Covid-19 Vaccines: Safety

Debate between Christopher Chope and John Hayes

Monday 24th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I am, as was mentioned, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on covid-19 vaccine damage. The group is now up and running. We had an enormously well-supported meeting in Portcullis House last Thursday. I agree with the legitimate concerns of the 100,000-plus people who signed the petition, and share their belief that the recent data relating to cardiovascular problems, which is increasing in volume, is of enough concern to warrant an inquiry on safety. As I have said, the big Hallett inquiry on covid-19 will cover a lot of this ground, but it will not report for many years. In the meantime, people are being encouraged to have more and more boosters, and they understandably want to know the impact of those boosters on their health and the risks and rewards.

As well as being chairman of the APPG, I have taken an interest in the subject for about a year, and produced a private Member’s Bill on the subject, and I hope to produce another, which will have its Second Reading next month. Coroners up and down the country have found in their reports that deaths have been caused directly by covid 19 vaccines. I have spoken to some of the bereaved; indeed, I spoke to the gentleman referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden)—the gentleman who attended our meeting on Thursday, and whose wife was a journalist in Newcastle. I have seen with my own eyes the suffering of people who are bereaved or still suffering adverse reactions.

I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn), in introducing the debate, did not have much to say about the people who we know have suffered death or serious injury as a result of the vaccines. My hon. Friend showed himself to be rather the victim of producer capture—the producer in this case being the MHRA. He does not seem to have allowed his researches to go further than the MHRA. Has he, for example, looked at what has been happening in Germany? The Paul Ehrlich Institute is the German regulator responsible for vaccine safety. On 20 July, the institute confirmed that one in 5,000 people was seriously affected after a vaccination. That also reflected a finding that it published earlier in the year, in which the institute tried to raise the alert that one in 5,000 vaccinated people experienced a serious side effect, such as heart muscle inflammation. It said that, statistically, every 10th person must expect a severe consequence from having a course of three or four vaccines. The institute uses the World Health Organisation definition of a “serious adverse event”, meaning one that results in hospitalisation or is life-threatening or life-changing. After a course of four doses, the risk of a report to its system of a serious adverse effect is one in 1,250. That is serious information coming from the regulator of a country that is highly respected for the quality of its healthcare.

Is it not interesting that the number of adverse reports referred to the institute is far fewer than the number of adverse reports that led to the 1976 swine flu vaccine being withdrawn? Some hon. Members may recall that, in 1976, the President of the United States, Gerald Ford, was panicked by swine flu into organising a vaccination campaign. When reports emerged of suspected adverse reactions, including heart attacks and Guillain-Barré syndrome, and there were 53 reported deaths, people began to worry about the safety of the vaccine. The Government halted that mass vaccination programme in December of that year. In that case, the Government acted on far fewer adverse events than we have talked about in this debate and decided that, given the balance of risk and reward, it was too risky to continue with the vaccination programme. Let us look at the facts and not just be beholden to the MHRA. If this were a debate about the MHRA, I would have masses of material on it.

The Government seem to be in denial about the risks of these vaccines. Only this morning, the deputy chief medical officer for England was on the radio saying that the boosters were perfectly safe and effective, but they are not perfectly safe, and there is a question about whether they are effective, but that is for another debate. The fact that they are not perfectly safe has now been admitted by the Government. Indeed, the UK Health Security Agency has issued “A guide to the COVID-19 autumn booster”—you may have seen a copy of it, Sir Roger. It requests that people get another booster from their GP. Unfortunately, the cover letter from the NHS makes no reference to any risks associated with the vaccine, but if one looks at the document included in the envelope, it talks about serious side effects. It says,

“Cases of inflammation of the heart (called myocarditis or pericarditis) have been reported very rarely after both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. These cases have been seen mostly in younger men and within several days of vaccination. Most of the people affected have felt better and recovered quickly following rest and simple treatments.”

It then states:

“You should seek medical advice”.

What it does not state is what happens to those people who do not recover. That is what I will concentrate on in the remainder of my remarks. Those people, if they are disabled to the extent of 60% or more, may be eligible for payments under the vaccine damage payment scheme. They might get £120,000. That scheme, however, is not fit for purpose, because its description of disability does not necessarily apply to autoimmune conditions such as those suffered as a consequence of covid-19 vaccine damage. And what about all of those people who are only 59% disabled? There is no financial help for them and, even more worryingly for many, no specific medical help.

The Government refuse to provide specialist help for these vaccine victims. Although they have set up long covid clinics, vaccine victims are being ignored. I have asked parliamentary questions about this, but I have not been able to get a satisfactory answer as to why there are no clinics for those victims of vaccine damage. As a result of the Government’s behaviour, victims are increasingly telling their loved ones, neighbours and friends about their circumstances, which is leading to a much lower rate applications for booster vaccines. That is happening because the Government cannot suppress the information that ordinary people are sharing with one another, even though there is very little on this topic in the mainstream media.

Many people now would not touch a booster with a bargepole, and I include myself among them. I am not anti-vax—I had my first two vaccines—but from all that I have seen and know about this, the increase in boosters is counterproductive for many and dangerous for some. We need to take into account what is happening on the ground. People are becoming increasingly vaccine-hesitant. Large numbers of doctors and health professionals are now calling for a complete halt to the vaccination programme because the risks outweigh the benefits.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

The thing to understand is that there is a fundamental difference between these kinds of vaccines and vaccination per se. Vaccination per se has saved millions of lives here and elsewhere, but these vaccines are qualitatively different. Science matters, but much matters more.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In the United States, they changed the definition of a vaccine. We have always understood a vaccine to mean someone receiving into their system something containing a small element of that which they were being vaccinated against, so that their system could react against it and protect them if they were later exposed to a large amount. But unlike those old vaccines, these vaccines do not use the raw material, so in many senses it is a misnomer to describe them as vaccines at all. That information is not really out there among the public any more than the fact that the booster vaccines have not been tested on humans at all during studies; they were tested only on mice. People are being used as victims for experimentation, and that is why they are getting worried.

Finally, Oracle Films’ film, “Safe and Effective: A Second Opinion”, is available on YouTube—I make no apology for the fact that I participate in that film—and sets out a different view on the safety of these vaccines. I am not saying we should ban all covid-19 vaccines and have a complete halt. What I am saying is that there is an urgent need for the Government to get to grips with this issue before more people are duped into having vaccines that they probably do not need, that will not do them any good and that will present risks to their health.

Diesel Vehicle Scrappage Scheme

Debate between Christopher Chope and John Hayes

Wednesday 19th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hayes]

I will not, for the sake of time, but I put on the record that my hon. Friend has been a great champion of his constituents’ interests in this and so many other ways.

We are going further and have introduced a Bill, the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill, which has been referred to in our debate and has gone through Committee. It is designed to promote a charging infrastructure for electric vehicles and we also dealt with autonomous vehicles in our consideration of it. The Bill was debated in Committee without amaritude or contumely. There seemed to be a cross-party view that we need to move ahead both with care and with a degree of unprecedented vigour to promote the take-up of electric and other low-emission vehicles. We will therefore put in place appropriate infrastructure, which was a point made in the course of this debate. I said today, in a breakfast meeting with the sector from which I rushed to come to Westminster Hall, that I will be rolling out the competition for the design of electric charging points which I mentioned in that Committee.

In the brief time I have available, I need to draw the whole of the Chamber’s attention to the breakdown of where the emissions emanate from. The question was asked several times: why and where? It is all here, on this list, which is exhaustive. I have not time to deal with it now, but I will make it available to every Member who has contributed to and attended the debate. It breaks down the very points that were made. For example, are emissions coming from shipping? By the way, shipping is important, and I want to do more in that respect, as argued for by the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), the chair of the maritime all-party group, as well as in respect of railways and so on and so forth.

Let me move to my exciting conclusion in the couple of minutes that I have available—

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. Does the Minister intend to allow the mover of the motion to respond?

[Mr Hayes]

I will give my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton a brief time, if he is happy with that.

One of the other big problems has been Europe, and the failure of the Euro testing regime has come together with increased use of diesel vehicles following tax incentives introduced by the Labour Government. The failure of that EU regime to put in place real tests that made a difference has been a contributory factor that, as in so many other ways, was injurious to the interests of the British people. This Government are determined to put the wellbeing, welfare and health of our people at the heart of all we do. We will bring forward the plan and the policy, and they will be balanced and certainly not penalise those who are worse off. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the chance to say so.

HS2 Funding Referendum Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and John Hayes

Friday 23rd January 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

This has been an interesting debate to which a number of Members have contributed. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on enabling us to explore these important matters. They involve HS2, of course: that is the matter of substance, because the essence of the proposal in the Bill is that it is of such significance that it should be supported only on the basis of the consent of the people, sought and gained by means of a referendum.

I do not want to delay the House unduly, but my hon. Friend would expect me to deal with the question of why a referendum is an inappropriate vehicle for such a decision. The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) focused on that—and, while I speak of focus, let me reassure her that no one’s focus is more laser-like than mine. She explained why she thought that a referendum was an inappropriate way of proceeding in respect of HS2. I intend to speak about that in some detail and at some length, and also with considerable respect for the argument advanced by my hon. Friend, the essence of which is that very big projects that have an environmental effect of this kind and an economic value of this type, and which involve costs of this scale, are of a character that necessitates a referendum.

