Oral Answers to Questions

David Nuttall Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

I certainly endorse what the hon. Gentleman says—that the Human Rights Act is a mechanism through which victims of crime may seek redress. He is right about that, but there is no reason to suppose that if it were to be replaced by a Bill of Rights, that right would necessarily be removed.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Does the Attorney-General agree that the British people want the European convention on human rights to be interpreted in the way the original draftsmen intended back in 1950, and not according to what some judges would like it to mean today?

[The Attorney-General]

I am afraid I have to disagree with my hon. Friend. If he were correct, the criminalisation of homosexuality would remain acceptable, because the convention would not have evolved. I realise he touches on a difficult issue. Some have argued that the interpretation of the convention goes further than it should, and that is a legitimate issue of public debate. As for the principle that the convention should simply be static and remain where it was in 1950, I think careful examination would soon reveal a great many problems that would cause anxiety in this House.

Commonwealth Meeting and the Philippines

David Nuttall Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My point is simply this: this country has a unique relationship with the Commonwealth and it would therefore have been completely wrong, opportunistic and irresponsible not to go. I think that has been demonstrated amply this afternoon.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement, which I warmly welcome. I think that he was absolutely right to go to Sri Lanka and demonstrate this country’s commitment to the Commonwealth. Does he agree that one concrete way of demonstrating our continued commitment to the Commonwealth would be to establish dedicated channels of entry at UK airports for Commonwealth citizens, on the grounds that if it is good enough for the European Union it is good enough for the Commonwealth?

[The Prime Minister]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, but I think that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary might have a few things to say about new, simpler routes for people to come to this country. What we have tried to do is improve our visa system. For instance, in India we have introduced a one-day visa system. Of course, we should look at all countries on the basis of how we can have an improved visa system and encourage people who genuinely want to come here to visit, but we should also ensure that there are not abuses, and I am afraid that we have to apply those rules to Commonwealth countries as well.

Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill

David Nuttall Excerpts

Friday 1st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is right. Over the past few months, when I was drafting the Bill, I spoke to numerous companies, large and small, which were bidding for public procurement contracts. They made precisely the point that my hon. Friend has made. If a public body requires apprenticeships to be part of the tendering process, the standards of the bids will be levelled upwards, so that a company that pursues good practice by providing apprenticeships will no longer be undercut by another that does not invest in skills and training.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman said a moment ago that the Bill would send a message to public authorities that did not include a requirement for apprenticeships in their procurement processes. If that is all that he aims to do, would it not be simpler to write to the authorities explaining the position and to issue a press release, rather than trying to introduce legislation?

[Andrew Gwynne]

Were that to succeed, then yes, but the hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that some Government Departments, public bodies and local authorities would still be saying “We cannot do this.” Introducing legislation giving them the power to ask to be allowed to do it, if it is what they want to do, will make the position clear to all. The Bill is not prescriptive; it does not compel those bodies to act. On the contrary, it empowers them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I hope to have the opportunity to come on to some of the detail in the Bill. Suffice to say at this point that I am not sure that the bit that the hon. Gentleman read out is particularly relevant to the bit that I read out. The bit that I read out is a requirement to provide apprenticeships and skills training generally, whereas the bit that he read out is about a higher level of apprenticeships, so we are talking rather at cross-purposes. I am not entirely sure that his point addresses my point or that my point addresses his. That is why I think we may be left with further confusion.

[Mr Nuttall]

Perhaps I can assist. I wonder whether the real problem is in clause 1(1)(a), which states that

“the authority must”—

it does not say “may”; it says “must”—

“give due consideration to the relevant guidelines issued by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) or by the Cabinet Office”.

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that those guidelines could easily be amended to make it a mandatory requirement?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We heard what I thought was an excellent speech from the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish and it was difficult to disagree with much of what he said. We may have a slight disagreement about the respective merits of each party’s approach and what they did while in government, but it would be churlish to argue the toss on that. I am willing to look above the party political and look at the issue as a whole, and I agreed with virtually everything that the hon. Gentleman said. My concern—I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) for jumping in at this stage—is that the hon. Gentleman’s view that the Bill was all about people’s choices seemed to fly in the face of the language in the Bill, such as the words “require” and “must”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s confidence that my constituents listen carefully to the speeches that I make in Parliament. That has been a revelation this morning. To be perfectly honest, I was not aware that anyone listened to my speeches in Parliament, but if my constituents are listening, it is a great boost for me to know that they are hanging on to every word. It is certainly news to me. They are very good at hiding the fact that they are hanging on to my every word.

My fundamental problem with the Bill—which I reiterate in response to the various interventions, and then I hope that I will be able to make some progress, which I am sure we all want—is that it will create more confusion about whether these are requirements or just something that can be done. If this were required of people in the public sector, I would appreciate the sentiment, but it would be misguided and would lead to some unintended consequences. If it is not compulsory, it is completely unnecessary, because any public body can do these things anyway. The hon. Gentleman made an interesting point about EU procurement and the role that that plays in this, but I will come on to that later because I want to show why the Bill might be counter-productive and have some unfortunate unintended consequences.

The reason why the hon. Gentleman is right about the quality of apprenticeships is that that is how they started in the reign of Elizabeth I. They were very limited and they lasted between seven and 14 years, which was far in excess of the time needed to obtain skills in a particular sector, but it showed that the person who had passed their apprenticeship was an expert in their field. That is what I would like us to return to; not necessarily that they would take up to 14 years to complete, but that a completed apprenticeship would allow someone to be perceived as an expert in their field. The hon. Gentleman was right to say that that is what we want to achieve.

I do not want to go into the detail of apprenticeships in the time of Elizabeth I, but I can do so if anyone is interested.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is being generous with his time this morning. Does he share my concern that if a given number of apprentices were required under a public procurement contract, particularly at a local level, it could result in an increase in the tender prices? Despite what was said earlier, there would therefore be a cost to the public purse.

[Philip Davies]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. Another danger is that if apprenticeships become an important focus for a public body in its procurement, it will become the focus of the bids. A company will increase the price that it is charging in order to take on x number of apprentices and will get the contract on that basis. The price that is charged to the taxpayer will therefore be higher than it otherwise would have been. The problem of overpaying for contracts in the public sector that has been identified would be made worse by this proposal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend has hit on a crucial point. As he knows, contracts, especially in the construction sector, often revolve around many subcontracts. Is it clear to him—it is not clear to me—whether apprenticeships created by a subcontractor count towards the main contract?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. It is not clear whether or not apprentices in subcontracts count. Is there a requirement on a subcontractor bidding for a proportion of a contract? If the subcontract is for more than £1 million—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who made a considered and thoughtful contribution, much of which we could all agree with. As has been said, we are all agreed that apprenticeships are generally a very good thing and that a lot of good work is being done on them. If this debate has done nothing else, I hope it has been able to highlight some of the excellent practices going on around the country. I apologise for the fact that I have to leave at about 2.15 pm, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am not sure when the debate will finish. It may have wrapped up by then, but if it has not I apologise to the Bill’s promoter and to the Front Benchers, if I miss their speeches.

The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), my near neighbour in Greater Manchester, made an interesting opening speech. When there are no explanatory notes to a Bill, as is the case with this one—I certainly was not given any by the Vote Office—I always rely on the opening speech to clarify some of the issues. It probably says more about me than it does about the hon. Gentleman, but I was a little more concerned and mystified by some of the Bill’s provisions after I had heard his speech, and the explanations he gave in response to some of the interventions, than when I read it in my office over the past couple of days.

The hon. Gentleman has a touching, perhaps naive belief in the Government’s ability to create jobs and to do so through direction and the inclusion of certain provisions in contract clauses. He mentioned the 50:50 scheme, and I understand, if I heard correctly, that that scheme was run by his local authority, which paid £1,000 for each apprentice. I am not sure whether the number of apprenticeships was limited or unlimited, but of course there is already a Government scheme, the apprenticeship grant for employers—AGE—scheme. I am sure he will be familiar with the scheme, which provides £1,500 to small businesses.

The AGE scheme, which applies specifically to young people aged 16 to 24, was announced in November 2011 and launched in February 2012, and was designed to encourage more small businesses to take on apprentices and to encourage young apprentices to raise their skill levels. It pays £1,500 to every small business that takes on a young apprentice if the firm has never hired an apprentice before and if it has 1,000 or fewer employees when it takes the apprentice on. It is very much geared towards small and medium-sized enterprises, and the employer cannot claim more than 10 grants. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman’s local authority got the idea of giving a cash sweetener to local employers from that scheme.

One point has emerged which goes to the heart of the Bill: is it mandatory, compulsory or merely permissive? That question is at the core of my concerns. We have heard a lot from the hon. Gentleman about his belief that the Bill is purely permissive but, frankly, that is not the purpose of legislation. Local authorities and public bodies already have the freedom to do what the Bill proposes. Indeed, we have heard many examples already of good practice. Where appropriate, public bodies have encouraged—I would not want it to go any further than that—contractors to take on apprentices.

The only possible rationale for having the Bill at all is if someone has the view that there are not enough apprenticeships and that not enough are of a high enough quality. Clause 1(2) is about a possibility—I will not put it any more firmly than that, as that is what the hon. Gentleman has said himself. It says that an authority “may”—note, “may”—

“require that a minimum proportion of the apprentices employed by the contractor are higher or advanced apprentices.”

