Children in Care

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I shall make a brief contribution to the debate. If people wish to read the unabridged version of my speech, it will be on my website at the end of the debate. I declare an interest as the unpaid founder and chair of both the Rebalancing the Outer Estates charity and the Early Intervention Foundation.

I fully support the motion tabled by the hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan). I may surprise colleagues by not taking the opportunity to speak again about the need to change from a late intervention philosophy to an early intervention one, the need for evidence-based policy making, or the need for a “what works” organisation for the victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse. Today I want to speak to the need for local people—real people in the localities—to make a difference in places such as my constituency, Nottingham North. In doing so, I pay a specific and well-deserved tribute to those connected with the Safe Families for Children programme for the phenomenal work that they are doing.

Safe Families was brought to the UK and started in the north-east of England entirely as a result of the energy and personal commitment of Sir Peter Vardy. After I spoke to Sir Peter about my constituency, with typical generosity he put at Nottingham’s disposal his fantastic team led by the unstoppable chief executive, Keith Danby, and we began to work out how we could take things forward for unsafe families in Nottingham North. We had several planning meetings involving the community convened under the auspices of the Rebalancing the Outer Estates charity. Nottingham city council put its considerable weight behind the idea. Alongside our own 20-year early intervention plan, the programme works with the many other facets of Nottingham’s early intervention city programme and with the strategy of our far-sighted and talented team led by Candida Brudenell, Katy Ball and Kevin Banfield.

Put simply, Safe Families works with three levels of volunteers. Colleagues might wish to take this up in their own constituency. Those three levels are, first, family friend volunteers, who are trained to help the families directly to overcome their problems; secondly, host family volunteers who, after proper criminal record checks, can look after the children for one night, a week or whatever, giving the family the time they need to get it together again; and thirdly, resource friend volunteers who, like us perhaps, can contribute a little bit of time here and there to help with supplying or delivering much needed household and other items to families in difficulties.

Building the volunteer critical mass has been crucial. The wonderful Kat Osborn and the local Safe Families for Children Nottingham team have been brilliant. They have recruited, trained and approved 240 volunteers in Nottingham and throughout the east midlands—sadly, far too many to name, but I have met many of them—starting with faith-based communities and spreading to involve people of all faiths and none. Starting just a few months ago from the base in Nottingham North, the city of Nottingham has now made 32 referrals and 49 children have been supported to date. These include 32 nights of hostings, with more in the pipeline over the next few weeks.

The financial benefits are enormous. A very small upfront investment of resource, time and effort avoids costs of tens of thousands of pounds for every child who did not go into care The average cost of a looked-after child is estimated to be £48,000, excluding legal costs and council staff costs. We in Nottingham are close to making our own evidence-based savings prediction as we grow beyond the 32 referrals we have made so far.

The Safe Families for Children extended pilot became a joint venture between the Department for Education’s children’s social care innovation programme and Nottingham council. As with all the ideas we trigger in the Rebalancing charity, the idea was to pioneer Safe Families in one place and then grow it. Now, using Nottingham as a hub, all four of our east midlands phase 1 Safe Families partners—Derby, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire—have been up and running for over a month and all are now making referrals.

Will the Minister raise with the Treasury the possibility of using this as a social investment programme? Also, will he ensure that every council takes up a similar scheme?

Child Sexual Abuse

Graham Allen Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

Child sex abuse is the public health issue of our time, and it is about prevention, not just cure. It is vital that our view is driven by the science and not by the media. It is also vital that our efforts are focused through a national institution, and that is what we will debate tonight. This is about sparing generations of children—the next generation and many after—and not about prurient interest in celebrities, the BBC, racial stereotypes, or even politicians. The Government now have another opportunity to get a serious strategic grip on how we can combat and build out child sex abuse.

Creating a national “what works” institution to pull together the best practice and the strongest evidence on prevention of sexual abuse is the most important contribution that this Parliament and Government can make together. I first proposed the creation of a national institute to study and prevent child sexual abuse 26 years ago to the then Prime Minister Mrs Margaret Thatcher, and have done so repeatedly ever since. Now, after years of Governments of all parties being reactive and inactive, I am delighted to welcome real signs of progress. May I put on record my thanks to the officials and Ministers involved? One Minister, Lynne Featherstone, has now left us, but I am glad to see the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), in her place, and of course the Minister who will reply to the debate. Their contribution to this very serious issue has been second to none, and it would not have happened without them and colleagues in all parts of the House working together on it.

The breakthrough came in March when the Home Office, working with the Department for Education, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Health, published this report, “Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation”, which I strongly welcome. I commend the Government for looking to long-term solutions to this deep-rooted issue, not just quick fixes belatedly responding to specific crimes and expensive inquiries. In the report, they pledge to

“establish a new Centre of Expertise to identify and share high quality evidence on what works to tackle child sexual abuse.”

They should do so swiftly and with the support of absolutely everyone in this House. Why?

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Allen]

I am afraid that I have only 15 minutes to make my contribution.

I repeat: why? Let us imagine we had acted a quarter of a century ago—think of the body of work that a national institute could have produced by now on what works, what does not work, and what policies can be applied at lots of different levels in a multi-agency situation. We could have had an absolute treasure chest of things that would help us tackle child sexual abuse. Had we acted then, countless numbers of victims could have been saved from abuse and the development of thousands of potential perpetrators could have been prevented. The creation of a national institute is a chance for us to make a start now—to banish the feelings that we all have of powerlessness and anger and instead substitute a clear, practical solution.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

rose—

[Mr Allen]

I apologise for not giving way because I have so little time to get these things on the record.

There is an enormous amount of excellent work to build on—we are not starting with a blank sheet of paper—by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, Barnardo’s, the Wave Trust, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Circles UK, the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, the Quakers, our Children’s Commissioner, the National Working Group Network and the International Centre at Bedford University, to name but a few. I say to the Minister that they should all be valued and made close partners in this venture. Competition in this field would not and should not be tolerated at all. Working together will be the key to unlocking some of the answers.

I have the good fortune to write extensively, and on a cross-party basis, on early intervention and I set up Nottingham as the first early intervention city. As a result, the Prime Minister asked me to write two independent reports on early intervention for Her Majesty’s Government. The reports made many recommendations, the key one being the creation of a “what works” centre for early intervention: an independent charity, rooted in evidence-based policy that would share knowledge, promote best practice and link up early intervention services across the whole country. With the Government’s help, I was able to create the Early Intervention Foundation, which has been running for almost two years and has become the national authority on all early intervention evidence and practice.

I say that in order to make a very simple point: nothing less will be acceptable for a national institute for the study and prevention of the sexual abuse of children. It must be a centre for excellence and the national authority for what has already been proven to work.

One of the most important weapons against child sexual abuse will be evidence-sharing. Many local authorities, charities and agencies do great work, but all of us are stronger if we learn from each other and share wisdom and successes. In order to have that and credibility, it is essential that the institute is broadly constituted and broadly governed, and is not the property of one successful bidder, however eminent they may be.

We can no longer pretend that child sexual abuse has not happened in all corners of the UK. As the Home Office report says:

“Any local authority or police force that denies that it has a problem, or thinks that it is only happening elsewhere, is wrong.”

Organisations confronting child sexual abuse cannot win without a strong, independent source of evidence and best practice that they can turn to, be encouraged by and confide in.

Louise Casey’s superb report earlier this year on child sexual exploitation showed that, even today, many localities continue to deny or totally misunderstand the scale of the problem. A national institute, in the words of the Home Office report,

“will support areas that are struggling to get it right.”

It is so important that we all help each other to understand some of the ways forward in this field. Poor practice in multi-agency working, information sharing and risk assessment have led to the major failures that were highlighted in recent reports on Rotherham and Greater Manchester and that are evident elsewhere. It is vital that a national institute becomes a hub for evidence and best practice, so that all agencies can invest together wisely in prevention and in the most effective therapies to help victims.

A new national institute should never deal with an individual case or initiate inquiries or inquiries on scandals or celebrities. Its reputation must be for hard evidence—it must be unimpeachable and apolitical—so that it will be as trusted, I hope, as the Early Intervention Foundation. Above all, it must research the root causes of child sexual abuse. Why do people perpetrate these unimaginable crimes? How do we prevent abusive behaviour from developing in the first place? Those questions must be addressed, because understanding the causes will allow us to take action to prevent these horrible episodes in future. Simply recognising and breaking the inter- generational nature of much of this offending will save thousands of broken lives.

Of course, firefighting will always be necessary. There is a plethora of public inquiries and criminal proceedings that must be pursued with vigour and rigour. Those inquiries are vital for the victims of these awful crimes, but clearly the Government now understand that they must also think about the future, setting out a long-term plan—crucially, on an all-party basis—so that I do not have to haunt similar debates in another 26 years’ time.

One enormous side effect of a national institute would be the local and national economic benefits. Early intervention has been proven to save taxpayers billions of pounds. Tackling the root causes of sexual abuse would mean much less money was spent on large inquiries and criminal trials and, above all, on lifetimes of massively expensive care for damaged individuals and families.

The most important saving that a national institute would bring would be felt by our children themselves. Saving future generations from horrific and avoidable experiences must be the key driver of our actions. We must intervene pre-emptively to eradicate the sexual abuse of children over a generation and longer, not only to protect children now, but to prevent future abuse. A national institute should not have to go around with a begging bowl, or cap in hand; it should be secure in its future so that it can undertake this tremendously important work. I know that the Minister feels strongly about that.

With a national institute, we can start to do something about this issue by helping people and ensuring that they have the social and emotional capability to make choices—the choice not to become an abuser—and the strength to resist grooming when it is taking place. Although there is no magic wand to prevent child sexual abuse from happening, there is a growing body of national and international programmes and practices that can be tested, evidenced and replicated so that they are costed, ranked and accessible to all the agencies that need to access them. They can build on good parenting and the social and emotional bedrock for babies, children and young people that is at the heart of early intervention.

Child abuse is about inhumanity, cruelty, domination and dysfunction; our alternative is about empathy, love, nurture and humanity. When people have social and emotional capability, it is difficult to go wrong. If they do not have that, they might deliver adverse childhood experiences that, at their most dysfunctional and extreme, can include the sexual abuse of children.

I congratulate the Minister on getting the initiative to this point. I must share with him, however, that when I got the concept of the Early Intervention Foundation to this point, even with full prime ministerial approval, it took a further two years of battling in Whitehall to get it established. My hard questions to him are therefore: what time scale does he have in mind? How will he ensure that the governance of a national institute is independent? As I alluded to earlier, what financial provision will he put in place to ensure the longevity and sustainability that will be necessary to match the intergenerational nature of the task?

By the time of the next election, the national institute for the study and prevention of the sexual abuse of children could be celebrating its fourth birthday. It could have a full menu of best practices and programmes. It could have a website, accessible to all agencies. It could be advising perhaps 30 champion localities throughout the country. It could have a clear, independent, charitable governance structure. It could be at the heart of an international network and be a respected, credible organisation. But most of all, it could have enabled tens of thousands more children to have been raised without the life-wasting curse of sexual abuse.

Some may regard it as an onerous responsibility that the Minister is taking on; I suggest to him that it is one of the most exciting and rewarding challenges that any of us could hope for, and I personally will help him in every way he sees fit.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that one of the great tragedies is young people, at a very young age, making choices whose impact they do not realise and closing off routes into engineering and maths teaching. That is why we have introduced the EBacc to prioritise those subjects—sciences, English and maths—that open doors and open possibilities for all young people.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

22. Does the Minister accept that if we are to improve basic maths and English, a key step is to bring forward, with some urgency given that the Government are about to go to the electorate, a number of proposals already in the Department, such as the disadvantaged learners fund and proposals to ensure our FE provision is completed—in my case at Basford Hall FE?

[Nick Boles]

The hon. Gentleman has been a champion for his constituency, and not just a champion but an initiator and a creator of very good ideas and programmes. We are very keen to work with him to support disadvantaged learners in the outer Nottingham estates in the way he has outlined. We are currently looking at how we will fund that, but he has my commitment that we will be working with him to achieve his goals.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

I am having more comebacks than Frank Sinatra.

I am a huge supporter of the portable antiquities scheme, and in fact we ring-fenced its funding when we came into government. I will do all that I can to support that very effective scheme.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

T9. Will the Secretary of State welcome tomorrow’s meeting in Nottingham between “Get Creative”, from the BBC, and “What Next?”, which is organised locally? Will he also underline the strong commitment that he gave me at the last Culture, Media and Sport questions that he considers arts, culture and heritage just as important for the outer cities as for the often oversubscribed inner cities?

[Sajid Javid]

I wholeheartedly agree. The hon. Gentleman has teamed up with two excellent organisations, and I wish him well.

Voter Engagement

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Davies. Today’s debate on voter engagement is timely, given that today is national voter registration day. That happy coincidence means that we are going to talk about something very relevant, and although few Members are in the Chamber at the moment, I suspect that many people will be watching our proceedings with great interest. I understand that there has been a tremendous amount of traffic regarding the matter on Twitter today, and that we have a lot of interest from people outside Parliament on this important topic. I was hoping that I could bring some detailed information with me about what has happened on Facebook and how many hits there have been on various websites—perhaps those figures will come to me as I speak—but there has certainly been a great deal of activity.