Since I became a Transport Minister, straddling No. 10 and the Department, I have been associated with—indeed, I would like to say that I contributed to—our road investment strategy. The ideas for that began before my arrival, but I have been pleased to be very much a part of its formulation, and look forward to being part of its delivery. The road investment strategy, the biggest of its kind since the 1970s, looks forward to many decades: the effect of its provisions will last throughout my lifetime, and well beyond. It commits some £15 billion—indeed, a little more than that—to a plan that will affect places throughout Britain, consisting of 100 schemes.

Did we take the view that a referendum was necessary for that plan to proceed? Did my hon. Friend suggest that a referendum should be held in respect of a very large infrastructural scheme, which involved transport and would affect tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of our countrymen in connection with the works that would be carried out and the value that would result in the form of easier and better communications and safer and better roads? I have to say that the answer to that is no, at least as far as I am aware. The same might be said of a number of other infrastructural projects to which the hon. Member for Nottingham South drew our attention, Crossrail being a good example. I am not sure that a case can be made for a referendum in one policy area—indeed, one transport policy area—but not in others, when the drama, significance and scale involved are as great as what we saw in that road investment programme.

[Mr Chope]

My right hon. Friend surely needs to look at his own situation, because the Government say in respect of local authorities that may, for example, want to spend money on subsidising buses that if the consequence is that they are going to increase their council tax by more than 2%, they must have a local referendum. If it is good for local authorities, where the sums involved might be as little as £28 per household on average—if we take the average council tax—why is he saying that it is essential to have a referendum in that situation, but not in the situation we are addressing today?

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend draws attention to the idea of holding a local referendum or plebiscite in a very particular area and on a very particular proposal. He does not propose in his Bill a referendum for those directly affected by HS2. He is not suggesting that we hold a referendum of the people of Birmingham, Warwickshire or Chesham and Amersham—or even Christchurch, although I am not sure they will be as directly affected as those in some of those other places. He is suggesting a national referendum, where people from Northern Ireland, for example, would have a vote on these matters, and he is doing so not because they are affected directly, but because of the cost.

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[Mr Hayes]

What I am saying is that a referendum on this kind of matter is wholly inappropriate. The only referendum my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch cited in his speech introducing the Bill—and I understand why he has introduced it; it makes a perfectly understandable contention—was the referendum on what is now the EU. I have the Referendum Act 1975 with me and I also have a copy of the Second Reading debate when it was a Bill being discussed in this House. The arguments made then were that this was a matter of immense constitutional significance that affected the future of our nation as a whole in respect of its governance. That is a very different set of arguments from those, however well made, about the cost of a particular area of policy and the effect of that on a number of our constituents—and I include in that the effect, in the broadest terms, it has on the taxpayers contributing to it. That it is a very different kind of argument as my hon. Friend knows very well.

That kind of referendum has only been used in the way I describe. Indeed, my hon. Friend also mentioned the referendum by 2017 that has been pledged by the Prime Minister on our association with the EU, and which is of a similar kind to the 1975 referendum. There are many of us, including my hon. Friend, I imagine, who would argue that that new referendum is absolutely necessary because getting the fresh consent of the British people on the terms of our relationship with the EU is a matter of some urgency. I do not think, however, that one can argue that it is equivalent to the proposal he makes today.

[Mr Chope]

Are not the EU referendum and the referendum proposed in this Bill a lot closer than my right hon. Friend says? All the leading political parties’ Front Benches support our continued membership of the EU and it is time that the people had a chance to challenge that consensus in a referendum. Similarly with this Bill, the Front Benches all support HS2 funding to the extent of £50 billion-plus, but the people outside do not. Is this not a chance for them to express their own view on this matter?

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend is a distinguished and experienced parliamentarian, but he is much more than that: he is both a wise man and a clever man—he will understand the difference between wisdom and cleverness —and he knows the argument he has just made is an argument not about equivalence, but about political coincidence. It is certainly true that the Front Benches at that time took a similar view, and the Front Benches do so now, too, as he heard when the shadow Minister spoke. That is a matter of political coincidence, however; it is not a matter of governance. I am arguing that the difference between this Bill and the 1975 Act that gave rise to the referendum in that year is that the advocates of that referendum made it absolutely clear that the referendum was necessary because it was on a constitutional matter of profound significance. I am not sure we can say that about a particular area of policy, however important it is. It would be unprecedented, as my hon. Friend knows, and in my judgment it would, for that reason, be ill-judged. Once we open up that hornet’s nest, I see the ugly prospect of plebiscites on every kind and type of subject. There are those who might welcome that, but I, as a confident exponent of the role of this House, would not do so. I think it is important that representative democracy is served by those who believe in—who have confidence in—the power of this House to take big decisions: to be bold, and to be sufficiently original to excite and inspire the people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Christopher Chope and John Hayes

Monday 16th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

The national careers service is the first all-age service, and the previous Government could have introduced such a service; there were calls for them to do so on many occasions. We estimate that its website will get 20 million hits a year, and that its telephone helpline will get 1 million calls a year. I expect 700,000-plus people to benefit from the face-to-face guidance that the hon. Gentleman describes. New professional standards will also be set out for the careers industry for the first time. That is progress by any measure, and he should acknowledge that.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

3. What steps he is taking to reduce regulatory burdens on schools.

Intellectual Property (Hargreaves Report)

Debate between Christopher Chope and John Hayes

Thursday 7th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hayes]

That is another interesting point. Again, that will form part of what we say when we respond to the report. The review did not deal with the subject in the detail that the hon. Gentleman refers to. The review recommendations do not come to a definitive conclusion on that subject, as he will know from having read them, but the proposal seems to be a useful addition to those recommendations and is certainly something that we will cover in our response. I am more than happy to give him that assurance.

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the Minister that it is customary in these general debates to leave five minutes at the end for the hon. Member who initiated the debate to respond and that we have to finish by 5.30 pm.

Regulatory Authorities (Level of Charges) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and John Hayes

Friday 13th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is a short Bill but an important one because it raises an issue that affects everyone in the country: the level of regulatory charges imposed on them. I think it was the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General who coined the phrase “stealth taxes”. He did so more than 10 years ago, but it is still a highly relevant term, because when public sector organisations increase their fees and charges, they are essentially imposing additional taxes on the populace.

While I was looking into possible subjects on which to introduce Bills during this Session, I had some very unsatisfactory correspondence with the Care Quality Commission about the price it was charging for the registration of a children’s hospice in Dorset called Julia’s House. At that stage, Julia’s House had three residents rooms but it wanted to add a further room, and the CQC said it would have to pay a substantial additional fee of thousands of pounds. The hospice chairman wrote to me saying he thought that was unsatisfactory as the hospice is, after all, a charity and all its costs are covered by charitable donations, which in this instance were, effectively, going into the proxy coffers of the Government by way of a regulatory burden.

Following that, the CQC conducted a consultation on its level of charges in general. I will refer later to some of the conclusions to be drawn from that, but it is clear that the CQC is intent on increasing the burden of charges well above the rate of inflation from year to year, partly to meet the Treasury requirement that it should cover its costs by raising charges. We know, however, that it is possible for organisations to reduce their costs, although that option is very often not taken by regulatory authorities. Fortunately, the BBC is now being forced to reduce its costs because the Government have said the licence fee cannot be increased.

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend might dwell a little further on this point and give us a little more detail because, contrary to what he has said, there are cases in which the introduction of a moderate and measured regulation may allow for other regulations to be lifted. That balance lies at the heart of the Bill and our consideration of it.

[Mr Chope]

I note what my hon. Friend says, and he will, no doubt, be able to give us some examples of where he thinks the overall burden of regulation has been reduced as a result of introducing new regulations. I look forward to hearing some of those examples.

[Mr Hayes]

rose—

[Mr Chope]

Perhaps my hon. Friend will give an example now.

[Mr Hayes]

Yes I will, as I want to inform my hon. Friend’s contribution as well as I possibly can. There is a strong argument that the introduction of professional standards, and therefore some measure of quality, into certain parts of the economy may allow for the reduction of other regulations that are currently in place precisely because those professional standards are absent.

[Mr Chope]

That is a rather general example, if I may say so. Perhaps when my hon. Friend comes to respond to the debate he will address a specific profession, such as dentistry. Dentists are already regulated by their professional body. They are also regulated under health and safety legislation and so forth, but the CQC is now insisting that it too should regulate them. It is going to cost dentists a minimum of £800 a year, I think, to register with the CQC. I hope that the Minister will in due course explain what added value will come from that, as there is an enormous amount of scepticism about whether it will lead to any improvement in the quality of dentistry in this country. When one looks at the CQC report, one finds that the income from the regulatory fees for dentists will far exceed the amount that will be spent on regulating dentists. That is a good example of what I am describing as a “stealth tax” or an “additional regulatory burden”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I think that that would be a danger were the increase in fees to go ahead. A similar danger arises in the case of 17-year-olds seeking their first provisional driving licence. Is it reasonable that they should have to pay a very large fee for that? That fee might be a deterrent to their getting a licence and they might choose—unlawfully, obviously—to drive without a licence. That was a challenge I faced when I was the Minister for Roads and Traffic because in order to keep down the cost of entry into driving for someone obtaining a provisional licence and in order to make ends meet, it was necessary to introduce a modest charge for people who wanted to renew their licence at the age of 70.

There was a big debate in the Government at the time, egged on by a false leader in The Sunday Telegraph, and the proposal to charge a modest fee for 70-year-olds when they renewed their licences was regarded as a tax on pensioners. Nobody really understood the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) is making, which is that to increase the costs for the person seeking to get his first provisional licence would be a potential deterrent for that person. I have raised a similar issue in the context of the very high rates of insurance costs and the Government’s policy of having increases in insurance premium tax that bear directly and disproportionately on the costs for young drivers who want insurance. My hon. Friend therefore makes some very good points.

