this after the election when we have seen how the Electoral Commission has operated with its responsibilities, which are most important in the course of and the run-up to an election campaign. Perhaps at that point he and I and others might talk together about how we take such wider issues further.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, before we leave this clause, I would like to take this opportunity to ask the Minister a question. I am a strong supporter of the Electoral Commission, with no qualification whatever; but next year’s election will be the first time that it has had four and a half years to plan for the date. Therefore, is there an absolute rock-solid guarantee that there will be no chaos in any of the polling stations in this country of the kind that occurred in 2005?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I join my noble friend and add to what he said. My noble friend knows that I come from Birmingham and I was shocked by some of the behaviours I saw outside some Birmingham polling stations, to which I suspect he is referring. I particularly remember a polling station in Moseley, where large groups of men—about 20 or 30—were outside. This was clearly intimidatory; it was very difficult—particularly for women—to go and vote. The current system is so slow to react to situations like that when they arise. This is a very serious matter: in some parts of the country, people are not able to exercise their democratic right to go to a polling station free and unfettered.
For some years, the Electoral Commission took the view that it could only take measures that applied to each part of the country in an equal way. That was madness; it has been clear for a number of years that we have a real problem in some polling areas and we need a response from the Electoral Commission that recognises that.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, it would be foolhardy to give a cast-iron guarantee that no problems might break out. These are not purely matters for the Electoral Commission; as we all know; the local police and the local electoral registration officers have clear responsibilities here as well.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
In the case I mentioned, there was a police van outside; I approached the police van and the officer, of his own volition, went to speak to this group and kind of negotiated that the numbers would come down from about 20 to three or four on either side. I applaud the fact that a police constable, of his own volition, was able to make his own judgment, but that does not necessarily happen, and there is no guarantee that there will be police outside each polling station during the whole of the day. The other problem is that the polling officers are in the polling station in the school, a long way from the road where people can congregate. I accept the point he is making, which is that it is not just down to the Electoral Commission—but the Electoral Commission has a leadership role here.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, let me take that back and make sure that the Electoral Commission is informed of this. I trust that the incidents were reported to the local authorities and the local police at the time. I am conscious from my own experience with polling stations in parts of west Yorkshire that there can be problems; although my strongest memory of the last election is of passing a polling station 10 minutes before it closed and meeting a large extended family coming out of the polling station after voting, having a very sharp and loud argument as to whether each of them had voted the right way. I fear that, in this coming election, there may be rather more of that sort of confusion than any of us would really like to see. Meanwhile, I can assure the noble Lord that I will take these points back and make sure that they are reported to the Electoral Commission. I repeat that local issues like this are very much about local support. It is for the local police, local education and the local political parties, of course, to make sure that the police and the electoral authorities are doing their duty.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness very much. In listening to her, I was remembering that I discovered a new third cousin 10 days ago when the political adviser to someone in the Government in the Emirates got in touch with me. I recognised his unusual name, which happens to be my mother’s maiden name. In inviting him, I asked him to bring the names of his great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather. He arrived with an A3 family tree and the comment from his uncle that the missing bit was a group who had moved away from Somerset, which is where this uncommon local name comes from, and were alleged to have set up as fishmongers in Leicester. That was my grandfather. I now have a new third cousin and quite a useful set of additions to our family tree. I also have a strong desire to visit Australia, where the third cousins who have made good live. They are apparently very generous to their visitors. I should also say that this summer my wife and I were in north Yorkshire looking for her family and we spent a very enjoyable and constructive time in the local history section of Stockton library. The local historians were extremely helpful and provided us with a number of useful bits of family history, including some birth certificates for nothing. The local dimension is as important as the national one.
I can reassure the noble Baroness that officials in the Home Office who lead on this issue will be very happy to meet her soon to discuss the issue further. There are, however, a number of technical issues which mean that the Government cannot accept the amendment as it stands for reasons that I will summarise. The proposed new clause would enable copies of historic births, deaths and marriage records aged 100 years or more to be provided in formats other than a paper certified copy or certificate. It allows for such copies to be produced on paper, electronically or in another prescribed format with a stipulated cost to the customer of,
“no more than £3 per record”.
The amendment seeks to address restrictions laid out in primary legislation that currently prescribe that the only way to access information from a civil registration record, regardless of age, is to purchase a certificate either from the GRO or from the register office where the event was registered, at a standard cost of £9.25 or £10 respectively. While recognising that allowing historic civil registration records to be treated differently from modern records may support government objectives around transparency of data and digitisation, there are some aspects of the clause that make it unworkable in its current form.
For example, the proposed new clause limits the amount that can be charged for an historic record to £3, but further work would be needed to ensure that this allows for compliance with Treasury rules regarding the management of public money—such as rules about full cost recovery. Of course, specifying the fee cap within the clause hinders a regular review of fee levels, as any resultant changes would require further amendment to primary legislation.
The title of the proposed new clause refers to,
“Births, marriages and death registration”,
but the clause seeks to amend only the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, which does not provide for the issuing of marriage certificates. We would expect any amendment that provides for a change to the issuing of marriage certificates to be included in the separate marriage legislation, which is the Marriage Act 1949. In addition, the clause applies the same definition of “historic” to all types of records, but this is not aligned—as the noble Baroness has suggested—with the systems of civil registration in place in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which operate under separate legislation. The legislation in place in Scotland and Northern Ireland provides for records to be defined as historic at 100, 75 or 50 years respectively, depending on whether the information relates to a birth, marriage or death, which goes further than the proposed clause suggests.
The clause makes no changes to the information available from the register office where the event was registered, meaning that while the GRO could make historic records available more cheaply centrally, local register offices would have to continue to provide any information from a record, regardless of its age, in the form of a certificate. The impact on the local registration service of introducing a legal distinction between modern and historic records needs further consideration: the amendment as it stands would disadvantage local authorities, which would continue to be legally obliged to maintain the original historic records but would see the demand for information from them decrease as customers chose a cheaper, centrally provided service.
The Government therefore cannot accept the amendment as drafted on the grounds that a number of aspects would prove problematic in practice. In addition, by defining all records as “historic” at 100 years, rather than following the precedent of Scotland and Northern Ireland, and preventing the change to be applied to marriage records by failing to amend the Marriage Act 1949, the clause as it is currently drafted fails overall to achieve the intended aim of opening up as wide a range of records as possible to greater public access. We therefore express sympathy with the aim but reservations about the clause as currently drafted, and we offer an invitation to meet and discuss it further. On that basis, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and certainly look forward to having a meeting to see how we can progress this further. I have been trying to talk to somebody about this for about five months now, so I hope that even at this late stage it is not too late to bring something forward for the next stage of the Bill, because this is a very important issue for people researching family history. As I have already said, there are many millions of such people. The point about local offices is, of course, valid, but the fact is that most people who order copy certificates would do so through the website of the national GRO. That particularly applies to people from abroad. We should be doing everything we can to open up our records where appropriate to people resident both here and abroad who look to us as their historic homeland. I look forward to having meetings as soon as possible and perhaps taking this further. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have an extremely long speaking note on this. Amendment 88 is a minor and technical amendment to paragraph 14 of Schedule 19 to the Bill. It makes clear that the repeal to a provision of the Public Audit (Wales) Act 2004 made by that paragraph will come into force only if a duplicated repeal of the same provision made by the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 has not yet commenced. The purpose of the amendment is legal clarity. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
As I am not the Minister in charge of the Bill, I am not sure I can give that commitment and am wary of doing it, having just invited the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, perhaps to suggest candidates—although I did qualify that invitation by saying that he should give plenty of time so they could be properly looked at and considered.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I can say that it is not our intention. We will take the warning.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I am advised that it is not the Government’s intention to bring forward further pieces of legislation into this. We take heed of the warning that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has very effectively delivered.
Deregulation Bill
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that speech and I am glad that he has so much enjoyed reading the details of Clause 48. I confirm that his understanding of these clauses is by and large correct.
The Government are most concerned, of course, about looked-after children. As I understand it, the change in the 2011 Act was introduced partly as a result of pressure from within the House of Lords, so we were doing our job properly at that time—I do not know who was involved in it; certainly, I was not myself. I am also told that a number of charitable bodies and philanthropists have in some instances added to these new junior ISAs for looked-after children, which seems to us to be a good public benefit and a step forward. That is very much part of where we are. The move to junior ISAs allows for a more flexible system, and it is expected that better-to-do parents and, speaking personally, better-to-do grandparents should contribute to junior ISAs when they can afford to do so. One is therefore most concerned about disadvantaged children.
The remainder of the clause concerns the transitional impact as one moves from child trust funds to junior ISAs; I wrote a note to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, yesterday. Part of the transition is what happens to existing trust fund organisations, which may include credit unions, as much of the money is taken out. At a certain level, there is a point at which the scheme might become unviable. The Government are very concerned about those transition issues.
Financial education is a particular issue for looked-after children, but it is a broader issue for all children. This is why financial education now forms a part of the compulsory national curriculum in England in citizenship classes, which should teach 11 to 16 year-olds the functions and uses of money. Budgeting, managing risk and financial mathematics are also included in the maths curriculum for this age group. The noble Lord might say—I would probably agree with him—that we all know, and have often debated in this House, the inadequacies of citizenship education so far. There is clearly a long way to go. That is something on which I suspect that, again, the House of Lords in its revising role should keep exerting pressure on schools to make sure that citizenship education continues to improve. Of course, the child trust fund and the junior ISA provide excellent ways of increasing a child’s financial capacity and their capacity to learn about the role of savings, mortgages, trusts and the like.
The second amendment was about junior ISAs and protected child accounts. My understanding is that the reason for using “protected child accounts” rather than “junior ISAs” is that, as we have often discovered, the exact names of financial instruments may change over the years, but they will continue to be protected child accounts even if they are later renamed from junior ISAs to something else. That is the simple reason for that. At the moment, we are of course talking about junior ISAs. The question about the transition from one to the other is well taken. We are of course concerned to provide the maximum amount of competition. If the noble Lord is not satisfied with anything I have had to say on this point, I am happy to write to him further on that. One wants a range of providers. We want, however, to make sure that the providers are viable and have sufficient financial reserves.
The noble Lord asked about the Financial Conduct Authority. I can answer with reference to both of these amendments: the FCA has a crucial role in ensuring that account holders are treated fairly, but its remit does not extend to making detailed changes to the child trust fund account rules. Such changes will be required if the safeguards envisaged in Clause 48 are applied. Changes to the CTF rules are most appropriately brought before Parliament by Her Majesty’s Treasury. I am sorry that the noble Lord is so suspicious of Her Majesty’s Treasury—I picked up on that—which has been responsible for the development of child trust funds and the detailed account rules since the account was created.
I think that the noble Lord was most concerned about Clause 48, which is again about making sure that, as we go through the transition, which he rightly points out will be from 2020 to 2029, we guard against any untoward developments. That is why Clause 48 is there: it is very much precautionary. It is intended to ensure that if things that we have not yet anticipated come along, the Government are able to respond. We consider it prudent to seek these powers, given the background of uncertainty about the impact of transferability on the child trust fund market. We do not know—and I cannot speculate on at the moment—what action the Government may need to take in this area or the timescale for such an intervention. However, if it became necessary to use these powers, the Government would have to act promptly and appropriately. Therefore, we felt that we should include this measure, with the proviso that it would be subject to the usual public law safeguards. The overriding interest would be to safeguard the interests of the trust fund holder.
The Government’s usual approach is to consult on changes to the child trust fund rules where possible. However, while the Government will always look to consult and engage interested groups wherever possible, they must also be free to intervene at short notice in response to market conditions. I hope that provides the reassurance the noble Lord seeks.
Lord Tunnicliffe
Will the Minister be kind enough to comment on the parliamentary involvement?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I had better write to the noble Lord on that. However, I understand exactly what he is asking and can assure him that I will feed back to him precisely what role Parliament will have in overseeing any such necessary interventions. Having said that, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment, and perhaps he and I might have a further discussion off the Floor of the Committee about the exact areas on which he would like further reassurance.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. I will read it in Hansard with great care and compare our two contributions. I will certainly get back to him if I feel that there are any inadequacies. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I wish to move this largely technical amendment briefly. It does not alter practice very considerably.
The Government have tabled seven amendments to Schedule 13. Schedule 13 gives effect to Clause 49 of the Bill, which deals with the abolition of the statutory office of chief executive of skills funding, as established by Part 4 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. The chief executive of skills funding is the head of the Skills Funding Agency, which is an executive agency of BIS.
As a result of the abolition of this office, the powers and functions that are currently exercised by the chief executive of skills funding in respect of education and training for adults aged 19 or over and all apprenticeships will in future be exercised by the Secretary of State. I hope noble Lords are aware that we are now approaching 2 million apprenticeships, with which we are extremely satisfied.
Schedule 13 therefore removes the provisions of the 2009 Act that create the office of chief executive, and transfers or amends the current duties of the chief executive so that these duties will in future apply, as appropriate, to the Secretary of State. The majority of responsibilities are transferred, with any necessary modifications, to the Secretary of State, including the funding powers set out in the 2009 Act. These amendments deal in detail with the transfer of the duties relating to the provision of facilities for education and training, and remove redundant provisions.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Perhaps I may respond. A number of people over the age of 25 have indeed been through the apprenticeship scheme that I know best, in Bradford. I met a splendid woman who had been unemployed for 10 years before she came on to the scheme and she is now training apprentices. That is worth while. My deep frustration, given that the scheme deals with the building and maintenance trades, is that we are not putting enough people through these schemes. We know that part of the problem we face in the economy is that we are desperately short of skilled people in the construction industry. We need to expand such apprenticeship schemes still further.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
The thought had not crossed the minds of any of us on this side of the Room that we might possibly be waiting for the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton; we, too, are very glad to see her here.
I do not think we are very far apart on this matter. I think we are all strongly in favour of good-quality teaching. We all recognise that in many of these practical areas people with practical experience also have a lot to offer, but that, as part of their development and encouraging them to become good teachers, it is quite useful these days to give them some teacher training—in spite of the fact that many of them may not want any.
May I declare a slightly embarrassed interest? I taught for 15 years in three successive universities without a single half-hour of training on how to be a teacher—which was the way one behaved in those days. What is more, I gained a prize at one stage for the quality of my teaching. I was rather relieved when, having spent 12 years in a think tank, I came back to universities and found that, although the University of Oxford did not think about training me to teach, the London School of Economics did. Since IT had become an important element in teaching, there were things that we really needed to know about how one handled a different student generation. No qualification was required, but there were some very good short courses on how to use teaching aids.
Thinking about my own university experience, I recall that the most popular course in my department at the London School of Economics was taught not by somebody who had come via the traditional route through universities or research and so on but by a former ambassador. He taught a course in economic diplomacy. The weight of his practical experience, as well his ability to organise an argument, made a huge difference for students, most of whom would not themselves become university teachers but many of whom were indeed hoping to become diplomats or businessmen and thus picked up that practical experience.
In introducing his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, citing the City & Guilds institute, said that the majority of FE teachers are either qualified or on their way to being qualified. That is fine; we do not disagree too much—that is where we are and we merely wish to push things a little more in that direction. The noble Lord also said that what we need is both experience and skills.
We recognise that people in these practical disciplines will come from a range of different backgrounds. They will not all have to have extensive professional qualifications but it may be desirable for them to pick up the sort of skills I have been talking about now that we have all these different ways of using teaching aids. The purpose of this amendment is very much to allow colleges to make their own decisions and not to impose too many strong controls from the top. We intend to free colleges from central government control and place responsibility on them to address their various needs.
The Education and Training Foundation has a core responsibility for ensuring the development of a well qualified, effective and up-to-date professional workforce. It is responsible for the standards of FE leaders and teachers and has now taken on responsibility for the membership of the Institute for Learning. The foundation will be looking at what more it can do to help increase the professionalism of teachers in this field. It has recently issued guidance and new professional standards for these teachers.
I hope that suggests that we are not far apart on this. It is really a question of how far we should impose detailed regulations from the top. We are encouraging colleges to work with the Education and Training Foundation to make sure that people who often come from a practical background, as the noble Lord said, are given the chance to acquire the professional skills that they need alongside the inspirational qualities which they may have gained from their practical experience. This is about deregulation, not deprofessionalisation. We have removed the requirement to have a qualification, which as the noble Lord points out, does not apply to a number of people teaching in FE colleges at the moment. However, the expectation is that the large majority of teachers will be qualified. We do not see regulation from the top as the best way to achieve this. Teachers need to play a part in developing their own professionalism, with the Education and Training Foundation providing common standards which will underpin that. On that basis, I hope that I have reassured the noble Lord and that he will feel able to withdraw this probing amendment.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
The Minister’s contribution was worth while. I will read Hansard and look at what the Institute of Education is saying because that is important. I think the only difference between us here concerns what we would regard as minimum standards in maths and English. On the basis of what we have heard, we will reconsider the issue. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for giving me time to get here from the Chamber, where we had an excellent three-hour debate on violence against women. I am now very pleased to join the deliberations in Committee.