Last night, following the debate we had on the Floor of the House on individual electoral registration, we had an event, sponsored by the House, during which an animation of a ballot box with ballot papers going into it was projected on to Big Ben. Members of Parliament from all political parties joined me on Westminster bridge; they were doing selfies, videos and little bits for their own constituents—press releases and so on. I would like to thank all those involved in the event. It was great fun, and a lot of passers-by got engaged with what we were doing and were very interested.

I particularly want to thank Holly Greenland and her team at Outreach for all their support in getting the event organised, as well as Mr Speaker, who gave us permission to hold the event. It is the sort of thing that has to be treasured and done only occasionally, but when it is, I think it has great impact. Perhaps on similar occasions, the House might consider doing similar things.

There is also an immense amount of interest from a lot of organisations. I read the names of a few of them into the record yesterday, when I had my six minutes to speak in the debate on individual electoral registration. In relation to the subject of yesterday’s debate, I particularly want to mention on record Bite the Ballot, which is a small organisation that punches way above its weight. It has been a great pleasure to work with it; it reaches out to all Members of Parliament from all parties and makes a real difference through its efforts.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Allen]

I give way to my hon. Friend, who is a distinguished member of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee.

[Chris Ruane]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his leadership on the important issue of electoral registration. I also pay tribute to the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), but I am disappointed that no Minister has turned up for the debate.

I talked earlier to Bite the Ballot, which hoped to register 200,000 voters today. To put that in perspective, the Electoral Commission’s aim was to get 142,000 people registered in the two months before the general election. In paying tribute to Bite the Ballot, will my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) ensure that the Electoral Commission raises its game as far as electoral registration is concerned?

[Mr Allen]

I am happy to pay tribute to Bite the Ballot. I very much hope that it will reach that target, which, for a voluntary organisation, would be absolutely immense.

The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has reservations about the way in which the Electoral Commission has participated in raising the number of people on the electoral register. We feel that it should be much more ambitious in getting people on the register. We say that in our report, and we are not being churlish in doing so; it is an open comment that we have made directly to the Electoral Commission. At the heart of the matter is the fact that 7.5 million people are not registered to vote. That means that in your constituency of Shipley, Mr Davies, there are probably 10,000 electors who are not on the electoral register. I am talking not about the ones who are registered but do not vote—we will come to them in a moment—but about people who are not connected with our democracy at all. That is frightening, and I have to say that given the demography of my constituency, I would be absolutely amazed if the number of people who are not even on the register there was not half as much again. Those people have turned away from politics not because of any recent issues, but because they do not feel that it can do anything for them or that it is relevant to them. It is incumbent on all of us, whatever our political persuasion, to ensure that that disengagement is halted and reversed. Why? Because it threatens our democracy.

Some will say, “The more people you register, the more you help Labour”. But do you know what? If we do not have people participating in our democracy, the institution itself could be threatened. That is my big worry. I shall not repeat my remarks from yesterday, because my speeches from yesterday and today could be read together, but I alluded to the fact that political parties and party leaders have historically been so focused on winning the key 70 to 90 marginal seats that we are not doing what we should to keep our constituencies in good health on a nationwide basis.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Ruane]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Allen]

I give way first to my hon. Friend.

[Chris Ruane]

It was myself who informed the Electoral Commission that 6 million people were missing off the register after I met with Experian, the credit reference agency. Initially, the Electoral Commission denied that, but it researched the matter and said, “Yes, you are right.” Experian told me that if I had all the missing voters in my constituency registered, my political chances of being re-elected would be diminished. This is not an argument about political benefit; it is an argument about democracy, as my hon. Friend said.

[Mr Allen]

That is a fundamental point. Regardless of anyone’s political persuasion, our democracy lives and dies by the participation of the people and the trust that people have in the system. If we do not maintain and cherish it, it can be diminished, not least because of what I called yesterday the corrosive drip-feed of cynicism from the media in all its aspects—and sometimes, my goodness, we have deserved the cynicism. It is incumbent on all of us to be a bit more optimistic, a bit more dynamic, and a bit more vital in refurbishing our democracy. If the current trend continues, I am afraid that our democracy itself could be threatened.

I will now gladly give way to the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey)—she might explain why the Minister is not with us this afternoon.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

First, I apologise on behalf of the Minister. For whatever reason, he has it in his diary that this debate starts at 2 o’clock—given that we changed the sitting hours of the House a couple of years ago, I am sure that he will make his own apology to the hon. Gentleman. I also want to make sure that all hon. Members realise that the civil servants will be taking notes, so that the Minister is fully up to speed with all the issues covered in the first part of this debate. He assures me that he is on his way.

May I come back to the point about turnout? The largest turnout in recent years was during the 1992 election. Then the turnout started to decline, but it rose again for the last election. I genuinely believe that the British public realise when there is something at stake, and turnout does increase. Even in my constituency, which some would consider to be safe—I never do, because I do not think any Member of Parliament should be complacent about their constituents’ views—the turnout was over 71%. I am therefore not sure that I agree with the hon. Gentleman that just because the so-called marginal seats get a lot of political attention, the turnout there will be higher.

[Mr Allen]

I am not trying to diminish the hon. Lady’s helpful and valuable contribution, but part of the reason for turnout figures is that if large numbers of people are not registered, the group from which turnout is drawn is smaller. None of us wants to be in the situation at the ridiculous extreme where we have 100% turnout of one person.

[Chris Ruane]

On a point of order, Mr Davies. I listened to what the Conservative Whip said, but, in your time as a Chair, have you ever known a Minister not to turn up for such an important debate? Could an Officer or a Whip get a message to the Minister to tell him to get here right now to listen to the important words of the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee? We are discussing our second report in three months on the most important constitutional issue facing us. He has done an excellent job and the Minister’s absence shows disrespect to him, to the Committee, to you and to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

I am sure that everyone is grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion.

[Mr Allen]

They say that what we say in Parliament does not count for anything, but those two points of order have counted for a great deal, because I see that the Minister has now arrived, and very welcome he is too.

As I was saying, large numbers of people are very much engaged in the process, but we are almost at a crisis point. We are coming to the end of a five-year Parliament, and I think we have 91 days left before the election and 72 days left before the close of registration. Therefore, if we are to encourage the millions of people out there who are not on the register to get on to it, we have 72 days.

It is relatively easy to get on to the register these days, particularly for those who are online. It can be done in a minute, even by those who are not technologically adept. I managed to help my daughter to get on the electoral register on an iPhone, but there are still the normal ways to do it through post and telephone among others. However, the figure of 72 days should be sobering for all of us. Parliament has only 38 days of involvement left. I hope that those are not 38 days to bob, weave and not do anything, but 38 days of great action from the Minister in particular to encourage people to get on the register for the important election that is coming up.

[Mr Spellar]

Are we not dealing with symptoms rather than causes? Is not the fundamental issue—I hope my hon. Friend’s Committee will take this on board in time —that we need an effective system of national registration not just for parliamentary elections but for driving licences and national insurance cards? That would not be revolutionary, because for decades people in Holland have had to register with the local municipality within three months of moving. That registration is then notified to all other parts of government. That avoids various problems, and that information becomes the electoral register. If we did that, we would save huge sums of money and get a far more complete register as well.

[Mr Allen]

I talked yesterday about the reasons why people are disengaged with the process, which are deep and fundamental and need to be addressed at a political level. Today we are talking more about the nuts and bolts—the process. My right hon. Friend made a good point that it is not as if we are bereft of ideas. If we look around the globe, we will see that others do this better than us. That is not asking a great deal.

Governments of all parties need to get together to consider this matter It is no good just criticising the Government for inaction in the past five years or even previous Governments in the time before that—I am not making any partisan points. I look in a friendly way to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), when I say that. All parties need to be clear that what they say in their manifestos is what they will do, whatever Government is formed after May. Perhaps the ideas suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) and those in my Select Committee’s reports may help address that.

The point I was making was that we are crisis-managing at the end of a Parliament when a little pre-emptive activity earlier on might well have seen a steady flow of people registering and saved us a considerable amount of grief. Then we could have bitten into the 7.5 million people who are not on the register in a deeper way. Indeed, if we do get 200,000 people registered today as a result of national voter registration day, that will make a contribution, but almost that figure is needed on every single one of the remaining 38 days before Dissolution to make any serious impact on that enormous figure.

[Chris Ruane]

My hon. Friend mentions a figure of 7.5 million people who are missing from the register. In fact, it has gone up by 1 million in the past year to 8.5 million. Will he join me in asking the Electoral Commission to raise its stakes, because its 2014-19 plan says that it will be happy if 7.5 million people are still off the register in 2019? It will give itself a big fat tick for that.

[Mr Allen]

I have referred to that already and I am happy to refer my hon. Friend to the report that he helped the Committee to agree unanimously. I think page 61 says exactly that: the Electoral Commission needs much more ambitious targets. It needs assistance from this House, the Government and electoral registration officers throughout the land to make an impact.

Before I come to our report, I will first, and most obviously, thank the Speakers Commission on Digital Democracy, which I will refer to a little in my remarks. It has done excellent work and its report was published last week. Thankfully, most of its recommendations overlap almost inseparably with our conclusions. The Speaker is to be congratulated on taking that initiative. I think that such ideas will become common practice and, in 10 or 20 years’ time, people will say, “Why on earth didn’t they do that when they had the technology early on?” If banking can be done securely online, there is no reason why, with a little bit of effort, we could not do something similar. That is what we propose in our report, which I will come on to later.

I also want to thank the people who were involved in Parliament week. We are in real danger of Parliament doing something significant here in helping to build our democracy, with this place standing up for democracy in a way that does not necessarily mean that it is supporting or opposing the Government of the day. Parliament can have a will of its own. I was involved in Parliament week, which was a wonderful event that involved a massive amount of interaction with young people aged 16 to 24—the very group that we want to get involved. My involvement was over in the atrium of Portcullis House and the interaction was fantastic. We estimate that there were more than 1.3 million contacts and interactions during that week, which is an enormous number of young people for any campaign to reach. Members of Parliament took part in live chats and web chats with, we think, up to 4,000 young people and there were nearly 2,000 recorded tweets—my congratulations to Lee Bridges and his team in Parliament.

The idea that people in Parliament are somehow stuffy and getting in the way is not the case. We have bags of ideas in Parliament, as Members will see in the report. I come back to my point about the House’s involvement in general and the fact that we are leaving it very late. I must say to hon. Members that the Select Committee that they, as parliamentarians, elected, along with its Chair, have taken the issue very seriously: the report on voter engagement that came out a few weeks ago and the follow-up that we are launching today are the last two of seven reports on this issue from my Committee over the past five years. Anyone who says, “We didn’t know,” or, “Oh, what a shame we didn’t have that idea—why didn’t they tell us?” should go back to the first report we did and go through it: they will see some of the ideas that will help to build, strengthen and grow our democracy. We know how to do it—none of it is rocket science—and it is very important that we now start to take action.

Parliament is not an executive body. All it can do is tee up the opportunity. It can outline how things could go, draft Bills and clauses, and write resolutions of the House—and we have done. It is all there. The only thing we cannot do is execute. The Government have to do that. That is why, as we have gone through this five-year Parliament, we have honed our proposals until we now have six key ideas that could happen as soon as a Government—of any political complexion—show the political will. As soon as they want to do this stuff, it can be trialled.

The first proposal is about voting online. I have already referred to the fact that the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy has come out in favour of that idea. We have spent a considerable amount of time examining the possibilities and consulting people. In the time between the publication of the report that came out on 14 November and the publication of the follow-up that has come out today, 16,000 people have interacted with the Select Committee. I think that is a world record—I do not think that a Select Committee has ever engaged in that way before. Not only did we have written evidence and responses as normal, but we had external organisations putting out response forms on the proposals in the report. Those organisations include Bite the Ballot, Unlock Democracy, the Hansard Society, the Electoral Reform Society and many others—I hope I will be forgiven if I do not mention them all today. That is how we managed to get 16,000 interactions with people and distil the proposals in the earlier report into the document we have published today. That is a fantastic feather in the cap of the House and, if I may say so as an aside, an indication that Select Committees might get even more credibility by doing comparable exercises on issues of concern to the general public—I will leave it at that.

Voting online was one issue where there was an enormous response, and 60% of the responses were clear that it was something we should pursue. Instead of saying, “Yes, let’s go snap on this. It’s a wonderful idea —let’s do it tomorrow,” my Select Committee has said, “We believe that voting online is the way of the future, that people should have a serious debate nationally and that after the election in May a proposal should come before the House of Commons to discuss and agree the way forward on online voting.” We are not dictating that we should be doing it in the next few weeks or that it has to be done in a particular way, but exploring that issue. If, as I say, people are prepared to put their bank account online, why on earth can we not commission the right people and get the right reports written so that by 2020 we can have an election in which people can not only register but vote online? I cannot remember the exact number—he will know better than me—but I think in the debate yesterday the Minister quoted a figure of many hundreds of thousands of people taking the opportunity to register online, so why not have many hundreds of thousands of people voting online if they choose to? That deserves serious consideration by whichever party or parties form the next Government. Let us get on with that experiment so that we can put it into action; the Speaker’s Commission agreed with that view.