A constant problem is: if we have regulators, who will regulate them? That is essentially what the Bill is about. It challenges the Government in a time when money is tight and when we are told that family incomes will fall over the next two or three years. The Government are imposing quite tight targets on many Government Departments, but would it be fair if those Departments responded by increasing the fees and charges they impose on the tax-paying public by more than the rate of inflation? I do not think it would.

[Mr Hayes]

I am interested in that assertion. Of course my hon. Friend will know that the Government are sympathetic to the thrust of what he is saying. We understand that regulation is a significant issue for businesses of all types, but I wonder whether the debate about regulation is too often seen in quantitative rather than qualitative terms. My hon. Friend has made a case about the volume of legislation in respect of regulation and I wonder whether he could expand on the quality issue. When regulation is justified, how should it be devised and implemented?

[Mr Chope]

My Bill deals with the cost of regulation rather than the wider issues of regulation that have been raised in, for example, Lord Young’s report. I have a number of other Bills before the House that cover various aspects of Lord Young’s recommendations.

My concern is that it is too easy for the regulatory authorities to say that they have to increase their charges because they have to carry out more activities. That is what they do. My hon. Friend will know this better than anybody, because he probably has the coalition’s programme for government on his bedside table, but that document talks about reducing the burden of regulation:

“We will cut red tape by introducing a ‘one-in, one-out’ rule whereby no new regulation is brought in without other regulation being cut by a greater amount”

and:

“We will end the culture of ‘tick-box’ regulation, and instead target inspections on high-risk organisations through co-regulation and improving professional standards.”

I am unsure how what the Care Quality Commission has done to dentists fits in with the second paragraph on business in “The Coalition: our programme for government”. Perhaps all will be revealed when my hon. Friend the Minister responds to the debate.

[Mr Hayes]

For the record, because it is important to be accurate about these things, I do not have that document on my bedside table. I have the collected works of Ezra Pound and a selected number of my own speeches.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am grateful. No debate would be complete without the legendary literary references of the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), but I know that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) will not be tempted away from the path of virtue, whatever the enticements of the Minister.

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[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

It is a pleasure to speak about the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who spoke with his usual clarity and consistency about the burden on business. He takes the view, which the Government broadly share, that it is crucial that business is free from all regulation but that which is necessary for it to go about its purpose. In a free economy, businesses must be allowed to do what is in their commercial interest and the wider public interest without unnecessary interference from Government. That is a fundamental aspect of what my hon. Friend advocated. It is at the heart of the Bill, and he will be pleased and perhaps even relieved to know that it is also at the heart of the Government’s thinking.

The Bill highlights some important ways in which regulation is enforced in this country. I made the point when I intervened on my hon. Friend that our attitude and approach to regulation need to be qualified by considerations of both quantity and quality. It is true that the Bill deals with cost, but cost has a direct relationship with both of those. It is certainly true that we should measure the volume of regulation quantitatively, and I shall speak at length—but not at undue length—about some of the ways in which that is already done by Government and others. However, it is also true that we should assess regulation qualitatively, because the quality of regulation has a direct bearing on its cost to Government and to the organisations that it affects. The Bill is both a quantitative and a qualitative assessment of regulation measured by cost.

For reasons that will become clearer later in my speech, I cannot support the specific approach that the Bill takes to regulatory change, notwithstanding the warm welcome that I have given to my hon. Friend’s commitment and the opportunity that the Bill gives to consider these matters in greater detail. I shall speak about the matters that it raises in considerable detail as we engage in this interesting debate.

The Bill provides an important reminder of the many ways in which regulation can impact on business and the best means of ensuring that adverse consequences are minimised. It would be helpful to consider some of the principal aims of the Bill. In a rather abbreviated contribution by his usual standards, my hon. Friend took us through the Bill, but I shall do so in more detail. First, the Bill seeks to limit the ability of regulators to recover the costs of the regulatory services they provide. Specifically, the Bill seeks to limit increases in charges to no more than the rate of inflation as measured against the consumer prices index.

My hon. Friend may feel that this is a rather technical point, but these are, after all, technical matters: many examples given in his speech would probably not be covered by the Bill as drafted. He said with typical humility when he was coming to the end of his peroration that he understood that, if the Government supported the broad thrust of the measure, it might be necessary to perfect its drafting, so I acknowledge that he anticipated that some of these technical problems might arise, as they often do when Bills are introduced through the method of a private Member elevating a matter for the consideration of the House and asking for the Government to respond.

I make that technical point because in existing regulatory law the definition is largely restricted to business regulation. Therefore, some of the matters with which my hon. Friend dealt—passports, for example, drivers licences and vehicle licensing—would not necessarily be covered, because those are matters affecting the private citizen. They are subject to the usual rules on public expenditure, managing public money and the normal oversight of spending. That is probably the most appropriate set of frameworks by which they should be assessed. On a purely technical note, therefore, it would be inappropriate to relate the detail of the Bill to the advocacy of my hon. Friend in the areas that I highlighted.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend suggests that the Bill applies only to regulatory authorities that regulate the carrying on of any business. As he knows, it also covers regulatory authorities regulating the carrying on of any activity. Why does he think the Identity and Passport Service, which is responsible for the carrying on of activities, is not covered by the Bill?

[Mr Hayes]

Activities of the kind that I mentioned and about which my hon. Friend spoke in his contribution are covered by other legislation and a different set of regulatory protocols, which the Bill would contradict. It would require considerable work to achieve a happy marriage between the two. It is impossible to pass the Bill in its current form without its having an impact on other legislation which itself sets up a series of regulatory mechanisms to deal with some of the matters that he described. I do not want him to assume that this is a criticism of the essence of his argument or of the principles upon which it is based; it is purely an observation that technically it would not necessarily be possible for the Government to adopt the Bill in its current form.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend seems to be saying that regulatory legislation is so complex that it is impossible to simplify it in the way that the Bill would simplify it. If the regulatory legislative framework is so complex, why do not the Government get to grips with making it simpler?

[Mr Hayes]

Later in my contribution I shall describe some of the ways in which the Government have done just that. They have taken a firm grip on these matters. Even in these early days of the long regime to which we can look forward and in which I hope to play a small part, we are making significant progress in the way that my hon. Friend wishes us to do.

It is not a question of the Government not intending to grasp the nettle—to take a grip on the subject, to use his terms—but of doing so in a way that is consistent, coherent and deliverable.

Lest I dwell too much on the first part of the Bill, let me deal with the second part. The Bill would stop a regulator, subject to specific conditions, introducing a charge for a previously free service. A regulator would be able to introduce new charges where previously there had been none on the condition that a report setting out the benefits of the new arrangements was laid before and agreed by the House. Were I a rather more sarcastic person than I am, and if I wished to tease my hon. Friend, which I would not do, as you know, Mr Speaker, I might say to him that he is himself in the Bill establishing a rather elaborate system, to put it mildly, for dealing with the test that he describes: a report to the House, which presumably will be debated, with no real clarity about the length or nature of that debate, and perhaps even referred to a Committee of the House. Who knows how long that process might take? It is absolutely right that these matters should be scrutinised, but the implication of my hon. Friend’s proposals is that we might lengthen, both in terms of time and substance, the mechanisms by which we assess, implement, gauge, and judge necessary regulation.

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[Mr Hayes]

Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am guided, as ever, by your advice in these matters.

The Bill suggests that the fees charged for services that are determined by law and part of the regulatory agenda should be gauged in a way that allows this House to make a judgment about their impact. The Bill, in those terms, needs to be assessed against its likely impact and effectiveness, but we are right to argue that it also should be gauged against the existing provisions, both in law and beyond, that affect costs and fees in respect of regulation, and the Government’s absolute determination to reduce that burden.

So, my hon. Friend will want to know that the moratorium on new domestic regulations for smaller companies, which the Government have put in place, certainly affect the provisions of this Bill. The determination of the Government to publish all regulations sector by sector will to some extent do what the Bill intends, because it will give us a clearer indication of the character and nature of costs, and how they rise.

[Mr Chope]

Surely the effect of the Bill will be to ensure that regulators are not able to increase their fees and charges beyond the rate of inflation, and they will therefore have to reduce their costs and probably their regulatory activity, which in itself will be beneficial to business, will it not?

[Mr Hayes]

We are back—are we not?—to the point that was made earlier in this brief debate, about quantity and quality, because it is true that the Bill will necessitate the reconsideration of quality and effectiveness because of the link to charge. In other words, regulation will have to be legitimised around price, but it would be dangerous to assume that the effect of introducing that new provision—unless seen in the context of what is already there; the point made is existing charges and costs—might be as profound as my hon. Friend describes.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend will realise that HM Treasury’s guidance on fees and charges requires all regulators to cover their costs where they have fee-setting functions. Therefore, the Bill, by forcing regulators to reduce their costs, which they can pass on in the form of fees, will reduce their activities and, thereby, the burden of regulation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

That—ipso facto—is certainly the case, but the qualitative judgment about regulation that I have advocated would need to be applied, too. My hon. Friend says that the Bill needs to be set in the context of what the Government have already agreed. The Government have agreed, as he knows, that they will regulate only

“having demonstrated that satisfactory outcomes by alternative self-regulatory or non-regulatory approaches; and where analysis of the costs and benefits demonstrates that the regulatory approach is superior by a clear margin to alternative self-regulatory or non-regulatory approaches; and where the regulation and the enforcement framework can be implemented in a fashion which is demonstrably proportionate; accountable; consistent; transparent and targeted.”