That is about raising the general skill level of apprentices.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Does the hon. Gentleman not think that if a local authority—for argument’s sake, let us say Bury metropolitan borough council—is procuring services and wants to ensure that the apprenticeships linked to the contract are of a higher or advanced level, it should be able to specify that in the contract?

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful for that intervention because it allows me to make an important point. If the Bill were to say the opposite and prevented any procurement contract from including a provision requiring a contractor to take on higher level or advanced apprentices, or any apprentices at all, I would certainly be very much against it. But of course that is not the Bill before us, and local authorities already have the power to include such a provision, as the hon. Gentleman said.

[Andrew Gwynne]

But does the hon. Gentleman not want to put it in statute, so that it is beyond all reasonable doubt that public bodies can specify that a proportion of apprenticeships tied into a contract should be of a higher and advanced level?

[Mr Nuttall]

I am not aware that there is any doubt at all. The phrase “beyond all reasonable doubt” is commonly used to describe the burden of proof in a criminal case, where the prosecution must prove their case beyond all reasonable doubt. As has been made clear, there may be some instances where local authorities, for whatever reason, are not doing what some other local authorities are doing, but by the hon. Gentleman’s own admission, the Bill will not change that.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Actually, the Bill will change that because it will make it clear to those local authorities that are not doing this that they are legally able to do it. The hon. Gentleman says that there is no doubt at present, but if so he cannot have been listening to his hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who seemed to spread a lot of doubt about whether local authorities were able to do just the kind of things that we are talking about.

[Mr Nuttall]

The hon. Gentleman refers to my hon. Friend’s speech. This debate is not about whether I agree with my hon. Friend; it is about the terms of the Bill. The arguments that my hon. Friend made may or may not be the same as the arguments that I will advance—and quite frankly, I do not think it matters whether they agree or not.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the nub of the situation is that either this will require local authorities to do something that they do not want to do, in which case it will be undesirable, or it will allow them to do something that they can already do, in which case the Bill is unnecessary?

[Mr Nuttall]

I entirely agree. I think that intervention goes to the nux of the Bill—[Hon. Members: “Nux?”]—the crux of the Bill. Did I say nux? That is a new word. It is the difference between the nub and the crux. It goes to the core of the Bill—I will change track.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Of course the Bill is empowering in its ability to allow local authorities to require a proportion of apprenticeships to be of a higher or advanced level. The only compulsion that I can see is that a relevant contract must require the contractor to advertise the vacancies in their local jobcentre. Surely the hon. Gentleman is not arguing that that is a bad thing.

[Mr Nuttall]

I do not want to jump ahead too far in my speech, or I shall run the risk of repeating myself later. The hon. Gentleman is right about the provision in clause 2:

“A relevant contract must require the contractor to—

(a) advertise all vacancies”.

I have my concerns about that, which I will come to. Before that, let me deal with the question whether the Bill is mandatory or permissive, which is where I started this preliminary remark.

Although I am constantly told that the Bill is permissive in so far as clause 1 is concerned, I have concerns, as I mentioned briefly in an intervention, that if the guidelines were altered, one interpretation of clause 1(1)(b) would mean that a tenderer—somebody applying for a contract—could be required to do as the clause states. It would be mandatory in those circumstances because the clause says:

“must . . .

(b) ensure that the provisions in the guidelines issued by the OGC . . . are reflected in that contract”.

If that provision were used, it would become mandatory. I say that by way of preliminary comment.

Two or three speakers have mentioned the number of higher level apprenticeships, level 4. The statistics that I have, which I think are the most recent ones, show that the number of level 4 apprenticeships increased from 3,700 in 2011-12 to 9,000 in 2012-13. Although these are still small numbers, they are the very highest level apprenticeships, which are a fairly new creation, so by definition the numbers will be small because it takes a while for people to follow through the lower levels and to be able to move on to the higher level. That step change in those numbers from 3,700 to 9,000 shows the general direction of travel.

I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish on his success in coming so high up in the ballot for private Members’ Bills that he secured pole position on one of the coveted first seven Fridays, which means that he could be certain of having his Bill debated. It deals, as I said, with a worthy cause and at first sight it seems very attractive, but that is all that can be said for it. It is superficially attractive, but I fear that it will not achieve what he wishes to achieve. I share with him the desire that there should be more higher quality apprenticeships, but as I will go on to say, all the evidence, and there is plenty of it, shows that the route that the Government have taken over the past three years has increased the number of apprentices.

The Bill goes to the heart of the debate about the extent to which the Government—any Government—should micro-manage individual businesses and their relationship with Government.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Nuttall]

Yes, I shall certainly give way to the shadow Minister.

[Mr Umunna]

The hon. Gentleman can carry on giving his speech for as long he is obviously going to, but is it not the case that he can address many of the issues he raises in Committee? As is habitually the case on Fridays, when he often appears in the House, is this not an ideological attempt to stand in the way of a very good piece of legislation which will complement what the Government are doing to boost apprenticeships in his community, for which some of his local councillors, such as James Frith, have been arguing for some time? That is what this is about.

[Mr Nuttall]

As we have heard this morning, the fact that someone opposes a Bill does not mean that they oppose a particular cause, whether that be, as in this case, apprenticeships, or anything else. I want to put on the record that I know all about apprenticeships and working and learning at the same time.

[Mr Umunna]

The point is that actions speak louder than words, and the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will make their judgment based on what he is doing right now.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am pointing out some of the flaws in the Bill, which is what I was elected to do. If the Bill is such a good idea, why in 2009, when the OGC produced the original “Promoting skills through public procurement”, did not the Labour Government enact the Bill to go with it? There is a good question.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend question the arrogance of people who think that they should be able to introduce a Bill and have it nodded through Parliament without any scrutiny whatever? Is that not the type of activity that does disservice to the House?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. This morning’s debate is not on the process of private Members’ Bills or its merits. There has been an exchange but I am sure that the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) now wishes to come back to his specific points on the Bill. That would help all of us.

[Mr Nuttall]

I was being dragged off there by the shadow Minister, but I will come back to the specific points that I wanted to make on the Bill.

The Bill is not new. In many respects, it mirrors the Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill that was introduced in the first Session of this Parliament on 14 September 2010 by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell). It is interesting that when that was introduced by way of a ten-minute rule Bill, the hon. Lady prayed in aid the Federation of Small Businesses, which my hon. Friend made clear now has serious concerns about this Bill. It is concerned that the Bill may harm the progress that has been made during the last three years. My hon. Friend made a good point.

I am sure that it was only the large number of hon. Members who wanted to support the hon. Lady’s Bill that stopped the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish being one of its supporters in 2010. But I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for introducing his Bill because it gives me and my hon. Friend an opportunity to make clear what has been, by any measure, one of the great success stories of the present Government.

The coalition programme for government said:

“We will seek ways to support the creation of apprenticeships, internships, work pairings, and college and workplace training places as part of our wider programme to get Britain working”.

It is worth noting at the outset what is meant by an apprenticeship. Basically, it is a paid job that incorporates both on-the-job and off-the-job training. When someone has completed an apprenticeship, they will have a nationally recognised qualification.

In response to the shadow Minister, I said that I had personal experience of this, and I do. Using the definition of an apprentice as someone who learns and earns at the same time, that is precisely what I did for 10 years after I left school. Rather than going to university, I joined a local firm of solicitors as a trainee legal executive, for which I was paid a wage. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said, in the past being an apprentice often meant starting at the bottom, which is exactly what I did. I was one level up from the office junior, as I used to say at the time.

I then went out on day release to study in the afternoons and evenings for examinations under the auspices of the Institute of Legal Executives. As part and parcel of its training requirements, a person could not become a fellow until they had been employed for eight years, to ensure that they had a thorough and grounded knowledge of the processes. It was a nationally recognised qualification. I used it, along with the degree I studied for at the same time through correspondence from London university, to go on and work for two more years as an articled clerk, which is really just a different term for an apprentice solicitor, before qualifying as a solicitor.

The shadow Minister, having launched his personal attack on me and used a clever way to name my opponent at the next general election, has now left his place on the Front Bench, but I think it is fair to say that I have personal experience of working, learning and earning at the same time.

Public procurement contracts should be awarded on the basis of value for money. Even without the Bill, projects already promote apprenticeships. Crossrail will deliver over 400 new apprenticeships through its supply chain over the lifetime of the contract. All main works contractors will create one new apprenticeship, or the equivalent training opportunities, per £3 million of spend. Crossrail is working in partnership with the National Apprenticeship Service to support contractors in delivering the apprenticeship programme.

The National Apprenticeship Service was established in April 2009, under the previous Government. It has overall responsibility for apprenticeships in England. It promotes apprenticeships to employers and those seeking to take up an apprenticeship by providing support throughout the recruitment and training process. It maintains a national online apprenticeship vacancy system that allows employers to post vacancies and aspiring apprentices to search and apply for them. It is interesting that a requirement to post an apprenticeship through NAS is not included in clause 2.

Apprenticeships have changed considerably in recent decades. There are now over 200 different types of apprenticeship available across a variety of sectors, including: agriculture, horticulture and animal care; arts, media and publishing; business administration and law; construction, planning and the built environment; education and training; engineering and manufacturing technologies; health, public services and care; information and community technology; leisure, travel and tourism; and retail and commercial enterprise. Virtually no aspect of Government procurement does not fall within one of those sectors.