Amendment 69B concerns co-operative schools. We believe that there is scope within the Deregulation Bill’s intention to,
“make provision for the reduction of burdens resulting from legislation for businesses or other organisations or for individuals”,
to correct two specific burdens on the development of co-operative schools and co-operative school trusts. Amendment 69B would insert a new clause to ensure that co-operative schools are able to establish an industrial provident society, should it be desirable, to bring them into line with other types of co-operative organisations.
The background to this is that the first Co-operative Trust school was established just over five years ago. Few would have anticipated the extent of their growth. There are now 700 co-operative trust schools, and that number is expected to increase to 1,000 by the end of 2015. More than a 250,000 pupils in England now attend co-operative schools. The values of these schools are drawn from the global Statement on the Co-operative Identity, which is recognised by the United Nations and forms the basis of co-operative law throughout the world. The co-operative values of self-help, self-responsibility, equality, equity and solidarity, together with the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others have been seen by the governing bodies to resonate powerfully within their schools, including with staff and pupils.
In fact, moving to a co-operative model provides a framework in which everybody with a stake in the school’s success—parents, teachers, support staff, local community organisations and pupils—have the opportunity to be involved in running it. There is a growing recognition that working co-operatively brings clarity, allows school leaders to concentrate more on the effective leadership of teaching and learning, and raises standards. The value of this kind of collaboration and partnership working between schools was recently highlighted by the Education Select Committee, which highlighted in its report the benefits that collaboration between schools brings, particularly where it is on the basis of mutual benefit.
Examples of these trusts can be seen in Cornwall, where more than 100 schools have become co-operatives and are part of 13 trusts. Most of these are geographically based clusters, enabling small village primary schools to be part of a learning community with a secondary school that most of their young people will move on to. In Leeds, a significant proportion of the city’s schools are already in co-operative trusts, and others are in consultation. The remarkable growth in co-operative schools has happened despite, not as a result of, the current Government’s policy. This demonstrates that the models developed under the pathfinder scheme programme following the 2006 Act under the previous Labour Administration are enormously attractive to schools.
The case for the changes proposed in the amendment was first made by my honourable friend Meg Munn MP within a 10-minute rule Bill, the Co-operative Schools Bill, in 2013. The proposals then formed part of an amendment tabled in Committee on this Bill in the Commons when it was debated on 27 February 2014. After the debate, my honourable friends on the Labour Front Bench withdrew their amendment on the basis that the Government had indicated that they were willing to work with the Co-operative Party to adopt the changes into the Bill as government amendments. My honourable friend Meg Munn, with the Co-operative Party and co-operative schools experts, then sought to work with the department over the next few months. While the then Secretary of State Michael Gove MP was personally supportive of the proposals, he indicated that the department lacked the expertise and resources to adopt the changes. I understand that in meetings, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, has, however, expressed very limited support for co-operative schools. Subsequent to the Government’s reshuffle, we were told that the department and new Ministers would not seek to adopt our proposed changes.
I raised this issue in a meeting with the Minister before we started discussing the Bill, and again at Second Reading. The Government need to explain their opposition to these proposals because they are in line with government policies, first, on co-operatives and mutuals; secondly, on schools and their freedom to operate; and, thirdly, on deregulation and creating fair circumstances in which organisations and individuals —in this case schools—can operate. It is a complete mystery why the Government refuse either to accept these amendments or to bring forward amendments of their own. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I was slightly shocked to discover, when I asked for a list of how many co-operative schools there were in West Yorkshire, that there are nine in Leeds, eight in Wakefield but only one in Bradford.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I look forward to talking to the noble Baroness about what else Bradford claims, but I am sorry to hear that we are a little behind in this respect. As the noble Baroness said, few would have anticipated the rise of co-operative schools. Indeed, there has been considerable development of them.
The Government are not persuaded that this amendment is needed. We understand the argument that has been made for co-operative schools forming a part of developments under the current school models, which include maintained co-operative schools and co-operative academies. They should do so without weakening school accountability or adding complexity to an already complex system. Some co-operative schools are very impressive but others are rather less impressive. They do not stand out in any particular way.
In line with the Government’s earlier undertaking, given in the other House, to investigate the proposals further, my noble friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education met interested parties earlier this year, as the noble Baroness said, to discuss their concerns but was not entirely persuaded of the merits of their case. The Government are determined to continue to remove the barriers and obstacles that prevent schools delivering the best education possible for their pupils.
The department recognises the general aim behind this amendment. We welcome further discussions and assurances on how these changes can be achieved without changing primary legislation or adding to the complexity of the system. Officials have been engaged with representatives from the Co-operative Party for some time now, and we are yet to see any compelling evidence of clear educational benefits that these changes would introduce.
Baroness Thornton
This amendment is about allowing co-operative schools to have the business form that makes them co-operatives. Given that the Government allow other schools to have the business form that allows them to operate in different ways, such as companies or charities, with religious freedoms and all that, why is this discrimination in place against the co-operative form of doing business?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the fact that there are now some 700 co-operative schools suggests that they are not suffering from systemic disadvantages in this respect. I was interested to hear from the noble Baroness that the expansion is continuing. If there are strong arguments to make that the current structure is discriminatory, I look forward to hearing them and perhaps we can continue this discussion, but at the moment I hope the noble Baroness has been sufficiently persuaded by my response to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Thornton
Of course I will withdraw the amendment, and I thank the Minister for the offer to continue these discussions because that is exactly what we need to do. I will bring my co-operative school experts with me because I think the Minister will be persuaded by what they have to say about this. This is an issue that needs to be solved one way or the other. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lady Thornton. I declare an interest: I am president of a co-op trust school, St Clere’s School, which is a cluster of schools. It has one secondary school, formerly known as St Clere’s, and two primary schools: one junior and one infants. The ethos of that school is very much community-based. It was set up to extend its facilities and to work with the local community to get the best support from the assets held by those schools. St Clere’s has also been successful at ensuring that those pupils who came from feeder schools and potential feeder schools would want to be part of the school and its success before they joined. As noble Lords will remember from their school days, having some contact with a secondary school before joining it can make it a less frightening experience. That seamless trust that co-op schools provide has been excellent.
What surprises me about the amendment is that my noble friend has had to table it. It seems to me quite logical common sense that, if a nursery wishes to be part of a co-op trust, it should be able to do so. It is a matter of choice for the nursery. To deny it that opportunity is something that some parents may feel is rather unfair. I was really encouraged when the Department for Education, under the leadership of Michael Gove—I probably did not agree with very much when Michael Gove was Secretary of State for Education, but on this I did—seemed willing to open up discussions so that, if nurseries wanted to be part of a co-op cluster, they would have the choice to do so. It seems that that has been taken away and no progress has been made. For me, it is a simple matter of that ethos of the co-op: if parents of children in those nursery schools who then go on to primary and secondary schools in the same area wish for them to be part of that trust and choose to do so, they should be allowed that opportunity. It is hardly a radical or striking move, but it seems to be very much a common-sense one.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have returned to the issue of nursery schools myself as my grandchildren have reached a certain age. I am conscious of the patchy provision of nursery education. I understand that only a small proportion of the overall sector providers—400 out of 14,500 day nurseries—are presently in the maintained sector. Nursery schools are currently able to federate with other schools and early-years providers. The Government support the broad aims of partnership, collaboration and co-operation. This sector has a diverse range of providers that facilitate parental choice and it enjoys a high degree of autonomy.
The Government are not currently persuaded that there are further benefits in creating a separate category of “nursery academies” at this time. It sounds as though there is further room for continuing discussion, but the Government have not yet been persuaded that this is a necessary addition.Nursery schools can indeed federate with other schools, so I believe that part of what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, is asking for is already available without legislative change. I hope I have said enough to assure the noble Baroness that she can withdraw her amendment and, again, I am willing to discuss this further off the Floor if there are other points to cover.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, I shall take the opportunity of this amendment to ask two other questions. What was the problem that the Government felt needed to be remedied with these provisions? Is it to reduce administrative costs to schools? I should also like to ask the Minister about reports and the dissemination of information by electronic means, particularly websites, which is included in this part of the Bill. What do the Government think will happen to streamlining the information that is available to parents from schools in areas where there is a digital divide? For example, in Bradford, there are lots of people who are not online and would not be able to receive those reports.
Term times is one of the really difficult problems that I know my Government struggled with, but I would like to know whether the Minister has consulted organisations in the education sector, including teachers, trade unions and head teachers’ representatives, to see what they feel about this.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am conscious that the issue of school term times and summer holidays is particularly acute, especially for the leisure sector. I have heard a lot of people say that it is absurd that we still have long summer holidays because people went out to help with the harvest. When I was a teenager, that is precisely what I used to do during my summer holiday. I worked on a farm for four to six weeks. When I went back to visit the farm 25 years later, almost all the jobs that I had done had been mechanised. That is part of what has happened. Farmers do not need the labour, and they did not need that much labour then.
I am also conscious that the speech that Mr Gove made about reducing the length of summer holidays has rung a number of alarm bells. This clause does not give the department the power to reduce summer holidays, and the department has no plans to reduce summer holidays. It is very much intended to push down to the local level where the length of holidays should be agreed. Schools’ term dates are already determined locally, but in many cases an individual school’s flexibility is constrained by the fact that Section 32 of the Education Act 2002 places responsibility for determining term dates on the local authority. This measure will enable all schools to vary term dates to help pupils, rather than simply following tradition, where there is a compelling need to do so.
Lord Clement-Jones
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his reply. What happened to evidence-based policy-making? In my all noble friend’s points, I could see assertions; indeed, I could see assertions in what the vastly respected noble Baroness, Lady Perry, had to say. Nothing that my noble friend said was rooted in evidence. He read out a string of educational consultees and the Federation of Small Businesses. Later in his reply he mentioned BALPPA, but BALPPA is extremely unhappy about this. It is one thing to consult; it is another thing to actually listen to what the consultee is saying.
Both the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and my noble friend talked about parents’ interests and so on. The fact is that many parents already find the system where some schools can set their own dates pretty much of a nightmare as well. There is already some advantage in uniformity. In a sense, the case that I am making is, “Why read the writing on the wall when you can read the book of the US experience?”. If we go to a set of very different dates, which this could potentially lead to, that will have a severely detrimental effect on the tourism industry.
My noble friend is relying on the idea that, in practice, it will not happen. What evidence do we have that it will not happen over a period of time, especially if the pressure is to have shorter summer holidays? That seems to be what the department would like to see, even though I accept the point that it is not up to the department to fix those dates. However, there is a way of establishing a culture, of which it is perfectly capable. The department judging that there will be no impact does not, I am afraid, have a great deal of force behind it. “No change likely” is not particularly plausible.
I very much hope that those local educational establishments—the schools and so on—will consult when they decide what dates they fix if we keep this in the Bill or delete it from Section 32. However, when did local schools ever go to the local attractions and piers and consult with them and local businesses about this kind of thing? It is highly implausible to imagine that the headmaster of a local school is going to consult local businesses when considering what dates they are going to fix, unless it is made clear in some sort of guidance or instruction that that is what they ought to do. Otherwise, I am afraid that it will be a difficult situation for local tourism attractions in these circumstances.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
There is no plot to reduce the length of the summer holiday. I fear that the noble Lord is suggesting that there is some Govian conspiracy afoot; there is not.
We have clear evidence from academies and pre-schools—the half of schools which already have the freedom. Only 8% have made any changes, and we see no evidence that it is likely that more will do so. There are strong arguments for at least one long break between terms every year. They include basic things such as school maintenance: repairing the roof and other such things. The same sort of argument exists for having a long break for the Houses of Parliament at one point during the year. In most instances we have no evidence whatever that there is a surge of demand to change the existing patterns.
I can reassure the noble Lord that the Department for Education is very much working with and has listened to BALPPA. We have agreed a new position. The advice that I have read out is an assurance: we are giving advice that schools should consider the needs of business. Having visited a number of costal towns on the east coast of England with my wife this last summer, I appreciate that costal towns in some instances are in real difficulty. However, that is not necessarily primarily connected with the position of schools and school holidays. There are a range of other problems that they are facing for other reasons.
I hope that I have said enough to reassure the noble Lord that this is not intended to produce radical revolution, but to produce a reasoned local compromise, a little more flexibility in the system and a little less interference from the top.
Lord Clement-Jones
I thank my noble friend for that peroration. It was very helpful. I think I have kicked the tyres on this particular clause enough. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I read this amendment as also covering taxi licensing, scrap metal dealers—the whole caboodle of local authority licensing. The amendment refers to,
“all legislation relating to local authority licensing”.
Was it the noble Baroness’s intention to include all that?
Baroness Smith of Basildon
On my reading of the amendment that is not its intention. If the noble Lord wants to carry out a review of all licensing, I am very happy with that, but it is not the intention of the amendment. I am talking specifically about alcohol licences and the problems that are caused by the way in which they are operated. As I said, the application forms councils have to use are set out in regulations. This means that local authorities cannot combine forms so that a business can provide basic information once or even twice. Instead, businesses must complete this for each and every form required, overlapping and duplicating the information they provide. Councils tell us that they would like to have the freedom to remove this burden by combining and simplifying forms to cover just the information they need, thereby not placing undue burdens on businesses. Ending prescribed forms by regulation would enable that to happen without taking up parliamentary time. It is an easy thing for the Government to do by regulation. I always like to make things easy for the Government.
Individually, licensing regimes make sense and most of them continue to provide valuable safeguards. Typically, they have been brought in to tackle specific problems as they occur, which makes sense, as we have seen with the Scrap Metal Dealers Act. However, collectively, licensing regimes are a complex set of conflicting rules. The Licensing Act 2003 made an initial attempt to bring together multiple licences covering alcohol, entertainment and late-night refreshment under one Act. We want to take that further by rationalising and updating the legislation which is currently across at least five government departments. To give the Minister an example, I just referred to the Home Office and to the order I spoke to earlier this year, the draft Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Conditions) Order 2014. We have before us today a document on licensing from the Cabinet Office, and I was today given an impact assessment from the DCMS for yet another proposal to exempt regulating the provisions of the Licensing Act 2003.
That is very difficult for small and large businesses to manage and to cope with, but it can be simplified. That is a really easy thing to do, and does not cost any money. If we establish broad and consistent criteria for licensing schemes, we have to include transparency. There is also an issue around appeals and cost recovery processes. We need to enshrine the principle of joined-up related applications. That would simplify processes for businesses and councils and would also offer scope for improved safeguards for communities. Our proposal, which I believe is helpful to the Government—I thought I saw the Minister nodding at one point—is for a government-led review of local government licensing legislation, which would give the basis for a comprehensive licensing framework. We believe that that would help economic growth, and it would certainly help those businesses which have told us that they see a problem.
I turn to Amendment 75A, which is about making the licensing authority a relevant person. Clause 52 and Schedule 16 insert a new Part 5A into the Licensing Act 2003, to introduce a new procedure for authorising the sale of alcohol where the sale is ancillary to a community event or the provision of other goods or services. The clause and the schedule as a whole are sensible, and I am not going to oppose them. Currently, the requirement for obtaining a licence to sell alcohol is that it is sold on a commercial basis for profit. It is not to be given away freely or cheaply. However, we have some concerns around the unintended consequences of the new notices, including the potential costs to local authorities.
The new legislation outlines the prescribed fee, and we seek assurances that the fee will cover the cost to local authorities. Amendment 75A would make the licensing authority a relevant person. As the Bill is drafted, the licensing authority is responsible only for processing the applications. Objections to ancillary notices can be made only by the police or by council environmental health teams, not by the licensing authority. The licensing authority is the district council, the metropolitan London borough or unitary authority. That is the authority responsible for considering applications to sell alcohol and issuing a licence.
I am indebted to the Local Government Association, which supports Amendment 75A. I should declare that I am also one of its vice-presidents, as are many noble Lords. This mirrors a change made to the Licensing Act in 2012. When that change was introduced the Government said that licensing authorities were better able to respond quickly to the concerns of local residents and businesses by taking actions they considered appropriate to tackle irresponsible premises without having to wait for representations from other responsible authorities. We agreed at the time and we still agree with those reasons but we believe that they apply to all aspects of licensing. The Explanatory Notes on ancillary sales notices state that licensing authorities have the right to raise objections, but there is no wording to allow this. Expert legal advice confirmed that this power will not be available without an explicit reference in the legislation. Licensing authorities should be included on the list of relevant persons to ensure that they can raise local concerns about a notice if it is appropriate for them to do so.