If one applied those principles to my hon. Friend’s argument, one would find, I assert, that his Bill is not necessary. Furthermore, I assert that his Bill, rather than applying those broad principles—I say “broad”, but they are clear in intent—would put in place a series of mechanisms that, as I argued earlier, might lengthen and make more complex the process.

The Bill sets up a mechanism by which Parliament must scrutinise those matters, and my strong assertion and, indeed, recommendation to my hon. Friend is that the adoption of the regime I have just described, already articulated by the Government, is a more effective means of achieving his ambition than the Bill, which might have perverse consequences, albeit unintended, in making the system rather more costly and difficult than it need be.

[Mr Chope]

May I invite my hon. Friend to move away from the rhetoric to the reality, in the context in particular of the Care Quality Commission’s decision to start regulating dentists, who are already adequately regulated, and then to impose on them charges of £800 a year each to fund the regulation? The provisions of the Bill will catch that activity.

[Mr Hayes]

I am going to come on to dentists and the rationale for dentistry regulation, because there has been some debate about it already this morning in consideration of this Bill, but before I do so perhaps I may be very specific, as you have invited me to be, Madam Deputy Speaker, about fees, charges and levies, which lie at the heart of the Bill.

The fundamental policy of government is to charge for public-provided goods and services, where that approach helps to allocate the use of goods and services in a rational way, because it prevents waste through excessive or badly targeted consumption. The Government argue that that makes for easier comparisons with the private sector, promotes competition and helps to develop markets. When a fee is charged for access to public goods or services, there are specific rules on how the charge should be determined, and it is important to protect Parliament’s rights to decide which services should be charged for and how public resources are allocated.

That is much like what my hon. Friend wants to achieve, but my argument is that there are mechanisms already in place to do what we wants. I accept that it is necessary for those mechanisms—how can I put it?—to be enlivened and accelerated by a commitment by Government to be absolutely scrupulous about where regulation applies, what is charged for and how those charges, those fees, should be gauged. I am giving my hon. Friend an assurance—not gold-plated but copper-bottomed, one might say—that the Government will indeed be determined, as he asks us to be, that the extent and character of that regulation, and the fees and charges associated with it, should be legitimised, should be moderate and should not increase in an unjustifiable way.

A word about the specifics. My hon. Friend asks me to be less rhetorical. Most people enjoy—I will not put it more extravagantly than that—the rhetoric with which I embellish what I do, but I am prepared to take the slings and arrows as well as the praise, so I will for a moment or so move from rhetoric to detail.

The rationale for dentistry regulations, which my hon. Friend draws attention to as an illustration of the purpose of this Bill, is clear. The Care Quality Commission is the responsible regulator, and the registration of dentists is a new requirement, as he says, reflecting the commission’s new regulatory responsibilities. The purpose of registration is to bring a single, consistent approach to monitoring dental practice, including private dental care practice, for the first time. This is regarded as an essential basis for encouraging swift action to protect the public, and it will give the public an accessible single source of information on quality. Fees are variable, according to practice, size and type.

That is a perfect example, if I may say so, of two points that I have made: first, the regulation that is put in place should be coherent, clear and as simple as possible; and secondly, the fees and charging regime associated with that regulation should be established against a set of criteria that can be justified and supported by the profession concerned.

I do not want to delay the House unduly, so I shall move swiftly on to the matter of the principles that underpin charging regimes. As we know, Madam Deputy Speaker—your advice has guided me accordingly—this Bill is principally about charges and pricing. The principles that apply to pricing and charging by regulators are those that apply to publicly provided goods and services in general, and they have at their core the central doctrine of setting charges to allow full cost recovery. We need to remember that in many cases regulators give consumers and others confidence that regulated sectors are meeting their legal responsibility. Regulators can also create the conditions that provide businesses with a level competitive playing field by taking effective action against criminals operating in their respective markets. We need to remember that in many cases it is appropriate for those whose activities need to be regulated to bear the cost of regulation, not the taxpayer.

[Mr Chope]

Perhaps my hon. Friend would apply the principle that he has enunciated to the regulator on access to higher education. Most people would think that that is a totally unnecessary additional burden. Is he saying that the cost will have to be borne by the universities?

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend is displaying the mischievous quality for which he is known and which the House enjoys, but I will not be tempted, Madam Deputy Speaker, for fear of your benevolent but strict rule, to get into a debate about higher education access or anything related to it, except where it is absolutely pertinent to the Bill before us. I rather suspect that you might come to the same conclusion that I have, which is that it is not completely pertinent to the Bill, so I will continue on the very strict and controlled theme that I was developing.

We will consult shortly on the extent to which some of the functions currently carried out by the statutory regulators might be performed either by businesses themselves, through better recognition of internal quality controls, or by other agencies through services such as the use of accreditation and certification, which can provide some of the safeguards traditionally put in place by state regulators. This would have a direct impact on costs, fees and charges, because in those circumstances the decisions about those matters would be dealt with within the sectors or businesses themselves.

There will be cases where we can lighten the burden of regulation and the character of some of the costs that my hon. Friend has highlighted by taking a more radical approach to where regulation should apply, who should regulate, how decisions should be made about its extent, and, most saliently, what should be charged for what service. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that that decision is better taken at the sharp end, if I might put it in those terms, rather than distantly in Westminster and Whitehall. However, there will inevitably be cases where the intervention of a state regulator is required, particularly to protect consumers or to provide a level playing field for businesses. I take the view that professional standards in these terms should be looked at more closely by Government. In some cases, as I suggested earlier, the adoption of professional standards may allow us to reduce the overall burden of regulation, and the costs associated with it, in the way that my hon. Friend recommends.

The Treasury’s publication, “Managing Public Money”, sets out the main principles for dealing with resources used by public sector organisations. It makes it clear that:

“Where a fee is charged for access to public goods or services, there are some specific rules about how the charge should be determined. It is important to protect Parliament’s right to decide which services should be charged for, and how public resources are to be allocated.”

This principle is as valid in the case of regulation as with any other public service. Setting a fee or charge for a public service usually requires powers in primary legislation, with the charge structure and each charge set out in secondary legislation. Therefore, a parliamentary approval procedure of the kind that my hon. Friend advocates in his Bill already exists, and, as I said earlier, it is one that is less likely to lead to delay and complexity than the albeit well-meaning provisions in his short Bill. The guidance on calculating fees is also clear, stating that the full cost of each category of service should be measured realistically and objectively.

As I mentioned earlier, local authorities are regulators, and they sometimes provide purely discretionary services. In this regard, they operate within an additional framework of control set by the Local Government Act 2003. I know that my hon. Friend will be familiar with section 93 of that Act, because he researches these matters with diligence and care before he comes to the House to speak about them. He will know that that section, which is headed,

“Power to charge for discretionary services”,

contains the power that I have described. This power is subject to a duty to secure that, taking one financial year with another, the income from charges under the section does not exceed the costs of provision—precisely the point that he made in an intervention a few moments ago.

[Mr Chope]

But that is not the point, is it? Anybody can ensure that their charges do not exceed the costs of provision; I am trying to ensure that the costs of provision are kept down because the charges cannot be increased by more than the rate of inflation.

[Mr Hayes]

The purpose of the Act that I mentioned is to ensure that organisations—in this case, local authorities—do not make a profit out of the service, so that the cost, as I said, is related to the fee. My hon. Friend is arguing, is he not, that even where the cost of provision—it may be a perfectly justifiable cost, by the way—grows or changes for some reason, the fee associated with that cost could not be raised. If taken to its logical conclusion, this would place local authorities—or, if we apply the principle more widely, Government—in the impossible circumstance of not being able to recover costs of provision from businesses or individuals even where those businesses or individuals were gaining from the application of that provision. That would be a perverse effect of his Bill.

[Mr Chope]

Let my try another one on my hon. Friend. It relates not to local authorities but to the Forestry Commission, which is a regulator. The Forestry Commission is having its grant cut by central Government, but it still needs to carry on its regulatory functions. In the New Forest, it is thinking of funding quite a lot of those costs by raising car parking charges, which do not currently exist there. Where does any public accountability come into that?

[Mr Hayes]

Again, I am not going to speak about the specifics of that because it is a matter that I would want to look at in more detail before I said anything definitive. The principle remains that we should address the relationship between the scale of provision, the cost and the fees charged. That should, quite properly, be set out by this House in regulation, if not in legislation, and—I take my hon. Friend’s point—it should be proportionate.

Let me repeat, for the benefit of my hon. Friend and the House, that the Government share his determination to scrutinise these matters with new zeal and with diligence. He is right that we need to have a basis on which we consider and legitimise regulation of this kind and the costs and fees associated with it. I agree with him that it is important that agencies, whether in local government or elsewhere, can justify what they charge. I simply do not think that this Bill is the best way to do that. I welcome the fact that its introduction has given us an opportunity to consider these matters. I may say a little more about that in my final remarks.

The primary authority partnership scheme between businesses and regulators constitutes the kind of discretionary service that I was describing prior to my hon. Friend’s intervention. It was established under the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008 to provide more consistent regulatory enforcement for businesses, charities and other organisations operating in more than one local authority area. It entails an advisory partnership between a specific business and a given local authority. Having assessed the resource requirements of the primary authority partnership scheme, the local authority and the business have to agree how the costs will be met.