Each apprenticeship is made up of three elements: first, the national vocational qualification, which examines work-based skills; secondly, a technical certificate, which examines theoretical knowledge; and, thirdly, key skills, which examine transferable skills—for example, numeracy and literacy.

Apprenticeships can be studied at different qualification levels, starting with basic, intermediate level 2 apprenticeships, equivalent to A*-to-C GCSEs. Above those are advanced level 3 apprenticeships, equivalent to A-levels. Finally, there are higher level 4 apprenticeships, equivalent to a Business and Technology Educational Council professional diploma or a higher national certificate.

The rationale behind the Bill is well intentioned—to encourage more companies to provide apprenticeships. However, I am not convinced that the way to do that is by passing such legislation as this. The way to create a more skilled, better qualified work force is to have a growing economy in which companies can compete in the global marketplace. When they want a larger work force, they can train people using the apprenticeship route, working with the Government to set nationally recognised standards and with a training provider to which they can send their employees for off-the-job training. The companies themselves train them on the job and give them work.

The latest figures show that there has already been a significant increase in the numbers—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I have been closely following what the hon. Gentleman has been saying. He has made his preliminary remarks and discussed extensively apprenticeships and the different definitions. Now I would like him to relate his comments to the Bill; he has been speaking for 32 minutes. This is not a general discussion about apprenticeships.

[Mr Nuttall]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I will. The rationale behind the Bill is that there are not enough apprenticeships; that can be the only reason for the Bill. However, official data show that last year more than 500,000 apprenticeships were created, which demonstrates one of my arguments for opposing the Bill.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has just put very succinctly his point about the Bill. I am asking him to make sure that all his comments refer to the Bill with the same clarity, rather than referring to every industry that might offer apprenticeships.

[Mr Nuttall]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will try to be as succinct as I can about the points I want to make about each of the clauses.

Clause 1 deals with apprenticeship requirements. It is the key clause because it states that when a public authority, defined as

“any body or person discharging functions of a public nature, including local authorities”,

prepares to issue a relevant contract—that is, one exceeding a total of £1 million—it must

“give due consideration to the relevant guidelines”.

We have not heard much about those relevant guidelines, but they were published by the Office of Government Commerce in 2009 in a document called “Promoting skills through public procurement”. It is a long document, but I want to refer to one particular sentence. The document goes through the process that a public body has to follow in granting a tender. It says of the stage at which the contract is granted:

“It is at this stage that public authorities should”—

I am afraid that the document is not written correctly because there is a word missing; I think it should say “should meet”—

“Regulation 39 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2006”,

which states

“that contracting authorities ‘may stipulate conditions relating to the performance of a public contract, provided that those conditions are compatible with Community law and are indicated in the contract notice and the contract documents or the contract documents’.”

Clearly, the 2006 regulations contained in the guidelines mentioned in clause 1 already give local authorities the power that the Bill seeks to give them in order to do all the things the hon. Gentleman would like them to do.

The second part of clause 1 would require that an authority “may specify” that

“a minimum proportion of the apprentices employed by the contractor are higher or advanced”

apprenticeship level. Because of the use of the word “may”, that could equally mean “may not specify”. The provision is therefore completely superfluous, irrelevant and unnecessary.

“Apprentice” is defined in clause 4 as having

“the meaning given in section 32 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009”.

I thought that I would have a look at that to see what the definition is. It gives a definition not of “apprentice” but of “apprenticeship agreement”, which is not what one would expect from reading clause 4. If the Bill receives a Second Reading, that should be looked at, because clearly some clarification is needed regarding the definition of “apprentice”.

Clause 2 deals with the advertising of work force vacancies. In an intervention, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish said, “You must be in favour of that”, but it is not as straightforward as that. In some cases, these contracts cover the whole country. Does he intend that, if the contractor needs to take on half a dozen extra workers as a result of getting the contract, they should advertise every single one of those vacancies across the whole country? That is what the clause would mean if taken literally, and of course one has to take it literally, so, if it is a national contract, that is what the contractor would have to do. As the hon. Gentleman himself admitted, this is the one clause that is mandatory, because it

“must require the contractor to…advertise all vacancies”

in local jobcentres.

Another aspect is that many local newspapers rely on job adverts to survive in this day and age. I wonder what they would think of this provision if they suddenly lost their local job adverts as a result. The first thing that many people do when they are looking for a job is to turn to the local paper.

[Barbara Keeley]

What does the hon. Gentleman have to say about the situation with our local paper, which is not delivered to all parts of Salford? A lot of postcode areas do not get a paper and if the jobs were not advertised at the jobcentre, the people who live in those areas, most of which are deprived, would not see them.

[Mr Nuttall]

I think the hon. Lady is referring to a free paper, but what I had in mind was a paid-for paper. Either way, any jobseeker who is anywhere near half-interested in finding a job will not find it beyond their wit to get hold of a paper.

[Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)]

On the question of a paid-for paper, my area has a population of 80,000, but the local paper’s circulation is only 7,000. The jobcentre is the only place that most people can get it.

[Mr Nuttall]

The point remains the same: a jobseeker would look in the paper whether it is delivered to their home or whether they read it at a friend’s house, a jobcentre or a library. The point is that they would still look in a local paper.

[Philip Davies]

Is not the issue more complicated than that? Many people who may be interested in pursuing an apprenticeship might not go to the jobcentre to look for an advert. Someone who is doing their A-levels and considering the next stage of their education—they might be thinking about going to university to do a degree—might never go to the jobcentre, but if they saw a particular opportunity advertised, they might think, “That might be better for me than going to university.” Is it not the case that advertising at just the jobcentre would be of no use to many people?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The clause is restrictive. It suggests that all an employer would have to do is put an advert in just the jobcentre and they would then think that they had discharged their duty. They would not necessarily feel that they should advertise any wider than that, because that is all the clause requires them to do.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Surely the hon. Gentleman is not arguing against the logic he voiced earlier when he said that he supported small businesses? He seems to be saying that they should be compelled to advertise apprenticeship positions in the local papers, which would involve many requisite costs.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am not suggesting any compulsion. It is the hon. Gentleman’s Bill that suggests that small businesses must advertise.

[Andrew Gwynne]

In jobcentres.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am not suggesting that small businesses should be forced to advertise in a local paper. I am suggesting that, given that the Bill requires them to advertise in a jobcentre, they might then not advertise in a local paper.

[Philip Davies]

Is this not the difference between our attitude and that of Opposition Members? Their nanny state approach is to say that employers cannot be trusted to advertise in a way that will help them find the right person for the job. Surely we can trust employers to advertise in a way that helps them find the right person for their business. We do not need the nanny state approach of the Labour party.

[Mr Nuttall]

Any employer seeking to take on new apprentices or, indeed, new employees will want to cast their net as widely as possible. When I was an employer, we routinely advertised in the paper and at the jobcentre, because we wanted as many people as possible to see the advertisement, which is what any form of advertising seeks to achieve. This is not the worst clause I have ever seen, but I do not think there is any need for it, because any employer looking for new staff would automatically seek to cast their net widely.

Clause 3 states:

“Skills training provided by the contractor must form part of a nationally accredited scheme.”

Anybody who knows anything about the current form of apprenticeships will be aware that they result, by definition, in a nationally recognised qualification, whether it is at level 2, level 3 or level 4. I am therefore not sure what is added by clause 3.

The Government have done a lot to develop apprenticeships since taking office. They asked Doug Richard, an England-based Californian entrepreneur, to look in great depth at how the apprenticeship system was working. Hon. Members may remember that he came to prominence as a dragon in the first two series of the BBC’s “Dragons’ Den” programme. In 2008, he founded the School for Startups, which is an enterprise that teaches entrepreneurship in partnership with UK universities, the Royal Institution and the British Library.

The Richard review, which was produced in November 2012, is a substantial piece of work. Doug Richard spent months speaking to apprentices, employers and Government organisations. He highlights the problems that have developed in the apprenticeship system. The Government carried out a substantial consultation process for several months over the summer, which involved seven workshops covering assessment, qualifications and—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am afraid, Mr Nuttall, that you are again drifting beyond the purpose of the Bill. Let me be clear that your remarks have to relate to the Bill and its four clauses, which you have already debated rather extensively. We do not need a review of the Richard review. I want you to relate your comments to the Bill and its clauses. I hope that I have made myself clear this time, because I think that I might have failed last time.

[Mr Nuttall]

The reason the Richard review is enormously relevant is that in such a huge piece of work, nowhere did Doug Richard come up with the solution that is contained in the Bill. He spoke to hundreds of employers and Government organisations—I will not go through them all—but he did not come up with the solution in the Bill, and neither did any of people who responded to the Government’s consultation exercise over the summer. I hope that we hear more from the Minister about that, because he will have all the facts and figures at his fingertips. The Government’s work on the matter is therefore relevant.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley briefly mentioned, this week the Prime Minister himself announced the new trailblazer programme during his visit to the Mini plant in Oxford. That programme will move apprenticeships on to a new level and deal with the problem that the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish says he is concerned about, which is the quality of apprenticeships. The Government’s approach is to have employers, rather than the Government themselves, lead the development of apprenticeships, and that is what the trailblazer system will ensure. As the Prime Minister said:

“If you want an apprenticeship, we’re going to make sure you do the best apprenticeship in the world.”