The next issue that the Select Committee reported on to the House is compulsory voting. That is always a sensitive issue, as there are clearly aspects that will make us all a little bit anxious. Telling people what they should do should not be in the vocabulary of anyone in this place. However, there are, again, examples from other countries where civilisation as we know it does not collapse when there is a desire to ask every citizen to carry out their democratic duty. In my view, it is a part of the social contract—if someone benefits from a society, they should interact with and be a part of it to some degree. The minimal amount of interaction, in my opinion, should be to vote. Most of us do it, but there are large numbers of people who simply cannot be bothered.

[Chris Ruane]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way yet again. If, as the Speaker’s Commission has backed, we achieve online voting by 2020, all an individual will have to do is press a button. That is not too much to ask once every five years.

[Mr Allen]

From my own point of view, I have to say that I do not ever want to vote online except in particular circumstances—because I am not in the country, or some such other reason—because I actually enjoy the process of going down to the polling station. It is an unusual democratic activity, and, as we have seen in Scotland, can be the culmination of an interesting and exciting experience of democracy. I will always want to go down to the polling station as my first preference, although I might be away or want to use a postal vote, or whatever. But someone might choose to vote online. For me, the question is whether someone has chosen to vote. Let us put the customer first. If young people, in particular, find it much more convenient to vote online and will be happier if they can, we should facilitate that. Then the bogey of compulsion becomes a very thin spectre indeed, because many more people will have the facility to vote and will do so.

[Chris Ruane]

Does my hon. Friend agree that with compulsory voting it would be important to have on the ballot paper either “none of the above” or “I abstain”?

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend has rehearsed the arguments on the issue so much in the Select Committee that he is even picking out the lines I am about to come to in my speech. He is absolutely right. If someone wants to abstain, they should at least have the courtesy to the rest of society to do so in person, and not do so just because they are lazy. They should go to the polling station. At the moment they can spoil the paper, as some people do even today; but there may be room—this issue should be part of a wider consultation—for an abstention box or a box for “none of the above”. Frankly, if someone has taken themselves out of the house and gone to the polling station, I think that they should make a choice, instead of wanting a counsel of perfection, and thinking, “I don’t like any of them.” Sometimes politics is about the option people dislike the least—the one with whom someone finds a little more to agree on than the others. If I had the idea that every candidate and every party must completely meet my agenda, I would certainly not be in the Labour party. I cannot ask the elector to apply a test that I cannot pass myself. Of course, it is only on rare occasions that I disagree with the Labour party.

In answer to my hon. Friend, of course we should give people that option and allow them to express themselves. It is better to do it that way than to adopt a heavy-handed approach and put people in prison for not voting. We must excite and encourage people, and make voting relevant for all the reasons that I talked about yesterday, which I will not go into again now. We must make voting for a local representative important. In a devolved society, they will have more power to get on and do stuff, so it will be meaningful.

Perhaps we should ultimately have the fall-back position of a fine of some description, but, frankly, we will have lost the battle of encouraging people to vote if fines are our main weapon. They should be used sparingly. If people are fined, the organisation that brings the case—the local authority—should keep the proceeds, and should not be forced through the lengthy, expensive process of sending the fifty quid or whatever it is to central Government.

We should introduce a raft of incentives, which people can claim by right if they have voted. We all know who has voted—it is in the marked register, as plain as a pikestaff—so it is possible to create an incentive-based system. The Select Committee is saying that we do not have the system down pat, so we want people to look at it, consider it and deal with it seriously.

The third of the Select Committee’s recommendations is automatic registration. If we could think about registration with a blank piece of paper, we would think that registering to vote and then voting in a general election, or any kind of election, is a strange process. Members of all political complexions go knocking on doors asking people whether they have registered, sent in their postal vote or whatever. Why on earth can we not have a system of automatic registration? We are halfway there with the cross-referrals to the Department for Work and Pensions and other institutions. We can use that public information to say, “Mr Blogs lives at such-and-such an address”, and put it on the register.

It would be up to the political parties to take it from there—nobody is saying that this is a matter for the Government. I would like that information, because I would like to go knocking on people’s doors so that I can say to them, “You are on the electoral register and you are thinking about voting. What will make you vote? What do you think about politics at the moment? What are the local issues?” We all know the patter, because we all do it. It is about getting people to want to be part of our political society, our democracy and our civic society.

We must use all the means available to us. Technologically, it is a no-brainer to put people’s information on the electoral register when they register for something or interact with a public body. I do not think that that is the most controversial of our proposals. Again, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee is wisely saying that the Government should consider and plan for automatic registration. They should consider whether and how it should happen.

Our next proposal—votes for 16 and 17-year-olds—might be a little more controversial. There was a very high turnout of 16 and 17-year-olds in the Scottish referendum. We saw on TV the energy, the vitality and the challenge that young people brought to that marvellous adventure in democracy. Again, there are different views about that issue. For example, my 17-year-old daughter said, “I wasn’t mature enough to vote when I was 16.” However, giving young people the option and engaging them has another advantage. It is not merely that they will be able to vote, but that at school they will be able to register, interact with people, have debates, hold their own elections and enjoy it.

We heard a lot about people going into old people’s homes, universities and other places to block-register people, which is a sensible idea that Governments should think carefully about. Certainly, it would be sensible to enable the officer in charge of an old people’s home to register everybody in the home. We would lose something if we forced individual registration at that point. Let us be sensible about it and allow people to be registered in the way that is best for them. Schools bring a captive audience, and teachers can get everybody to register. They can make it fun or part of an exercise. That is a sensible way to proceed.

Many people—particularly those in the charitable sector—have a lot more ideas. We should listen to them and be open-minded about encouraging young people to vote. We should get people involved early. It is statistically proven that if people are reluctant to vote up to the age of 30, they tend to remain reluctant to vote for the rest of their lives. We should get people interested and excited, but not in a stupid, “We can give you everything you want” sort of way. We must tell people that making decisions can be tough, and that they should choose the party that, by and large, accords with their views, but that they are never going to get perfection. That is part of growing up and being mature.

People should not say, “Unless they give me everything, I am not going to vote for them.” We sometimes get letters saying, “I am never going to vote for you because on this issue, you didn’t do what I wanted.” Rather than that immature response, people should say, “By and large, we think you are the better person.” It would be incredibly valuable to include that sort of personal growth in schools as part of personal, social and health education.

If we do not have the automatic registration that my Committee has proposed, how might we make registration better than it is at the moment? We have suggested that the period for registration should be up to and including election day. I am not proposing that there should be no other means of registration, and that 80,000 people in a constituency should roll up at the town hall on election day. However, many of us who have been to the United States will have seen that it is perfectly manageable to enable people to go to the town hall on election day, walk through the front door and be encouraged to register, then go round the back of the town hall to the polling booth and cast their vote. However, that must be managed to ensure that there are not blockages, and we must ensure that the main routes for registration continue to be those that we have now, with or without automatic registration.

We must tell people who want to vote that they have 72 days left. If they are among the millions of people who, unlike our good selves, could not care less whether there is a general election at some point in the future, they may wake up to the fact that they are not on the register quite late. There must be a means for those individuals to get on to the register if they want to exercise their right to vote. That makes a lot of sense to me.

The campaigns on encouraging people to vote that we have all been involved in over the past few days—some of us have been involved for much longer—may percolate down to people’s consciousness only closer to the election day. There is not a Member in this Chamber who has not had somebody say to them in the last couple of weeks before an election, “I want to vote. Where do I go?” Too often, we have to respond, “I’m sorry. I’ve checked your name and address, and you are not on the register.” We have all had that. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s opinion is that people who express a wish to register should have that wish granted up to and including election day. We have some ideas about the nuts and bolts, which the Government and officials may find helpful. May I take a moment to thank the Minister and his officials for the positive way in which they have considered our report and engaged with us? Indeed, they have accepted several of the principles in the report.

There are many other points that I would like to raise. We have produced seven reports on the matter, two of them in the past couple of months, so there is bound to be a lot that I have missed. If hon. Members want to prompt me, I am sure I can bring those things to mind. The final point that I have on my little list, however, is about weekend voting. That issue got a lot of responses in the consultation, and a lot of people would be interested in the concept. Add to that the ability to vote during the week before the election, perhaps at a given place or a number of given places, and we would start to engage people who, even of a weekend, may be away or unable to vote for some other reason. The bottom line, by which the Committee has been driven, is that we must try to engage people in our democracy and facilitate every possible means of engaging people in their right to vote.

I return to the key statistics. As I alluded to yesterday, half a million people who had postal votes no longer have them, because they have not filled out the forms necessary to re-engage with the process. Some people were all but promised a postal vote for the rest of their lives, but the system has changed and those people, if they have not done the right thing, will not vote. That is a large number of people in each constituency. Even larger is the number of people not registered to vote in each constituency; as I mentioned earlier, if 7.5 million people are not on the register, that is an average of 10,000 people per constituency. [Interruption.] I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), because I can see that he has a point to make.

[Chris Ruane]

No, no. I think I have intervened enough.

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend has missed his last chance, uncharacteristically.

The creation of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s report on voting and voter engagement in the United Kingdom has been an excellent process. There has been massive public engagement and considerable engagement by Members of the House. There has been unanimity among the members of the Committee, which is, like most Select Committees—you will understand this, Mr Davies—made up of independent-minded individuals from all parties who do not reach a consensus easily. The fact that we have reached unanimity on those matters underlines the fact that our democracy needs to be polished, refurbished and maintained, and that the way in which we vote needs to be facilitated for the convenience of the electorate rather than that of anyone else. I hope that you and colleagues across the House will take the time to read the report, Mr Davies. Above all, I hope that those in government, and those who aspire to government, will act on it.

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

Before I call Mr Ruane as the only Back Bencher to make a speech, it may help if I indicate to him—I have no idea how long he intends to speak for—that I would like to get to the shadow Minister by 2.35 pm, to give time for the Shadow Minister and the Minister to speak and for Mr Allen to wind up the debate briefly.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Davies; that should be ample time. I congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), for his dedication to and focus on the question of electoral registration and voter engagement. As he has said, we have had seven reports in five years, and two in the past three months. The personal attention and focus that the Chair has given to the subject has enabled us to bring forward a raft of eminently sensible suggestions. I congratulate the staff of the Select Committee, who are in the Public Gallery and who played an excellent part in drawing up this report. I congratulate civic society, including organisations such as Bite the Ballot, Unlock Democracy, the Electoral Reform Society and dozens of others that contributed. I congratulate academics from around the country, MPs and other elected politicians, and the professionals involved in electoral registration. I have been hard on some of the poorer-performing electoral registration officers, but there are some excellent ones out there and I pay tribute to them for their work.

The report is chock full of eminently sensible suggestions. I want to give a flavour of how big the problem of under-registration is. There were 3.5 million people unregistered in 2004. That went up on Labour’s watch to 7.5 million in 2010, so we do not have clean hands. My concern is that the coalition Government said in 2010 that they hoped to introduce the biggest constitutional changes that the world had seen since 1832, but even though they knew that those changes were coming, they did absolutely nothing to reduce the number of unregistered individuals before introducing the changes. Labour proposed in 2009 to introduce individual electoral registration after the 2015 election, and to work in the interim five years on reducing the 7.5 million unregistered people, so that when IER was implemented we would have a perfect picture of how it was impacting on democracy. The cross-party consensus that we had in 2009 was shattered, however, and it has not returned. The issue has been polarised.

As I said in my speech yesterday—I will not go over it—I believe that that was deliberate. The Government did not say, “Oops, we have made a mistake.” That was carefully plotted. Some of the measures that the Government tried to introduce would have made being on the register a lifestyle choice instead of a civic duty. That would have resulted in a drop in registration of 35%, according to the Electoral Commission, on top of the 15% drop that had already occurred. The Government wanted to get rid of the annual canvass before the introduction of IER, knowing that the decrease would have been even greater. I believe that that was deliberate, but that was an argument for yesterday. I want to move on to other issues that are actually in our report.

Under-registration is a massive issue; 7.5 million people were not registered in June of last year, and 8.5 million people are not registered today. It is possible that there will be 14 million people not registered in June of this year, and if the Government’s original proposals had gone ahead, we would have been looking at a figure of 23 million. Yesterday, I called it a “constitutional coup”, because that is what we would have had if the Government had gone ahead and introduced those proposals.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby, our Front-Bench spokesman, for highlighting the problem of the 1 million lost voters. He did his research and found out where they were, and many were in his own constituency. They were in university towns. That is just a flavour of what is yet to come, and when the Electoral Commission finally releases its figures next week, we will see exactly where the impact has been.