The local authority is entitled to charge the business for services applied through the partnership. In deciding whether or to what extent to charge the business, the local authority should consider all relevant matters, including the local authority’s policy in respect of supporting local economic prosperity and the existing resources provided to the business by the regulatory service and other services of the local authority. When advice and guidance have been developed for use with more than one business, an individual business should pay no more than a reasonable proportion of the costs. Where a local authority decides to charge for some or all of the services provided to a business, it can recover only the costs reasonably incurred in providing those services. In calculating the costs, the local authority should, like a national regulator, have regard to the guidance issued by the Treasury in “Managing Public Money”, to which I referred earlier.

A further statutory provision that affects the way in which regulators charge is the Regulators’ Compliance Code. I am surprised that we have not heard more about the code in our considerations, because its existence mitigates some of the arguments of the advocates of the proposed legislation. It is a statutory code of practice to which regulators must have regard in their work. It puts forward the general principle that

“Advice services should generally be provided free of charge, but it may be appropriate for regulators to charge a reasonable fee for services beyond basic advice and guidance necessary to help ensure compliance. Regulators should, however, take account of the needs and circumstances of smaller regulated entities and others in need of help and support.”

I draw the House’s attention, in those terms, to the effect of regulation on small business. Smaller businesses often find it more difficult to deal with these matters, purely because of scale. Excessive regulation can have an extremely damaging effect on small business growth. As a Government, we will certainly look again at the effect of regulation on business as a direct result of the overtures of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for saying that he will look again at these issues. Will he address his remarks to the issue of small charities, such as Julia’s House, which are even more deserving of help? Despite the guidance to which he referred, the Care Quality Commission imposes the same standard charges on a children’s hospice with three or four beds as it imposes on much larger, and even commercial, organisations. How is that consistent with the guidance?

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend is right that small organisations in the voluntary and charitable sector are also affected by the burden of regulation. I will, as a result of his overtures, look at that matter too. I know that the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), who has responsibility for regulation, takes these matters very seriously. He has been a great champion of small organisations in this respect. However, it is important that the Government are informed by the House. It is clear that Members from both sides of the House understand that if we are to build the big society that we seek, small organisations, charities and community organisations will play a critical part. It is right that we should look specifically at how regulation affects those organisations, and we will do so as a result of the arguments of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and other Members.

I will move on to explain why we feel that legislation is unnecessary in this case. This Bill, although it makes an immensely important point about the effects of regulation in practice, is not one that the Government can support. That is not just because there are existing controls that address the issues that the Bill seeks to address. It is also because regulators have a responsibility to ensure that they provide value for money and that the costs are as low as possible, while the quality of regulation remains appropriate. There needs to be flexibility in practice. Although we agree absolutely that we need to ensure that the burdens on business as a whole, and on the other organisations that we have just spoken about, are taken into account when we introduce or review regulations, the flexibility that I have described needs to reflect a wide range of regulatory circumstances. That would be inhibited, at least to some degree, by my hon. Friend’s Bill.

There are circumstances in which a modest uniform charge is appropriate. Many licensing regimes, where individuals must apply for a licence to trade, have that character. I spoke earlier about my view that the adoption of professional standards through licences to practise can be helpful in reducing regulation. It can provide a simpler series of mechanisms to guarantee quality, protect public health and ensure public safety.

[Mr Chope]

I am sorry to go back to this point, but my hon. Friend keeps referring to the issue of professional standards and duplication. How does what has happened to dentists fit in with that philosophy? They were already regulated by their own professional standards body, and now have to pay a fee to be regulated by the Care Quality Commission.

[Mr Hayes]

We have spoken of dentists already. Perhaps I may take this opportunity to pay tribute to my own dentist, Lisa Jamieson of the Fen House dental practice in Spalding, who looks after my teeth and those of my wife and children. I will discuss this matter with her, because I believe that it is important as legislators that we are in touch with those whom legislation affects. Nevertheless, the case that I made on dentists is that the adoption of the new regulatory regime will simplify how we ensure that dentists are doing what they should. There are circumstances in which a new approach, framed by the desire to reduce regulation, can assist us not only in the matter of regulation, but in its cost.

There are circumstances in which a substantial charge is appropriate. Some regulatory regimes require the inspection of hazardous, highly technical processes, and would otherwise present a substantial cost to the public. There are also circumstances in which a tiered approach is appropriate, for instance to reflect the costs to the regulator of regulating different sizes of business.

The proposal that my hon. Friend articulated with such style and charm would limit regulators’ flexibility to innovate and incentivise in ways that work to the benefit of good, compliant businesses. The existing system, by contrast, supports that flexibility. Regulators might seek to reduce fees for some regulated organisations —we have spoken of small businesses, small charities, community organisations and so on—to reflect the intrinsically lower costs of the services provided to them. Yet they might simultaneously increase charges to organisations when the service in question is palpably more costly. That would surely be the case in respect of larger businesses, in the case of which checking compliance requires significantly more time and resources.

My hon. Friend’s ambition is to allow small organisations, be they businesses, community organisations or charitable organisations, to thrive because of the lighter hand of Government that both he and I wish to see applied. He will note that I take that ambition so seriously that I have said the Government will examine it once again with a critical eye. It is entirely possible to achieve it within the flexible regime that exists in respect of fees and charges, and it might, ironically, be inhibited by the proposals in his Bill.

Meanwhile, the Health and Safety Executive has recently announced a proposal that would impose charges on businesses that were found to be in material breach of health and safety laws. It would not seek to recover costs for purely technical breaches, of course, and compliant businesses would not pay a penny. That is another example of the flexibility that I am advertising as a virtue of the existing regime.

It is fair to say that a range of approaches are appropriate, including ones that create strong incentives for better practice in businesses. In practice, the relevant legislative framework allows for all those approaches, and it is not appropriate to impose a single framework on all regulators. It is for them to determine the relevant approach, within the powers confirmed by Parliament and the public spending rules overseen by the Public Accounts Committee and the Comptroller and Auditor General. The existing arrangements provide meaningful parliamentary oversight, combined with a pragmatic foundation for regulators and Government to adjust their approach according to dynamic circumstances. If we were to adopt an entirely different approach founded on the consumer prices index, as my hon. Friend suggests, rather than on a cost recovery basis, the incentives would be very different.

Finally, increases in fees limited to the CPI are unlikely to reflect changes in a given regulator’s costs. My hon. Friend argues that the cost to regulators is not the issue, and that the charge to organisations, whether they be businesses, individuals or otherwise, is always of paramount importance. However, it is equally important that there is some relationship between provision and fee, between cost and charge. It would be a very blunt instrument to apply the mechanism at the heart of the Bill in the way that he suggests.

If the increase in the full cost of a service exceeds CPI, capping fees would either leave the taxpayer to pick up the bill or leave the regulator to do the job within its official resources. It would not necessarily save taxpayers money, and it could arguably let businesses and individuals off the hook, because they would not have to pay the price necessary to cover the regulator’s costs. That might be my hon. Friend’s intention, but I have never heard him suggest before that the taxpayer’s burden should be increased in such a blunt way. Indeed, I know for a fact that he has long been an advocate of cutting taxes where we can.

[Mr Chope]

I thought for a moment that my hon. Friend was going to traduce me. I made it quite clear at the beginning that the Bill would not add to the burden of taxation or public expenditure, and that is set out clearly in clause 1(3). I am surprised that he is not praising that subsection. Can he give some examples of where he thinks it is reasonable for regulators to increase their costs beyond the rate of inflation?

[Mr Hayes]

If the cost of provision to a regulator rises for technical reasons, and that regulator has a perfectly sensible set of regulations with the protection of public good or public safety at their heart, it would be entirely appropriate to relate the cost of that provision to its price. That should be legitimised and justified, and it is absolutely right that we put in place criteria that ensure that any such price increase is a true reflection of a change in cost, but to do the opposite and prohibit any change in charge regardless of a change in the cost or character of provision, as my hon. Friend suggests, would be a very blunt instrument. I am arguing for flexibility; he, rather untypically, is arguing for a rigidity in the application of public policy, insensitive to circumstances. With a bitter irony from his perspective, that might increase costs to the taxpayer, contrary to the part of the Bill that makes it clear that that is not his intention.

I do not wish in any way to be excessively critical of my hon. Friend, who is a distinguished Member, but I argue that the Bill has at its heart a contradiction. I know that that is unintended, but none the less, it would have potentially dire consequences for the Government and for him. His reputation as a tax saver, as a guardian of the public interest and as a man who stands in the way of excessive state interference in the affairs of individuals and in the freedom that he cherishes, is at stake. I stand here as his guardian, and as the protector of his interests.

I know that this will disappoint Members, but I wish to begin to move to my conclusion. It would be bad for both the public, whom we are seeking to protect, and conscientious businesses that are doing their best to comply with the law, if we left regulations unenforced because the Government did not have the capacity or power to supplement any shortfall. The Bill would limit the Government’s ability to intervene, which would create just such a circumstance.

Our view is that the existing flexible framework provides the best means of controlling and keeping an appropriate limit on the fees and charges imposed by regulators. However, for the avoidance of doubt and to reassure my hon. Friend, let me be crystal clear that there is a certain determination on the part of this Government to ensure not only that the quantity of regulation is reduced but that its quality is re-examined with a vehemence that has not been typical of recent Governments, and that the costs associated with any such regulation are tested empirically in a way that protects individual, business, consumer and taxpayer interests. The existing regime, which provides for charging at full-cost recovery, enables regulators to recover costs from those who are regulated.