That sums up the trailblazer approach.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, whereas we all want to strive for what the Prime Minister set out, the Bill would be in danger of bringing apprenticeships back to being tokenistic? They would exist only to fulfil a contract requirement, not to help the wider apprenticeships agenda.

[Mr Nuttall]

That is the fear about making requirements mandatory, or even creating an impression that would make them quasi-mandatory, which could happen if we passed the Bill.

It has been suggested that the Bill’s definition of “relevant contract” as those being of more than £1 million means that it will not affect small and medium-sized enterprises. Actually, a £1 million contract may cover a period of not a month or six months but three or five years. A micro-company, which is defined as one with fewer than 10 employees, could easily bid for such a contract, so it is simply not the case that the £1 million threshold means that the Bill will cover only the largest companies.

We want to encourage more small and medium-sized companies to apply for contracts, and the Government’s website is an excellent resource. If there is one thing that we can get out of this morning’s debate, it is to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises that are thinking about bidding for Government work to look at that website, which is really user-friendly. A few days ago, the Government finished consulting on how to make it even more user-friendly, and I hope we will hear about that from the Minister. The website is excellent, and users can filter contracts by type and financial value. As a matter of interest, because of the £1 million threshold specified in the Bill, I typed in “construction” and filtered the results to contracts of more than £1 million, and 304 contracts were listed.

I am not sure what the point of clause 2 is. It looks unnecessary to me.

On clause 5, I am not sure why a 12-month delay before the Bill comes into force is specified. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish did not say why, if it is so important, it should not come into force straight away. Perhaps he will explain in his closing remarks why he has not provided for it to come into force in the usual way, perhaps one month after Royal Assent.

I accept that there is a plethora of statistics on the number of apprenticeships but, by any measure, the Government have an excellent story to tell on the number that have been created in the past three years. The Bill will not do anything to increase the number of apprenticeships. On the other hand, it might create a tick-box atmosphere and culture among those who are interested in, or who apply for, Government contracts. For all those reasons, I oppose the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wright]

I found it astonishing too. I was particularly concerned by the 55-minute speech of the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). I am sure that those 555 18 to 24-year-olds in his constituency will be surprised to hear that he did not want apprenticeship opportunities advertised in his local jobcentre.

[Mr Nuttall]

With the greatest of respect, I never said that I did not want job opportunities advertised in the Bury jobcentre—incidentally, my office is just around the corner from it. I just think it should be left to employers to decide where they advertise their jobs.

[Mr Wright]

But does the hon. Gentleman not agree that, in order for the opportunities to be cast as wide as possible, young people should be made aware of them. There could be teachers, schools and colleges who are not aware of what is on offer. As I just said, I am keen to see these opportunities advertised in jobcentres, but I am also keen to table amendments in Committee to ensure that schools, colleges and others in the community are made aware of them.

House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

David Nuttall Excerpts

Friday 18th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

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

As Lord Steel stated when he introduced the first of his five private Members’ Bills on this subject, some six years ago, the years of debate about the long-term reform of the House of Lords have obscured the need for effective, immediate, yet modest, reform. Today, I hope that we can all set aside any differences we may have on long-term, substantial reform of the House of Lords and instead focus on delivering the very modest reform that this Bill delivers—although modest, it is overdue and increasingly necessary. It is important, too, that the House notes that this Bill has broad cross-party support. It has broad support across both Houses of Parliament, in the media and across the country.

Over the past few months, I have engaged widely on this matter, doing my best to ensure that this Bill is not seen as frightening or sinister in any way. I hope that I have been successful, because it is not a stalking horse aimed at any group of peers and it is not certainly not an attempt to close off any potential future reform. I wish to tackle head on the issue of the debate over an elected House of Lords, because this Bill makes no contribution to that debate whatsoever. The Bill does not prevent or preclude further reform of the House of Lords, at any time or of any type. This Bill is simply irrelevant to the debate over election to the Lords, and I believe that any Member, regardless of their position on an elected Lords, should feel comfortable supporting this Bill.

It is fair to say that that Lord Steel’s Bills did contain some controversial features: the establishment of a statutory appointments commission and an end to the by-elections for hereditary peers. My Bill does not reintroduce those proposals, and instead contains three core elements, all of which have already been agreed by the House of Lords during the passage of Lord Steel’s most recent Bill. First, my Bill provides for the retirement or resignation of peers who are Members of the House of Lords; secondly, it provides that those peers who do not attend should be cease to be Members of the House; and, finally, it provides that those Members convicted of a serious offence should also cease to be Members.

Clause 1 provides that peers may retire or resign as a Member of the House of Lords by giving notice in writing to the Clerk of the Parliaments. It will, for the first time, provide peers with an honourable and dignified retirement mechanism. It has been suggested that, in some instances, the honour of serving in the Lords has become a life sentence, and it should not be so. As the Leader’s Group on Members Leaving the House observed in 2011:

“For a conscientious member who has played a full role in Parliament, and takes his or her commitment to the House seriously, an honourable release from obligation could be welcome.”

Currently, there is no mechanism by which a Member of the House of Lords can permanently conclude his or her membership.

A leave of absence system was introduced in 1958 to address growing concern regarding low or non-attendance, but it has failed to meet the objective outlined by the then Leader of the House, the Earl of Home. He said that

“the objective which all of us desire is that we should be, and should be seen to be, an efficient and workmanlike House of Parliament, playing a limited but a definite and valuable part in the Constitution of our country.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 April 1958; Vol. 208, c. 1005.]

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Although my hon. Friend suggests that the leave of absence system is not working, the latest figures that were in last week’s The House magazine show that 43 Members of the other place are on leave of absence, and the Parliament website gives a list of them. So it does appear that at least some Members in the other place are making use of the system.

[Dan Byles]

Absolutely; in the absence of any method of leaving the other House, the leave of absence system does provide a compromise. However, it is far from a perfect compromise, because one could very well ask: how many peers do we currently have? The 43 peers currently on a permanent leave of absence have a very ambiguous status. Some of them could, in theory, continue to seek a rolling leave of absence each time for 10 or 15 years and then suddenly decide to come back and start voting again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Byles]

Absolutely, and as I said, I understand that a number of noble Lords are in exactly that position. I repeat that the Lords have previously passed these measures and sent them to the House of Commons, but the system for private Members’ Bills from the Lords has meant that this House has not agreed them. Why should this House continue to stand in the way of extremely simple and modest reforms that the other House has requested?

[Mr Nuttall]

When these measures were considered in the other place, Lord Steel’s Bill had the short title House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill, but they are now in the House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill, whose title contains that dangerous word, “reform”. Would my hon. Friend like to comment on why he has not stuck with Lord Steel’s title?

[Dan Byles]

That is a good question. Lord Steel has made five attempts to bring in some degree of reform. His first four Bills were all called the House of Lords Bill. There is also a House of Lords Reform Bill before the other place in the name of Baroness Hayman. We would need to ask Lord Steel why he made the change for his last Bill, but one can speculate about why he felt the House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill might have sounded less contentious. My view is that we are all grown-up and whether the word “reform” is in the title is not really the point. The point is what is in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Blunkett]

Yes, I do believe that, and I put forward a paper to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee on how the House of Lords could have a different function, building on what it already achieves and is good at, if we took away, very carefully, the element of it being a legislature. That does not mean that it could not debate and put forward legislative propositions; I am talking about the constitutional role that it plays, which is what upsets people so much—people not being elected to it— even if, under the proposal of the Deputy Prime Minister, those people would not be responsible or accountable to the people who elected them, because they would never have to stand for election again; nor would they have held offices, or have had to report back to their multiple constituencies in any meaningful sense. It would be good to start with the question of what we want the House of Lords to do, and then go on to how it should be made up, and how we could make it function better.

Unfortunately, as the hon. Member for North Warwickshire, who opened this Second Reading debate, is always ready to acknowledge, the pressure on him was to minimise any suggestion of any proposition whatever. He cannot be blamed for bringing forward a Bill that moves—I was going to use the term “goalposts”, but I think that has been overdone in the past fortnight.

[Mr Nuttall]

We are talking about badgers again.

[Mr Blunkett]

I was thinking of pitches. Let me put it this way: it is a Bill that moves the sods very little at all. We should commend the Bill, ask ourselves whether we are serious in wanting reform, and put it to our respective parties that it would be quite useful to put in the manifestos commitments to finding solutions, rather than putting up propositions that we all know will meet their demise once the practicalities, sensitivities and realities are examined and voted on in this place. Then we might get commendation from the electorate for acting like grown-ups and adults, and for being prepared to move our constitution on a little bit, while the rest of world moves the constitution around us.

I give my support to the hon. Member for North Warwickshire. Whatever heads of pins people may stand on, and while they might make sensible points in amendments to the Bill, it would be a great shame if so modest a measure was scuppered by people who wanted the perfect as an alternative to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Clark]

I was about to say that the Bill contains modest proposals that the Government are prepared to support. Obviously, it needs to be scrutinised closely in Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) has ventured into the Bermuda triangle himself on occasion—whether he was singed or not is for him to say, but I am pleased to see him in his place today and look forward to his contribution.