My final amendments in this group, Amendments 75B, 75C, 75D and 75E, introduce a right of appeal to the licensing committee. This is really a streamlining process, because they introduce a right of appeal to the local licensing committee for applicants to use if their notice is refused because of an objection. That mirrors the Licensing Act regarding licensing committees whose judgment and applications are the subject of objections. Each licensing authority is required to establish a licensing committee that is formed of elected councillors, which will hold hearings and make decisions relating to licenses.
Local government prides itself on being the most open and transparent part of government and on being directly accountable to residents and businesses. It is worth noting that it also has the strictest rules regarding conflict of interests. I do not understand the reasons why, under the Government’s proposals, the only right of appeal against the decision not to grant a notice because of an objection is by judicial review. That seems a lengthy and expensive process, particularly when you take into account that applicants are prevented from reapplying for a licence for a period of 12 months. There is supposed to be a light-touch approach. Is that not hugely disproportionate and expensive for those businesses concerned?
I feel—and I am sure other noble Lords will probably accept this—that licensing processes within local government are pretty robust, but within any system objections can be raised with which applicants do not agree. Businesses should be able to appeal against objections they feel are unfair or do not take full account of their business proposal in a way that is straightforward and affordable. If we are insisting appeal has to be by judicial review, while that has to be part of any wider appeals process, it does not meet the criteria of being proportionate, straightforward and reasonable in cost.
We are not talking about a great deal of money here. Fewer than 5% of regular licences are refused. It is anticipated that it will be even lower for the new licences, so the financial impact on most applications would be negligible. It seems a bit OTT to have a judicial review process before any other appeal process is brought into play. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the LGA published Rewiring Public Services: Rewiring Licensing in 2014, calling for a major review. I had indeed read Amendment 70A as covering the whole remit of local authority licensing. This is a very large area, and I am conscious that it is an important part of how local authorities regulate local communities. It is also a not insignificant part of how some local authorities recoup the costs of what they do. I note the case made for moving towards harmonised dates for renewal and for reforms to be completed. I also note with my different Cabinet Office hat on that, as we move towards digital interaction between companies, individuals and local authorities, some of these things will become easier than they were—as the noble Baroness will know, that is something which the Government are actively promoting. Some small businesses are much slower than others in moving towards digital interaction with their local authorities, but that will help to reduce a number of these burdens.
We have reviewed a range of licensing areas through the Red Tape Challenge, including alcohol, entertainment and taxis, and we do not see the need to do another major review of all licensing legislation. Therefore, having looked at the LGA report, we do not accept its proposals, although we are still considering some of the issues raised. Certainly, the Government remain committed to reviewing unnecessary bureaucracy. A 2011 survey by the Federation of Small Businesses found that only 8% of small businesses identified local authority licenses as the most challenging area of regulatory compliance.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
When the Minister intervened on me previously, it was because he thought that my amendment was significantly wider than I intended it to be. I apologise if there is a drafting defect; it was never intended to be as wide. Does the 8% figure that he gives for the proportion of businesses which are concerned about the licensing regime relate to the vast, entire licensing regime or just to the regime relating to alcohol that my amendment refers to?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I suspect that it is about a much wider issue; we are in that sense at cross-purposes. I thought the amendment was concerned with alcohol licensing and other forms of planning licensing. As I was being briefed on this, I was thinking of the example of a bar in Saltaire that lies halfway between where I live and where the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, lives. It is a very popular bar which is licensed for the sale of alcohol. It is sufficiently popular that its clients spill out over the pavement and on to the road. The question of whether tables can be put out on the pavement has been raised and you begin to deal with different sorts of issues, such as disruption to traffic, noise and so on. So putting everything into a single category is not entirely straightforward. The Government are not therefore convinced that we need an overall review at present. I know that we will come back to some of these issues when we consider the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe.
I turn to the other amendments proposed by the noble Baroness on community and ancillary sellers notices or CANs. The noble Baroness asked why there was no provision for appeal if a CAN is revoked. Our intention is that there will be no prescribed right of appeal for the user either at the stage at which the CAN is given in cases where it is rejected, or where revocation takes place after a CAN has taken effect. This is one of the key ways of keeping the costs of the CAN as low as possible as it avoids costly hearings processes, as well as reflecting what is intended to be the light-touch nature of the authorisation. We believe that this is justified on the basis that the user will be given very limited rights to sell alcohol. The authorisation lasts for three years only and it always remains open to the user to apply for a full premises licence or to use a temporary event notice. The business of the ancillary seller would also not be unduly affected by revocation because the alcohol sales are by definition only a small part of the overall service being provided. It would remain open, as the noble Baroness has suggested, to the CAN user to seek redress via administrative complaint to or about the licensing authority, or ultimately, in extreme cases, by judicial review.
I hope that that provides some reassurance to the noble Baroness; she looks a little puzzled by this. The intention is to limit the complications of this very limited change in the alcohol regulations.
I was asked whether the fee will cover the cost to the licensing authorities. Licensing fees are set on a cost-recovery basis. We will be working with the LGA and licensing authorities to estimate the cost of processing a CAN before we set the fee. I hope that that covers the issues that have been raised and invite the noble Baroness to withdraw—
Baroness Smith of Basildon
I apologise; I am intervening rather than making my final remarks. I think that the Minister addressed the point about the ancillary sales notice. The Explanatory Notes state that licensing authorities have the right to raise objections, but there is no wording to allow this. Our legal advice is that the power will not be available without explicit reference in the legislation. It is in the Explanatory Notes; it is not in the legislation. The Minister did not answer that point.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
It is probably better if I write to the noble Baroness to make sure that I am absolutely clear about it.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
That is helpful. That point needs clarification if we are to achieve what the Government say they want to achieve, and we are not opposed to that.
I am rather disappointed with the Minister’s response and, indeed, that of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. This gargantuan review is not quite as gargantuan as the noble Lord thought it would be. The figures to which he referred are for the gargantuan review, not the review that we are asking for. When those who are dealing with this, day in, day out, say that there is so much ad hoc regulatory change and ask whether it might not be better to look at it in the round, that seems to be a sensible approach.
The noble Lord made his own case on the late night levy. He and I debated that as we have debated other issues such as the licensing order, referring to mandatory licensing conditions, earlier this year. We had a number of discussions about it being very piecemeal, and we were also critical of the late night levy, which is also proving to be quite ineffective because of how it was set up.
I will read again what the Minister said about the right of appeal being through judicial review. He seems to be saying that because there is an admin review process when someone wishes to make a complaint, it can replace any other appeal. It seems rather costly and disproportionate if the only right of appeal is through judicial review. However, I will read what he said in Hansard so that I am absolutely clear on his points before I decide whether to bring this back at another stage. For now, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, whenever I listen to my noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe speak on these issues, I am always conscious of—I hesitate to use the word “experience” on the issues we are talking about—his knowledge of and commitment to these issues. He has been a campaigner to protect people from the harm that those who overindulge and unwisely use alcohol are subject to.
My noble friend has hit the nail on the head on public health. When we were discussing the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill in 2011, we proposed that public health should be one of the licensing conditions. I mentioned the four licensing conditions earlier, but we recommended that public health should be one of them. That proposal was blocked by the Government, yet the Government’s alcohol strategy includes a commitment, as the noble Lord said, to look at including public health and the cumulative assessments that councils undertake. I am not aware that that has been taken forward, even though it is in the Government’s strategy. It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us whether that has been taken forward, given that it was in the Government’s strategy. At some point, but not today, I would be interested to know which measures from the Government’s strategy have been taken forward. Perhaps the Minister will write to me on that. The Alcohol Health Alliance UK and the Local Government Association want to see public health included in the licensing process. There is widespread support for that. It seems a sensible measure to include it, not as the overriding measure but as one of the measures taken into account when licences are awarded. I should like to know some more from the Government on that.
When I look at the alcohol strategy, I lose track of when the Government were in favour of minimum alcohol pricing and when they were not. In our debates, I was assured that the Government would look hard at advertising and education involving children to ensure that we are not subjecting children to the kind of alcohol advertising that would encourage them to drink at too young an age. Pan-European research shows that children in the UK see more alcohol advertisements than adults and more than their European counterparts in Germany or France. I have asked about this before. I would like to know why the Government have not moved forward to look at that kind of advertising and how to combat it. If we are talking about young people and their health, that is a key thing that could really make a difference, and we have not seen the progress we were promised.
I still cannot understand what has happened on minimum alcohol pricing. I have raised this in your Lordships’ House on a number of occasions. The Government have moved from absolute certainty that minimum alcohol pricing would be introduced. The Home Secretary said, without ifs or buts, that the Government would introduce minimum alcohol pricing. When the Government undertook their consultation on the strategy, they specifically excluded minimum alcohol pricing from it. I raised this back in July 2013, so it is not a new issue; I am sure that the Government and the Minister are aware of it. The Government said in their consultation that they were committed to introducing a minimum unit price, but added:
“However, in other areas, this consultation seeks views”.
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee states in its 32nd report that it contacted the Home Office when it was seeking to introduce a permitted level of pricing—which is different from minimum alcohol pricing. It asked, “Why are you bringing this in now, because you’ve said that the minimum unit price is still under consideration?”. The Home Office explained:
“Minimum Unit Pricing remains a policy under consideration, but will not be taken forward at the present time”.
That is not what the Home Secretary said. So it would be helpful to understand the Government’s thought processes and whether any advisers in Downing Street or political lobbying played a part in this. Why did the Government move from absolute certainty that they were going to do something to “maybe” and then, as I think is the position now, to not going to do something? If we are to take an alcohol strategy seriously, we need to know what the Government are seeking to achieve and how committed they are.
There are two points in particular that I wish to emphasise and seek assurances from the Minister on. First, what has happened to dealing with advertising and education aimed at children who could be at risk of harm from alcohol? Secondly, why are the Government so set against including public health as one of the considerations when introducing a licence?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, was able to get back from Brussels and apologise to him for our not yet having managed to fix up a meeting. If he would like to have a meeting, we will make sure that it is pursued as soon as possible. I recognise his strong concerns in this area and the amount of work that he has put in and continues to put in on these broader issues.
On the implementing regulations, we are about to go out to consultation on what they should be. We are of course ready to discuss informally our current thinking, but it seems to us right that we should consult on where we might go from here.
I think we all recognise that the focus on alcohol-related problems is at its most acute in the centre of some of our cities on Saturday evenings. I have been in Leeds and Wakefield on a Saturday evening and it is very much a problem involving young persons in those areas. Sometimes, in the winter, I think that there is also a hypothermia problem, from the fact that they wear so little as they go out. What we are proposing here is absolutely separate from that. It is thinking about deregulating some of the issues which arise for local events and ancillary sellers.
As it happens, my wife and I went to rather a splendid party in a village hall just north of York in the summer. One of those who attended explained to us that they had had some difficulty about this, because they are allowed to have events that serve alcohol in the village hall only once a month. This was for all sorts of restrictive reasons, and that is the sort of area where we would like to loosen the constraints and the number of times a year that village halls can have events of that sort.
That is the “community events” to which the measure refers; the ancillary sellers are the bed and breakfasts, as the noble Lord knows. I am informed that the reason why 7 am is specified in the Bill is so that if, on a particularly special occasion, a bed and breakfast wants to provide a champagne breakfast it should be allowed so to do. I have been trying to think about having a champagne breakfast in any of the last three or four bed and breakfasts that I stayed in in the north of England. It is an interesting concept and I shall probably go to sleep tonight imagining what one might look like. However, that is the justification for the 7 am starting point.
This is intended to be deregulatory, to exempt community groups and small providers of accommodation from needing premises licences on multiple temporary event notices, and to limit the costs to them of having to renew these licences so frequently. We are very much responding to community pressure, and again I think about how this affects my locality. This would cover events in the park in Saltaire but would not cover the wonderfully bucolic Bradford Beer Festival, complete with a large number of large stomachs, which is held once a year in Victoria Hall. That is a big event at which a lot of alcohol is served—beer—which therefore requires a different sort of licensing regulation. That is why I stress that this is a limited measure. The terms “ancillary” sellers and “community events” explain how limited this measure is.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
I accept the noble Lord’s point that, taken event by event, or even instance by instance, we are talking about relatively small numbers—one or two glasses, not magnums, of champagne. I think that the point my noble friend was making, picked up by my other noble friend Lady Smith, is that in aggregate, if we are talking about nail bars, hairdressers and small events, we are talking about a potential explosion in the total quantum of alcohol being provided. Is the Minister happy with that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the concept of having my hair cut and being offered a whisky at the same time had not occurred to me. I recall that when thinking about the 7 am starting point, the one occasion of which I was conscious, when listening to someone describing how pleasant it was to have alcohol at breakfast, was when I got up very early, heard the BBC farming programme, and a good friend of mine who appeared on that programme was having breakfast with the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, at his farm, who had indeed offered him a dram with his breakfast. He remarked that that was an unusual occurrence. I do not think that that is the sort of thing that bed and breakfasts will want to do very often.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
The noble Lord, Lord Mackie, would not have required a licence to offer a friend a glass of whisky at breakfast if he chose to do so. The point made by both noble Lords who raised this issue was to express concern about the 7 am start. Does it open a door far wider than the Government intend in order to allow an occasional champagne breakfast at a bed and breakfast?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I will take both points back and see how much this opens a door wider than intended. If it is possible to interpret the measure in such a way as to open a door much wider, we will clearly need to tighten this. I hope that we can provide reassurance on that point.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Certainly, because, again, the measure is intended for small providers of accommodation, so that they can provide guests with an evening drink if they wish. As I say, the B&Bs with which I have been familiar in the north of England in recent years had not done that, although I would probably have appreciated it if it had been possible. Again, the intention of including “ancillary” sellers is to allow small-scale provision of alcohol in small-scale establishments. Does that begin to satisfy the noble Lord?
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
The answer to that is no. The great danger of these debates is that we pick out a particular instance and focus on it. I have said that my concern has not been particularly about community events but the movement of ancillary licences into the business community. I have asked for a definition of the range that will be eligible. We focused on the bed and breakfast people, and I suspect you will find that it is much wider than that; they are just a small element. I suspect that you can almost look down any street in a town and see several people who would fall into the category. Hitherto they have never sold alcohol because it is not their main business but, under the new arrangements, they would be free to apply to do so. There is no reason why you would stop them.
I have sought from the Minister a definition of the extent to which freedom to apply for the licence will be available. I have not got the answers. Again, we are focusing on a limited area when, in fact, this will spread over a much wider front. I will be reassured if the Government can limit it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I think that I can now give the noble Lord some further reassurance. I am told that, in the other place, the Minister for Crime Prevention spelled out specifically that we will not and should not allow businesses such as hairdressers, sandwich shops and florists to benefit, and that this is intended very much to permit certain prescribed businesses to sell small amounts of alcohol as a minor part of the service that they provide.
I will take the noble Lord’s questions back and will look again at the details, but that is the assurance that the Minister for Crime Prevention gave in the Commons. This is intended to be for bed and breakfasts and businesses of that sort, and is not intended to provide me with a shot of whisky with my coffee when I go into a coffee shop on Gordon Terrace at 11 am, which I think is the sort of thing that the noble Lord is suggesting that we will spread into if we are not entirely clear.
I hope that I have managed to answer most of the questions. I note that the noble Lord has some much larger questions, including on alcohol and pricing. I am informed that the issue of minimum alcohol pricing in Scotland is currently being challenged before the European Court of Justice. That is one powerful reason why Her Majesty’s Government are taking a pause in considering the matter further in the English courts, being, as we of course are, strong supporters of the European Court of Justice. Perhaps if there were to be a Labour Government they would wish to ignore that particular constraint but I rather suspect that they would not.
The Government have a range of other considerations to bear in mind on alcohol pricing; not only the EU legal challenges but also the not insubstantial question, particularly in southern England, of smuggling, which arises if the price in Britain differs too sharply from that across the Channel. If one goes through Calais and around there, one can see how much that is a possibility that could easily expand.
I also note, with respect, the noble Lord’s insistence on the public health dimension. That is a broader issue, which covers the Government’s alcohol strategy as a whole, to which we will return. We have already been discussing citizenship education, but it is clear that part of the answer is to educate children in schools about the problems of alcohol. Binge drinking among young people is the single biggest alcohol problem that we face in Britain at the moment, on which we need to do more.
I hope that I have provided enough to satisfy the noble Lord, and I have no doubt that he will continue to pursue his wider campaign on alcohol strategy as a whole on this occasion and the many other occasions on which he will be able to do so.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, as ever, my noble friend Lord Brooke has given us food for thought on this issue. I was unaware of the detail of the issues that he raised. This goes back to our earlier comments about policy being evidence-based. I am not quite clear about why this has been brought forward and about the purpose behind it. When we look at it, it does not seem to have much of an impact on business so repealing it has only a very tiny, albeit positive, as the noble Lord thinks, impact on business.