It is right that regulators have a responsibility to ensure that regulation is efficient, effective and provides value for money in the way the Bill intends. My hon. Friend is in tune with C. S. Lewis, is he not? The latter said:

“Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth thrown in. Aim at Earth and you get neither.”

My hon. Friend aims at a heavenly circumstance in which regulation is only ever applied out of absolute necessity and at minimum cost. We are sympathetic with that spirit, but perhaps the more important point to take from this debate is the extent to which any regulation necessarily brings with it some expense. We need to get to grips with that problem at source. I have spoken repeatedly in this speech about the measures the Government have put in place to constrain the flow of regulation. I believe that that is the right way forward. We have listened to his overtures, however. This debate has given us the opportunity to reconsider these matters, and has been an additional spur, a goad or perhaps just an encouragement to be still more determined to reduce the regulation on individuals, businesses, charitable organisations and others that might inhibit growth and, worst of all, inhibit virtue.

[Mr Chope]

I would like to reply briefly to this debate. I am grateful to the Minister for setting out, in just over an hour, all the reasons why his Department does not think that this Bill is the right solution, although at least he acknowledges that there is a problem. In the absence of any other possible solutions, however, I am not sure that one can say this Bill is not worthwhile. Although the Minister talks a lot about sympathy and says he wants to reduce the quantity and increase the quality of regulation, it is apparent from the figures that he gave, as well as the quotes from the CBI and the Institute of Directors, that things are probably getting worse rather than better. The shadow Minister made that point in relation to the number of regulations being introduced and removed from the statute book. I sympathise with my hon. Friend the Minister: he is not the Minister responsible for deregulation; that is not his main brief and he is here today as the departmental Friday duty Minister. However, I was disappointed that he did not respond to what the hon. Lady had to say.

In essence, this is whether we are going to try to control the stealth taxes reflected in the increased charges that regulators impose on consumers, individuals, businesses and charities. Nothing I have heard from the Minister gives me any encouragement in that regard. He was unable to explain—to my satisfaction anyway—why the Care Quality Commission is now trying to regulate dentists. He was unable, or did not wish, to engage in an argument about how we were going to pay for OFFA, the higher education access regulator, and whether it was justified or whether it was going to be a new financial burden on the universities. He was unable to answer my question about the Forestry Commission now seeking, because of a cut in Government grants, to fund its regulatory activities by imposing new charges that will force people to pay for their car parking in the New forest and elsewhere.

Treasury guidance states that regulators must increase their charges to reflect their costs, but there is no guidance saying that those costs must not increase by more than the rate of inflation. That is the key to it. If the regulators were not allowed to increase their charges beyond the rate of inflation, they would have to keep their costs to within the rate of inflation. They would have to reduce their costs and become more efficient. I cited Ofcom as an example of a regulator that has reduced its costs by 20% in the past year. The BBC, too, is now having to concentrate its mind on reducing its costs significantly because of the pressure put on it.

[Mr Hayes]

I plead guilty to two things—to not being the Minister for regulation, and to what my hon. Friend described earlier as elegant and flowing rhetoric. However, I will not plead guilty to not dealing with dentists. We did dentists to death! My argument was that the new regime would simplify the regulatory system and its associated costs and fees. That is in contrast to the current regime, which is more costly and confusing. Surely that is in the spirit of his Bill.

[Mr Chope]

I forgive my hon. Friend because I do not think he is an expert on dentistry. However, I do not think that he or his officials have addressed the fact that dentists are already properly controlled by the professional dentistry bodies. The CQC is now adding to that regulatory burden, rather than substituting for or simplifying it. However, we can have a separate debate about that on another occasion perhaps. That example alone shows that all the lofty rhetoric about the Government’s intentions —even those in the coalition agreement—to reduce the burden of regulation is not being reflected in practice.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) for his support for the Bill, to the shadow Minister for her observations and to the Minister for what he has said. In essence, he has criticised the two parts of clause 1 designed to introduce flexibility. I could have just said that no regulatory authority should introduce a charge in respect of a service currently provided free of charge. Perhaps on reflection that might have been better because it would have been clear. I thought that we needed some flexibility, which is why I used the wording I did, yet now I have been criticised by the Minister for doing so.

The Minister said—this is the most worrying aspect of today’s debate—that the panoply of the legislative framework covering regulation is so complex and impenetrable that it is impossible to simplify and cut across it in the way I am trying to do with the Bill. I hope that his Department, instead of producing these long, wordy briefs, will start getting to grips with rationalising the legislative framework around regulation and regulatory burdens. I hope then that we will be able to deal with the issues in a simpler way.

[Mr Hayes]

I will give this guarantee to my hon. Friend for the benefit of the whole House. In the matters for which I have responsibility within the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, I will stand tested by the criteria that he in broad terms has established. We will create a system that is freer, less burdensome and less regulatory and that allows those associated with further education, skills and lifelong learning to go about their business properly, in the way they see fit and in response to need, rather than be dictated to by the micro-management that typified the last Government.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that commitment. In due course perhaps I will table a parliamentary question so that he can explain what has happened under his leadership over the past year on those matters. It is important that the Government do not just talk about what they are going to do in future; they must show that they are reducing the burden of regulation. I am very depressed that they are not prepared to support the Bill, although I wish to test the will of the House on the matter.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Further and Higher Education (Access) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and John Hayes

Friday 4th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is a Bill to make provision to require all institutions of further and higher education in receipt of public funds to allocate places on merit, something that I understand my right hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for universities and higher education very much supports. I hope, therefore, that the Government will support the Bill today; and if they do not I hope that the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, who I am pleased to see on the Front Bench, will spell out in detail exactly why not.

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has given way at this early stage. There is no doubt about our shared commitment to the principle that people should advance on the basis of merit. It would clearly be precipitous for me to say more about the Bill, but I give him the absolute assurance that that principle guides all that we do in the Department, and that it is a view shared by all Ministers who have responsibilities in this area.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He is obviously demonstrating that he has an open mind on this subject, which is more than I can say for the Government in relation to another Bill that I have on the Order Paper, the Minimum Wage (Amendment) Bill. Yesterday, before he had even had a chance to the listen to the arguments for that Bill, the Leader of the House said that the Government would be against it. I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend has an open mind on this issue.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that there is a lot of confusion at the moment, among universities in particular and other institutions of higher education, because the Government seem to be at sixes and sevens in developing their policy in this area. Originally, the Government said that they would publish guidance to the Office for Fair Access by the end of January to enable it to give guidance to universities by the middle of February on their admissions policies for the academic year starting in 2012. Despite full guidance having been issued in the middle of February, with the Minister for Universities and Science saying in a press statement at the time that OFFA would be able to advise universities by the end of February, as of now, in the first week of March, there is still no information from OFFA on the principles that universities should apply for next year’s admissions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

The essence of what my hon. Friend says is in the phrase “if we can assist in that”. I do not believe that the Government can assist in that. The premise of what he says is that the universities themselves do not want to facilitate wider access or ensure that the best people can gain access on merit. All the evidence that I have seen suggests that they want to achieve that aim, but they resent the fact that the Government are using OFFA to try to impose additional criteria on them. That is certainly the view of the Russell group and other universities.

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend’s perspective and the Government’s are close. We have a perfectly proper desire to widen access in the way that has been described, but we differ on the admissions system. I shall speak at some length about that when I reply, but he needs to address it too.

[Mr Chope]

I shall certainly address that, and I look forward to responding at the end of the debate to the Minister’s comments.

Perhaps one way to address the issue is to look at what the Russell group says. It states:

“We share the Government’s commitment that every student with the qualifications, potential and determination whatever their background has the opportunity to gain a place at a leading university”,

but emphasises that

“the most important reason why too few poorer students even apply to leading universities is that they are not achieving the required grades at school.”

If the main reason why students do not apply is that they do not achieve the required grades, why do the Government, who are responsible for almost all primary and secondary education in the country, not concentrate on that problem, rather than interfering in an area of education in which they have not hitherto interfered? That is a typical approach of the Government: rather than focus on their failure to undertake their responsibilities, they try to introduce more regulation for things that run perfectly adequately. That is the difficulty.

[Mr Chope]

It is one thing to make a commitment and another to deliver on it. I hope the Government can deliver on that one, but my response to my hon. Friend is that if they concentrate on delivering on it through the pupil premium and other measures, they will not need to interfere in the right of the universities at the other end of the system to choose people on merit.

My point remains: there is something desperately wrong with how many our schools operate. They do not allow the full potential of their pupils to be realised in the form of exam results, which is one barrier to access.

The Russell group states:

“The main problem is that students who come from low-income backgrounds and/or who have attended comprehensive schools are much less likely to achieve the highest grades than those who are from more advantaged backgrounds and who have been to independent or grammar schools”,

and points out that

“this gap in achievement according to socio-economic background is getting wider. Too many students don’t choose the subjects at A-level which will give them the best chance of winning a place on the competitive courses at leading universities.”

That is why everyone in the House, including the Minister and the shadow Minister, will be pleased with the Russell group’s informed choices initiative. It tries to ensure that students choose the right subjects at A-level for the courses they are thinking of taking at university.

My daughter is studying veterinary medicine at university. Had she not discussed her preferences with her teachers before choosing her GCSEs, she might not have made the right subject choices. She made those choices on the basis of information provided to her, but quite often people who aspire to take veterinary or medical courses at university do not take the hard subjects in their preceding exams to enable them to do so.