The changes that are set out, as the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) said, are relatively straightforward and represent common sense. There are those who argue that no change should be made until the wider case for reform, or improvement, as the right hon. Gentleman had it, or change, as other people might have it, can be agreed, but there is a clear consensus, after five attempts in the House of Lords, on the need to describe some arrangements that constitute incremental but nevertheless practical changes. It is only right that this House should listen to that call and take time to scrutinise it.

[Mr Nuttall]

Bearing in mind that these proposals had already been considered on a number of occasions by the other place before the Government introduced the House of Lords Reform Bill, does the Minister agree that had these measures been introduced in this place at that time, they would now be on the statute book?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

It is, as always, a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who made, as usual, a very illuminating speech on the matter of Lords reform. I was one of the 91 hon. Members to whom he referred. However, on this Bill I do not start from the same position as I started from on the gargantuan House of Lords Reform Bill, because although this Bill’s title contains the word “Reform”, anyone would have to accept that it is not in the same league as the previous Bill.

I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on his courage in dipping his toes into the deep and turbulent waters of House of Lords reform. As an adventurer of world-record-breaking renown, he is no man to shirk a challenge. It is certainly a challenge to try to steer any House of Lords measure through this House, but no one is more capable of doing so than him. He should be congratulated on his bravery in picking up this issue. When he announced that he was introducing this Bill, he wrote on his website:

“Lords reform has been a difficult and controversial subject”.

Few would dispute that statement. It is a topic that has caused problems for many before him. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the Bill, he should be congratulated on introducing it.

Although the Bill’s short title is the House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill, it is fair to say that it is not in the same league as the Government’s own blockbuster House of Lords Reform Bill, which hit the rocks and then sank without trace in the previous Session. It is nevertheless a reforming measure. I would take slight issue with my hon. Friend when he said that there was a “slight hint of constitutionality” about it. I would venture to submit that, on any measure, it must be construed as a constitutional Bill, albeit, I accept, a modest one. I wonder whether the private Members’ Bill route is the correct one for bringing legislation of a constitutional nature before this House. This Bill is certainly not typical of a private Member’s Bill.

I urge the Government to consider the merits of putting the Bill over to a Committee of the whole House rather than sending it to be dealt with upstairs, as would be normal for a private Member’s Bill. As I said in my intervention on the Minister, had the Government introduced a House of Lords reform Bill along these lines instead of the leviathan they did introduce, there would be no need for my hon. Friend’s Bill. The matter could have been dealt with in the normal way as a Government Bill, and that would have gone some way towards assuaging the feelings of those who would like more far-reaching House of Lords reform measures. At least, for them, it would have been some measure of progress.

My own approach to constitutional reform, which is particularly appropriate in relation to reform of the House of Lords, is that if it is to be done at all, it should be done on the basis of evolution rather than revolution. I accept that the aims of this Bill are fairly modest, but let us recognise that they have the potential to have a fairly radical effect on the membership of the other place. Because of the nature of the Bill, one can only surmise what its true effect would be. For example, if a statutory retirement scheme were to be introduced, we would have no way of knowing whether there would be a sudden rush of Members of the other place wanting to take advantage of it.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the number of people who might take up such a scheme would depend on what the incentives were? One of the proposals that I made in my modest Bill is that there should be an opportunity for those who seek to retire from the other place to exchange their life peerage for a hereditary one.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that suggestion, which he says is contained in his Bill; obviously I have not yet reached that provision. That would be an innovative way forward. As the law stands, it would exclude people from membership of the House of Lords, but they would be entitled to stand in any by-election that arose among the hereditary peers and would thus have a potential route back, should they so desire.

According to last Friday’s edition of The House magazine, dated 11 October, the current membership of the House of Lords is as follows: 220 Labour peers, 219 Conservatives, 184 Cross Benchers, 98 Liberal Democrats, 22 bishops, 21 non-affiliated Members, two members of the Democratic Unionist party, two members of the Ulster Unionist party, two members of the United Kingdom Independence party, two members of Plaid Cymru, one Green party peer, and five others. I am not sure where those others come from after such a long list of other parties, but there are five of them. Eight peers are currently disqualified. I understand that disqualification comes through perhaps being a judge, which prevents people from being members of the other House. As has been said, 43 peers are on leave of absence.

That gives a total of 829 peers, or 786 if one excludes—which one usually does—those who have taken leave of absence. Of those 786, roughly two thirds—537 or 68.3%—come from the three major parties: Labour, Conservative and the Liberal Democrats. The rest are the Cross Benchers, the Bishops and members of the various other smaller parties.

I understand that the average attendance is in the region of two thirds of the total, which means that it is a little over 500. That is not that dissimilar to this place. The argument for House of Lords reform is invariably made on the grounds that it is too large and unwieldy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has said, it is somewhat ironical that over the years Governments of all descriptions have rushed to appoint new peers. The previous Labour Government created 408 peerages when they were in power, which led to an enormous increase in the size of the House.

The Bill would not have much effect—except in the case of the occasional, perhaps forced, expulsion of a Member who committed a serious criminal offence—on the numbers turning up to take part in the day-to-day work of the other place. No one should kid themselves that the problems of overcrowding would be eased that much by the Bill.

The Bill essentially has three different aspects and I will consider each in turn. The first is the retirement or resignation of a peer, the second the removal of a peer for non-attendance, and the third the removal of a peer after conviction for committing a serious criminal offence. I am inclined to agree that it is absurd that a Member of the other place should be required to remain a Member if they no longer wish to do so, but there is already in place a procedure that enables them to take leave of absence. Last Friday, The House magazine stated that 43 noble Lords have taken such leave of absence. Roughly 5% have taken advantage of the process, so it must be fairly widely known and it seems to be working. There is a list on the Parliament website of those Lords who have taken a leave of absence. I will not read it out, but what I will say is that 10 Members of the other place applied for leave of absence and were granted it in the first month of this Parliament back in May 2010. Those 10 knew straight away what the situation was and that they would not be able to attend, so they applied for a leave of absence.

Although the mechanism set out in the Bill is one way of dealing with this—and perhaps we can consider it in more detail if the Bill gets to Committee—it might be better if, rather than starting up a new system, we built on the existing mechanism of a leave of absence and made a provision for something that might be called a permanent leave of absence, whereby peers could simply say that until they write again they do not wish to be bothered by receipt of the writ of summons.

[Mr Chope]

Is that not exactly the system that is in place? A permanent leave of absence system was established in 2011 and I think that three noble Lords have taken advantage of it. The only respect in which it is not permanent is that it entails at the beginning of a new Parliament that each peer, even when in receipt of a permanent leave of absence, receives a writ of summons.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am not aware of the minutiae of the two schemes, but perhaps the informal voluntary scheme, which was introduced in 2011 and which allows a Member to write to the Clerk of Parliaments indicating their wish permanently to retire, has not been given a chance to work. It has not even been in operation throughout an entire Parliament yet. As my hon. Friend says, in its first two years of operation the scheme has attracted only three Members to take advantage of it, two of whom had been non-attenders for several years.

The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee helpfully produced, only this week, its ninth report of Session 2013-14, “House of Lords reform: what next?” The Committee took evidence during its inquiry and the broad consensus in the written evidence it received was that the current voluntary retirement scheme has not been effective and that it has had no notable impact. That raises the question of the extent to which the scheme has been publicised to their noble lordships. How many of them are aware that it is in place?

I think I am right in saying that my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire said during his excellent opening remarks that, at present, six Members want permanently to retire. If that is the case, it would be interesting to know—perhaps we will find out as the Bill moves through its various stages—why they have not availed themselves of the present voluntary retirement scheme, which, as I have said, was introduced back in 2011. Do they know that the scheme exists? If they do, why have they not taken advantage of it?

[Mr Chope]

In answering that question before the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the Clerk of the Parliaments said that the reason was that there were no incentives. That is why I mentioned the need for incentives in my earlier interventions.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am extremely concerned about the desire to offer an incentive scheme. The danger is that, far from this being a cost-saving measure, it could end up costing the taxpayer a great deal more than the present system.

I accept, as a ballpark figure, that the scheme might involve several dozen Members of the other place who, for whatever reason, are not regular attenders. However, because peers receive an attendance allowance only if they turn up, all those who have taken a leave of absence or who simply do not turn up are not costing the taxpayer anything. If we offer their noble lordships an incentive to retire, we will enter an arms race of incentives. Although some Lords might accept the incentive, others will say that it is not enough, so people will say that we ought to make the incentives more generous. There are dangers in going down that road.

I can understand why peers might want to retire. As I have often said, a peer who is appointed in middle age or at the end of many years in another career will want to spend 10, 15 or 20 years in the other place. However, many of them will feel obliged to keep soldiering on out of a sense of duty to the other place and to the country. Of course, many of them do so.