One of our recommendations, which has caused some excitement in the media, is compulsory voting. Our cross- party Committee has recommended that the Government —whether it is this one, which failed to heed our advice from last November, or a future one—should at least look at the positives and negatives of compulsory voting, because there are positives. In Australia, 100% of people are registered to vote, and 90% participate in elections. It is not just about democracy; it is about the impact that non-voting has on those who are off the register and those who do not vote. Those are the people who have been hit the hardest by austerity cuts.

I cite the specific example of young people. Thirty years ago, the disparity between young people and old people, and between rich people and poor people, in terms of voting and registration was marginal. Now, those differences are major, and the biggest sufferers have been young people. In England, only 25% of young people participated in the last general election. Some 55% registered, 44% of whom went out to vote, so just 25% of all young people participated. Among pensioners, 96% registered and 85% voted. When the cuts came, the Government asked, “Where shall these cuts fall? Well, we’ll take away the education maintenance allowance from 16-year-olds—we’ll get rid of that—and we’ll triple tuition fees.” That is where they came. After the election, 250,000 students and young people stood outside Parliament, but the horse had bolted. They should have been on the register before the election, and they should have voted. I hope they heed their mistakes, and hopefully we will see 200,000 young people register today because they have realised that being off the register and not voting does not help them. It is easy to express: no vote, no voice.

The Committee took evidence on compulsory voting, which was not conclusive. Half the witnesses said that voting should be compulsory, and the other half said that it should not be compulsory. The Committee members themselves were split on the issue, but they unanimously recommended that the Government should at least explore the issues. Compulsion to raise turnout was just one of the Committee’s recommendations.

Another recommendation was greater access to postal voting. In my opinion, the Electoral Commission views postal voting as something corrupt that politicians try to manoeuvre to maximise their political turnout, but nothing could be further from the truth. We are agents for democracy, and I cite the specific example that the highest postal voting turnout in the whole country was in Tatton, the Chancellor’s constituency. Ninety-six per cent. of people with postal votes turned out to vote, which is fantastic. I take my hat off to the Chancellor, his electoral registration officer and his party for registering those people, because 96% of people voting is an aid to democracy. We should consider greater access to postal votes.

The Chair of the Select Committee raised the issue of digital voting, and again I pay tribute to the role of Mr Speaker and the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy. In the 21st century, it is eminently sensible to have access to online voting. If people can vote with the push of a finger, they can exercise their electoral and civic duty.

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend is talking about all things digital, and it may be because people knew he was going to get to his feet, but there have been more than 3,700 tweets using #nvrd in the past couple of hours, which adds to the 13,000 tweets using the same hashtag over the past 30 days. Of course, people can intervene—just as I am intervening on him—using that hashtag to participate in this debate, as the Committee intended in its broad consultation.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I should have started with this, but today is national voter registration day, an idea pioneered by Bite the Ballot—not by the current Government, not by the previous Government, not by the Electoral Commission but by a group of young people who are concerned about the registration and turnout rates among young people.

[Mr Allen]

I intended to raise this in my speech, but the Minister was not here so, out of courtesy, I did not. He has listened to the Select Committee’s recommendation that additional moneys be deployed on electoral registration, for which I am genuinely grateful. Yesterday, he published a list of bodies that will get that funding, but my hon. Friend reminds me that Bite the Ballot, which has been foremost in this process, does not appear to be on that list. If Bite the Ballot does indeed recruit an additional 200,000 people to the electoral register, it will deserve not only a medal but a fair share of the additional money that the Minister has made available. Will my hon. Friend give way to the Minister so that he can answer that question?

[Chris Ruane]

I will give way to the Minister if he wants to confirm that Bite the Ballot will be getting some funding. A pat on the head is fine, but it wants more than that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Allen]

Welcome to the Chair, Mr Walker.

I will not detain the House for too long, and nor will I make any partisan points, because it is a matter of shame for everyone in the Chamber and in the House that we have 7.5 million people not on the electoral register. That is an average of about 10,000 people per constituency, and some of us will have more than the average.

In addition, at the previous election, 16 million were on the register but chose not to vote. I agree with both the Minister and his shadow, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). We are talking not about the techniques of electoralism, but about re-engaging people who feel disenchanted with and disengaged from our political process. If people feel disengaged from democracy, ultimately they feel forced to engage with other types of political systems. That is the threat that we all need to confront today.

Unfortunately, we have not taken our duty seriously enough—all parties, all Governments—but we now have a chance to do something about it. After seven reports over five years from my Select Committee, it is now possible to see a consensual way forward on how we can improve the way in which we vote, although it will not answer the engagement question, which is a broader one; I touched on that in my remarks on the Floor of the House in yesterday’s debate.

We now have a number of ways forward. I hate to sound apocalyptic, but the next general election is an important one, because a lot of the pieces will be thrown up into the air and we will no longer have a lot of the traditional loyalties and means of expressing support. Possibly, it will be the last election in which we can make a serious effort to re-engage what is now more than a third of the population who do not play a part in our democracy. That is an onerous responsibility for those in government, for those who aspire to it and for the rest of us as elected representatives. I hope that we take that responsibility seriously.

Electoral Registration

Graham Allen Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend points to why we introduced IER. He should take the matter up with his local ERO, who is responsible for ensuring the integrity of his local register.

Online registration has made it simpler and easier to register to vote, and I am pleased to announce that 900,000 18 to 25-year-olds have registered to vote online. As I said, we have learned the lessons from Northern Ireland.

I can assure the House that every resource request, from electoral returning officers, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and the Electoral Commission has been met. I pay tribute to all the electoral administration officers and dedicated professionals in the Cabinet Office who are working to make the transition to IER a smooth one, but we are not complacent.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

For the record, the Minister said that 900,000 had registered to vote online, but I think 900,000 might have chosen to register online—unless his announcement is much more significant than we all thought, and he is actually announcing today online voting, which many of us would welcome.

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his correction; that number registered to vote online.

Despite the 900,000 young people who have registered to vote online, we are not complacent in our efforts. In January, we announced that an extra £10 million would be invested this year to maximise voter registration—in addition to the £4.2 million announced last year. Today, I can announce that £2.5 million of this funding will be used specifically to target groups that are under-represented on the electoral roll, including students, minority ethnic communities, overseas voters and members of the armed forces, while also tackling the issue of electoral fraud.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I begin with a happy announcement. If colleagues wish to go outside from about 6 pm, national voter registration day, which is tomorrow, is being celebrated this evening by a projection on to the Elizabeth Tower of an exciting animation showing ballot papers going into a ballot box. I thank the Speaker for facilitating my request to involve Parliament in national voter registration day. I am sure colleagues will avail themselves of the opportunity for a wonderful “selfie” from Westminster bridge.

More seriously, the elephant in the room is not the technicalities of voting and registration, but why people are disengaged from politics. We must facilitate people’s engagement with politics. The real reason people are not engaged with registration and voting is that they are disengaged from our democracy. They suffer a daily drip feed of corrosive cynicism, often very strongly politically biased, from the media. Our parties have atrophied. We have concentrated more and more on 50 to 100 marginal seats and not looked after our parties. There is immense ignorance, which none of us does much to dispel, around the idea that Parliament and Government have the same, rather than conflicting, interests. There is a failure, even in this place, to set out what a plural, devolved democracy of independent institutions might look and feel like. Add to that the chronic sclerosis of Whitehall and an over-centralisation that kills local creativity and responsibility, and we have a recipe of poor capability on electoral registration and bureaucracy around voting that can produce a poisonous mixture for the future of our democracy.

I am delighted we are seeking to address at least some of those difficulties today. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has reported seven times on this specific issue since 2011—seven separate reports by a Select Committee of this place to flag up what might go wrong with individual electoral registration. I have gone back through the reports today looking over the same difficulties. To the Government’s credit, they have addressed some of them, in particular on finance and on certain technical matters, and I am grateful for that. Fundamentally, however, many of the difficulties the Committee has outlined over five years are coming to pass, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) said from the Opposition Front Bench, with just 92 days to go before an election and 38 days to go before Dissolution. In our complacency, we have let these problems grow and we are finding immense difficulties in each of our constituencies.

On postal voting, about half a million people have been kicked off the electoral register because they failed to reregister. That is a misfortune for them. Many of us will have been on the doorstep and said, “Hello, I am your Member of Parliament. I can see that you might need a postal vote. Can we give you that postal vote? Can we get that registration for a postal vote for you?” The Member of Parliament has been there and almost given a guarantee that the constituent will have a postal vote, but some of those people will be the very people who will not now be eligible to vote—some may not be in the first flush of youth—because of all the technicalities. We need to make sure we get these messages over and get them over quickly.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the universal postal voting regime was introduced to boost turnout. Why does he suppose that since 2001 turnout has been 59%, 61% and 65%, whereas in previous elections it was 75%, 73% and 78%?

[Mr Allen]

We live in a democracy and it is the sacred duty of every Member of this House of every party to ensure that as many people register to vote and as many people can vote as is humanly possible. To throw out this red herring of fraud when there has only been a handful of cases—[Interruption.] As my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) reminds me, only one case has ended in a successful prosecution. Denying millions of people the right to vote is the biggest fraud we are perpetrating in our democracy and we should not be collaborating on that.

[Dr Offord]

The reason there have been so few prosecutions could be, as we found out in the case of Nigel Kennedy, that there is a limited period in which a prosecution can be brought. That period may expire before the time it takes to get the evidence, and that determines that there will not be a prosecution.

[Mr Allen]

One case has been proven and taken forward. I want to give a couple of other statistics, and, sadly, there are a lot more zeros in them. Some 7.5 million people were not registered to vote at the last election. That works out at about 10,000 people in each of our constituencies. In fact, in deprived areas, such as my constituency, I am damned sure that it will be more than that—so more than 10,000 of my electorate are not even registered to vote, let alone not taking up the right to vote. Of those who did register at the last election, 16.5 million people decided not to bother to vote. If we add the non-registered to the ones who did not bother to vote, it comes to more than the number of those who voted Conservative and Labour combined.

This is a scandal. I am not blaming the Government for this; I am just saying that we as a Parliament need to take this in hand. We as a Parliament need to get people to register. We need to encourage people to vote not just because the techniques are right, but because they feel engaged in their system and believe that decisions are made not just at the Whitehall level, and because they feel they own their democracy and own decision making, particularly in own locality.

The point about EVEL—English votes for English laws—has been thrown into the debate again, but that is a procedural technicality for this House, rather than a question of how we devolve power, as they do in virtually every other western democracy, to people at the grass roots, to seize the opportunity to develop their own ways in their own areas.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

rose—

[Mr Allen]

I give way to my distinguished colleague from the Select Committee.

[Mark Durkan]

On the subject of English votes for English laws, does the hon. Gentleman recognise that if the Government continue with the current Act—the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011—the seat distribution to the boundary commissions in the next Parliament will be on the basis of reduced registration in England, so there could be fewer English seats in this House and more Scottish and Northern Ireland seats?

[Mr Allen]

Whenever a colleague in this House hears someone talking about EVEL and English votes they should be reminded that, unlike most democracies, we decide the size of our constituencies not on the number of people in them but on the number of people who are registered, and, as I have said, even at the last election 7.5 million were not registered. What a nonsense of a system that is!

I am going to give one last statistic, which is a slightly happier one. Some say, “People out there aren’t interested in this stuff”, but a world-record number of people replied to a Select Committee consultation on voter engagement. People out there are desperate; they are hungry for engagement. That is why there are so many organisations around. I have a list of a few of them here: Bite the Ballot, Unlock Democracy, the Hansard Society, the British Youth Council, Sky’s “Stand Up Be Counted” campaign, Catch 22, the National Union of Students, Involver, UpRising. They all wanted to grab that chance of saying to us that we have got to do better.

It is not good enough. Sixteen thousand people responded to our report, and the follow-up report, having listened to those 16,000, will be published tomorrow. There will be a debate in this House starting at 1.30 pm for those Members who are not able to speak in today’s debate.

We must do something about this. If people read the report tomorrow, they will see lots of ways forward on an all-party basis to involve our people in our own democracy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is right to say that tourism is vital for local economies, and I have a big ambition to get more people out of the cities and visiting our fantastic countryside. He will be pleased to know that one week from today we will launch the Countryside is Great campaign in New York, with the fantastic Katherine Jenkins performing. That will help make clearer to international tourists exactly what our fantastic countryside has to offer, including in Wales.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

2. What steps he is taking to encourage the development of creative industries to help regenerate outer-city estates.

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Sajid Javid)]

Economic estimates for the creative industries published this week have shown that the sector plays a leading role in our long-term economic plan. The figures estimated that in 2013 there were 84,000 jobs in the creative industries in the east midlands, and the Government continue to work closely with the sector so that it can produce further jobs and growth across Britain.

[Mr Allen]

Welcome as those figures are, does the Secretary of State agree that there is sometimes an imbalance with the creative industries necessarily being located in the inner cities, city centres and business districts for tourism, heritage and media, and that very few go to the outer-city estates and working-class areas of the sort I represent? I chair the Rebalancing Nottingham North charity. Will he find some time in his busy diary to meet me and discuss how we can balance the expansion of creative industries so that everyone can benefit?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight that important point, and I commend his excellent work in taking forward the Rebalancing the Outer Estates Foundation. He will know that the Arts Council supports many regions around the country and helps with that rebalancing effort, but there is always more we can do, and I or the Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy would be happy to meet him to take that issue forward.