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend once again hits on a key reason for the failure of many students to achieve their potential—the lack of advice and guidance. I hope he will take this opportunity to welcome the Government’s commitment to an all-age career service to deal with some of the disparities he describes.

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely—I am not pouring cold water on that initiative. The Government have demonstrated over the past several months that they share many of our concerns about the failure of the education system to deliver.

The statistics show a desperately serious situation. In the last 15 years, the proportion of A-level students at comprehensive schools who achieve three A grades or more has increased from 4.2% to 8.2%, while the proportion at independent schools has increased from 15.1% to 32.3%. That is a commentary on the previous Administration’s lack of achievement. Anything that can be done to put that right would be a good thing.

[Mr Chope]

They are not my figures—they are from the Department for Education, but they speak for themselves. However, if the hon. Gentleman wants more figures to confirm what a miserable failure the previous Government were in that respect, I should tell him that 29.9% of all students who got three A or A* grades at A-level in 2009-10 were at comprehensive schools, which was 8.2% of the total taking A-levels at comprehensives, but that those comprehensives accounted for 46.7% of all A-level students. That shows that the comprehensive schools just did not deliver on the potential of the students whom they taught.

[Mr Hayes]

I recognise, and indeed acknowledge, that prior attainment, as well as advice and guidance, is a key factor in subsequent achievement. My hon. Friend might remind the shadow Minister that, as C. S. Lewis said:

“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”

It is a long road for the Opposition and many finger posts.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend the Minister is great with quotes, and I notice that the shadow Minister does not wish to respond to that one yet—he will have the chance to do so later.

Let us not think that the universities are doing nothing. They are trying to encourage people to apply and are engaging in outreach initiatives. The Russell group alone is investing £75 million a year in initiatives designed to help the least advantaged students to win places at university, which is quite a lot of money.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am afraid that I am completely at odds with my hon. Friend, because I think that getting the Government involved will be—even more so than it is already—a disastrous policy, and it would be much better to improve the quality of education in our mainstream schools.

I want to quote a final statistic. In 2009, only 232—4.1%—of students in maintained mainstream schools who are known to be eligible for free school meals achieved three or more A grades at A-level. It is a matter not of trying to get more of those students into higher education but of trying to increase that cohort of students, from 4.1% to maybe five times as many. That is the problem. I am not sure that anything that the Government are proposing to do in interfering in this area will help that problem; instead, it will exacerbate it.

There is a mass of literature on all these matters. I was looking—some hon. Members may say, surprisingly —at a couple of articles in The Guardian. One was headed, “Grammar schools do not improve social mobility for working-class. Study shows little difference in work prospects for poorer children who attend grammar schools and comprehensives.” Earlier this week, on 1 March, there was an interesting article by Mr Owen Jones, headed, “Social mobility is a dead end. Our society relies on working-class jobs—dangling a narrow ladder for moving up is a diversion from tackling inequality.” I do not know whether those are articles on which my hon. Friend the Minister intends to comment in his response.

[Mr Hayes]

I had not intended, given the breadth of the material that I shall have to address, to deal with that matter particularly, but I will do so in the form of an intervention, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way to allow me to do so. Grammar schools pertain in my Lincoln constituency. I went to a grammar school myself and I hope that my young sons, if they are bright enough, will go to one too. I think that explains my views on grammar schools pretty clearly.

[Mr Chope]

Good. I am glad that I have given my hon. Friend the opportunity to put that firmly on the record.

I was looking at the access agreement 2010-11 for the university of Exeter. The university has been criticised in some quarters for announcing, this week, that it is going to charge £9,000 fees—subject, of course, to being able to get approval for that. Yet that university has achieved an enormous amount in recent years in increasing access to those who are from less-favoured backgrounds. I cannot understand why the Government wish to interfere in the right of that university to charge whatever level of fees it wishes up to the maximum, when it already has a very good record of increasing access to the university. There has been a significant increase in the number of students from state schools and from lower socio-economic groups.

The problem, I think, is that the Government realised that it would not look good if they allowed some universities to have no limit on the fees that they charged, so they introduced a ceiling of £9,000. They then allowed the loan system backing that scheme to be fixed in such a way that it is actually adding significantly to the potential burden on the Exchequer. The Minister for Universities and Science has said that if universities charge more than £7,500, that will add to the costs to the Exchequer, given the generous loan scheme and the fact that the Government expect a third of loan applicants never to pay anything back.

As the Treasury has looked at the figures, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has realised that it has to try to put the brakes on allowing universities to increase their fees to £9,000. It is using the threat of access restrictions and sanctions against those universities to try to get them into line. However, courageous universities, such as those in the Russell group and the university of Exeter, are saying that their first duty is to maintain academic standards in their universities and that if students pay higher fees, it is because they want more investment in the services that they receive. Those universities are not prepared to allow the Government to threaten them with sanctions if they exercise their freedom to take such decisions. My Bill would prevent the Government from interfering in universities any more and effectively forcing them to put quotas on the numbers from different backgrounds who should be admitted. The Minister has told the House that quotas are illegal, but ways short of express quotas are being used to threaten and cajole universities, and the Bill would prevent that from happening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that correction. I will not say that it was a U-turn—that would be too strong—but he seemed to clarify his remarks in a way that is helpful to us all in considering these matters in a balanced and measured manner.

The principle that I have described in respect of merit linked to a consideration of potential is time honoured. The other things that OFFA suggests that universities should take into account are no more frightening than those that I have already identified:

“progress towards benchmarks…published by HESA and others more immediate targets and measures agreed”

in respect of those less well represented groups. Targets agreed and measures suggested and agreed do not form the frightening perspective that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch described in his opening remarks, although, of course, I celebrate the fact that he has given us the chance to explore these matters because I want to put on the record what I have told him previously: I agree with him about merit.

[Mr Chope]

How can the percentage of students admitted from state schools, from lower socio-economic classes or from low-participation neighbourhoods directly have a bearing on merit? Surely, they are irrelevant to merit.

[Mr Hayes]

They would be irrelevant were it not for the fact that we know—do we not?—that many high-performing students from state schools do not get to some of the universities that they might get to if they had the wherewithal that is available to people such as he and I and will be available by proxy to our offspring. I have not finished my list, but that brings me conveniently to advice and guidance.

We know—do we not?—from what Lord Browne and Mr Milburn said in their reports that part of the problem in matching the abilities of the under-represented in higher and further education to the institutions that might best serve their tastes and talents is that they do not have the wherewithal to get to where they might want to go. What I mean by that is this: we know that social networks and familial understanding are the basis on which those who are already advantaged cement their advantage. It is not aspiration or ambition but wherewithal that limits working class people from achieving what they might.

This is a difference between the two sides of the House. There has been a bourgeois left misunderstanding of working class culture. Lord Mandelson is a case in point—he felt that there was lack of ambition. Aspiration, we are often told, is what the working classes lack. That is completely untrue. Working class parents and grandparents seek exactly the same for their children and grandchildren as middle class people. What they lack is the means to achieve those ambitions because of a gap in wherewithal. They do not have the social and familial networks that understand the process by which their talents might be turned into actuality through higher learning.

That is why the Government are introducing an all-age careers service from this autumn that will balance the advice that it gives in an empirical and independent way. The Education Bill that is going through the House will place a duty on schools to secure that independent and empirical advice because we know that learning is a key driver of social mobility, and social mobility is a critical component of social justice. I would go as far as to say that a free society, which is by its very nature an unequal society, can be legitimised only when social mobility prevails. The inequalities that are the natural bedfellow of freedom can be ethically justified only by social mobility. That is why social mobility and social justice are so central to our mission.

I return to the requirements published by OFFA in respect of access and admissions, which universities must take into account, as that is a subject that has been raised repeatedly in the debate. The list of requirements goes on to identify

“the support offered to students once enrolled on courses—for example additional study support, mentoring, pastoral support, help with basic skills; and the range of programmes the university will offer which could be easier for under-represented groups, particularly mature students, to access—part-time courses, distance learning, two-year degrees, intensive, accelerated degrees, supported foundation year.”

Why is all that so important? We know that when the rhythms and patterns of study match the rhythms and patterns of many more kinds of people’s lives, they are likely to engage in learning, and that for a mature student, for someone working to fund their study, for someone with caring responsibilities, the traditional three-year degree course, full time, at a leafy campus is not an option. By being more creative about modes of learning and access points to learning, we can engage many more kinds of people.

I gave a speech on broadening access to higher education—I know that you will be familiar with it, Mr Deputy Speaker, but others in the House may not be—some time ago at Birkbeck college in London. I have a copy for anyone who would like one. I am prepared to sign them for particular fans and admirers. Birkbeck college is the embodiment of the principle that I have just outlined. At Birkbeck, the idea of taster courses, first years which allow people to move on to a degree, and the very business of part-time study are intrinsic. It is central to the college’s mission, as it is to the Open university. I was with the Master of Birkbeck college and the vice-chancellor of the Open university briefly yesterday, as I was anticipating this debate. The Open university, too, shows us that by changing the way people study we can change the level of engagement of those who are typically under-represented in higher education. I have mentioned further education, where part-time study is generally the norm, rather than the exception, which is one of the reasons why we want to expand HE in FE.

To return to the Bill and the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, the real issue is that OFFA’s requirement that universities must use a range of programmes, including distance learning, part-time study and taster and foundation courses, far from being malevolent, is extraordinarily virtuous in achieving the mission that he and I share, which is that those who have the ability should be able to access higher education.

[Mr Chope]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I was just about to say something about Pope John Paul II, but I will give way before doing so.