[Dan Byles]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We must not underestimate the power of the writ of summons. For somebody who has devoted a substantial portion of their life to the service of their country and to Parliament, receiving the writ of summons from the monarch is difficult to ignore, even if they have taken leave and are entitled not to attend. Some people really do feel that they are letting their country down by not attending or not playing a more active role. It seems to me that having a formal retirement mechanism, rather than the informal one that is in place, whereby they would no longer receive the writ of summons but a great thank you for their service and would be allowed to retire in peace, would be an important step.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an important and worthwhile point. There will be noble Lords in the other place who feel that they have an obligation to continue. One suggestion is that there should be a formal retirement ceremony to mark the service of a peer. There is, after all, a formal ceremony to introduce new peers into the House of Lords. We saw that ceremony only yesterday, when two new peers were introduced. That demonstrates that the figures that I gave from last week’s The House magazine are already out of date because of the new peers who were announced over the summer.

It is reasonable that new peers are introduced from time to time. Inevitably, the numbers will fall over time by reason of death. When there is a diminution in the number of working peers—those who regularly attend and take part in proceedings—because peers have died, it is right that the party leaders should replace them. What is not right—we saw this all too often under the last Government—is the creation of new peers for party political purposes. Currently, the Conservative party has nowhere near a majority in the other place.

The 2011 Leader’s group report, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire mentioned in his opening speech, suggested that it should be considered whether a

“modest pension, or payment on retirement”

would provide peers with an incentive to take up voluntary retirement, while also providing an overall saving to the taxpayer. I am not sure that it would provide an overall saving to the taxpayer. To be fair, such a payment is not suggested in the Bill, but I hope that it is not the thin end of the wedge. We should make it clear that there will be no inducement for Members of the other place to retire.

[Mr Chope]

Is not one of the problems with the Bill that it is silent on that issue? If my hon. Friend is right, surely the Bill should provide that retirement should not be associated in any way with payment.

[Mr Nuttall]

It would have been helpful if there had been explanatory notes to the Bill that dealt with that issue. I have not seen any explanatory notes.

[Dan Byles]

If it was felt that something of that sort was necessary, it could be considered in Committee. Originally, the Bill simply referred to “retirement” and I changed it to “retirement or resignation” because I felt that the word “retirement” on its own had a number of implications to do with age, pensions and so on. I made it “retirement or resignation” to make it clear that it was not linked to the end of somebody’s working life and the connotations that go with that.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. It is entirely conceivable that there will be peers who wish to leave the other place for reasons other than retirement. They might wish to pursue another avenue.

It is often said that the other place is full of retired politicians. The last figures that I saw showed that only about a quarter of the Members of the other place had previously been Members of this House. On that basis, it would be a little unfair to describe the other place as being full of retired politicians.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I have something of a pub quiz question. Can my hon. Friend name a single former Liberal Democrat MP who is not in the other place?

[Mr Nuttall]

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg).

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

In a spirit of helpfulness, may I suggest Lembit Öpik?

[Mr Nuttall]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Perhaps we can refrain from discussing individual Members of the other place, or even those who might be individual Members of the other place.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful for the helpful intervention from my hon. Friend, because I fear that I would not have got very many points for that particular question in the pub quiz.

If I may return to where I was—which was not with the Liberal Democrats—it is perhaps a little unfair to condemn all the Members of the other place as retired politicians, when only about a quarter are former Members of this House. Moreover, they are not retired politicians, because they are still taking part in the political process. That is the crucial point. They may be retired Members of the House of Commons, but it is an entirely noble—I use the word in its fullest sense—calling to be a Member of the other place and to devote one’s working life to the scrutiny of legislation, as they do so admirably.

All too often, certainly when House of Lords reform is being discussed, we look at the problem from the wrong end of the telescope. I am not making that point about this Bill, which is modest in its aims, but generally we look at the mechanics of the Lords rather than whether it is doing a good job in its primary task of scrutinising the legislation that we send to it. The answer is invariably that it is doing a good job.

The 2011 Leader’s group report suggested that it would be worth while investigating whether a modest pension or payment on retirement should be provided. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee took evidence on that point, and the evidence of the Clerk of the Parliaments confirmed that savings could be made. I have some doubts about that, but it is a cause for concern. There is merit in the suggestion that we should have some sort of retirement procedure, whether it is called retirement or resignation—perhaps we could call it a leaving party. If that idea took off, it could mean a boost to the economy with House of Lords retirement parties, and give all hon. Members a new diary engagement at the end of each Session, as various Members of the other place retired or resigned.

We have had considerable discussion about what sort of scheme should be in place, and what use retired Members could make of the facilities. It has been suggested, for example, that the retired or resigned Members could still be entitled to make use of the facilities, and it might be worth looking at that idea. It is not an idea that I would favour, because in my view if someone has left, they have left, but it would perhaps be one way to encourage people to resign or retire.

Clause 2 relates to non-attendance and provides that if someone does not attend during a Session, the Lord Speaker can certify that they

“did not attend at any time during the Session, having regard to attendance records kept by officials of the House, and…did not have leave of absence in respect of the Session, in accordance with Standing Orders of the House.”

My concern about that provision is that it is not entirely clear what “attend” means. For example, if someone attends the building, but does not take part in proceedings on the Floor of the House, does that count as attendance?

[Dan Byles]

I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to clause 2(4), which states that

“a reference to attendance is a reference to attending the proceedings of the House (including the proceedings of a Committee of the House).”

[Mr Nuttall]

I was coming on to that point, but it does not explain whether attending the proceedings of the House covers, for example, somebody who wishes to attend and listen to the debate, but then decides that they do not want to take part in the vote.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend will be aware that, because of the very large numbers in the House of Lords, the seating at the Bar of the House that is not technically within the Lords is now being used by peers. If a peer were to sit behind the Bar, hoping to attend but not actually be in the body of the House, would that count as attendance?

[Mr Nuttall]

As always, my hon. Friend makes a valuable and pertinent point. Have those peers attended the proceedings or not? What if they were to attend but had to witness the proceedings from the Gallery because of the lack of seats?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I can help my hon. Friend on that point. Certainly in this House, the Gallery counts as the House and, if the Chamber is full, it is possible to speak from the Gallery, which I hope at some point to do—although not today. [Laughter.]

[Mr Nuttall]

No, not today. Whether one is on the Floor of the House in the other place or in the Gallery, does merely attending and watching count as attendance, or would one be expected to vote? Many of the Cross Benchers, because of the nature of their appointment to the other place, often do not wish to vote on certain issues, so we need to be careful with that provision.

Clause 2 amounts to the compulsory exclusion of a peer from the other place, and in many ways it is therefore much more controversial than clause 1. Clause 1 has its problems, but we can deal with it. Clause 2 is more controversial, because someone would risk being excluded from the other place against their will. They might not be happy about being excluded and we should be careful in our consideration of the provision. It has been suggested that we should go even further and put in a minimum attendance level and link it to the number of votes a peer takes part in. For example, as a minimum, a peer should take part in at least 10% of votes to maintain their membership of the other place.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is quite dangerous. I can think of at least one former Prime Minister who would be disqualified from attendance of this place.

[Mr Nuttall]

I agree with my hon. Friend that it would be a dangerous precedent to adopt. We heard from the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), who suggested that voting should be used as a method of determining whether peers are non-attenders. In a written submission to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, he stated that peers who have not voted in more than 10% of Divisions for three Sessions out of the last five should be removed from having “a formal role”:

“They would of course remain Peers and could be allowed access to the restaurants and bars (but not offices, research and other working facilities). This would be commercially prudent.”

That may be prudent from a commercial point of view, but it would be the worst of all worlds. We would have Members of the other place effectively treating it is a social club: not taking part in proceedings, just having a drink in the bar. If anything were to bring the other place into disrepute, it would be such a mechanism.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Would it not also undermine the benefit of having a House of Lords of specialists? We want peers to intervene on subjects they know about, not to turn up for any old thing on which they have no expertise.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point that links in with my earlier point about Cross Benchers, who often feel that they only want to take part in debates on issues on which they have specialist knowledge. It may be that in one Session their area of expertise is not brought before the House, but that in the next Session it is and their expertise is desperately needed.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

While I do not wish to disagree with my hon. Friends, I find it extraordinary that people could be appointed to the House of Lords and contribute, in more than 10 years, to just one debate on one day. They could give evidence to Select Committees, if that is all they are worth.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful for that intervention. I think the vast majority of peers, as the figures demonstrate, take an active part in the proceedings of the other place. As with any large body, there will always be one or two Members who fall outside the general norm. The old adage says that difficult cases make bad law. We should not form our laws around one or two cases; we should look at the majority.

There are a lot of other things we could do to deal with non-attendance. Frankly, if peers are not attending, they are not causing any problems—they are not taking up any space and not making use of the facilities. I understand that there are one or two Members who, apparently, use the facilities but do not attend. Quite how that works needs to be considered, but I am sure there are other ways to do it. For example, it would be easy, even if the clause became law, for Members who wanted to retain their membership of the other place to take advantage of their membership without playing a full and active part. They could turn up on the first day of the Session, take part in a Division, thus ticking that box, continue to come and go as they please and not take part in anything else. Human nature being what it is, there will always be one or two who do that if such a provision is introduced. It would perhaps become known as “the Byles attendance”. They would do their Byles attendance day, get their mark and think, “Phew, that’s dealt with clause 2.”