I understand that the Licensing Act 2003 requires premises to obtain the relevant licence before selling liqueurs due to their alcoholic content. The Act exempts liqueur confectionery from being classed as alcohol and defines liqueur confectionery as containing alcohol in a proportion not greater than 0.2 litres of alcohol per kilogram of the confectionery. I do not know what 0.2 litres of alcohol per kilogram means. The noble Lord referred to something being 6% proof. If I buy, as I may on occasion, a bottle of wine, the label will tell me the percentage proof, as it will with beer or any other kind of alcohol. It does not tell you on confectionery. In the interests of evidence-based policy, can the Minister tell me what 0.2 litres of alcohol per kilogram is in terms of percentage proof? It is an important point: 6% proof for a five year-old is significant.
The law states that the chocolates must be sold as separate pieces so they are not consumed en masse. I am puzzled by that because anybody who eats chocolate as I do always eats chocolate en masse. There is no other way to eat chocolate. One buys boxes of liqueur chocolates, and it seems to me that they are not being sold individually in that case. They are being sold en masse. I would like to understand a little more about the interpretation of the law. If that is not possible today, I am happy for the Minister to write to me because I do not understand what that means. I have to confess that when I was 14 my French pen pal sent me a box of Mon Chéri liqueur chocolates, which I ate. I do not think I liked them terribly much at the time, but I grew to like them. I probably felt more sick from the chocolate.
I am trying to understand exactly what is intended here. There is a negligible effect on business. There is a tiny minority of businesses that sell such confectionery. The point raised by my noble friend when he asked who asked for the change is interesting because when something is deregulated it is normally because somebody wants it because it is an onerous burden on them. In most cases we obviously want to reduce overonerous burdens on businesses. Who asked for this change? Were there any complaints about the law and how it has been implemented? Where did they come from? Is there any intention to have any consultation on this? My noble friend Lord Brooke has raised issues that I was not aware of. This first became an offence in 1961 under a Conservative Government. Labour’s Licensing Act 2003 built on the definitions that were brought forward in 1961. The Conservative Party tabled an amendment during the Licensing Bill Committee for the age to be increased from 16 to 18. We held out against that and it was withdrawn.
My first reaction was not dissimilar to Norman Baker’s: you would have to eat the equivalent of nine Mars bars of liqueur chocolate to drink the same quantity of alcohol in a regular bottle of wine with a content of about 12%. However, I think that misses the point, and that is what worries me about this. One of my concerns is whether it helps young people get a taste for alcohol: does it encourage them? That is a valid point to look at. I am interested in the evidence base on both sides of the argument. It would be helpful to understand that.
My noble friend raised some points that I am unclear about. Does the Government’s proposal also impact on the kinds of alcohol that are being sold in forms other than liquid? Does that mean it is easier to buy vodka ice cream or vodka lollypops? I have some concerns about alcopops: people drink quite large quantities of alcohol because they are very sweet-tasting and fruit-flavoured. They do not realise the content that they are drinking. I stressed that I will leave here tonight and will no doubt enjoy a glass of wine at some point. However, there is a difference between responsible drinking of alcohol and almost surreptitious drinking, where people are not aware of the alcohol content that they are drinking.
I have concerns about this. I would like to know what the evidence base is—the consultation, where the request came from and what differences it makes—particularly if it opens up a much wider area than indicated by the Government’s proposals.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, this debate has ranged a good deal wider than liqueur chocolate. I stress that the amount of liqueur chocolate sold in this country is very small and we have no evidence that it is likely to increase. I am unaware, and I have checked with the officials, that there was any lobbying from the drinks industry on this. It is an issue of retailers and small shops having different levels of regulation about not selling to people under the age of 18. This is something that is for under-16s. This was identified, as part of the Red Tape Challenge, as a piece of law that was not necessary and would not be missed.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
If the Minister were to check the notes that go with the Bill, he will see that the only people who asked for this were from the industry.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I will certainly check that. I recognise that the wider issues that the noble Lord has raised about alcohol in other food are serious. I can promise only that I will take that away and consider it. I do not know how much alcohol there is in these new sorbets, let alone in rum and raisin ice cream and other such things. It may well be that the amount of alcohol in sorbets could be quite considerable. I promise to take that away. We will see whether we can respond to the noble Lord on that or whether it is a developing problem. Liqueur chocolate is not a developing problem: there is no sign that very much is sold or that more will be sold.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Brooke raised a serious point. The Minister just said he was quite clear that there was no lobbying from the drinks industry on this. He implied that it was not clear that it came from retailers—I am not sure whether he is saying that the retailers lobbied, but that it came from concerns for retailers. If he has erroneously informed the Committee, as my noble friend referred to, will he write to all Members of the Committee and make clear, either in Committee or on the Floor of the House, that that was a mistake and that there has been lobbying from the drinks industry?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Certainly, I am very happy to do so. My understanding was that this was very much part of the Red Tape Challenge. I am told it is a piece of legislation under which there has been one prosecution in the last five years and no convictions. As a piece of legislation which might on occasion be used inappropriately, it seemed a good idea that it would be one of those that we might now strike out. I was not aware that the law had been introduced only in 1961. Some of the laws that we are hoping to strike out in this Bill as part of the Red Tape Challenge date back a good deal earlier than that.
My information is that you would have to eat the equivalent of 20 Mars bars rather than nine to become drunk on liqueur chocolates. The amount of alcohol allowed in 100 grams of confectionery—
Baroness Smith of Basildon
The noble Lord may be aware that Mars bars have reduced in size considerably in the past couple of years.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I think I last ate a Mars bar about 40 years ago, so I had not noticed the shrinkage. The maximum amount of alcohol allowed in 100 grams of confectionary is 20 millilitres. This alcohol can be up to 57% alcohol by volume. Any confectionary containing alcohol in a greater proportion than 200 millilitres per kilogram is defined as alcohol and no one under the age of 18 can buy it. That is probably the answer to the noble Lord’s question about sorbets; any sorbet that had a high proportion of alcohol in it would be covered by the same regulation. However, the noble Lord raises a number of interesting points which deserve a considered reply.
This pragmatic clause is intended to strike out a piece of legislation which can be used against chocolate retailers, small shopkeepers and others because it is on the statute book as an offence to sell liqueur confectionery to a child under the age of 16. I very much suspect that the number of occasions on which retailers sell liqueur confectionery to children under the age of 18 is actually very small. We do not consider that this has wider implications. The noble Lord raises the prospect that it could, which is something that we might discuss further in terms of developing trends in the food industry.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
I am grateful to the noble Lord for saying that he will write to us with some of the evidence. One of the issues he relied upon for removing this legislation is that there are few prosecutions; that is an entirely valid point. However, could it be that there are few prosecutions because the law is working?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I can only say that that surprises me. I think that the demand for liqueur chocolate remains small and is likely to remain so. I see no evidence that there is a pent-up demand that is not being satisfied. The noble Lord may want to say, “Well, that might develop; it might be a new fashion among food manufacturers actively to advertise”. I note the noble Baroness’s point about alcopops being a new development we are worried about. I am happy to talk further to the noble Lord about this, but we are proposing a small, limited deregulatory proposal to knock something off the statute book which is rarely used but is a potential irritant to small retailers.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
The important point I am trying to make is that, while there are not many prosecutions, it is a deterrent. That is the effectiveness which has come from this legislation. What I am uncertain about, on which I would welcome the opportunity of a discussion with the Minister, is if that goes, what deterrent is left to prevent food and drink manufacturers increasing the amount of alcohol they are putting into their products which would be available for sale to under-18 year-olds on a wider front than at present? If there is legislation that would prevent it, maybe I would be happy with that.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I understand that that is the thrust of the noble Lord’s argument. It is a much wider point, but I will take that back. With that assurance, I hope noble Lords will agree that this clause stand part of the Bill.
“Motor racing on public roads: general
(1) The Road Traffic Act 1988 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 12 (motor racing on public ways), after subsection (1) insert —
“(1A) Subsection (1) is subject to—
(a) in relation to England and Wales, sections 12A to 12F (which make provision to allow the holding of races or trials of speed between motor vehicles on public ways in England and Wales);(b) in relation to Scotland, sections 12G to 12I (which make provision to allow the holding of races or trials of speed between motor vehicles on public ways in Scotland).”(3) After section 12 insert—
“12A Motor race orders: England and Wales: overview
(1) Sections 12A to 12F allow highway authorities to make orders relating to the holding of a race or trial of speed between motor vehicles on a highway in England and Wales (“motor race orders”).
(2) A motor race order is made on the application of the person promoting the event, with the permission of a motor sport governing body (see sections 12B to 12D).
(3) The effect of a motor race order is set out in section 12E.
12B Permission to apply for motor race order
(1) A person who wishes to promote a race or trial of speed between motor vehicles on a highway in England and Wales may apply for a permit to a motor sport governing body authorised by regulations made by the appropriate national authority to issue permits in respect of a race or trial of speed of that kind.
(2) Before issuing a permit, the motor sport governing body must consult—
(a) the highway authority for each area in which the event is to take place or which is otherwise likely to be significantly affected by the event,(b) the local authority for each such area,(c) the police authority for each such area,(d) in the case of an event that is to take place in Greater London, the Greater London Authority,(e) each person who has given the motor sport governing body written notice within the previous 12 months that the person wishes to be consulted about applications under this section, and(f) such other persons as the motor sport governing body thinks appropriate.(3) The motor sport governing body must issue the permit if satisfied that—
(a) the applicant intends to promote the proposed event,(b) the applicant has the necessary financial and other resources to make appropriate arrangements for the event,(c) the applicant has arranged or will arrange appropriate insurance cover in connection with the event, in accordance with guidance issued by the motor sport governing body, and(d) the application includes all necessary details of the safety and other arrangements proposed for the event.(4) A permit must specify—
(a) any route to be followed in the course of the event;(b) arrangements for the approval by the motor sport governing body of drivers participating in the event;(c) arrangements for the approval by the motor sport governing body of vehicles to be used in the course of the event; (d) arrangements made or to be made for insurance in connection with the event.(5) A permit may set out conditions that the motor sport governing body thinks should be included in any motor race order made in relation to the event.
(6) The appropriate national authority must by regulations list motor sport governing bodies that are authorised to issue permits for the purposes of this section.
(7) The regulations may specify the kinds of races or trials of speed between motor vehicles on a highway in respect of which each listed governing body may issue permits.
(8) The regulations may provide that a listed motor sport governing body ceases to be authorised to issue permits if the rules of the governing body—
(a) include provision of a kind specified in the regulations;(b) do not include provision of a kind so specified.(9) In this section—
“the appropriate national authority” means—
(a) in relation to England, the Secretary of State;(b) in relation to Wales, the Welsh Ministers;“local authority” means —
(a) a county or district council in England;(b) a parish council in England;(c) a London borough council;(d) the Common Council of the City of London in its capacity as a local authority;(e) the Council of the Isles of Scilly;(f) a county or county borough council in Wales.12C Application for motor race order
(1) A motor race order may only be made on an application under this section.
(2) An application may be made only by a person who—
(a) wishes to promote a race or trial of speed between motor vehicles on a highway in England and Wales, and(b) has a permit issued in accordance with section 12B in relation to the event.(3) The application must be made to the highway authority for the area in which the event is to take place (and, where the event is to take place in the area of more than one highway authority, separate applications must be made under this section to each authority).
(4) The application must be made not less than 6 months before the event.
(5) The application must be accompanied by—
(a) the permit issued in accordance with section 12B;(b) details of any orders under section 16A of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (prohibition or restriction on roads in connection with certain events), and of any other orders, regulations or other legislative instruments, that will be needed in connection with the event;(c) a risk assessment in such form as the highway authority may specify;(d) such fee as the highway authority may specify.12D Determination of applications for motor race orders
(1) Before determining whether to make a motor race order, a highway authority must consider—
(a) the likely impact of the event on the local community,(b) the potential local economic and other benefits (in respect of tourism or otherwise), and(c) any other local considerations that the authority thinks relevant.(2) The highway authority may make the motor race order if satisfied that—
(a) adequate arrangements have been made to allow the views of the local community to be taken into account, (b) the person proposing to promote the event has shown that the event is commercially viable, and(c) effective arrangements have been made to involve local residents, the police and other emergency services in the planning and implementation of the event.(3) A motor race order must—
(a) specify the event to which it relates, including the date or (in the case of an event that is to take place on more than one day) the dates on which it is to take place,(b) include a map of the area to be used for the event (showing, in particular, the roads which participants will use, and areas which will be available for occupation by spectators), and(c) include any other information specified by the appropriate national authority by regulations.(4) A motor race order may include conditions which must be satisfied before, during or after the event.
(5) A motor race order may, in particular, include conditions designed to ensure that the arrangements mentioned in subsection (2)(c) continue throughout the planning and implementation of the event.
(6) In this section, “the appropriate national authority” means—
(a) in relation to England, the Secretary of State;(b) in relation to Wales, the Welsh Ministers.12E Effect of motor race order
(1) A motor race order made under section 12D has the effect described in this section.
(2) Section 12(1) does not apply to the promoter of the event if that person—
(a) promotes the event in accordance with any conditions imposed on the promoter by the motor race order, and(b) takes reasonable steps to ensure that any other conditions specified in the motor race order are met.(3) The provisions listed in the Table do not apply in relation to a participant or an official or (as the case may be) in relation to a vehicle used by a participant or an official provided that—
(a) the participant has been approved by the motor sport governing body that issued a permit in respect of the event or (as the case may be) the official has been authorised by the promoter,(b) the participant or official complies with any conditions specified in the motor race order that apply to participants or (as the case may be) officials, and(c) the participant or official also complies with any conditions imposed on him or her by the promoter.
Provision | Topic |
|---|---|
Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 | |
Section 18(3) | Contravention of order relating to one-way traffic on trunk roads |
Section 20(5) | Contravention of order relating to use on roads of vehicles of certain classes |
Section 81(1), an order under section 84(1), section 86(1), an order under section 88(1) and section 89(1) | Speed limits |
Regulations under section 99 | Removal of vehicles illegally parked etc |
Section 104(1) | Immobilisation of vehicles illegally parked |
Road Traffic Act 1988 | |
Section 1 | Causing death by dangerous driving |
Section 1A | Causing serious injury by dangerous driving |
Section 2 | Dangerous driving |
Section 2B | Causing death by careless, or inconsiderate, driving |
Section 3 | Careless, and inconsiderate, driving |
Section 3ZB | Causing death by driving: unlicensed, disqualified or uninsured drivers |
Section 12(1) | Motor racing on public ways |
Section 21(1) | Prohibition of driving or parking on cycle tracks |
Section 22 | Leaving vehicles in dangerous positions |
Section 22A | Causing danger to road-users |
Section 36(1) | Drivers to comply with traffic signs |
The Highway Code, as it has effect under section 38 | |
Section 40A | Using vehicle in dangerous condition etc |
Regulations under section 41 | Regulation of construction, weight, equipment and use of vehicles |
Section 41A | Breach of requirement as to brakes, steering-gear or tyres |
Section 41C | Breach of requirement as to speed assessment equipment detection devices |
Section 42 | Breach of other construction and use requirements |
Section 47(1) | Obligatory test certificates |
Section 87(1) | Drivers of motor vehicles to have driving licences |
Section 103(1)(b) | Driving while disqualified |
Section 143(1) and (2) | Users of motor vehicles to be insured or secured against third-party risks |
Sections 164 and 165 | Powers of constables to require production of driving licence, obtain information etc |
Section 165A | Power to seize vehicles driven without licence or insurance |
Section 170 | Duty of driver to stop, report accident and give information or documents |
Vehicle Excise and Registration Act 1994 | |
Section 1(1)(b) | Circumstances in which vehicle excise duty is chargeable on unregistered mechanically propelled vehicles |
Section 29(1) | Offence of using or keeping an unlicensed vehicle |
(a) add or omit an entry in the Table in subsection (3);(b) provide that subsection (3) applies in relation to a provision for the time being included in the Table only for purposes specified in the regulations;(c) provide that subsection (3) applies in relation to a provision for the time being included in the Table only if a condition specified in the regulations is included in the motor race order.(5) However, regulations under subsection (4) may not add any provision of sections 3A to 11 of this Act (motor vehicles: drink and drugs) to the Table in subsection (3).
(6) The promoter of an event in respect of which a motor race order has been made is liable in damages if personal injury or damage to property is caused by anything done—
(a) by or on behalf of the promoter in connection with the event, or(b) by or on behalf of a participant or an official,unless it is proved that the promoter took reasonable steps to prevent the injury or damage occurring.(7) For the purposes of the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945, the Fatal Accidents Act 1976 and the Limitation Act 1980 any injury or damage for which a person is liable under subsection (6) is to be treated as due to the fault of that person.