[Mr Chope]

I do not want to get between my hon. Friend and Pope John Paul II, but if a university court, for example, is to have the freedom to decide what is best for its university, why can we not trust the universities themselves to do what is best? Why are the Government prescribing this set of requirements through OFFA?

[Mr Hayes]

My right hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science, when dealing with those issues in the House, has made it clear that universities are indeed independent institutions that will make their own judgments on precisely how they deal with those matters. It seems perfectly reasonable, based on our desire to spread good practice as far as we can, to draw to their attention those salient matters that might affect their ability to give opportunities to those people with merit who typically do not do as well as those with equal merit from advantaged backgrounds. I do not think that that is unreasonable. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would not want to inhibit in any way those who are under-represented in higher education, but who have talent and merit, from prospering. I give him absolute assurance that merit is the basis on which universities should choose students, and we are not in the business of dictating to independent institutions on how they go about meeting the requirements, which seem to me very reasonable, set out by OFFA.

We believe that freedom is central to the concept of a university. Indeed, a free university linked to academic freedom and freedom of thought seems to me to be important elements of a civilized society, as was mentioned earlier. I qualify that, however, by noting that John Paul II said that freedom has its merit when it is exercised to pursue truth. I do not want to leave on the record any misunderstanding that freedom is intrinsically of value, separated from truth, because that could misrepresent my views on the character of freedom.

That takes us to Cardinal Newman’s “The Idea of a University”, which I know my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will have read before the debate. Newman’s idea of a university was that by definition it should be distinct from instruction, vocation or a profession. That is one of the tenets he sets out in his discourses concerning what a university should comprise. That is no longer the case in Britain. Pursuing a university career in Britain might, indeed, still be about studying something peculiarly—solely—academic, but it might also include studying something that is highly vocational or practical in character, and so it should. I admire Cardinal Newman immensely, but on that matter I disagree with him, which might be because we live in different times. For that reason, however, the business of access to university, tied to what is studied and how, needs to infuse all we do regarding admissions and access. That is why I take a rather more lateral view about the character of higher study: how, where and what people study all seem to be linked when we consider the matter of access.

My hon. Friend fears that we are engaged in social engineering, but I can absolutely assure him that, far from that, the independence vested in universities by their very nature remains unaffected by the Government’s determination to pursue an agenda that will widen access as I have outlined.

My hon. Friend will know, and it has been discussed today, that the Government have been looking at how universities are funded. The changes in fees and funding will put universities on a more sustainable footing, and, as he argues, part of that will involve universities deciding what they charge their students. There are those who think that that will inhibit our plan to widen access, but I absolutely believe that it is not admissions or fees that are central to spreading opportunity in that way, but, as I have said, prior attainment, advice and guidance, what people study, access points to learning and modes of learning.

For example, the Government’s response to Browne, which accepts his recommendations on part-time funding, will, I believe, in a short time have a more dramatic effect on widening access to higher education than any change to the admissions system could ever have. We already know that part-time learners tend to be drawn from a wider cohort than full-timers, and the change has been widely welcomed by the universities sector, in particular in the House yesterday by the Open university and Birkbeck college and, indeed, by others. I know that it is welcomed also by the Association of Colleges, Universities UK and the Million+ group, and it is going to be an essential component in allowing us to achieve our objectives to broaden access.

My hon. Friend seeks to prescribe in law the circumstances by which people might be admitted to university, but my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset suggested—and I was able to help him through an intervention in making the point, I hope, even more clearly—that in doing so my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would prescribe not merely what universities chose to do, but what they chose not to do, because universities that use interviews as a way of assessing students would, I guess, be prevented from doing so.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, but why does he say that? In my Bill, there is no restriction on universities being able to assess academic ability, potential and aptitude by interview if they so wish.

[Mr Hayes]

That is a helpful intervention, because a student with less prior attainment, for all kinds of variables that we do not need to expand on now, might well be admitted to a university as a result of an assessment of their potential at interview, whereas a student who had achieved strong results and so had strong prior attainment might not be. I am glad that my hon. Friend is not saying that there is rigidity in these principles. He displays an understanding of merit that is rather more liberal than I had imagined. I assure him that the Government’s understanding of merit is equally liberal. I do not usually like to use the word liberal in a positive way, but we are now in a different world so I will do so. The Government are absolutely clear that it is for universities to make decisions about who will best benefit from their provision, and not for us. We do not want to dictate that any more than I have now learned my hon. Friend does. Universities are, as the Minister for Universities and Science has made perfectly clear in this House, independent institutions, and long may they remain so.

The principle of institutional autonomy is enshrined in the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, which I happen to have with me. My hon. Friend will know that that Act—from memory I think that it is in section 62 or 63—makes it absolutely clear that universities are autonomous institutions. That limits the power of the Secretary of State. The Act, which I hasten to add is unchanged by this Government, limits the Government’s power, subject to certain terms and conditions. For the benefit of the House, I will read the provisions because I do not imagine that everybody has the Act to hand. Section 68(3) states:

“Such terms and conditions may not be framed by reference…to the criteria for the selection and appointment of academic staff and for the admission of students.”

That could not be clearer. It could not be more plain that the Government, in leaving the Act unaffected by any changes that we are making to fees and funding, are absolutely confirming the independence of our universities in those terms. That principle has been observed for a very long time and we do not wish it to be challenged or amended.

Institutional autonomy, whether in further or higher education, remains a central tenet of our system, and it is a key theme in our current considerations. Perhaps I should add that in respect of further education colleges the Government are going even further. We are determined to lift much of the bureaucratic burden that they have endured for too long. To unleash the human capital in our further education colleges and to build on their excellent work, we will free them from some of the target-driven, centrally micro-managed and directed edicts that emerged from the previous regime. In those dark days, further education was undervalued by Government; it is not now. As we have moved from the shadows into the light, so has further education in the United Kingdom. The Education Bill that is currently making its way through this House rescinds some of the requirements that were placed on further education colleges late in the previous Government’s life. It will increase their powers to borrow and invest, and make various other changes. The principles of institutional freedom that I have described will be retained.

Although I understand the reasons for doubts about what OFFA has said about admissions, I do not believe they are well founded. I have given a firm commitment on behalf of the Government to the principle of merit, but I wish to say a little about how we might move ahead in agreement.

To help identify individuals with the greatest potential, institutions may want to use data about the context in which a young person has achieved their qualifications. The Government believe that that is a valid and appropriate way for institutions to broaden access while maintaining excellence, as long as individuals are considered on their merits and institutions’ procedures are fair, transparent and evidence-based.

That is not a change from previous good practice, it is what universities and colleges have always done. Many universities already take into account a range of such contextual information in considering whom to admit. The sector has taken steps further to develop its use of such information, and the sector-led supporting professionalism in admissions programme already has as one of its key themes the use of contextual data to support fair admissions. Good practice principles on the use of such data have been developed.

Comments have been made about the proportion of private school pupils who go to university. We have no policy view on the number of privately educated students entering HE. The Government’s policy view is that access should be on the basis of merit, irrespective of background. It would be wrong for the Government to suggest that the number of people from private schools going to our universities should be limited, and we have no intention of doing so.

There is no chance of the Government interfering or setting quotas. Our recent guidance letter to the director of OFFA makes that point, stating that universities will select their own performance measures and set out, in their new access arrangements agreed with OFFA, the progress that they expect to make in widening participation and access. The Government are quite clear not only that quotas are undesirable, but that as I have explained, legislation simply does not permit us to interfere in university admissions in such a way.

I am inclined to move to my summary now, although I know the House would like me to speak at greater length. The Government fully support the principle that universities and colleges should admit students based on their academic ability, potential and aptitude, as assessed by the institution in question. That is precisely the aim of the Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch articulated with his usual flair. We believe that his concerns about accessing educational opportunities on merit do not need legislation. I hope that given my firm assurances from the Dispatch Box, he agrees with that, particularly as I have illustrated the legislation that already exists to protect the very interests that he has mentioned.

Chesterton—we have heard too little about him in this debate, have we not?—said:

“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”

In passing on the soul of society, we need always to be conscious of the fact that the relationship between learning and opportunity is profound. It would be inappropriate, but worse than that unethical, for a Government not to focus on how we can spread opportunity as widely as possible. That is one reason why I championed vocational education so vociferously in my time as a shadow Minister and now as a Minister. Many people’s tastes and talents will take them down a vocational pathway, which must be as navigable, progressive and seductive as the academic route. Notwithstanding my support for apprenticeships, to which the Government are devoting unprecedented levels of funding, the tastes and talents of many other people from the kind of backgrounds that I come from will take them towards an academic career in a university. Our duty is to ensure that they too get their chance of glittering prizes.

We believe that my hon. Friend’s objectives do not need legislation, as I said. We know that good sense and good government demand that universities remain free to make those judgments about their future. Accordingly, while recognising the worth of his intentions and admiring his ambitions, and frankly, being envious of his perspicacity, the Government are bound to oppose the Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Christopher Chope and John Hayes

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

I have made it clear that we are absolutely determined to ensure that the worst-off are not disadvantaged by the new arrangements. However, I believe that there is a strong case for greater discretion to target some of things that Opposition Front Benchers identified as salient in helping people to achieve their best.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

T4. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one way of getting more capital into free schools would be to enable them to obtain it on the open market by allowing them the freedom to make a profit, as they can in Sweden? When will my right hon. Friend have the courage of his convictions and enable free schools to have the same freedoms as they have in Sweden?