[Dan Byles]

I would hate it for anybody to think that any measure in the Bill, with the possible exception of the references to criminality, is accusing any Member of the House of Lords of gaming the system. That is not the intention. The Bill does not suggest that people are trying to pull a fast one; it is simply that some people want to leave and should be allowed to leave, and that some people have no interest in attending and therefore should be moved on so they can be replaced by somebody else. Of course, my hon. Friend is right that there are always ways of gaming the system, but the Bill starts with the premise that we are all hon. Members and noble Lords and will probably not be gaming the system.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. I need to make it absolutely clear that no one is suggesting, and I am sure that none of the hon. Members who have intervened is suggesting, that any noble Lord is taking advantage of the facilities of the other place without playing a full part in proceedings. What we are doing is looking at hypothetical cases that might happen, which is right and proper when we consider legislation of this nature.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is being too generous, if not naive. In his evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Lord Cormack said that

“it is difficult to say this but it has to be said. There are those who attend very regularly indeed and do precisely nothing. They do not speak; they do not take part in committees; they vote.”

[Mr Nuttall]

That is evidence straight from the other place. If that is the case—we have no reason to doubt that it is not correct—the situation we are discussing might not be as hypothetical as I have just ventured to suggest. I still express the hope and desire that it is not widespread. If it is happening, it raises questions about whether we need the provisions in clause 2. My point, which is that there will always be people who try to play the system, is applicable.

Finally on the non-attendance provision, what if someone was in a coma as a result of tragically being involved a road traffic accident, and so unable to apply for leave of absence or attend? I appreciate that it is up to the Lord Speaker to issue a certificate, but I wonder whether someone suffering from ill health ought to be protected by being excluded from the clause.

Under clause 3, a Member could be excluded from the House of Lords if they were convicted of a serious offence and

“sentenced or ordered to be imprisoned or detained indefinitely or for more than one year.”

To get straight to the heart of my concern, human nature being what it is, there is a danger that those involved in sentencing, knowing the accused to be a Member of the House of Lords and knowing that were they to hand down a sentence of 12 months or more they would lose their membership of the other place, might think, “Well, we’d better not give them 12 months, because we don’t want them to lose their membership”, or, “Well, we’ll give them more than would otherwise be the case, because we think they ought to lose their membership.”

I do not know which of those two evils is the worst; they would both be equally unwelcome, so I wonder whether we would not be better to leave the matter to a committee on standards and privileges in the other place to consider each case on its merits. It could then weigh up the different aspects of each case and decide whether it would be appropriate to expel the Member. I entirely agree that there is a danger, if the other place does not have rules in line with those in this House, that people outside will rightly think that there is one rule for some and one rule for others; and they would not expect those who have broken the law in a serious manner also to sit in the legislature making the laws. All we have to do is come up with a mechanism for dealing with that.

I am concerned about sentences handed down by foreign courts. I suspect that such concerns are the reason clause 3(6) provides that if the other place resolves that there are special circumstances, a Member of the other place convicted of a serious offence could still remain a Member of the House of Lords, if the conviction was outside the United Kingdom. Obviously, there could be many jurisdictions in which an offence carries a much more serious penalty than in this country, which is why this provision is in the Bill, and rightly so. I wonder, though, whether anything would be lost by removing the phrase “outside the United Kingdom” and leaving it open to the Lords in any case, even if the sentence had been handed down by a court in this jurisdiction, to waive in certain circumstances the provisions in clause 3(1).

The final three clauses deal with the effect of ceasing to be a Member, the detailed rules about the issuing of a certificate by the Lord Speaker and the short title, commencement and extent of the Bill, all of which I have no comment to make on at the present time. Although this is a relatively modest measure, it could have enormous constitutional consequences for the other place. I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire on his bravery in bringing it forward and repeat my request that this matter is considered by a Committee of the whole House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). His remarks should persuade anybody who has any doubts about the desirability of having this constitutional measure debated on the Floor of the House in a Committee of the whole House of the wisdom of that course of action, because this is a serious constitutional Bill. In the absence of a written constitution, it is this House and the other place that have to look after our constitution, and why should all Members of this House not be able to consider in detail the provisions and implications of this Bill, which could be done if there were a Committee of the whole House?

One of the advantages of the Government supporting any motion in relation to Standing Order No. 63 would be that the Committee of the whole House could meet to consider this not on a Friday, but on some other day of the week, so we could get an even higher attendance than we have been able to achieve today. We could then be sure that, if and when this Bill leaves this place and goes to the other place, it will have been properly thought through and all the constitutional implications will have been explored.

One of my roles in life at the moment is to be the representative of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the Venice Commission, which looks at written constitutions. Last week in Venice we were looking at the proposed Tunisian constitution, and the time before we were looking at the amendments to the Hungarian constitution. One of the problems with those written constitutions is their rigidity. We are fortunate in having an unwritten constitution, which is inherently flexible. Long may that continue to be so. That is why it is essential that, before making changes to our constitution, which we can do by a bare majority in both Houses, those changes should have been properly thought through in the way my hon. Friend is encouraging us to do.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on introducing this Bill. It is a pity that he was not able to incorporate in it some of my ideas in the House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill, which is also on today’s Order Paper. Some of my Bill’s provisions dealing with retirement are perfectly apposite to his Bill. If his Bill reaches a Committee of the whole House, some ideas from my Bill may well be taken forward by him in the form of new clauses or amendments. I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) made specific reference to his view that we should have a maximum number of peers and that it should be 650, which is exactly what is contained in clause 1 of my Bill.

My Bill sets out a retirement process for peers on a different basis from that proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, but it does, as I mentioned in an intervention, deal with the issue of incentives for retirement. Clause 5 of my Bill refers to the ability to convert, whereby the title of someone seeking to retire becomes a hereditary one on retirement. That would provide an incentive, not an expensive one, and it would address the issue of a lack of incentive and of compensation, which seems to be very much at the forefront of my hon. Friend’s Bill.

As has come out in the debate, clause 4 of the Bill, which deals with the effect of ceasing to be a Member, is silent on the issue of any costs. Would, for example, severance payments be made? Could we ensure that there was no guarantee of, or no entitlement to, severance payments? I imagine that the issue of whether money should be paid out of central funds to compensate people who cease to be Members would be a matter for the other place. However, that should be specifically excluded from the provisions of this Bill, so that in no circumstances could a Bill which made provision for retirement from the House of Lords be an additional and significant charge on public funds.

As we recall, the Prime Minister has been very hot on the issue of reducing the cost of politics, although he was not able to reduce the numbers in this House because of the duplicitous way in which the minority Government party and the Liberal Democrat leader behaved. Meanwhile, however, the Prime Minister has been increasing significantly the numbers in the other place, and that has added significantly to the cost of politics. So the cost of politics, far from being reduced, is going up substantially. On the way back to this House yesterday, I was looking at the Daily Mail, which was forecasting that yet another tranche of new peers is going to be appointed very soon—perhaps the Minister wishes to intervene on that point. That will increase their number even beyond what we have now.

I do not know whether one reason for the visits to China by the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London was to see the Chinese second Chamber, which is the world’s largest. Our House of Lords is exceeded in size only by the Parliament of the Chinese Republic. Having regard to the relatively modest population in this country compared with that of China, I am not sure that we should be pleased that we have a Chamber of Parliament that is second in size only to that in the Republic of China. The case for reducing the number of people in the House of Lords through having a maximum number is very strong. Having said that, I am not sure that the way that the Bill goes about it is right in its present form.

Clause 1 refers to the issue of retirement or resignation. Essentially, those words have the same meaning. The long title of the Bill makes provision for retirement from the House of Lords; it does not refer to resignation. Obviously, those who were looking at the drafting of the Bill realised that the term “resignation” effectively came within the concept of retirement. The use of the word “resignation” rather than “retirement” is an issue of semantics rather than of substance.

However, I am concerned that clause 1 does not make it clear whether, and if so how, it applies to their lordships spiritual and to hereditary peers. At the moment, it seems to apply to all peers, but I am not sure it would be appropriate for the Bill to introduce rules relating to the retirement or resignation of their lordships spiritual or to hereditary peers. However, that is not spelt out in the Bill.

I am concerned also, in clause 2, about the issue of non-attendance. There are many ways of defining non-attendance and the Bill sets out some of them, but as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset made very clear, one may well be a Member of the other place but not choose to attend. For example, at the moment Baroness Ashton finds herself too preoccupied with trying to rule us from Brussels to be able to attend the other place. One might argue that, in that case, it would be a good idea if she was forced to resign, or indeed expelled, from that place, but that is a separate argument and it is not covered by the Bill. However, there is a wide range of reasons why someone might wish not to attend the other House.

Many of the witnesses who attended the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee discussions on these issues made the point that the relative number of people who would wish to retire at the moment is very modest, so because most of those who would wish to retire do not attend anyway, the provisions relating to retirement would have no significant impact on the numbers in the House of Lords. Those who are currently not attending would be faced under clause 2 with the threat that if they carried on not attending, they would be deprived of their membership, so those people might be given a perverse incentive to start attending. The Clerk of the Parliaments has said that the biggest problem with the other place is not the people who do not turn up, but the fact that so many people do turn up, with the pressure on resources.

Clause 2 is misconceived. It deals with a presentational point. Their lordships seem to think that if there is a suggestion that some people are not very regular attenders, that causes reputational damage to their lordships House. But as we have discussed, there may be any number of reasons why those people choose not to attend, and if, in any event, under the provisions of the Bill, they could receive a certificate from the Lord Speaker to the effect that, notwithstanding their lack of attendance, they could still carry on as Members of the other place, that undermines that provision of the Bill.