(8) In this section—
“the appropriate national authority” means—
(a) in relation to England, the Secretary of State;(b) in relation to Wales, the Welsh Ministers;“official” means a person who facilitates the holding of a race or trial of speed.
12F Regulations by appropriate national authority: procedure
(1) A power to make regulations conferred on the Secretary of State or the Welsh Ministers by section 12B(6), 12D(3)(c) or 12E(4) is exercisable by statutory instrument.
(2) A statutory instrument containing regulations made by the Secretary of State under section 12E(4) (whether alone or with other provision) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.
(3) A statutory instrument containing regulations made by the Secretary of State under section 12B(6) or 12D(3)(c) (other than regulations to which subsection (2) applies) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.
(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations made by the Welsh Ministers under section 12E(4) (whether alone or with other provision) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, the National Assembly for Wales.
(5) A statutory instrument containing regulations made by the Welsh Ministers under section 12B(6) or 12D(3)(c) (other than regulations to which subsection (4) applies) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of the National Assembly for Wales.
12G Authorisation of races and trials of speed in Scotland
(1) The Scottish Ministers may by regulations authorise, or make provision for authorising, the holding of races or trials of speed on public roads in Scotland.
(2) Regulations under this section may in particular—
(a) specify the persons by whom authorisations may be given;(b) limit the circumstances in which, and the places in respect of which, authorisations may be given;(c) provide for authorisations to be subject to conditions imposed by or under the regulations;(d) provide for authorisations to cease to have effect in circumstances specified in the regulations;(e) provide for the procedure to be followed, the particulars to be given, and the amount (or the persons who are to determine the amount) of any fees to be paid, in connection with applications for authorisations.(3) Regulations under this section may make different provision for different cases.
12H Races and trials of speed in Scotland: further provision
(1) Section 12(1) does not apply to the promoter of an event that has been authorised by or under regulations under section 12G if that person—
(a) promotes the event in accordance with any conditions imposed on the promoter by or under the regulations, and(b) takes reasonable steps to ensure that any other conditions imposed by or under the regulations are met. (2) Section 12(1) does not apply to a participant in an event that has been authorised by or under regulations under section 12G, provided that the participant complies with any conditions imposed on participants by or under the regulations.
(3) Sections 1, 1A, 2, 2B and 3 do not apply to a participant in an event that has been authorised by or under regulations under section 12G or to any other person of a description specified in regulations made by the Scottish Ministers, provided that the participant or other person complies with any conditions imposed on participants or on persons of that description by or under regulations under section 12G.
(4) The Scottish Ministers may by regulations make provision for specified provisions of legislation of a kind mentioned in subsection (5)—
(a) not to apply in relation to participants in events authorised by or under regulations under section 12G or (as appropriate) in relation to vehicles used by such persons;(b) to apply in relation to such persons or vehicles subject to modifications specified in the regulations;(c) not to apply in relation to persons of a description specified in regulations under this subsection or (as appropriate) in relation to vehicles used by such persons;(d) to apply in relation to such persons or vehicles subject to modifications specified in the regulations.(5) The kinds of legislation are—
(a) legislation restricting the speed of vehicles or otherwise regulating the use of vehicles on a public road;(b) legislation regulating the construction, maintenance or lighting of vehicles;(c) legislation requiring a policy of insurance or security to be in force in relation to the use of any vehicle;(d) legislation relating to the duty chargeable on, or the licensing and registration of, vehicles;(e) legislation requiring the driver of a vehicle to hold a licence to drive it;(f) legislation relating to the enforcement of any legislation mentioned in paragraphs (a) to (e).(6) However, regulations under subsection (4) may not disapply, or otherwise alter the application of, sections 3A to 11 of this Act (motor vehicles: drink and drugs).
(7) The Scottish Ministers may by regulations amend section 16A of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 so as to enable orders under that section that are made for the purposes of an event authorised by or under regulations under section 12G to suspend statutory provisions in addition to those specified in section 16A(11).
(8) The promoter of an event that has been authorised by or under regulations under section 12G is liable in damages if personal injury or damage to property is caused by anything done—
(a) by or on behalf of the promoter in connection with the event, (b) by or on behalf of a participant, or(c) by or on behalf of a person of a description specified in regulations made by the Scottish Ministers,unless it is proved that the promoter took reasonable steps to prevent the injury or damage occurring.(9) For the purposes of the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945, any injury or damage for which a person is liable under subsection (8) is to be treated as due to the fault of that person.
(10) In this section, “legislation” means—
(a) an Act or subordinate legislation (within the meaning of the Interpretation Act 1978);(b) an Act of the Scottish Parliament or an instrument made under an Act of the Scottish Parliament.12I Regulations under section 12G or 12H: procedure
(1) Before making regulations under section 12H(3), (4), (7) or (8), the Scottish Ministers must consult such persons as they consider appropriate.
(2) Regulations under section 12G are subject to the negative procedure.
(3) Regulations under section 12H(3), (4), (7) or (8) are subject to the affirmative procedure.””
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we come to a set of government amendments—Amendments 76 to 78, 97 and 98—which we are introducing on motor racing. Currently motor racing on public roads can be permitted only by Parliament using the Private Bill procedure for specific events. These new provisions enable authorising bodies, in conjunction with the local highway authority, to run motor races on roads which have been closed for the purpose without the need for individual primary legislation. They also redress the anomaly which allows local authorities to close roads for all sorts of events, such as street parties, parades and motor events that do not involve racing, as well as for cycle racing, as in Yorkshire this summer, but not motor racing. The amendment will extend that permission to motor races.
The sorts of races envisaged are small-scale local events, such as rally stages, sprints and hill climbs—not a London Grand Prix. Although the legislation removes a potential obstacle to on-road F1 races, major logistical and financial challenges remain and it is not likely that one would be held. The Motor Sports Association and the Auto-Cycle Union have estimated there might be up to 100 new events per year. The bulk would be very small events that would often form part of larger local festivals and events. They estimate that there might be one or two new very large events annually on the scale of the Jim Clark Rally in the Scottish Borders, which is permitted under private legislation. Similar events are already permitted in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, where the major racing events the North West 200 festival and the Ulster Grand Prix—both motor cycling—provide major financial investment, attracting thousands of spectators from home and abroad.
The Government consulted on the proposals in the spring of 2014. Even treating all the template replies organised by the motor sport organisations as one reply, there was overwhelmingly strong support for all but one of the proposals. The one proposal not agreed to is not being carried forward. The provisions in new Sections 12A to 12F provide for England and Wales and the provisions in new Sections 12G, 12H and 12I provide for Scotland. These are different due to the specifics of the legislative system in Scotland and also reflect the preferences of colleagues north of the border for greater central government input.
The amendment for England and Wales allows a person who wishes to promote a race or trial of speed to apply to one of the motorsport governing bodies for a permit. These bodies will be appointed by regulation and we expect them to be the Motor Sports Association for car races and the Auto-Cycle Union for motorbike races being the very experienced bodies which authorise on and off-road events. The motor racing body would consult the highway authorities, the police, local authorities and anyone else who has requested to be involved and ensure that enough information is provided on resources, safety and other arrangements. That would include having sufficient insurance. Once satisfied, the body would then be able to issue a permit setting out the route and any relevant conditions.
The organiser would then apply to the local highway authority for a motor race order. He would need to provide a risk assessment. The local authority would consider the impact on the local community, the potential benefits and any other relevant factors, such as safety, before deciding whether to proceed. We envisage a high degree of consultation and engagement with such bodies as the police and emergency services before any such decision is taken. This would ensure that races are run only where it is safe and sensible to do so. The local authority would be able to charge a fee for considering the application for a motor race order.
The legislation then specifies some provisions that would be disapplied during these races. They include, among other things, speed restriction, traffic signs and licensing and insurance requirements, but not the provisions in the Road Traffic Act 1988 relating to drink and drugs. This new section would also disapply Sections 1 to 3 of the Road Traffic Act 1988—road traffic offences related to careless and dangerous driving—in respect of competitors. This is because competitive driving has an element of increased risk, since it involves conduct, such as driving at speed, that would be considered careless or dangerous in normal driving conditions, and the vehicles used for some forms of race are not road legal and do not comply with the construction and use requirements. National authorities will be able by regulation to amend the list of disapplied road traffic legislation.
The proposed amendment for Scotland permits motor racing and trials of speed on public roads so long as the event is authorised by regulation and is held in accordance with any conditions imposed on the promoter by or under the regulations. It also disapplies Sections 1 to 3 of the Road Traffic Act 1988—road traffic offences related to careless and dangerous driving—in respect of competitors. The amendment allows Scottish Ministers to make provisions by regulation that specified provisions of legislation should not apply, or should apply subject to modification, to participants in authorised events. These provisions could cover, among other things, speed restrictions, traffic signs, licensing and insurance requirements. These regulations will not be able to disapply the provisions in the Road Traffic Act 1988 relating to drink and drugs, as in England and Wales. Scottish Ministers will be able by regulation to amend Section 16A of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 to add to the list of statutory provisions which may be suspended by a road closure order. The legislation provides that the promoter would be liable in damages if their action, or that of a participant, caused personal injury or damage to property, unless the promoter could show that they had taken reasonable steps to prevent it. This amendment amends Section 16A of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 in respect of England, Scotland and Wales to allow local authorities to close roads in order to hold motor races.
The Government consulted on these proposals and there was strong support for this provision. We envisage a high degree of consultation that would ensure that races are run only where it is safe and sensible to do so. Certain legislation would be disapplied during these races, including speed restrictions and road traffic offences related to careless and dangerous driving in respect of competitors. I beg to move.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendments in this group, in particular those that transfer powers to Scottish Ministers. I crave the indulgence of noble Lords as I have not taken part in this Bill in Committee so far, but having listened to the eclectic subjects of schooling, tourism, licensing evenings in villages halls, haircuts, whisky ice cream and the size of Mars bars, it is much more attractive for me to carry on to take part in the debate.
These amendments are welcome. They reflect that rallying in Scotland has a long history and is enjoyed by thousands of dedicated individuals: spectators, drivers and volunteers. Scottish drivers and co-drivers have reached the highest levels of competition, for example, winning the World Rally Championship and building on Scotland’s motor sport tradition. As the Minister indicated, for more than 40 years the memorial rally for Jim Clark has been a fixture in the Scottish rally scene, in particular in the Scottish Borders in the constituency of my right honourable friend Michael Moore and in the ward of Councillor Frances Renton who is a tireless supporter of the rally. For more than 40 years, this annual event has taken place on private roads and tracks in the Scottish Borders in memory of my father’s hero Jim Clark, who was Formula One World Drivers’ Champion in 1963 and 1965. It is the only closed-road rally in mainland UK and therefore this measure will be of relevance to the Scottish Borders and the Jim Clark Rally.
It is held over three days in the Scottish Borders. It is worth acknowledging the work over many years by dedicated volunteers, and the real professionalism in the local authority and the local police and emergency services. However, despite that, this year the rally was struck by tragedy and three spectators were killed.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for his useful contribution to our debates. He certainly caught us on a colourful day. We had a succession of rather intimate disclosures around eating habits and various other things, which has not been a hallmark of this Committee—and I have been here for every minute of it so far. However, we still have two days to come; perhaps a trend is being set, and we may get on to that, certainly with subjects such as television on the horizon. I am sure that there is room for manoeuvre. The noble Lord would be welcome to participate or just to observe.
I am left slightly unsighted on this because I had expected my noble friend Lady Smith to respond to this amendment, but she decided to go off and console herself with some Mars bars, I think, and left me to pick up the pieces. I therefore have only three small points to raise, to which I hope that the Minister can respond. First—although I am not sufficiently up to speed on this issue to know whether this is the case—presumably, when one is talking about passing responsibility for these matters to local authorities, we are anticipating situations involving large-scale events such as the recent Tour de France in Britain, which might span several counties or other city authorities. There may be a variable response. Can he explain the process for that? Will there be a lead authority that would, presumably, normally take responsibility? Given that this is a big change, and we are talking about high-speed, rather dangerous sporting events, it may be a bit of a worry if there are variable local authority standards, or if it is not clear what happens if one authority agrees and another does not agree to run an event on the scale of, say, the Tour de Yorkshire. I know that the Minister and the amendment say that the measure is restricted to smaller-scale events, but small-scale events involving cars are, in my view, still quite large-scale. They are certainly noisy and quite dangerous. I would like some reassurance on that.
Secondly, as regards my point about variable standards, if there are to be differences, there is an issue as to how the events will be sustained. Parliament can currently take an overview of the standards it wishes to see. The devolution of these responsibilities is not a bad thing but it raises the question of variability, and I should like some comments on that.
Thirdly—because it may be topical—what would be the process if it were decided by someone, say the mayor of a large conurbation, to have an F1 race in that city? Would we be stuck with the current arrangements for an Act of Parliament in order to provide, say, the “London Grand Prix”?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I thank both noble Lords for those interventions. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Purvis, who clearly understands much more about the implications of this from his personal experience, and from the Jim Clark Rally and its history, than many of us do. It was extremely valuable to have his contribution. Perhaps I should mark to noble Lords that a series of amendments are in the name of both myself for the Government and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—not a Member of your Lordships’ House who is least careful about the importance of new legislation.
This group of amendments ought to have been in the Bill earlier. We apologise for their late introduction during the passage of the Bill. DCMS consulted on these measures in spring this year. The Government’s response to the consultation was announced by the Prime Minister on 11 July and we tabled these amendments at the end of July. However, for a number of reasons—including the fatalities at the Jim Clark Rally in the Borders just ahead of Second Reading in the Commons, when it was planned to table this—introduction was delayed to ensure that the provisions satisfied the need for confidence in the safety of such events. The Scottish review of the safety of these events will report at the end of the year. The provisions as drafted, which require secondary legislation to give these provisions effect, give Scotland, Wales and England the opportunity to have regard to any recommendations in the review.
My noble friend Lord Purvis asked a number of questions. He first asked whether the Government have considered allowing a local authority to be the regulating authority; I understood his second question to be whether the regulatory authority can enforce restrictions. In Scotland, the person or organisation authorised to carry events forward will be up to the Scottish Government, which can regulate. Enforcement of the regulations can also be determined by Scottish Ministers by regulation. Conditions in respect of public safety will be added to the regulations if the Scottish Minister wishes. I hope that my noble friend Lord Purvis will regard that as a matter of good co-ordination between the Scottish Government and Westminster.
On the question of safety for participants and spectators, we will certainly want to take into account the reviews that are following the Jim Clark Rally and apply those. We know that a number of local authorities would like to hold races. They apparently include: Oban South and the Isles; Torbay; Eastbourne; Isle of Wight; and Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council. We see those as being small events in a single local authority, with nothing on the scale of the Tour de Yorkshire, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, remarked, involved very considerable distances. Of course, across the north of England every summer we have effective motorcycle races by very large numbers of people—usually looking as though they are slightly older than me—which have fatalities on public roads. Indeed, my wife and I were crossing the North Yorkshire Moors when one of those sad accidents took place. There will be much more regulation under these circumstances than what currently happens.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked what the circumstances would be if the Mayor of London wished to have a London Grand Prix. I am informed that this legislation would be adequate in principle for an F1 race around London, but the wider logistics would also need to be considered. It could well be that a really large event in London, or another big city, would have to have its own specific legislation, as the Olympics did, because of the sheer scale of the operation. This is intended to cover small events.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
The Minister is trying to have it both ways. He said that it would be for small-scale events, not for F1, but on the advice of his officials he then said that the legislation would allow one to run an F1 event in London. Can we have a clear statement on where the break point is? The idea of F1 cars skidding around corners in Westminster and other places, which is being envisaged in this, puts a completely different light on it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I accept that. I can assure the noble Lord that I will check that and write to him to reassure him on that matter. I hope I have answered the questions from both noble Lords who spoke.
“Motor racing: road closures
(1) Section 16A of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (which allows a traffic authority to impose by order restrictions or temporary prohibitions on the use of roads in connection with certain events) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (4), in paragraph (a), after “(motor racing on public ways)” insert “unless a motor race order under section 12D of that Act is made in relation to the race or trial or it is authorised by or under regulations under section 12G of that Act”.
(3) After subsection (11) insert—
“(12) An order under this section that is made for the purposes of a race or trial of speed in relation to which a motor race order under section 12D of the Road Traffic Act 1988 has been made may also suspend—
(a) regulations under section 25(1);(b) section 28(1);(c) an order under section 29(1);(d) byelaws under section 31(1);(e) any provision made by or under Part 4.””
Deregulation Bill
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, living in one local authority area during the week and in another at the weekend, I am very conscious that standards differ from one local authority to another.