Business Investment (Outer-City Estates)

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I am pleased to be here under your chairmanship today, Mr Davies, on the last day that the House is sitting.

This is a debate on a very important topic—the outer cities. We hear a lot about the inner cities but the outer cities, and I represent an outer-city constituency, often seem to be the forgotten part of the UK. One of the things that I have attempted to do is to bring the outer cities back into focus and back on to the Front-Bench agendas of all parties. Outer cities are often neglected and unbalanced, with too many houses and not enough jobs. There must be a strategy, at both national and local level, to address their problems, and I am happy to be trying to pioneer that approach in my constituency of Nottingham North.

On the first day that the Minister for Skills and Equalities was in his new office, I had an Adjournment debate on part of the agenda that we are putting forward in Nottingham North. I will not today go back over the demographic and statistical background to prove how deprived my constituency is, other than to say it is one of the most deprived constituencies in the UK. I will give one example: it sends the fewest number of young people to university of any constituency in the UK, and, as I will refer to later, it has 1,250 young people who, by the age of 24, have never known a single day’s work in their lives. I could regale Members with other statistics, but I have already done that, so today I will talk about what we are doing locally. We are not being ground down by our circumstances, rather we are getting together, organising and improving our local circumstances in the long term. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us a little more, from his point of view, about how the effective partnership that we have between our locality and national Government Departments is working.

Many local partners have worked together, and continue to do so, on outer-city problems. It is not as if nothing is being done; people are working incredibly hard. However, what we have done in my constituency is to add a further and original element, by creating an independent charity to cover the whole of the Nottingham North area—the Rebalancing the Outer Estates Foundation. I hope that this charity, as it goes through its learning curve, can teach others lessons that can be spread throughout the United Kingdom. That particularly applies to the topic we are discussing today, which is the lessons around economic and business investment in the outer cities.

However, the expectations need to be made realistic from the outset. The role of Rebalancing—if I may call it that—is not only to speak up for the area but to broker the deals and convene the partners who can help. We are not a delivery body. We rely on a small board and a tremendously dedicated staff team from the public and private sectors, who generously give their time and personnel. We are indebted, not least to Public Health England, the local enterprise partnership, the council, Carillion, Nottingham City Homes, further and higher education, and the social enterprises, community and voluntary sector, as well as many others—even the local MP, and I declare an interest, as I am the chair of the Rebalancing charity. The key to all such enterprises of change is and will always be effective partnership working, not just in the locality but also between the local and national levels. Convention forbids me from naming them, but I will put on the record my appreciation of the support and creativity that particularly officials, but also Ministers, have shown. That has been immensely encouraging and helpful.

I will give two small examples of what I mean. One involves retail and shopping. We are working with the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), and her Department. We will host an outreach event in Nottingham in the new year, which will bring together a range of local retailers from across the area to build links and share best practice. There are lots of great examples up and down the country of people coming together to breathe life back into their communities, and there is no reason why we cannot apply that energy to the shopping parades on our outer-city estates.

Another example is building on the encouragement of the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who has responsibility for public health, by bringing forward dental checks for every three-year-old. That is a legal provision at the moment, but it is terribly underused. We would also like to introduce a lung check for every 60-year-old, because we have 1970s levels of smoking in Nottingham North. Finally, we aim to do the first prevalence study of the drinking habits of mums-to-be, so that we can tackle foetal alcohol syndrome, which is so damaging to the growth potential of many of the young people in my constituency.

However, the focus today is on investment. If we are to tackle the problems of outer-city estates sustainably, our investment horizon must be long-term—at least 10 years and preferably much longer. That is hard to achieve when our partners are dealing hand to mouth with the consequences of austerity. That is one of the reasons why our relationship with the LEP is central. Our LEP is called D2N2—Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire—and its growth deal not only talked about building roads and bridges but included a commitment to develop our rebalancing outer-city estates project, with the aim of getting more people into work, raising education and skill levels, and making better use of local assets and spending. The growth deal also states that the rebalancing project can be used to provide evidence on how these practices can be applied effectively to similar outer-city areas.

Included in the LEP’s growth deal were commitments from the Cabinet Office, the DCLG, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to work with the LEP, to develop proposals and to help put those proposals into action where there is a strong case for doing so. In order to sustain the Rebalancing charity itself, we have submitted a bid to the LEP, which will be decided on in the new year. Separately, we have a big, overarching employment and skills plan, which will be discussed with our key funding partners. We hope to make progress on the main proposals by about March next year. I will come back to that plan a little later.

Fundamental to business investment coming to the rebalancing area is that the labour market is ready, and that local people have the education, skills and training to be able to take the jobs on offer. Again, I could go on about the evidence regarding the demography that we are working with, but I will give just one example from our evidence base. A majority of working-age people in Nottingham North are not qualified to work in anything beyond entry-level—that is, unskilled—employment, and that problem is particularly pronounced among young people. That is one of the worst statistics, or pieces of evidence, showing the problems afflicting Nottingham North, and we are determined to do something about it. To tackle those problems requires consistent and sustained intervention. Little bits of money thrown here and there, which finish after a year or 18 months, can be worse than useless, because they raise expectations; they gear people up, then drop them back down again. A little investment and a little energy provided over a long period will be much more beneficial to communities. They can build on that, and then take over themselves as the investors gently move aside and the process transitions to people entirely running their own affairs.

There are several examples of how we are doing that. I have been discussing the matter with Ofsted and concluded a positive agreement with it and with the principals of the six secondary schools in the constituency, frankly, just to talk to each other outwith the quasi-judicial relationship that Ofsted and inspectors tend to have with schools. Let us talk to each other and find out what works. Let us talk to each other and see if we can understand each other better. As Ofsted expands its inspection regime to include young people who are not going to get 5 A to Cs—the pre-NEETs, if they can be called that—let us talk to each other to see how we can recognise their achievements. I have been to see the Minister about that as well. I can inform him that, since we met last, those meetings are now taking place. Indeed, we are extending them across the whole city, so that heads can understand better and Ofsted can understand heads better. It is one of the lessons that I mentioned earlier. That is absolutely positive progress.

The other thing that we are doing—I alluded to this some time ago, but things have moved on—is the youth engagement fund bid. We are now towards the end of that process. We are still not sure that we are going to win out, but numbers of other applicants have been weeded out as the process has gone on, so we are ever hopeful. If we are lucky enough to get that funding, we intend to have what I would call a careers adviser in every one of my secondary schools. No doubt they are called a life-work coach or some such name these days, but the theory remains the same: helping young people at the earliest possible moment to figure out what their options are in terms of skills, training and employment. They will be there to do that early and to be alongside young people as they grow through school.

The second part of the youth engagement fund bid is to create a small college dedicated to the 14 to 17-year-old group that I mentioned—what we might call the pre-NEETs—so that those people have their own place to go to. Just as the heads are dealing with the five A to C group at school, we want to place those other young people in an environment where they may want to go on and study. We are locating that college in the middle of a completely rebuilt further education college in the middle of my constituency. It was a great privilege to go on site with a hard hat and wellies, with Ofsted and all our principals and local head teachers, to see where the 14 to 17-year-old pre-NEET college will be, as it is being developed and built. I believe that it will be occupied around the middle of next year.

That college has much more potential. We are rebuilding on part of it, but it also has some land, which in the outer cities is an incredible asset. It is not a green field. Every last bit of land and property, every last street corner and every derelict site must be used to try incrementally to bring work, skills and training back into an area like mine. Using what is called the Basford Hall further education college of New College, Nottingham will be fantastically important.

I want to focus a little bit on something rather closer to home for the Minister and the Department: the disadvantaged learners scheme. We are working on proposals for the disadvantaged learners scheme with the LEP and with central Government help. The LEP commitment is to work with Government and other parties to co-design, test ideas and learn from the disadvantaged learners pilot. We are happy to be one of the guinea pigs—we hope, if we are so lucky. Central Government’s commitment is to support the LEP in developing a targeted ward-level pilot, focused on addressing skills challenges faced by disadvantaged learners with multiple barriers to employment and, subject to agreement on the proposals, to make funding and flexibilities available within the adult skills budget. The pilot will consider how local partners can work together to improve outcomes.

A key word in that regard is “flexibilities”. It is always helpful if extra resource is given, but much of what we need to do in a place such as Nottingham North, in the rebalancing area, is about having discretions around the edges to let people get on and do the job as they see it, to trial particular approaches, rather than just going straight down the line, with people saying, “Do it this way or not at all.” I know it is difficult—Whitehall has to run the whole country—but I have found that officials and Ministers are positive about minor changes that could be trialled and looked at in places such as Nottingham North, just to make the system work a little smoother, in the way that we all intended in the first place.

The disadvantaged learners fund complements the bigger, overarching employment and skills plan that we are putting together. The ambition behind that plan is for all those who live in Nottingham North to embark on a journey through education, skills and training and, ultimately, employment. Yes, it applies to the hardest to reach, but to everybody else as well. That is our ambition. It is a big one, but we think we can do it, given time, patience, flexibility and the drive that all our local partners are bringing to bear. The overarching employment and skills plan brings help at every stage of that journey, from helping people to address their initial barriers to work and training, to engaging employers in local labour schemes, and assisting people to access formal accredited training and qualifications to levels 2 and 3 and beyond.

In the big plan there are five key initiatives. I do not think the Minister has heard this before, because we have only just pulled it together and we are working with officials in his Department and others to be clearer about them. All the initiatives are of some benefit to disadvantaged learners, and some support the delivery of formal accredited training and access into employment for the hardest-to-reach groups.

First, community job coaches will provide continuous mentoring and pastoral support to the hardest-to-reach jobseekers throughout their journey to employment. Instead of popping in every so often, asking, “How’s it going?”, there will be someone with them, whom they can have confidence in and ask the right questions of and who will take them on the journey. Then there will be the great moment when that person is totally independent and can fly on their own.

Secondly, personal employability budgeting will meet the unforeseen costs that prevent jobseekers from the deprived estates of Nottingham North from accessing training and work. Those things crop up, and a little flexibility around a budget can get a young person to an interview, get them in good shape and allow them to do the things that they need to do to ensure that they are getting the opportunity.

Thirdly, community-employer partnerships will encourage employers to engage more with local communities, give greater support and get more involved in employability interventions. That sounds pretty straightforward, Mr Davies. You and I normally would just put a circular letter out, saying, “Come along to a meeting, have a sausage on a stick and talk to me about this issue.” However, it is a bit harder to do in a place with a demography like that of Nottingham North. I have done that and ended up with just two small employers in the room. In such places a one-man business has to shut the shop for two hours for the privilege of going to have a little chat with the Member of Parliament. We need to work harder on that. Certainly, we are working closely with the Federation of Small Businesses to do that.

Fourthly, a skills in the community element will deliver accredited vocational training and qualifications in a community setting and alongside mentoring and the softer types of community-based support. There was a cull—some of us would say, “About time, too”—of a lot of accredited courses. I have discussed this openly and sensibly with the Minister, and I think that the baby went out with the bathwater in a number of cases. A number of courses performed a really good function in getting a young person back into thinking about education: attending, working, writing. Frankly, if it does that, it has the makings of being the sort of course that people might want to accredit, because it starts a young person who has dropped off the conveyor belt back on the journey to skills, training and work. I am of course not saying that anything will do. That attitude was around before. However, sometimes we need to go back, have another look at the list and say, “There are a number of courses on there that should be reaccredited.” That way, we can start to get these young people on that journey. It all starts with that first step.

The fifth and final initiative is a local growth plan to develop and implement strategy to support local businesses, helping them to grow and create jobs for unemployed residents in Nottingham North. A variety of barriers exist to all those things. If it was easy, we would have done it a long time ago. The Rebalancing the Outer Estates Foundation is well placed to talk to the people the normal public sector institutions sometimes find it difficult to link to, through, for example, drug and alcohol work, youth work, sometimes community protection, mental health and even public health and housing. Bringing those areas in and engaging them in addressing social and personal issues is an end in itself, but another consequence of engaging with those people is that they will start to think about training, skills and employment.

If successful, our disadvantaged learners fund bid would set up a partnership to manage personal employability budgets and employ community jobs coaches, embedding them in the local community. That would not be the Rebalancing foundation, but a third party, properly procured and tested to ensure that it could deliver high-quality employability budgets and community jobs coaches. Those coaches would provide one-to-one pastoral support to develop some of these young people who do not have basic social and emotional capabilities, such as one would expect from a young person serving people in a retail shop, selling a tie or whatever. These young people are not capable of engaging and having that sort of negotiation and interaction. Sometimes it is as basic as those fundamental social and emotional skills that most of us take for granted. A real incentive for the partner organisations we can engage is that it ticks the boxes of their agendas. For example, gaining training and employment decreases the likelihood that young people will get involved in crime. I often say, as no doubt do you, Mr Davies, that the best crime prevention measure is a good job. People in work are more likely to be healthier, less of a burden on the health service and to live longer and happier lives. Employment increases income, ensuring sustainability of rent payments and addressing housing issues. Work can bring structure and self-worth to life, improving mental health and helping to tackle some of the consequences of mental ill health, including drug and alcohol problems.