The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee took all that evidence, and we produced a report. Some people—even the Minister on the Front Bench today—said that they were wholly in support of everything that is in the Bill. I think that is going a bit far. Sadly, I was not able to be present at the meeting at which the Committee examined the final report and considered possible amendments. If I had been able to contribute at that stage, I certainly would have tabled some amendments.

Having said that, the report accepts that there is a case for dealing with some of the issues covered in the Bill. The strongest case relates to clause 3, on people who have committed offences, because it would bring the Lords in line with what happens in this House to a greater extent. Even on that clause, however, I have some concerns.

As soon as somebody was convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced to a year or more of imprisonment, he would automatically cease to be a Member of the other place. That would apply even before any appeals process had been exhausted. Someone might be convicted in the Crown court and wish to appeal against the sentence, but before the appeal they would lose their position in the other place.

If one wants to go along with the idea of clause 3, it would be much fairer to provide that a person ceased to be Member of the other place after they had been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment in excess of one year, but also after all their rights of appeal had been exhausted. That would still not cover someone seeking an appeal in future through the administrative process by which people can have their convictions reviewed, but the provision in clause 3 should apply only after the right of immediate appeal against a sentence has been utilised and proved unsuccessful, or after the person in question has chosen not to use it.

I agree wholeheartedly with what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said about convictions having to be from courts in the United Kingdom. Criminal legal services operate in contrasting ways in different countries, and if we are to deprive people of the right to be Members of our legislature, we should say that a conviction by a court overseas has no effect. We should not leave it to the Lord Speaker to issue a certificate on that issue.

As we heard in the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the previous Lord Speaker, Baroness Hayman, and some others of their lordships, are keen to extend the provisions of the Bill into the area of expulsion of Lords who are guilty of conduct that brings their House into disrepute. The previous Lord Speaker, along with the noble Lord Goodlad and one or two other witnesses, told us that that would be a good idea. However, the points that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset made show that we must be extremely nervous about what the impact would be if their lordships tried to extend the range of conduct—misdemeanours as well as criminal law offences—that they considered sufficient to deprive somebody of being able to be a Member of the Lords. Even in this House, we do not have the power to expel Members who have not been convicted by the criminal courts, and it is not sensible to give such powers to the other place.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does my hon. Friend think that clause 3(2) is unnecessary, and that the Bill could manage just as easily without any requirement for the Lord Speaker to issue a certificate? The Bill could simply say that if someone was convicted, they would cease to be a Member of the House of Lords, and still retain the provision in clause 3(6).

[Mr Chope]

Yes, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This is another issue on which there might be amendments. I am concerned about how the Bill will proceed, assuming that it gets its Second Reading today, because if it does not go to a Committee of the whole House, it is quite likely that there will be so many amendments that people will want to move and debate that the Bill could end up taking up all the time available for discussion on Fridays; that is another good reason why it should go to a Committee of the whole House.

I should not sit down before commenting on what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said about the potentially ageist nature of the reference to retirement in the legislation. I have the privilege of representing the constituency with the largest proportion of residents aged over 65; the proportion is just over 35%. Obviously, that means that a much higher proportion than that are able to vote in elections, because those under 18 are excluded from doing so. I therefore have a particular reason for saying that it is important that the older generation be properly represented in this House and the other place.

Quite a lot of people see it as their objective in life to try to bring in, directly or indirectly, a restriction on the age until which people can participate in our democracy in a representative capacity. We should be hostile to those moves. That is another reason why I have always been against the idea of a retirement scheme for their lordships that is based just on age. The proposal in the House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill, to which I referred earlier, would not require people to retire based on their age; retirement would relate to the date when they first became Members, which can be a completely different kettle of fish.

As my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire said, the Bill is, on any view, a modest measure, but many modest measures have been brought before the House. Some of the Bills in my name further down the Order Paper are very modest measures—two clauses at most—but that does not mean that they will find favour with the Government Front Benchers.

Birth of Prince George of Cambridge

David Nuttall Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

On behalf of all my constituents, I warmly congratulate the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the birth of their new son, Prince George, and wish him a long and happy life. The royal family provide our nation with stability and an example of service and commitment to us all. I know that the new prince and his parents will be given a very warm welcome, should they have occasion to visit Bury, Ramsbottom or Tottington.

G20

David Nuttall Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. Let me be clear about humanitarian access as opposed to humanitarian corridors. Humanitarian corridors might require, according to some, wide-scale military action to bring them about, so that is not under consideration. What is under consideration is what Baroness Amos set out, with her role at the UN, about what is necessary to get aid to the Syrians who are in need. That is about reducing border checks, reducing bureaucracy, making sure that there can be pauses in the fighting, and making sure that major cities can be accessed. Those are the things that need to be put in place, and that is what we are putting the pressure on for. As I say, if we have to go to the UN for further action, we will.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Given that our country is having to borrow the money required to meet the arbitrary target of spending 0.7% of our GDP on international aid each year, was my right hon. Friend able to discover when the other members of the G20 plan to meet their target?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that Britain is alone among G20 countries in meeting its aid promises. I see that as a source of national pride rather than of national embarrassment. We made a promise to the poorest of the world and we have kept it. If we look at the argument in a different way, I would argue that if we care about getting things done in the world that are in Britain’s interests as well as those of the poorest, keeping such a promise and using our aid budget to demonstrate that Britain can get things done is good from that point of view, too.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Nuttall Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It is this Government who commissioned the Vickers report. It is this Government who committed to a ring fence around retail banks. It is this Government who are legislating to have criminal sanctions against bankers. What did the last Government do? What did those two do when they were sitting in the Treasury when Northern Rock was handing out 110% mortgages? They were knighting Fred Goodwin and watching while Rome burned.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Q13. On Friday the town centre of Bury will fall silent as the people of Bury lead the nation in paying respects to Drummer Lee Rigby, who was so horrifically murdered on the streets of Woolwich. Will the Prime Minister join me in paying tribute to all his family and friends and his comrades in the Fusiliers for their calm and dignified response to their loss, and thank all those in the Church, our armed forces, the police and public services who have been engaged in the planning and preparation for the funeral?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend speaks for the whole country and the whole House when he talks about this issue. We should all pay tribute to Drummer Lee Rigby for his service to our country. I heard about it at first hand when in Afghanistan meeting other members of his regiment. We should also pay tribute to his family for all the pain and difficulty they are going through, and I am sure it will be a very fitting and moving service on Friday and the whole country will be mourning with them.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Nuttall Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We have another psychic telling us what is in a report that he has not seen yet. We hope that the report will be published shortly; we hope to publish it before the recess, but of course we need to check that the unclassified document is properly vetted in all respects, which is what we are doing at the moment. The simple point is: does the hon. Gentleman believe that a weapons system designed to be fired at the push of a button, at any minute of any hour of any day, 365 days a week, to flatten Moscow in a cold war context, is the only weapons system available to us? That is the question he needs to answer.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Will the Deputy Prime Minister set out the occasions on which he or any other Liberal Democrat Minister met Derek Webb and what was discussed at those meetings?

Oral Answers to Questions

David Nuttall Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The programme has not even started yet: it starts in September. It is a programme that has been praised by the Institute of Directors, the CBI and the Federation of Small Businesses, but of course it has not been praised by Len McCluskey and the Unite union. The hon. Gentleman is a member of Unite, so he has to stick to their script. What a sad day for democracy.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Q10. When he plans to visit Bury North constituency.

[The Prime Minister]

I enjoy all my visits to Bury. I look forward to visiting it again, and I always take special time to look at the statue of Sir Robert Peel.

[Mr Nuttall]

Whenever the Prime Minister does next find time to sample the delights of Bury, Ramsbottom and Tottington, will he join me in meeting some of the hundreds of local small businesses and charities that will be £2,000 a year better off from next April because of the new employment allowance, which will cut employers’ national insurance contributions, giving them a real incentive to create genuine new jobs?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right: you can now walk down any high street in any town in Britain and point out to shopkeepers and business owners that if they employ people, they will see a £2,000 reduction in their national insurance bill, and if they do not employ people, they can take people on and not pay national insurance. That is possible only because of the tough decisions the Government have taken on public spending and welfare, decisions that have never been backed by Labour, but which demonstrate that we are on the side of people who work hard and want to get on.

Afghanistan and EU Council

David Nuttall Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I do not have the specific figures for police officer training, but in our monthly update to Parliament, which I instituted, Members can see the police training numbers, the army training numbers, the overall national security force training numbers and the retention numbers. This is a good moment to pay tribute to all those from Britain, including those from Northern Ireland, for the role that they have played in helping to train the trainers in those important programmes.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that the accession of Croatia yesterday will increase the burden on the EU budget, as it will be another net recipient of EU funds?

[The Prime Minister]

That obviously puts a little extra pressure on the budget, which has been reflected, but it is a pretty modest additional amount. It is in Britain’s interests that the EU continues to enlarge and expand. Croatia has been added to what is already the world’s largest single market, and Britain as a trading nation will have all sorts of opportunities to increase our trade with and investment in Croatia. We will put in place the transitional controls available for new nations—the Government have already made that decision.