It is a brave Minister, I know, who stands up to the Local Government Association embattled. The Government’s intention in these measures is to reduce the burden of regulation on householders. Representations were made on behalf of householders and, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has mentioned, there was also a press campaign which suggested that the threat of large fines and criminal convictions is disproportionate to what is often in the first instance a case of people making mistakes about which bin to put out when and what to put in each. Again, as the noble Lord has just said, that varies from one local authority to another. My family is lucky in that the two local authorities in whose areas we live are relatively permissive about where you put each particular bit of waste.
The noble Lord’s amendment would reduce the fines available to level 1 on the standard scale instead moving to a civil basis. The Government think that it is disproportionate for an individual to be treated like a criminal when they may make a mistake putting their bins out for collection, and it is not right that they risk a higher fine for making this type of mistake than they would, for example, for deliberate shoplifting.
I am conscious that some of my noble friends are concerned that this clause may increase burdens on local authorities. I reassure them that our proposals do not add significant burdens compared to how the current arrangements operate in practice. As always in questions of regulation and deregulation, there is the question of the balance of burdens. The Government’s view is that we should be concerned to reduce the balance of burdens on householders.
I am also aware that some of my noble friends are worried that this clause might have a negative impact on recycling rates. We are committed to meeting our recycling targets and, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has remarked, we have made considerable progress in recent years in that direction. The way to do this is to support people as they do the right thing rather than threaten them with criminal sanctions and fines of up to £1,000.
Currently, under Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, householders are subject to criminal sanctions and a fine of up to £1,000 if they do not comply with local authority requirements for presenting their waste for collection. In contrast, a shoplifter may be issued with an £90 penalty notice for disorder for their first offence. The Government’s argument is that it is disproportionate for an individual to be treated like a criminal when they make a mistake putting their bins out for collection, and it is not right that they risk a higher fine for making this type of mistake than for shoplifting.
Nevertheless, we recognise that local authorities need some powers to deal with people who spoil the local area by the way they put out their waste, which is why the clause provides for a civil sanctions regime. Under this system, fixed penalties between £60 and £80 will be available if a person has failed to present their household waste as required, and this failure causes a nuisance or is detrimental to the locality. This is what we refer to in shorthand terms as the “harm to local amenity” test, covering such things as putting waste out in a way that causes obstruction to neighbours, unreasonably impedes access to pavements, attracts foxes, rats or other vermin, or is an eyesore.
We expect local authorities to use effective communications to ensure that householders know what they can recycle; for example, by making it easier to know which plastics go in which bin. On the balance of the evidence presented in response to the consultation exercise, which the noble Lord, Lord Tope, raised, I will have to write to him.
I make it clear that we intend to retain the current criminal system applying to commercial waste. The sanctions available to combat more serious offences like fly-tipping are also unaffected by the provisions in the Bill.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, raised Schedule 11, which amends the London Local Authorities Act 2007 and gives London authorities similar powers to issue penalty charges to householders. We are amending the London Local Authorities Act so that civil sanctions and financial penalties will be imposed only if a householder fails the “harm to local amenity” test, and the level of penalties will be the same as under the Environmental Protection Act. In effect, the same provisions will apply throughout England. There will therefore be a degree of standardisation. I hope that this may persuade the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Hanham
Can the Minister explain something to me? Subsection (1) of new Section 46B of the Environmental Protection Act says:
“The amount of the monetary penalty that a person may be required to pay to a waste collection authority … is … the amount specified by the waste collection authority”.
That would seem to indicate that the waste collection authority had the right to set a charge. It then goes on to say in subsection (2) that:
“The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision in connection with the powers”—
one of those powers being the setting of the penalty. I seek clarity as to whether there will be a power for a local authority to set its penalty charge. New Section 20B of the London Local Authorities Act, in Schedule 11 to the Bill, is quite specific that:
“It is to be the duty of the borough councils to set the levels of penalty charges payable to them”.
That sounds great. If they must do it, they have got to do it. However, under the subsequent subsection (4) of new Section 20B:
“The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision”,
for that.
Which is it? Will it be left to local authorities to set their own penalties? I understand that there will be a regime. Or will it be regulations set by the Secretary of State? It does matter.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I thank the noble Baroness. At this point I may be better off writing to her to explain in detail. My note says that the Secretary of State will make the regulations, but I recognise that there is a degree of ambiguity there. We will make sure that we clarify that.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am of course, as always, grateful to my noble friend Lady Hanham. I was going to say “for her support”, but who is supporting who? We are as one on this. I have just said to her that it is good to have her back onside. I always knew what she really thought, because we have known each other for so long. Now, at last, she can say it.
I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his response and, indeed, whether he meant to or not, for confirming that we have this clause as the result of a “press campaign”—those were the words that he used—not because there is any evidence that vast numbers of innocent householders are being persecuted and prosecuted for their innocent mistakes. If that has ever happened, it is certainly not the norm. It certainly does not happen to the extent that requires this sort of heavy-handed additional regulation.
Reference has been made to different systems in different areas. In passing, most people only live in one local authority area, and it is not of much concern to most people what happens in other areas because they never experience it—unless they happen to live in two, three or more homes. Having said that, I entirely agree that greater harmonisation and simplification between local authorities in their collection arrangements, particularly for recycling, would be extremely helpful, however many homes one happens to live in. That is a job for the local authorities and the Local Government Association. It is not a job in which central government needs to intervene or is able to usefully add anything to what local authorities can do.
I said in my opening remarks—because I have always believed it very strongly—that I too believe in supporting recycling, not threatening it, and giving incentives for recycling. That was something that my council started to do the day when I became leader of it, as it happens. However, I have also said that you need to be able to back that up with a threat or disincentive. You will hope that it is never needed; if your incentives are working well and properly, that threat will never need to be used, but it needs to be there as a back-up. I am at one with the Government in wishing to incentivise rather than threaten, but not with them on the wish effectively to withdraw any meaningful threat.
The Minister says that he hopes that I will withdraw the amendment. He knows very well that the rules require that I do so. I have no choice but to beg leave to withdraw it, but I feel sure somehow that we will return to the issue of waste collection at a later stage of the Bill.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton
My Lords, I support the amendment. Air pollution in the UK is pretty serious and getting worse. We now have a better understanding that the larger the city, the more cars there are. In fact, cars travel longer distances in smaller cities. There is increasing awareness about air pollution, particularly in London, and the parties involved realise the seriousness of this. Other cities will have to make their own air quality assessments as they grow, so it is surprising that a Government who wish to make the UK seem like a desirable place to live and set up industry have introduced this measure. We know from experience around the world that incoming businesses and industries take a great interest in the environment but, under the Bill, local authorities will not be compelled to produce these assessments.
There is an equity aspect to this. We see large differences in life expectancy across London. Studies carried out every day in London show very high levels of pollution in areas with poorer housing. Therefore, it seems strange that we should be moving backwards in this respect. Websites show that the best city in Europe in this regard is Zurich and show how bad other cities are in comparison. The Government are taking a retrograde step in this regard. That is why this amendment insists that the Secretary of State takes this issue very seriously.
I regret that the amendment does not refer to noise, because the situation in the UK is pretty bad in that respect. If you drive round Germany, you see notices on the road advising you to drive slowly to reduce noise. The North Circular road is extremely noisy. People accelerate between traffic controls and the residents have to put up with that noise. There is no attempt in this country to tell people about the danger of noise pollution and how they can moderate their behaviour to reduce it. Local authorities are not encouraged to do that. Part 5 of this schedule takes a regressive step in not insisting that local authorities not only designate noise abatement zones but inform people how to reduce noise in these areas. I hope very much that the amendment will be carried.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I think there are some limits to how far we would necessarily take this as a general model in this area. The noble Lord will be well aware that all efforts to agree speed limits within the European Union and to deal with the problem of cars going extremely fast are blocked by the Germans, who have a very powerful lobby, not unconnected with BMW and Mercedes Benz, which insists on having cars which are extremely powerful, which we all know also produce more pollutants when they are being driven very fast. They are driven very fast across Germany, rather more quickly than they are allowed to be driven through other countries, so Germany is a mixed example, I think.
This government proposal is not to lower air quality. I recognise in the admirably clear speech of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, the much wider issues which he is raising about the Government’s overall strategy on air quality. This is a deregulatory measure which simply aims to remove the requirement for a further assessment when an air quality zone has already been agreed. The Government give active support to local authorities when it has been decided that a low emission zone or strategy is the appropriate action. We have so far funded 15 separate low emission zone-related projects or feasibility studies for our local air quality grant scheme. We have also disseminated the results that have come from these studies as good examples for local authorities. Since 1997, over £52 million has been spent to support local authorities in delivering low emission strategies, including feasibility studies with low emission zones and the uptake of clean vehicle technology and programmes to change behaviour.
There is regular feedback from local authorities, and an independent review of local air quality management in 2010 indicated that this requirement for a further assessment, or a second round of assessment, did not add to the understanding of local air quality and actually delayed the production and implementation of local action plans required under the Act. This was confirmed in a consultation with air quality stakeholders in January 2013. I refute the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has put forward—that this is an attempt to weaken the local air quality regime. This is very much an attempt to support what local authorities do and to speed up their implementation of such zones when they are agreed. The Government continue to give active support in this regard. I recognise what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said about the overall problem of air quality. As I sat listening to him, I recalled that, as a boy, when I first came to a choir school in London, I was here just in time for the last great smog, in 1953 I think it was. Air quality has improved a little since then, and life expectancy has improved with it.
However, this change is a limited one, as are many others in the Bill. It will allow local authorities to prepare and implement air quality action plans more quickly and to avoid duplicating information gathered either in the earlier, detailed assessment stage that is required or in the preparation of the air quality plan. That is the limit of what we are attempting to do here. We remain actively committed to higher air quality throughout Britain. We have supported local emissions zones: I have just been handed a note which remarks on the local emissions zones in Oxford, York, Bradford, Southampton, Birmingham and Hackney. With that reassurance, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Whitty
I thank the Minister for that. As on the previous occasion, I have no option but to withdraw it. However, the basis on which I withdraw it is not quite the same as the Minister’s.
The Minister is right to say that this is a relatively specific requirement, relating to checking what the effect would be of the emission zones, once established. But that is part of the evidence for extending them further. If they were simply replacing it with something more useful, I would not object to the deletion as such. But the reality is that that is just one part of what the Government seem—despite what the Minister has said—to be retreating from. They are not encouraging local authorities in a broad sense, although some local authorities, because of impetus within themselves, are still putting forward local emission zone propositions. I was surprised to hear Birmingham on that list, but I take the Minister’s word for it; some of the others I do know about. Local authorities as a whole do not feel that they are being encouraged to initiate new local emission zones. The Government are not really answering the essential thrust of this: if they are deleting what they regard as pernickety requirements, they should do so in the context of replacing them with a broader approach to encourage initiatives and activity at local and national level to improve our air quality.
Chilcot Inquiry
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Dykes
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to expedite the publication of the report by the Chilcot Inquiry.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the inquiry is completely independent of government. However, Sir John Chilcot has said that it is the inquiry’s intention to submit its report to the Prime Minister as soon as possible. I very much hope that its conclusions will shortly be available for all to read.
Lord Dykes (LD)
I express sympathy to my noble friend that HMG appear to be at the mercy of pressures from outside to connive in a delay in this report possibly to help Mr Bush and Mr Blair. Will he please come back to the Prime Minister’s exhortation in May that the report should be published by the end of this year at the latest and say when the date will be?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I refute that there is in any sense a conspiracy connected to the former Prime Minister or the former American president. It has taken a good deal longer than was anticipated to clear the many thousands of documents that have been examined and which will be published on the website with a number of redactions. That process is now virtually complete. The Maxwellisation letters, which were sent out as a warning last year, should now be going out and we hope that that process will be completed. As soon as those who are to be criticised in the report have responded, the report will be ready for submission to the Prime Minister.
Lord Morgan (Lab)
My Lords, is this not a scandal following on a scandal? Is it not a public disgrace? In other countries—for example, the Netherlands—there were far more competent professional inquiries, full of lawyers who could comment on international law, which replied very swiftly. We have had this endless delay. Does it not indicate that perhaps the Government as well as the Civil Service have ceased to believe in open government?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
No, my Lords, I do not think that it does. It has taken longer than we had hoped or expected. This is an entirely new sort of inquiry. I suppose it is comparable to the Savile inquiry, which also took a great deal longer than we had anticipated. We underestimated the complexity before we started, but we are encouraging the committee as rapidly as possible to complete and we are anxious to have the report published.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, does the Minister accept that repeated press reports of rows between the Cabinet Office and the inquiry over the declassification of documents are deeply hurtful to the families most affected by the Iraq conflict? Does he agree that until the inquiry is completed, many bereaved and grieving families will not be able to move on?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I appreciate that many have been affected by the issues studied by this inquiry. I am not aware of any rows between the Cabinet Office and the inquiry. I am aware of a long series of complex discussions within the British Government, between the British Government and our allies and with the inquiry about the exact nature of what should be published. I am conscious that what will be published includes notes from more than 200 Cabinet meetings, for example, including some extracts from Cabinet minutes.
Lord Dobbs (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend remember that, before the war broke out, 1 million ordinary people marched in the streets of London telling us not to go to war, yet we politicians did a pretty miserable job in waving that war on willy-nilly? While no one underestimates the difficulties that Sir John Chilcot faces, does my noble friend not accept that any further delay, after all this time, can only increase the sense of injustice that so many people feel about that war?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I remember that march very well: I was one of the marchers. We are very conscious that we now need to bring this to a close. I deeply regret that it has taken three years since the end of the interview phase of the inquiry to get as far as we have. We are all anxious to complete the next stage which, as I stress, is showing to those who will be criticised in the report what it says about them and giving them a chance to reply. As soon as that is completed—so we are a little dependent on them, I am afraid to say, and on their lawyers—the report will be submitted to the Prime Minister and published.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister regard “as soon as possible” as nearer or further off than “in due course”?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I very much hope nearer. In the debate in the House of Commons last week, my colleague the Minister for Civil Society commented that they very much hoped to have this published before the end of February. We are all conscious that we do not want to have this published in the middle of an election campaign.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Ind Lab)
My Lords, could we have the report as a Christmas present?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
There are many things that the noble Lord might like as a Christmas present. I am not sure that I would prefer to read this report, with all its appendices, rather than the novels that I hope my wife will give me for Christmas.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (LD)
Does the Minister agree that sometimes in these enormous investigations it might be wise to set a time limit with an understanding that there are some things that simply can never be found out?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I think one of the lessons we will have learnt from this inquiry is that time limits are highly desirable. I stress again that the review of thousands of documents, which were at high levels of classification, was unprecedented and did unavoidably take a great deal of time.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, how much has the Chilcot inquiry cost so far? Is it rather like building work in one’s own house that “as soon as possible” ends up costing an awful lot more?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the inquiry has cost £9 million so far. We estimate that by the time it is completed it will have cost £10 million. By comparison, the Savile inquiry cost £100 million.
Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, how far will the extra £1 million take us? Can my noble friend give an assurance that it will not be within the pre-election period before the next general election when silence is observed?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, that is the assurance that the Minister for Civil Society gave last week. We are all anxious that if it is not published by the end of February it would be inappropriate to publish it during the campaign period.
Lord Mawhinney (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as I had the privilege of working very closely with Sir John Chilcot when he was the Permanent Secretary in Northern Ireland. Is my noble friend concerned that the backstage manoeuvring and perhaps even bickering going on as people allegedly seek to protect their reputations could over time start to have a damaging effect on the reputation of Sir John Chilcot? It would be a disgrace were that to be allowed to happen.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am not sure about backstairs manoeuvring. I would say that the members of the Chilcot inquiry would not pass the necessary test as all being members of the establishment. Indeed, one of the members of the Chilcot inquiry disrupted the first lecture I gave as a university teacher when he was himself a rebellious student. The inquiry does have to consult those whom it will criticise and allow them to provide a defence. That is the process that now remains to be completed before we publish. We all have to accept that in natural justice that has to be allowed to go ahead even if there are lawyers involved.
Lord Richard (Lab)
My Lords, the process referred to by the noble Lord could take months. It could take a very long time. If criticisms are made in the report they then have to go to the people who have been criticised. They have the right to comment. It then comes back to Sir John Chilcot. He has to consider those representations and then, if necessary, reflect them by amending the report. That is a recipe for a delay that will go on and on and on.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I hope that will not be the case, but I am sure the noble Lord will accept that this is a necessary part of the process. There will be criticisms of people who served in the previous Labour Government and they are entitled to see them before publication.