Rebalancing would ensure a good mix of provision that is suitable for local disadvantaged learners. We would work closely with our partners to do that. As I mentioned, we want to target directly the 1,250 unemployed young people in the area, as well as cutting off the supply of young people into that group. That is one of our key ambitions. If we are fortunate enough to succeed in our bid, from August 2015 and running for three years, we would target three trial wards within the Rebalancing area. In those wards, we would target those aged 19 to 24 who are long-term unemployed and have claimed out-of-work benefits for more than six months. The information—their names and addresses—sits with the Department for Work and Pensions and some form of interaction or agreement will therefore need to be in place, whereby the Department regularly updates information on the eligible beneficiaries within the proposal target area.

Briefly, on small businesses, Rebalancing had a meeting just a couple of weeks ago with the NBV, the Federation of Small Businesses, the east midlands chamber of commerce, Invest in Nottingham, RightTrack Social Enterprise and Business in the Community. We agreed on three specific things that we would like to take forward. The first is the development of a concise and clear marketing and communication plan for small and medium-sized enterprises, underpinned by a few key messages. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) has taken a particular interest in pursuing similar ideas. The second is the deployment of business buddies to engage and mentor small and medium-sized enterprises, understanding the support they need to grow and assisting them in providing that essential service. Having someone to turn to who has been there and done it is important if someone is starting up a single or double-handed business. The creation of a Nottingham North SME advocate agency—part of the problem about being in a big city is that a city-wide function might not reach the places it needs to reach most—that represented the interests of SMEs would give them the support they need and a voice in our city and nationally.

I want to put a few specific issues on the Minister’s radar, although I do not suppose he will have time to deal with all of them today. I have touched on some of them. My first key word is intensiveness. Just having the service there and saying, “We have got it. It ticks the box”, is not good enough. It helps if there is someone to whom those hard-to-reach people can turn or phone outside normal hours. We tried that with the early intervention project in Nottingham with teenage mums using the family-nurse partnerships. Every teenage mum in the programme has an experienced health visitor whom they can turn to at any time. In a way, it is a little bit like that with hard-to-reach jobseekers. To reach them, it requires someone who can be personal and on the end of the phone whenever advice is needed. I put that on the Minister’s radar. Intensiveness as well as coverage is part of the answer.

Flexibility is another key word. I have talked a little about it. Sometimes, we meet the criteria set by the funding body, rather than the criteria needed by the individual. I fully appreciate that it is difficult to administer programmes that are tailor-made for each individual, but frankly it is essential when we are dealing with this sort of person. It is the only way it will work. Do not bother doing it unless there is the flexibility to say, “We can in certain circumstances bend what we are trying to do just to reach that person.” There are lots of great examples of how that has been done and how someone whom everyone else said was a lost cause—they said they would be unemployed for their whole life, could not care less and had this problem and that problem—proves to be a big success story, because of that spark of flexibility and interaction with individuals.

Continuity is another key word. When we are dealing sometimes with families who have inter-generational unemployment, programmes have to be sustainable inter-generationally. Perseverance is needed. The programme needs to be there at all points, because the issues cannot be tackled in the short term. The words “quick” and “fix” do not sit together in the same sentence. Were that true, we would have dealt with the issues long ago.

My final key word is additionality. When we are trying to do something original, flexible and new, we need also to be innovative, interesting and trialling something. Sometimes, people who do that will fail. They need to be allowed to fail, because most of the time they will be finding better ways to do stuff. It must be additional, not an add-on to what we already have with the many very good people in the field already. The bulk of the bigger picture on employability will be looked at over the next couple of months.

We hope to benefit from European structural and investment funding, which is coming up shortly, and want to work up a proper bid with our local partners, the LEP, the council and others to produce a community-led local development programme to be delivered by the Rebalancing the Outer Estates Foundation and local partners. We hope to agree that by March next year and to get action on the ground via the LEP following that bid no later than the second quarter of 2015-16.

In conclusion, I apologise for perhaps being a little long-winded, but it is necessary when trying to explain something new, innovative and, I hope, exciting. It represents a possible way forward in several different areas. I repeat that I am almost certain that several of the projects—across the whole range from public health to community building, which I have not talked about—that we are attempting to put together will fail, but to be allowed the chance to try to succeed without asking too much of the public purse and building on the good will of our private, voluntary and public sector partners, all of which have contributed without requesting any financial recompense, is a great start.

We hope that we can trial some things for the Minister and for the Government. Should there be a change of Government, whether we get another coalition or whatever else May might bring, that offer will remain. We have made a start in Nottingham North. We are not whingeing about the numbers or about where we sit in a league table. We are using the best offices of people in the locality, the best official advice and interaction with Government, and we intend to make a real difference. Ultimately, our ambition is to ensure that every young person leaves school work-ready and gets a job.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

It is traditional at this point in a contribution to say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. It is always a pleasure to see you on the Back Benches as well. You are always keen to make contributions, some of which have been among my favourites and will no doubt find their way into my leaflets in April.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) on not only the contribution he just made, but the wider work for which he is recognised and admired across the House. His description of the specific work being done on rebalancing outer estates was informative and thought-provoking. He described it as long-winded, but the time positively flew by for me. It was also a pretty strong sales pitch for cross-departmental work and the impact that that can have on areas such as his constituency. He was typically pragmatic and non-partisan, which may be something for me to aspire to in future years, but we cannot escape the political dimension of many of the challenges that his community faces. However, I understand why he would choose not to introduce that into this debate and into his promotion of his cause. He made some thought-provoking points about the challenges and the positive steps that his project can take to make a difference. He spoke at length about the importance of partnership working and bringing on board the private, voluntary and public sectors, local enterprise partnerships and various other networks.

My hon. Friend highlighted that a project such as this will face a lack of core capacity, so where will that capacity come from? In the main Chamber today, we had a statement on local government funding. In many areas, local government would have been the glue that pulled together the fantastic work that he described. We have already seen unprecedented local government cuts over the past four and a half years, and if the events of the past few weeks have taught us anything, it is that if we continue down the path the country has taken over the past few years, local government will experience even greater ravages. In somewhere like Nottingham, which has an excellent local authority, that will inevitably have an impact on capacity.

[Mr Allen]

Since we have a little time to spare, I am prompted by my hon. Friend to mention two things. First, in terms of all-party working or working “across the aisle”, it will often be the case that the serious things that we need to do will stretch across more than one Government and more than one political complexion. When talking about intergenerational change, it is important that we attempt to find some common ground across all parties, but there will always be differences.

Secondly, further to my hon. Friend’s point about today’s statement, local government funding is relevant to today’s debate, because I am a strong advocate of proper devolution to local government. Even in the direst circumstances, those in the localities will spend money, limited and diminishing though it is, much more wisely. I pay tribute to the men and women in Whitehall, but local people will spend money more wisely than those in the centre. I hope that my hon. Friend, in his exalted position on the Front Bench, will continue to push that point with his colleagues in Her Majesty’s Opposition.

[Toby Perkins]

I do not think that it needs a great deal of pushing. My hon. Friend will be aware of the report produced by Lord Adonis, and the Labour party is enthusiastically pursuing many of its ideas, which would represent significant steps towards devolution. We recognise that whatever Government follow the next election will still be working in straitened economic times and tough decisions will still need to be made, but we disagree about the sustainability of the scale of the proposed cuts. Projects such as my hon. Friend’s must be able to survive from one Government to the next as Governments change colour. The local authority devolution agenda, involving combined authorities working with local enterprise partnerships and bringing in the best of the public, private and voluntary sectors, is a vision that we share.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the impact of austerity on his constituents, which cannot be overstated. We are all conscious of the link between poverty and educational underachievement, but for too long the focus has been on spending more on education to deal with educational underachievement, rather than dealing with poverty, which is an approach that this Government could have taken. In communities that have faced challenges over many years, people will often have to deal with welfare cuts, may have a greater reliance on food banks and may have to deal with other social ills, which will inevitably have an impact on the educational attainment of the area and on other things that my hon. Friend is attempting to address. Placing that on the record is important.

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of careers guidance, and I hope that that aspect of his plan is taken up and supported. Careers advice and getting careers advisers in schools in his constituency is a key goal of his project. In fact, one of my most loyal party members in Chesterfield was previously a careers adviser in a school in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

I know how important such work is in raising the aspirations and expectations of people from more deprived communities. My hon. Friend should be reassured that, more broadly, the Labour party has publicly identified previous attempts by successive Governments to boost social mobility as having too often focused on getting more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into the traditional professions. In many cases, we need to see those young people’s aspirations and expectations opened more broadly, in particular with support for them to set up and run their own small businesses, which is a key part of his focus.

My hon. Friend will also be pleased, I hope, to know that a future Labour Government intend to get a representative of the business community on to every board of governors in every secondary school in the country. Schools do excellent work to ensure that young people pass exams, but alongside that there is real potential in ensuring a focus on the links between schools and the business community, which can have a positive impact on the educational aspirations of young people. He is very much pushing at an open door on the broader approach with what he is looking to introduce in his constituency through that project. I am supportive of his specific initiatives as well as of what needs to be done more generally.

My hon. Friend spoke about personal employability being one of the key criteria that his project wants to support. He is absolutely right to acknowledge the wide recognition of the need for an education system that supports people in their personal employability at the school level and through further education. He was entirely right to say that, although some streamlining of qualifications was necessary, there is a real worry about the focus moving away from vocational education and about the great narrowing of the further education opportunities available to people.

When people leave school, we need to get them on to courses that will not only give them rewards for studying, but get them turned on to study, or there is a real possibility of all of the prevalent problems that come from the absence of that. My hon. Friend was absolutely right about personal employability, but he was also right about the importance of the vocational further education landscape.

I want to touch on and take up the business support challenge set by my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right that if we want to see more people from deprived communities setting up businesses, we need them to have the support. I ran three businesses, at least one of which was successful, so I know how important business support is for people when they first set out on that path. It gives them the huge array of knowledge necessary.

When people become a new business owner, they instantly become the salesperson, the marketing person, the buyer, the legal person and the accountant—they are supposed to have all those skills and knowledge bases. Having someone able to support people and understand the kind of environment that they come from and the kind of challenges that they will face, ensuring that they are given correct guidance on the process, is incredibly important business support.

In recent years, in particular in the absence of Business Link, we have seen that business support tends to collect where most businesses are, so the areas already doing well and growing well are pretty well provided for with business support networks, but in areas such as my hon. Friend’s on the exterior of cities, or even more so in small towns and rural areas, business support networks are much more spread out and patchy. As a result, we tend to find most businesses being set up in exactly the areas that are already performing best, and the fewest businesses being set up in the very areas that need them the most. I support what my hon. Friend is attempting to do with the project that he has set up. I make the wider point that his project is perhaps providing a road map for some of the ills that face our country more broadly. That is a challenge that the Labour party will be enthusiastic to take up.

I congratulate my hon. Friend again on his excellent contribution and on the work that he is doing. I support his approach and, even more than that, the need for broader devolution in tough times. He provides a road map that gives us all food for thought about some of the challenges that face a future Government. The principles that he has set out for how Nottingham North can be developed would be listened to by a sensible Government in a much broader context.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Allen]

Thank you, Mr Davies—the invitation is unexpected but none the less very welcome.

I thank the two contributors from the Front Benches. My own party’s Front Bench is well represented in this area, particularly on small business, through the expertise that my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield brings to bear. I was pleased to hear him continue to emphasise that if Her Majesty’s Opposition become Her Majesty’s Government they will step forward on the devolution trail with an even firmer tread than has been apparent in recent years. That will be very welcome.

I would like to say that the Minister learned everything he knows from being a member of my Select Committee, but that would not be true. However, we were colleagues before he became a Member. His understanding and grasp of this field is second to none. I was pleased and grateful that he made the point that he supports the youth engagement fund bid and, should it be part of his bailiwick, the disadvantaged learners fund bid.

The Minister is absolutely right—as was my hon. Friend—that it is not possible statistically to find a place more in need of assistance. That is not just the case in terms of funding; the interest displayed by Ministers, officials and the Opposition Front-Bench team is as valuable as funding, because it means that people know that they are valued and that others want a way forward for them so that they can achieve and obtain the qualifications that they are absolutely capable of getting.

It is only if we can get that done that all the other things—housing, jobs, building a community—will fall into place. The key is to enable people to set off on the course of education, skills, training and work. If we can crack that, we can crack many more of the problems that come in its wake.

Repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

It is not for me to speak for the Liberal Democrats—unfortunately they seem to be absent from the Chamber. May I say that I always read my hon. Friend’s speeches with the closest possible attention? Both he and I were, of course, in coalition in our beloved Conservative party with a social-liberal leadership. I sometimes think that the Conservatives on the Treasury Bench would rather be in coalition with the Liberals than with the likes of me. If that is true, it is no surprise if party membership is under stress.