Lord Woolf (CB)
My Lords, the question of what happens in the course of inquiries was reported on by the committee, of which I have the privilege to be a member, headed by the noble Lord, Lord Shutt. One of its recommendations was that we should look again at the process of writing to those who may be affected. Many of those who have conducted inquiries said that it led to additional expense and waste of time. The Government were not sympathetic to what we recommended. Does the noble Lord think that the Government should look at the matter again?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, when the inquiry is complete and published, it might well be appropriate for some body of government or House of Parliament to look at that question again.
Deregulation Bill
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I think we all agree we need to build more houses and it is part of the puzzle over the last 20 years and more that successive Governments have been committed to doing this and have not been succeeding. Certainly, my own observation in Bradford is that one of the problems is a shortage of skilled labour for building. I am quite happy that the housing association that has its headquarters a good 10 minutes’ walk from my house in Saltaire now has a very good apprentice scheme to train plumbers, builders, electricians and others in sourcing its own maintenance and building. That is a model I hope others are planning to take forward. We are all conscious that we need to build more houses and aware—and this answers one or two of the questions raised by the noble Lords, Lord McKenzie and Lord Best—that we do not necessarily need to build the houses in the same areas where houses are being sold off as the population is shifting. We have different sorts of housing needs and requirements in different areas. Population has shifted towards the south-east and areas of heavy immigration require more housing than areas without much immigration, which now often have surplus housing stock. I have just been in Hull, for example, which does not suffer from a shortage of housing at present.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked a number of questions. I do not have all the figures to answer him but I will make sure he gets the answers to all his questions as soon as possible, and of course well before Report. I am told by officials that many of the figures which he asks for are publicly available, so there should be no problem in that respect, but I do not have them immediately to hand. I noted his comments about houses that have been sold under right to buy and which are now privately rented. In some parts of England, there are some problems of that sort.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Best, suggested that the discounts were enormous and immediate but the discount scheme, as he knows, is progressive and one gets the higher rates of discount only after renting a house for considerably longer than three, five or 10 years. The longer that someone has been a tenant the more discount they get, starting at 35% discount on a house and increasing by 1% each year to a maximum of 70% of the market value. It is not a short-term renters’ paradise, as I thought he was almost beginning to suggest.
The baseline for right to buy was set in April 2012, when the policy was reinvigorated, and it does not change year by year. I assure noble Lords that the Government are committed to keeping this reinvigorated right-to-buy scheme under review, including the impact of the change in the qualifying period from five to three years. The Committee may be interested to read the impact assessments for this clause that were published in January 2014, which is available on the parliamentary website, and in March 2012, at the time of reinvigorating the policy, which provide important context. When this Government reinvigorated the right to buy, they included an important measure guaranteeing for the first time ever that receipts from additional local authority sales—that is, sales above the level forecast prior to the change—would be used to help fund new homes for affordable rent on a one-for-one basis, not a like-for-like basis.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
While it is on my mind, is the test—the baseline—the originally anticipated numbers of sales of units, or is it anticipated sales proceeds?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I think that it is the units rather than the baseline being the proceeds of sales, but I will check with the officials and come back on that.
We publish quarterly and annually on right-to-buy one-for-one starts on-site and acquisitions, so the figures are available. I will make sure that they are circulated and put in the Library. Since the reinvigoration, there have been more than 12,600 additional local authority right-to-buy sales and, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said, councils have already reported almost 3,700 starts on-site and acquisitions of replacement homes for affordable rent. Councils have three years from the date of receiving the additional receipts in which to use them. This gives councils adequate time to leverage in additional funds and build up enough receipts to produce robust economies of scale.
The Government also publish annual statistics on preserved right-to-buy sales in England, which strike a balance between the needs to monitor the effectiveness of the policy and not to place unnecessary burdens on housing associations. As housing associations are independent organisations and stock transfer agreements are private commercial contracts, we do not mandate what those associations do with receipts that they receive from preserved right-to-buy sales. In practice, any surplus receipts retained, after costs and compensation for lost rental income, are likely to be used to support new build and other public benefits. Where receipts are shared with councils, it is our expectation that associations will work with them to develop replacement homes.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Stoneham, for their contributions to this debate. I look forward to receiving the figures in due course from the Minister. I was not quite sure whether in his response he was saying that the Government are currently meeting their one-for-one guarantee. It would be helpful to know if that is the Government’s position.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
In which case, when is it expected that the Government will meet that guarantee?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I have not chosen between soon or shortly, but we very much want to move on that. It takes time. As I said, local authorities have three years to replace, and we are already two years into this new scheme. We are, of course, frustrated by the length of time it takes to build new homes. That is part of a long-standing story under successive Governments which we continue to push forward with.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I thank the Minister for that. I was also not sure whether he had accepted the thrust of my amendment, which was that the Government would produce a report. Could he respond to that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My answer was that the Government already produces a large number of statistics which, in effect, form the basis of the report for which the noble Lord is asking.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I take that as a yes. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham. I think we are on the same page in recognising the scale of the housing crisis which faces this country and the need for more social housing in particular, and for a one-for-one replacement policy.
We have debated the issues in the three amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Best, extensively from time to time in recent years. We share with him a strong desire to do more to produce more and better social housing, particularly housing for rent, though we are not able to follow him specifically on every aspect of his three amendments.
Where Amendment 40 is concerned with setting discounts locally, it discusses setting them at a level which will encourage right-to-buy take-up. That raises an interesting question of where the policy should be focused between facilitating and encouraging. Presumably, it would depend on the need for investment into the social housing sector, and there has to be a balance in these matters. I do not resile from my party’s position on managing the country’s overall level of debt. Our priority is not a wholesale lift of the cap.
Notwithstanding that, we should recognise the important role that local councils can and should be enabled to play in tackling the housing crisis—as the Lyons report put it, to return to their historic responsibility to build affordable housing. We note that there is some scope for a rise in output even on the current basis, but that would be modest compared to historic output. In the 1960s, I think that about 200,000 units a year were produced.
We recognise that councils have a long record of sound economic management and borrowing prudently—a point that the noble Lord made—but early removal of the overall cap will be difficult for any Government. The Lyons report recognised that. The report suggested that there is an opportunity to provide additional capacity without exceeding total borrowing if there is more active management from the Treasury of the overall borrowing headroom. Lyons suggests, for example, that councils should be able to apply for more borrowing headroom by demonstrating: a viable business plan and asset management strategy in the context of new contracts for housing delivery and a single pot of funding for housing investment; costed plans for investment in new housing that relate to their housing strategy and make full use of partnership opportunities; that new homes will be additional to those which would be delivered by others; and compliance with prudential rules with expectations about rent levels and reinvestment in their existing stock. The Treasury would be able to make a decision on a case-by-case basis against an understanding of the overall level of borrowing planned, to ensure that total borrowing did not exceed the current provision.
The report also points to the alternative models by which councils can invest in homes—by using land, by entering into joint ventures, by some of the imaginative work which the LGA has done on the municipal bonds agencies. There are other opportunities there, but we cannot go the whole way with the noble Lord in reducing the cap as he wants to.
I hope that debates such as this will continue to help us focus on the absolute need to address the housing crisis across the private sector, the local authority sector and housing associations. I look forward to receiving the Minister’s data in due course; I take it that they will come in the form of the requested report. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, this clause and the government amendments are here because of the uncertainty and concern caused to landlords and tenants across the private rented sector by the Court of Appeal decision in the case of Superstrike Ltd v Marino Rodrigues. The noble Baroness’s amendment also touches on some of the implications of that case. The decision effectively interpreted the legislation differently from its original intention and contrary to the advice given by successive Governments. It left a large number of landlords at risk of court action and open to a financial penalty, because the tenancy deposit protection requirements must be complied with within a set period. That leaves landlords in an impossible position with no means of complying. The situation is made more complicated by the increase in the number of landlords resident outside the United Kingdom, which means that they are dependent on letting agents to deal with their tenants. Similarly, it has left tenants unclear about the status of their deposits.
The aim of Clause 31 is not to completely reverse the decision made by the Court of Appeal, as it is important that the protection offered to these tenants as a result of the ruling is retained. It gives landlords a grace period to protect those deposits and give the necessary information to the tenant. That applies to landlords who still hold deposits which were taken before the introduction of the tenancy deposit protection legislation for tenancies which rolled over into statutory periodic tenancies after the introduction of the legislation.
The clause will make it clear that where a deposit has been protected, the prescribed information is given to the tenant and the tenancy is subsequently renewed, there is no need for the landlord to keep providing the same information every time the tenancy is renewed. It will also be clear that this has always been the position and will continue to be from now on.
Where legal proceedings are under way at the time the provisions come into force, tenants will be protected from paying their landlords’ relevant legal costs where the court subsequently decides against the tenant in the light of these provisions. We see the provisions as striking the right balance between ensuring that tenants do not suffer financially as a result of the retrospective legislation and ensuring that landlords are not penalised where they have followed government advice. I hope that these changes are accepted as uncontroversial.
Finally, government Amendments 25 to 35 are technical drafting amendments.
The Government agree with the intention behind the noble Baroness’s amendment but are not sure that it is necessary. We understand that the law as it stands provides that, where the agent holds the deposit, it is sufficient for just the agent’s details to be included in the prescribed information. Article 2(1)(g)(iii) of the Housing (Tenancy Deposits) (Prescribed Information) Order 2007—I am sure that she knows it by heart—indeed states that,
“the name, address, telephone number, and any e-mail address or fax number of the landlord”,
should be provided. However, Section 212(9)(a) of the Housing Act 2004 explains that any reference in Chapter 4 of Part 6 of the Act—and hence in the 2007 order—to “landlord” in relation to any shorthold tenancy includes a reference to a person acting on his behalf in relation to the tenancy. Clearly, an agent managing the deposit on behalf of the landlord falls within that definition. Paragraph 40 of the regulatory impact assessment that supported the 2007 order covered this point, stating that:
“The person who receives the deposit will need to be the person who is registered with the authorised tenancy deposit scheme. Thus, in instances where the deposit is taken by a letting agent, the landlord’s details will not need to be included in this information”.
This is an issue with the deposit schemes that letting agent bodies have previously raised with the department, and I understand that they still consider the language of the Act and the supporting statutory instrument to be ambiguous. As I have set out above, we do not share that view. Of course, if they are able to provide evidence to the contrary we will consider whether a change to the order could be made to clarify the point, but we do not believe that any change to the primary legislation is required. I have asked officials from the Department for Communities and Local Government to contact the tenancy deposit schemes and letting agent bodies to discuss this further.
I hope with that assurance that the noble Baroness will be willing to withdraw her amendment. I thank her for the discussions we had before Committee and, if necessary, I am very happy to have further discussions. I commend Amendments 25 to 35 to the Committee.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that. Clearly this would not have been brought up and supported by the groups I mentioned if there were not real concerns. They have counsel opinion that differs from that of the Government. Of course, if the Government would like to assure them that should it go to the High Court they will then cover all their costs and those of all landlords, maybe we could accept that. Would he like to make the offer now? Offer came there none.
The groups are doing this day to day—their lawyers have worries and counsel opinion continues to say there is a difficulty that the words “or their agent” do not apply to the instrument. That seems the problem. I also cannot see why this change cannot be made. It would be very easy and would make sure we did not have to go to the High Court to get a ruling. I urge that that meeting takes place before we come to Report, so that I can then consult these good organisations and, if necessary, table an amendment for Report if they are not reassured by the meeting. If it is possible to set that up before Report then I would be happy to withdraw this amendment at this stage. I think the nod means that the meeting will take place before Report. On that basis I beg leave to withdraw.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I put my name to this amendment but there is not much else left to say, so I shall be brief. Like the noble Lord, Lord Best, we welcome the work on standards and the inclusion of these matters in building regulations. We are grateful to Leonard Cheshire for its very helpful briefing. We welcome the fact that the lifetime homes standards and the wheelchair accessible standards have been recognised in building regulations, but like Leonard Cheshire and noble Lords who have spoken, there is a concern that those standards are optional, and that, moreover, a hurdle has to be gone through for a local planning authority to be able to require those as a planning condition. My noble friend made a telling point about the capacity of local planning authorities to address those issues.
I conclude on one point: this is not only a quality-of-life issue, although it is very important at that level; it has economic ramifications. Unsuitable accommodation means the likelihood of more trips and falls, more visits to the A&E and hospital, and more cost. I hope that the Minister can assure us that there is a way through this process to address the real concerns that have been raised today.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. As I came in, I was thinking that I have mixed views on housing standards. I first became aware of housing standards because of Parker Morris, when a number of houses in the Yorkshire dales were being condemned as back-to-earths which were not suitable or up to Parker Morris standards. Nowadays, those houses that remain would be regarded as extremely environmentally friendly and valuable; they were indeed beautiful homes. I once sat in on a violent argument between someone who lived in one of them and a particularly modernist Liberal councillor who believed that the Parker Morris standards were the absolute minimum and that any house that did not meet them should be immediately demolished.
On the other hand, having with my wife delivered to a large number of houses on the other side of the Aire from Saltaire just before the local elections this spring, with road names such as Cliff Rise and Steep Avenue—one house had 41 steps up to the front door—I recognise that accessibility is an issue with new housing. As I was listening to the debate, I reflected that if I wish to get out of bed in the middle of the night, in our house in Saltaire there are 15 steps down to the bathroom, whereas in my house in London there are five steps down to the bathroom, which, for someone approaching middle age, as I am, is much easier. The question of suitable and unsuitable accommodation is one which we all need to be concerned about.
First, this is not a dumbing down. As there is in much of the Bill and much government legislation at present, there is an inherent tension between local autonomy and central direction. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Tope, that no Government can ever say that they understand in full the consequences of what they propose. We do our best to conduct impact assessments, but we are never entirely sure where we will be—especially after the High Court has had a go at our provisions in a few years’ time.
The optional requirements are intended to allow local authorities to set higher requirements for development than the building regulations minimum. They are a new concept in building regulations, and we are enabling local authorities, as a condition of granting planning permission, to require a developer to meet a higher building regulation requirement than the national minimum.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
Is it not the case, however, that if the local authority wants to do that, it must change its plan and go through the planning process for its local plan? So it is not just a question of a committee of councillors meeting to say, “We will let this go. We want higher standards”. It has to go through the process of changing its public local plan. Does the Minister accept that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That is my understanding, but I am a great deal less expert on this than the noble Lord, so I shall have to consult and write to him if I am mistaken.
The intention is of course to raise standards for new builds. We understand the reasons why there is this strong push for lifetime building standards; we also recognise that that imposes costs and that there are parts of the country—certainly the part of the country in which I live when I am in Yorkshire—where finding a sufficiently large level site on which to build, which is part of the requirements, is not easy. A great deal of housing is therefore not entirely suitable for the high standards which are suggested.
The Government intend to issue planning guidance on matters to be taken into account by local authorities in applying optional requirements, and we are consulting on the matters to be covered in that guidance.
This will mirror the approach taken with planning guidance, which supports the National Planning Policy Framework. I promise that I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on the point he has raised just to make sure I am correct.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My noble friend is absolutely right. I think the consultation document makes it very clear that it has to be part of the planning process for planning authorities to be able to impose it as an optional requirement.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I reform that. If the local authority already has a standard, it can passport this on, keeping the standard without a need for a new policy. If it wants a new policy, it will have to have a plan policy. Does that begin to answer the question the noble Lord has raised?
Baroness Andrews
It answers the question in part, but it raises and reinforces the problem of the complexity of getting these higher standards in place. Changing a local plan, as we know—and some local authorities still have not prepared and finalised their plans—takes four to five years. In the meantime, there are going to be hundreds, if not thousands, of people reaching their eighties and living in deeply inappropriate accommodation. If the Minister will bear with the Committee, I hope that we can return to this in more detail on Report.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I understand that our consultation suggests that where lifetime home standards exist these can be passported and will be carried on but I will consult and make sure we come back. I recognise the importance of this issue—particularly as we, Members of the House of Lords, might be approaching our 80s at some time in the next 25 years or so and therefore perhaps have a greater interest than our children do in this respect. Clause 32 is available in case there is a major problem in the delivery of the new system—for example, if the powers we have given to authorities are not applied properly, or without sufficient rigour, or the system is misused in some way. If the Government decide to put conditions in regulations under Clause 32(4)—and we have no plans to do so at present—then these will be subject to full consultation with interested parties, as with all changes to building regulations. I stress that this is intended not to lower standards but to raise them. Our proposals currently out to consultation are, for the first time, proposing that standards for accessible housing and for wheelchair-adaptable and accessible housing will be given the force of building regulations. This is a major new step and I hope it will be welcomed by all noble Lords. Indeed, I heard what was being asked for. The consultation under way at the moment sets out the Government’s thinking on the issues that local authorities should consider if they wish to apply optional building regulations’ requirements for access.