The contrary system to ours involves a host of smaller parties combining in smoke-filled rooms—although they are probably smokeless now—in order to make deals and hash out a coalition that may be contrary to voters’ wishes. That is often the continental system.

Of course, the Act we are talking about today moves against the spirit of the idea that one Parliament cannot bind another. That is rubbish anyway, because if somebody gets a majority in the next Parliament, they can simply repeal this Act in an afternoon. All the checks and balances are meaningless in any event, because one Parliament cannot bind another.

So, looking to other parliamentary democracies outside the Westminster system, we see that fixed terms are a rarity. Often they are based on the peculiarity of local circumstances, such as in Germany or Switzerland. France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands all provide for early Dissolution more easily than is envisioned under this Act.

One highly esteemed political scientist, Juan Linz, described in 1994 the capability for an early Dissolution as a critical antidote to the temporary rigidity of presidential-style systems. Linz was wise to point out that the power of Dissolution allows for stronger Governments who are more capable of responding to emergencies or to changes in democratic expression. He wrote that the fixed tenure means that the

“political process therefore becomes broken into discontinuous, rigidly determined periods without possibility for continuous readjustments as political, social and economic events might require.”

Indeed, I think the whole idea of fixed-term Parliaments has a Blairite feel to it, in a fawning admiration of the American style of government.

While a long line of thinkers, not least Russell Kirk, have been keen to point out the British roots of the American system, in fact, as you will know, Mr Speaker, it is very different from our own. Our daughter-Parliaments in Ottawa, Canberra and elsewhere have grown up in a very different way from the American system. The United States does not even have general elections, with different portions of both its Houses being elected in fits and starts every two years.

There is also another factor in the American system which we must avoid importing to these islands—this is an important point, which we have seen in this Parliament. With America’s fixed terms, the first half is spent legislating while the second half is spent in campaigning and raising money for the coming election campaign. The fixed date of the election is inherently conducive to that kind of mentality.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

Is the logical extension of the hon. Gentleman’s argument that President Obama should be given the power to decide to call an election when he feels it appropriate, rather than when the constitution states that it should take place? Does he think that the President’s internment in a prison or a mental institution would be the first thing that would happen if he were to suggest such a thing?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The whole point is that the American system is completely different from ours, so it would be unwise for me or anyone else in this House to lecture President Obama on when he should go. Actually, the United States does have a system whereby a President can be removed through impeachment, and President Nixon took that route.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I did not know about that, but my hon. Friend raises a good point, and I am very worried about it. Frankly, this coalition shows us that coalitions are a bad idea. It would have been much better to have had a minority Government. We could have gone to the people after a year or 18 months to seek a proper mandate. That has been done twice by Labour in the 1960s and the 1970s. There was no constitutional outrage, debate or scandal about it. Harold Wilson did it twice and nobody seemed to worry very much. People said that it was necessary to have a coalition to deal with the deficit. Leaving aside the fact that we have not yet properly dealt with the deficit anyway, a Conservative Government could have got on with dealing with the deficit from day one. They had the mandate to do so, and they could have renewed that mandate after a year or 18 months, and we would now have a much stronger Government.

We find ourselves stuck in a lowest common denominator straitjacket, which no one voted for—

[Mr Allen]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but the annunciator appears to be broken. We are on the hatred of Liberal Democrats and the coalition debate, and I am waiting for the Fixed-term Parliaments Act debate. Will you, Madam Deputy Speaker, ensure that the annunciator gets repaired, so we can carry on with the House’s business?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I appreciate the eloquence and humour with which the hon. Gentleman has made his point, but it is of course not a point of order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I am delighted that we can now come on to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 debate, and I am pleased to open the proceedings on that discussion. I want people to watch our proceedings in Parliament, but, privately, I hope that they are doing other things—perhaps going out with their families—because sometimes we can be incredibly embarrassing in this House. It was only three or four weeks ago that the Union nearly fell apart. I am glad that the numbers were what they were at the end, but there was a moment when all of us thought that the Union—the United Kingdom—would be split asunder. It may still do so if we do not deliver properly on the package.

One would think that everything in the garden was rosy, apart from the fact that some would like to revert to those great old days that the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) described. I am talking about those days when we had an empire, homosexuality was illegal, we could slaughter people around the globe, we always had a Prime Minister who told us what to do, and we could go hunting, shooting and fishing in the right seasons. Those were the days indeed. Of course there are many colleagues who long for that degree of exclusivity and privacy, but there are some of us for whom times have changed. We believe that we must do better, and that joining the family of democratic nations in having the people know when a general election is to take place and when the Executive can be replaced is one of the hallmarks of a modern democracy. We are not yet there, but we have made progress in some areas in recent years. One such area is having a fixed-term Parliament.

I say to the hon. Gentleman, whom I have known for many years, that this idea that somehow this Parliament, rather than the Executive, is the creature that runs the nation is the fundamental misapprehension and fundamental flaw in his argument; it is mythology. This is not the Executive. This is not even a body that effectively holds the Executive to account, so to say that things should go back to the way they were does not alter some of those truths, which we all need to consider as parliamentarians first and foremost and as members of the Executive, members who want to be in the Executive, and members who have been in the Executive. That so-called truth is a mythology, and I hope that during this debate we can explore why having a fixed term—having some openness about how long a Parliament or a Government is—will be one of the things that lead people outside to say that at least it looks like we are getting it.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I share some of the hon. Gentleman’s concern at the lamentable way in which Parliament fails to hold the Executive—of whatever Government—to account. Obviously, he supports the notion of a fixed-term Parliament, but does he think that it is right that the Act ensures that that cannot be changed? The Act reinforces this whole push towards coalition Government almost irrespective of public wishes because there has to be a two-thirds majority for getting rid of them. Does he not think that an old-fashioned straight majority would have been the correct way for a fixed-term Parliament to operate?

[Mr Allen]

Sadly, one cannot always bring about democratic change through a rational process; it is often a matter of seizing opportunities. In this case a coalition Government came together and it was helpful—there is no question about this—to have a fixed term, because otherwise there would have been votes of censure and the Government could have fallen at any moment over the past four and a half years.

This might sound strange coming from the Opposition Benches, but I must say that I think history will judge the coalition, however painful and bruising it might have been for the partners, to have governed, or at least administered, in a way that will have surprised many people, particularly if we think back to 2010. There are wounds and difficulties, of course, and I do not seek to underplay them, but a coalition was formed and governance in this country, much to my regret at one level, has continued, one could argue, in a relatively civilized way.

We are where we are, and it would not be democratic to take the power away from Parliament and restore a power that allows a Prime Minister alone to decide the date of a general election. It is yet another strong Executive power that this House should stand up and say should not be restored. There are other Executive powers in this highly centralised democracy that we should be looking to next to ensure that they are made properly democratic, or at least that Governments are held to account for their use.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Allen]

I will give way first to my distinguished colleague from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee.

[Mr Chope]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the argument is essentially between those who believe in rigidity, as he does, and those of us on the Government Benches who believe in flexibility? In a sense, is not that illustrated by what happened in Scotland? Had the Scots voted to leave the Union, the Prime Minister would surely have been required to call a general election, but the Fixed-term Parliaments Act would have prevented him from having that discretion.

[Mr Allen]

The hon. Gentleman is known for being a rather floppy and flexible individual, and perhaps I am renowned for being inflexible in the multitude of compromises I have attempted to make over my political career to secure at least some small reforms in our democracy.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech, as usual. He is right to say that this is a restriction on the power of the Executive, but I think that he is slightly wrong to say that in this Parliament power has not become more centralised. I think his book was called “The First President” or “President Blair” or something along those lines. Surely he thinks that guillotining and the Whips Offices are doing much more to give power to the Executive than a fixed-term Parliament.

[Mr Allen]

I am not saying that it is the fixed term that has helped create a lively Parliament; it is Members of Parliament who have done that, by carving out a niche and exploiting the difficulties of coalition Government, and more credit to them for doing so. However, I have to say to the hon. Gentleman, who is foremost among those pushing back the envelope—I congratulate him on that—that what the Executive giveth, the Executive can take away. Were we to return to a one-party Government, of whichever party, I guarantee that they would seek to roll back some of the gains that he and just about every colleague in the Chamber today have played a part in securing, bringing greater responsibility to Parliament. I warn colleagues here today that the tide will go out very rapidly indeed. We now have, for the first time in parliamentary history, Select Committee Chairs elected by secret ballot and by the whole House, as in my case, and that could easily become a thing of the past. In a one-party Government, the Prime Minister would instruct people to clamp down on dissent and nonconformity.

Similarly, colleagues elected to Select Committees by secret ballot and by party, such as the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), could be under threat. Difficult and awkward customers of the sort I revel in dealing with in my Committee, many of whom are in the Chamber today, will be the first casualties. I say that not because I am trying to scare them, but because I used to be in the Whips Office and had to take Members out of Select Committees and try to get compliant Chairs elected. Sadly, I have been there, done that—I am the gamekeeper turned poacher, and possibly turned gamekeeper again.

The idea that we have cracked it and that we now have a Parliament that in a one-party Government will be as frisky as this one is misleading. We have to protect the small gains we have made in recent years and build upon them, rather than regressing to the good old days when we used to allow Prime Ministers the unprecedented power in a democracy of deciding the date of an election.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the power of the Executive. Does he agree that the constitution should be established in the best interests not of the Prime Minister, but of the country as a whole, particularly in circumstances in which we are having to borrow a lot of money on the money markets to fund the deficit, which means the stability that arises from the Prime Minister not having the power to call an election anytime he feels like it is in the interests of the country as a whole?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Allen]

The hon. Gentleman, who speaks from the Liberal Democrat Benches, would have been terribly blackguarded by his coalition partners in the debate this morning. He is making up for that and makes some intelligent points with which I wholly agree.

What I think the people outside this place listening to the debate would find incredibly difficult is the idea that, as the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) said before leaving his place, we would not apply this to the devolved Administrations. We would not say to those who run Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, “Just have an election whenever you feel like it, for whatever purpose. We’ll happily give you that Executive power.” We have Executive power in No. 10 Downing street, and very rarely is it given away. It was not given away lightly, but on this occasion it was given away on calculation. We must retain it so that Parliament has at least some leverage and certainty so that it can fulfil its duty of holding Governments to account.

It is similar to the situation in local government. Imagine the leader of a council having the power to decide when local government elections take place. Consider the idea that the President of the United States could wake up one morning and say, “There’s some bad economic news coming down the tube in six months’ time, so I’m going to go for a snap election.” The President would then face prison or incarceration, because that would be unconstitutional and illegal. I suspect that the straitjacket would be the option of first resort were that to happen, whether in the US, France or any of our fellow democracies who figured this out a long time ago. Montesquieu figured it out in the 18th century when he wrote about the separation of powers. Given the flexibility we have created for ourselves in this House, perhaps we will come to that conclusion in the not-too-distant future.

[Kevin Brennan]

I caution against being too obsessed with the American system, because it is held in very low regard by American voters, largely because of the amount of money involved in their politics, and one of the reasons for that is the frequency of elections to the House of Representatives and the resulting gridlock. Does my hon. Friend agree that choosing a period of five years, which was done for the convenience of the Executive, whether a coalition or not, is far too long, not least given that the average length of Parliaments in the last century was three years and 10 months? Should not we go to four years, which would also stop the clashes with the devolved Administrations?

[Mr Allen]

We should of course be very careful about taking the American example lock, stock and barrel, although we should learn from other democracies. I also think that my hon. Friend should be a little careful about discussing the low regard in which politicians are held in America. Many people will have been watching the debate today with incredulity, given the way in which some Members spoke a little earlier.

As for whether the period should be four years or five, it is the first time that we have gone through this process. My anxiety relates only to practical politics. I fear that if the question of the period were opened up for review, some Members from whom we have heard today would seize the opportunity to hand power back, rather fawningly, to No. 10 Downing street. One wonders whether there would be as much enthusiasm for that if the Prime Minister were a member of a different political party from that of the mover of the motion.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

rose—

[Mr Allen]

I give way to my very distinguished Select Committee colleague.

[Mr Turner]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman could assist me by explaining what would happen if, for instance, we had lost the referendum in Scotland. In those circumstances, would there not have been an obligation to step up to the public and say, “I have failed, so someone else must take over”, and would it not be a bad thing if everyone were simply moved along one step and the job were put it in the hands of another person, with no election?

[Mr Allen]

The hon. Gentleman has made a powerful case. In fact, he has unwittingly made a powerful case for a written constitution, which would prevent that from happening. What we have, however, is a convention, and, like it or not, conventions mean what the Executive say—rather than, as we are finding now in relation to going to war in Syria, creeping something through the House and reinventing the convention. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister of the day would probably find, in giving way, that the Deputy would be appointed from within the coalition or from within the individual party. The only way of putting a stop to that is to have clarity, so that everyone watching at home has the rule book, the boxing rules, as it were. I am not referring to the fighters in the ring, but there should be a framework that we can all understand, and I am afraid that that is not the case.