The key points are that local authorities should plan for the current and future housing needs of a wide range of households, including older and disabled people, and should clearly state in their local plan the proportion of new development that needs to comply with the requirements for accessible and adaptable dwellings, or wheelchair-adaptable or accessible dwellings. Local authorities should base their decision on the outcome of their housing needs assessments, taking into account: the likely future need for housing for older and disabled people, including wheelchair-user dwellings; whether particular sizes and types of housing are needed to meet specific needs—for example retirement homes, sheltered homes or care homes; the accessibility and adaptability of existing housing stock; and the overall impact on viability. I hope noble Lords will agree that these are reasonable matters to be addressed by local authorities and answer some of the questions raised, for example, by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. Currently the Government expect to set out the detailed consideration, which I have described, in guidance rather than put it into regulations.
Multiple compliance regimes have created a maze for designers and developers to navigate. There are 50 different local space standards and many different conflicting ways in which to apply local energy standards, some of which may conflict with the building regulations. Concerns about these issues prompted the Government to launch a fundamental review of technical housing standards during 2012-13, which aimed to rationalise the proliferation down to a sensible core of what worked and what is really needed. There was widespread support for this; 92% of last year’s consultation responses supported the review.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, we have heard two very powerful presentations from my noble friends. It is not my nature to be helpful to the Minister, but I want to put one matter to him. The bit of briefing I received suggested that the particular provision in the Planning and Energy Act 2008 would stay in being until the zero-carbon homes policy was in place and that that would effectively replace it. That itself raises a couple of questions. The first is whether the zero-carbon homes policy would cover all the protections that my noble friends have said would be lost once we delete this provision. Secondly, how can we be assured that there will be an alignment—if that is the right way to go—and that the zero-carbon homes policy will come in at the same time as the ability to require higher standards disappears? There is a fundamental issue about whether the zero-carbon homes policy equates to what could be achieved under this provision. If it does not, the sort of losses that my noble friends Lord Rooker and Lady Andrews have identified become very real and pertinent.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, often raises difficult issues for Governments, and I give all credit to him for the attention he pays to this. It is an entirely proper role for a Member of the House of Lords to look with deep suspicion at government proposals and to make sure that the Government can provide the rationale for them. Perhaps I can assure him that Oliver Letwin spoke on this on the Floor of the House and it was discussed in Committee, so it has not been entirely ignored by the House of Commons.
Lord Rooker
Then I apologise. My advice was that it had not been looked at in the Commons. Obviously I was wrong there.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
The noble Lord is entirely right to be suspicious and to make sure that this is properly scrutinised, particularly an umbrella Bill such as this. I in no sense criticise him for raising a number of important points.
This is in no sense intended to lower standards; it is intended to continue the process of raising energy efficiency standards and to achieve zero-carbon aims. I was already briefed to make the point that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, just helpfully made. This is not intended to commence until it replaces the other standards. The code on which representation has been made is a fairly complex piece of legislation. Those parts will not be abandoned; they will be incorporated into the building regulations. I stress that we are raising standards, not lowering them. I will make sure that I can say that with confidence again on Report, because I recognise the concerns of noble Lords.
By 2016, the Government plan to have tightened building regulations to deliver zero-carbon housing. I repeat that the Section 1(1)(c) amendment will not be commenced until then; meanwhile there will be no dip in standards. We intend to consolidate necessary standards to ensure that sustainable housing can be built. The current situation means that insufficient housing is being built because authorities are applying too many different standards, making sites unviable. This is a rationalisation, not a deregulation of the sort that lowers standards and enables people to move further away from the zero-carbon housing that we all very much want.
Clause 33 amends the Planning and Energy Act 2008 to ensure that local authorities in England will no longer be able to set energy efficiency standards via local planning policies for new homes in excess of the building regulations. It does so by disapplying Section 1(1)(c) for dwellings in England where government policy is that such a requirement should be found only in national building regulations. However, local authorities will still play an important strategic role in delivering carbon reductions and the Act will continue to enable them to do so.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Given that we are not expecting the zero-carbon home policy to be included until late 2016, there is a lot of water to flow under the bridge between now and then. Would he accept an amendment which put in the commitment not to repeal the provision in the 2008 Act until the zero-carbon home policy was in place?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I thank the noble Lord for that interesting suggestion. May I consider it and consult? Perhaps we can also discuss that off the Floor, between Committee and Report.
Lord Rooker
I thank the Minister for his reply. I am not sure what I am supposed to do now on the clause stand part because there is no amendment.
Afghanistan
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Lord Lee of Trafford
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what arrangements they have made to review their continuing support for the promotion of security and development in Afghanistan.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the National Security Council regularly reviews plans for support to Afghanistan, most recently on 21 October. Our plans focus on countering the terrorist threat, as well as promoting security, stability and prosperity. Our embassy in Kabul and a few hundred military mentors will support the new Afghan Government in furthering these priorities. We also plan to provide £70 million in security funding and £178 million in development funding per annum until at least 2017.
Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)
My Lords, the military campaign in Afghanistan cost this country £37 billion, or £2,000 for every household. Sadly, we have lost 453 military personnel. Afghanistan faces a very uncertain and difficult future. Is it not vital that we and our allies give the appropriate level of financial support to Afghanistan? The figures that my noble friend quoted are, frankly, derisory. We give Ethiopia more than that—we give Ethiopia £400 million a year—and, if we do not finance Afghanistan properly, its future is going to be very uncertain, and would that not be a gross betrayal of all those who have given their lives in the cause?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, at the Tokyo conference in 2012, a number of states and international organisations made pledges amounting to £16 billion for reconstruction in Afghanistan. On 3 and 4 December we will jointly host a conference in London with the Afghan Government, at which a number of other Governments will be invited to recommit themselves to the development of Afghanistan as a collective effort over the next few years.
Lord Craig of Radley (CB)
My Lords, a considerable number of the available Tornado GR4s are still deployed in Afghanistan. Now that combat operations have ceased, what future plans do the Government have for that force in Afghanistan?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I will have to write to the noble and gallant Lord about that. I am not entirely up to date on where all the Tornados are.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, when we give educational aid to Afghanistan, is it the Government’s policy to insist that a fair portion of it—half of it—is spent on the education of girls? Will the noble Lord tell us about the progress of extending education to girls in Afghanistan?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, there are now 2 million girls in education in Afghanistan, and 4 million boys. That is remarkable progress from where we were 10 years ago. We are very much committed to improving the status of women and girls throughout Afghanistan, and that is part of what our priorities represent.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, in announcing next month’s London conference on Afghanistan, the Prime Minister said:
“We will bring together all our partners to assist this National Unity Government as they embark on vital reforms to revitalise Afghanistan’s economy”.
What steps have been taken to ensure that the voices of civic society, in particular those of women, are heard at this event?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, there will be an associated event for representatives of civil society at the London conference, and another associated event for private sector investors. We are very much aware of how much effort we need to make to strengthen relatively weak civil society organisations in Afghanistan.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)
My Lords, 450 British soldiers dead; thousands of Afghans lying alongside them; probably £100 billion overall spent on this campaign; a “short war” that lasted 13 years, during which we have written the textbook on how not to conduct these kinds of operations—surely my noble friend will agree that the case is made for a proper inquiry into the conduct of the Afghan war and the lessons we should learn from it?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, it may well be the case that we need a proper inquiry, although I am not sure that we need one of the length of the Chilcot inquiry.
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I draw the Minister’s attention to the report from the Children’s Commissioner for England, “What’s Going to Happen Tomorrow?”—Unaccompanied Children Refused Asylum, and its recommendation that we should see the boys and girls who arrive unaccompanied in this country from Afghanistan as a potential asset, who will speak English and can be helped to speak their home language, who can receive a good education from us, for instance in engineering, and who can return to Afghanistan to lead in the rebuilding of that country.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, that is a very complicated question. We are conscious of the extent to which people smuggling and human trafficking are associated with asylum seeking. It is not at all an easy subject.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)
My Lords, in answering a question, the Minister mentioned the possibility of a private sector donors conference, as well as a conference involving civil society. Can he give the House any further information about that? Is it likely to happen in association with the main conference or at a different time? There are many people who are extremely interested in that possibility, so it would be very useful to know about it in good time, in order to gather proper support for it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I understand that it is already being publicised and it will indeed be in parallel with the London conference at the beginning of December. I think we all understand that it is mainly natural resources and mining that will attract private sector investors to Afghanistan at the present moment, but that at least is a start.
Lord Ahmed (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the Pakistan Government and the generals said yesterday that Tehrik-i-Taliban, based in Afghanistan, is launching attacks inside Pakistan and against the Pakistani military. Have Her Majesty’s Government made any representation to the Afghanistan Government to stop Tehrik-i-Taliban from doing that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
The noble Lord knows better than I do the very complicated links between Pakistan and Afghanistan and between the Pakistani military and what happens in Afghanistan. I will not go into that at the present moment; I would welcome a discussion with him about how Pakistan developments and Afghan developments interconnect.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
My Lords, can the Minister reassure me that the voices of Afghan women are actually going to be heard at the conference, not just at an associate conference? In all the previous conferences, they have not been allowed to participate fully, so I would like the Minister’s reassurance that this will not happen at this London conference.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I cannot entirely give that assurance. Afghanistan is not the only country in which the voices of women are not easy to get through, particularly when Governments are involved. I can think of a number of other Middle Eastern countries. I would simply remark that, at President Ghani’s inauguration, as noble Lords might know, his wife appeared for the first time as part of the inauguration. These are small but useful steps forward.
Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, further to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, what action will my noble friend and the Government take to encourage joint action by the Governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan against the terrorists, who are a threat to both their countries?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are in regular and constant touch with the Pakistani Government precisely to encourage a constructive relationship with developments in Afghanistan. I am sure that my noble friend, like me, will be well aware of the very complicated relationships between India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, which is part of the problem that we face.
Lord Dannatt (CB)
My Lords, following the end of military operations in Afghanistan, can the Minister give an assurance that we will factor in very carefully that, over the last 20 years or so, the West has let Afghanistan down in a considerably damaging way? Can he confirm that the reassurances that have been given about the amount of inward investment will be taken seriously and that we will not in any way at all run the risk of abandoning Afghanistan for a third time, after all the effort and investment in blood and treasure that has been made over the last 13 years?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I think one has to say that the entire international community has an interest in the future development of Afghanistan. I have not mentioned the complicated Iranian set of interests in western Afghanistan and elsewhere; I have not mentioned the possibility of Chinese private sector investment in north-eastern Afghanistan. Afghanistan, as noble Lords know, has a great many attractive mineral resources. We and others, including the World Bank and a number of other international institutions, will be working to ensure that the Afghan economy develops steadily over the next few years.
House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Government do, of course, remain committed to a broader scheme of Lords reform, as I trust do the Labour Opposition in their turn. There is a consensus on that, at least officially. The Government have no settled view on the Bill at present. All I can promise, and I do promise, is that I will take back the speeches that have been given around the House and the strong arguments that these are essentially housekeeping measures—although I am not sure that expulsion is entirely a matter of housekeeping. Powerful speeches have been made, and then we will have to see what can be done with the House of Commons between now and the election. Time is very short—
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
The noble Lord says that the Government have no settled view. That is disappointing but it could be taken as a positive response if it actually meant that the Government generally would be prepared to discuss, maybe through the usual channels, with the noble Baroness whether they are prepared to support the Bill. Can he say that the door is at least open to that?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am trying to be as positive as I can be but the noble Lord knows as well as I do, having been in government, that getting consensus inside the Government, even in a single party, is not always entirely simple and straightforward. You have to get Ministers to concentrate on the matter in hand. When it is a matter of Lords housekeeping it is not entirely easy. I will do my best. I will take this back very firmly and we will have to look at the House of Commons dimension, and we might be able to make at least very considerable progress on the Bill. I take everything that has been said, although I repeat that the Government remain committed to a broader scheme of reform.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton
I am listening with great care to what the noble Lord is saying and we all know the pressure that we are under towards the end of this Parliament. Will he bear in mind the fact that in the wash-up at the end of the Parliament it is very often easy to get agreement on measures that are as clear-cut as this one?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I also take that point and will take it back. We had rather hoped that with a fixed-term Parliament there would be much less wash-up than before, but I suspect that when it comes we will discover that a number of things have been slid in at the last minute that we nevertheless have not quite managed to agree in either House.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I entirely understood. Unfortunately, some rather larger dishes may yet be introduced, which the Government may wish to try to push through.
We all hope that these powers would not be needed. We all recognise that we will need to look before the Bill is completed at the sort of things that will need to be in Standing Orders, because this Bill is quite a substantial extension to the power of the House, in spite of the wonderful phrase that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, used—that it is intended to be merely an “amelioration”. However, I am very happy to talk further with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and certainly take this back to the Cabinet Office to see what is possible.
Before we depart, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that I look forward to her next proposals on accretion or amelioration. I am happy that I hear around the Corridors a number of noble Lords on all Benches discussing the possibility of retirement at the end of this Parliament. That is another useful way forward. We should encourage it. However, perhaps the noble Baroness will, at the beginning of the next Parliament, produce a Bill that will suggest a retirement age by consensus. I look forward to giving her my support, from wherever I am at that point, on that next stage in amelioration.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
My Lords, the noble Lord’s tone is encouraging but slightly light-hearted. I regard this as a very important Bill. It may be short but if it is carried by acclamation in this House, as it should be, it will be very odd if the Government do not find government time for it in the other place.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we appreciate that this is a serious matter. We all understand the question of the House’s reputation and of the public reputation of Westminster as a whole. I have previously said in responding to questions that that is one of the strongest lessons of the Scottish referendum and of the disillusionment of opinion across England with Westminster as such. We all understand that. I will take that away. I happen to be a strong believer in a reduction in numbers by accepting that we should all retire at a certain age. That is part of where we are now moving and it is part of our general responsibilities. I strongly believe that to be a Member of this House is a privilege, not a right.
I hope I have said enough to reassure the House. Conversations will continue off the Floor, as they so often do. We will see what we can do.
Baroness Hayman
My Lords, I am enormously grateful for the support that I have received from all Benches of your Lordships’ House and for the seriousness with which Members have addressed the Bill. I was slightly worried on several grounds when the Minister wound up: at one stage I thought that he was inviting me to retire by the end of the Parliament. I do not think I am minded to do that with so much unfinished business before us, not least in this area.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I must congratulate the noble Baroness. She talked about completing a stage of House of Lords reform. What a wonderful phrase—the thought that we might ever complete a substantial phase of House of Lords reform. I suspect I will retire before we have done that.
Baroness Hayman
It is the never-ending story of British politics. However, I turn briefly to two points made by noble Lords. One was made by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. I quite understand his desire that we should not create rules so inflexible that injustices take place. That is less of a difficulty with a Bill that enables the House to make Standing Orders, which can themselves give the degree of flexibility referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. We then have the next lock of the House itself needing to make a resolution in individual cases. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, will not feel that it is necessary to try to amend the Bill, but that he will be engaged in the process that several noble Lords have mentioned of drawing up the Standing Orders, the procedures and the processes that would be necessary after enactment, which we all recognise should be taken very seriously.
Several noble Lords referred to the need for other measures of reform. It is well known that I share a desire to reform this House substantially. That does not mean I support an elected House—I do not—but I believe that there is a lot that we can do. I considered bringing the remains of the Steel Bill: an individual Bill on a statutory appointments commission, a cap on the size of the House, and even—dare I say it with the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, present—an end to hereditary Peer by-elections. I did not do any of those things because I believed that I should, in these circumstances, bring forward something that was deliverable and that could, in the terms of a Private Member’s Bill, become law and make a contribution.
The Minister said that it might be difficult to get people to focus on Lords housekeeping. I, too, take issue with that designation of the Bill. He might find it easier if he put it to colleagues that it was a Bill dealing with the reputation of Parliament, because that is what I believe it is and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, and others made that perfectly clear.
I am slightly surprised that the Government have “no settled view”, to use the Minister’s phrase. They had a settled view when they drew up these proposals and put them in the Bill in 2012. Of course, I am willing to consider and discuss what might be in the Standing Orders but I assume that that work has already been done in government: if it is necessary then it would have been done as the back-up to these proposals when they were put forward in the 2012 Bill.
The advice that the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, gave us was absolutely central. Although the Minister seemed to be willing the ends in a very generalised way, willing the means was not so specific. I shall certainly take up his offer of conversations—he did not say that the door was closed. I hope—and today’s debate has given me encouragement for this because I do not think that anyone expressed any doubt about the importance and necessity of the Bill—that we can deliver it up in good time for it to become law if the Government give it time in another place. That is the simple demand that, with the authority of those who have spoken today, I shall be taking into those discussions. I hope that, in a short period of time, the Government will reach the conclusion that it is in all our interests so to do.