Ultimately, even under the current legislation, it would be possible to dissolve Parliament if a vote expressing a lack of confidence in the existing Government were carried by two thirds. After 14 days, there would be a general election. However, those are extraordinary circumstances. We are trying to build a democracy in which everyone out there knows the rules.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

May I repeat the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan)? We are not going to convince the hon. Gentleman in regard to fixed-term Parliaments, but will he at least acknowledge that if we had had a proper national debate on the issue, we would obviously have decided on a four-year term, as in the case of the American presidency, rather than a five-year term?

[Mr Allen]

I believe that—particularly if there is a little less game-playing and a little more consensus-building—a five-year or a 10-year Parliament and longer-term planning make a lot of sense when we are faced with issues that are not about tomorrow’s newspapers, but about the future of the planet, the future of our children and the future of our economy.



Some of our colleagues are new to the House—I except the hon. Member for Gainsborough—and assume that things have always been like this. Some colleagues, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), are very new to the House. They are probably thinking, “Why on earth are they talking about this ancient history?” Well, some of us remember the ancient history.

Having been in the House for some time, I am aware—as are you, Madam Deputy Speaker—of the paralysis that grips a Government when there is speculation about when a general election can take place. We have all lived through it. There is a long period of under-achievement, of anxiety, of shuffles, of the civil service not knowing when the general election will be, of appalling speculation in the media, and of threats by Back Benchers who say that they will do this, that or the other. That, to me, is bad governance and bad administration.

A fixed term brings clarity. It means all of us saying, “Let us get on with our job.” It does not mean saying to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the House will appoint you for a term but it may throw you out at any moment, or press speculation may end your wonderful career. Of course, no one operates like that in the real world. A degree of certainty will end much of the paralysis and speculation that has been so damaging to our politics for many years.

[Mark Field]

I do not entirely disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about uncertainty in regard to election dates. However—this may be because there is currently a coalition Government, and because all the parties are going into the next election telling the electorate that they intend to win and have a manifesto that will enable them to win—an element of paralysis has clearly set in even at this early stage. As we know, there will be an election in May. I think that, in the event of another indeterminate election result, we should be relaxed about the possibility that we will not return for the Queen’s Speech until early or mid-June next year. There may well be an interval of several weeks. That would not necessarily constitute paralysis—it would be possible for government to continue—but Parliament would not be able to sit until we recognised what sort of coalition would be taking the place of the current Government.

[Mr Allen]

The benefit of our having a final year and knowing it is a final year is that we can plan for how we can sensibly use that final year. I absolve my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) of this, but is all the nonsense of “It will be a zombie Parliament unless we pack the last year full of inconsequential legislation, so that we can we pretend that we are macho and running the country” the best that we can do?

My Committee has produced two reports on this issue. We have studied it in great detail, and have heard from highly expert witnesses. We concluded that the fifth year of a Parliament could, because we would know that it would be the last year, be very different culturally—although not this first time round, because we are not used to it. Let us return to the default position of the old dogfight! Let us all slam each other over the Dispatch Box! But perhaps we could use the last year very constructively, rather than entering a state of paralysis or conducting ourselves in our normal, conventional way—often disgracefully, in the eyes of the public.

[Sir William Cash]

Did the hon. Gentleman’s Committee take evidence from Lord Norton of Louth? If so, can he remember what conclusions Lord Norton reached?

[Mr Allen]

I am afraid that I cannot remember, but Lord Norton of Louth—who is a very distinguished Member of the other place—gives evidence to us regularly, and I am confident that if we did not take oral evidence from him, he would have submitted some written evidence. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for not being able to recite it. No doubt he can do so.

Let me return to the points made by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field). We can plan our lives here better. We, Members of Parliament—not the Government—can plan our lives better, in the parliamentary interest. That means not being told what to do. It does not mean being told how wonderful it is to be able to have a debate of our own choosing on days such as this. Aren’t we lucky to be able to have a couple of debates every so often? Aren’t we lucky to be allowed out into the playground? That is better than being told every second of our waking day what agenda is being set by the Government, and hearing the nonsense that somehow Parliament is deciding stuff. Of course it is the Government who are deciding—but, on this occasion, we have made a little bit of an inroad on behalf of Parliament.

Those were very good points, and I shall be sure to write them up and pass them to my local Member of Parliament; so the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster can expect a letter in the morning.

Let me explain a little about the importance of what a fixed-term Parliament allows us to do, first as a Parliament, secondly as an Administration and a Government, and thirdly for the electorate. What does a fixed-term Parliament allow us to do as Members of this House, and as members of Select Committees and other institutions in the House? For one thing, it allows us to have a sensible legislative programme. Until the advent of the fixed-term Parliament—and I look forward to the legislative programme of the next one, because by then we shall have learnt a few lessons—it was the same every time. An election was won, and no one was sure how long the Parliament would last. It was a case of “Let us stuff the big important Bills through the House at the earliest opportunity.” Then there will be a ton of Second Readings before the Christmas of the new Parliament, things will be pushed through and often written very poorly, and later on we will have a period in the doldrums when things are drifting along because most of the legislation has already gone through.

That is anathema to what I suspect virtually all colleagues in the House would support me on, which is pre-legislative scrutiny. A fixed-term Parliament allows us, for the first time ever, to plan our legislative programme, because we know when the beginning, middle and end are. Things that require more work and more detailed analysis by the civil service to produce a draft can be prioritised—really important, practical things that can involve the British public and bring them with us. The Scottish example has shown what fantastic accidental glory democracy can deliver us. Imagine if we planned our next employment Bill and talked to working people and employers. Imagine if we really thought carefully about what a climate change Bill could do three years hence. Imagine if we had a Parliament talking to the electorate because it knew how it could plan its legislative programme. What a different Parliament it would be if we decided to go that way—a Parliament that might earn people’s respect.

Pre-legislative scrutiny would allow this House to present a Bill and say, “Here’s our draft, let’s have a Second Reading and agree the principles, and then we’ll give it to an expert committee of colleagues of all parties to look at for a serious period”—three, four, five or six months—“to really get to the bottom of this and get the evidence together.” A Government who were listening could then enable that to happen—not once, because we have made a persuasive argument on the Floor of the House and won a vote, but as a matter of course because that is the way we conduct our business. We would then be in great danger of producing good law that did not require our coming back the next year to put right the things that were got wrong because we did not take our time or that needed a thousand amendments from the other place because our legislative process was so poor.

[Richard Drax]

South Dorset (Con): First, there was no pre-legislative scrutiny, as far as I know, of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. Secondly, in the wonderful, mythological world that the hon. Gentleman lives in, he seems to forget that there is such a thing as politics. We do not always get on in this place—we disagree—and that is extremely good for democracy. I do not think the wonderful world he is portraying actually exists in this place—thank God, because nor should it.

[Mr Allen]

It is hard to pick the substance out of that intervention, but I will do my best. This is the first time that we have had a fixed term; the hon. Gentleman is a new Member, so he may not know that. When we have gone through the process once and come to it again, I hope we will have learned a few lessons. It gives us time to plan, whereas a system where there could be a general election at the drop of a hat means that we are in a state of febrile suspense about whether we are going to go to the electorate. Rightly, that is the first thing on our minds, rather than holding Government to account and perhaps developing an understanding of why Parliament is a separate institution from Government. Should the hon. Gentleman be re-elected and we have a four or five-year term, perhaps he will be able to find more time to understand some of those things a little more deeply.

Let me go back to how Parliament will benefit from this situation. Imagine a situation where each Select Committee has the power and the drive, and perhaps even the personnel, of a Committee like the Public Accounts Committee so that it could look at value for money, seriously examine Government accounts, and seriously examine accounting officers—and possibly even Government Ministers. Very few, if any, Select Committees other than the PAC can do that. Imagine what we could then do in terms of our constitutional role outlined by William Gladstone, who said that our role in Parliament is not to run the country but to hold to account those who do. It would be a massive step forward. People at home would say, “These guys are really earning their crust. They are not just shouting at each other on a Wednesday afternoon—they are figuring out how to save me, a taxpayer, a lot of money, how to make our services work better, how to involve people, and how to get ownership of the things we have in our society.”

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I agree with everything my hon. Friend says about the benefits of Select Committees, pre-legislative scrutiny and all the other things that we want to develop, but the pre-supposition of his argument is that the people elect a Government who have the power to continue for a fixed term—in other words, they have a majority and can maintain it to carry out a legislative programme for a fixed term. In the present circumstances, with a multi-party system emerging and the two Government parties unevenly balanced, is that going to happen?

[Mr Allen]

We do not contrive a system for each result—we have to do it on the basis of principle. The principle that we know when a Parliament begins and ends is very important, not just for us here in our own cosy little world but for people outside. It is important for the electorate to understand why we are doing what we are doing, and that principle allows that to happen.

My Select Committee took evidence from other Select Committee Chairs, none of whom said that they wanted to go back to the old system. They all said, as I did as a Select Committee Chair, “This enables us to have greater planning ability, even within our own Select Committee.” I will give one example from my own Committee. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, as one of its most important members before you came to exalted high office late on and robbed us of one of our main contributors, my Committee spent four years looking at whether we should devise a written constitution. We considered what other options there were; conducted a very detailed investigation through an external body, King’s college London; took copious amounts of evidence; and carefully produced a document that everyone can be proud of and that will stand the test of time. That is not possible if we think that in a couple of years’ time there might be a general election when Members, rightly, will want to be in their constituencies and so on. These things allow us to plan our work, as MPs and Select Committees, much more easily.

We also improve public debate if we allow people outside to see what we are doing—our measures, our policies, our options—and thereby engage with people. Rather than just being a glorified electoral college to elect a Prime Minister some time in the early hours of general election day, we can get a real role in life as a Parliament and start to produce good legislation and better law, and to do things that the public will be proud of us for in holding Government to account. We would not lose Bills in the “wash up” but be able to plan effectively. A lot of people in this House worked on the Sex and Relationships Education Bill, which, as finally drafted, had the support of most people. That Bill was lost because a general election was called. People outside who had an interest in young people growing up with fully rounded capabilities and full knowledge so that they could raise good families of their own found it inexplicable that Parliament could act like that.

The next area I want to turn to—I will try to be a little more brief, Madam Deputy Speaker, since you have glowered at me—is Government and the civil service. I had the privilege of being sent by my Select Committee to each of the permanent secretaries in Whitehall. To a man and a woman, they basically said the same thing, including the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood—that planning, long-termism and sequencing had improved markedly since people knew when the beginning and end of the Parliament were. That allows the civil service to address the comprehensive spending review and say, “We know when the next Government will be coming in, so we will have things ready for them. Perhaps they will want to do things differently, if they are not another coalition Government.” That also helps with budgeting.

That mindset goes down the pipe from the civil service and Government to local government, which then has a sense of the expenditure model it could operate over the next five to 10 years. It also gives our national health service an idea of when to plan hospitals and train doctors and nurses, which are long-term activities. It allows the civil service and Government to get to grips with those things.

The voluntary sector is also affected. I speak as someone who was plagued by not knowing from one year to the next where the next cheque was coming from or how much it would be worth. People would be fired at Christmas in the hope that we could put them back to work on 5 April. What a stupid way to run a system—making it up as you go along. Paralysis at one level means chaos at another, all because we cannot do what every business, local government and president in western democracy does as a result of knowing the beginning and the end of a governing period and how to plan life within it. Finally, this also applies to the electorate. I hope that sensible electors will view everything I have talked about as evidence that we can be more rational and more fit to govern.

At the end of the day, the key things are not those I have listed, but the fact that knowing the date of a general election, how a Prime Minister is elected and how a Member of Parliament gets the honour of the job the public give them is not a gift from an over-centralised Executive who are used to running an empire, but a right of which every citizen in our democracy should be aware. Those are the benefits of having a fixed-term Parliament.

I will talk briefly about what should happen in the last year of a fixed-term Parliament. The last year can be used not in a conventional way but in order to say, “Yes, this is the year we are going to run up to a general election. Can we involve people and have a public education drive? Can we, as parties, perhaps with the help of the Office for Budget Responsibility or other institutions, cost all our programmes?” We could have that debate a year out from a general election, rather than the mud-slinging that happens in the last few days leading up to a general election, where one party says, “You’re spending too much,” another says, “You’re not spending enough,” and another says, “We’re going to raise money, but you’re borrowing too much.” Let us try to work all that out. At the end of the day, we might surprise ourselves. Despite all the rhetoric, there can be common ground on a lot of stuff. The least we can do in Parliament—not the Government; leave them in Whitehall and No. 10 for now—is to figure out what the key problems are for the nation on whose behalf we are meant to parlay.

That is a different approach, but we also need to keep this Government to their promise of creating a House business committee to enable us to have the time to do those serious political activities, rather than have the same old dogfight. We as a Parliament could have a real impact on the main parties’ manifestos by creating an evidence base for policy, figuring out what works for that policy and making sure it is properly costed.

I hope that is a convincing argument for the need for clear planning and accurate budgeting and for involving the British people in our Parliament. We need to be confident that we are better than just doing what whoever runs the Government tells us to do or just opposing them from the Opposition Benches. We have gained a lot, but we can do even more. The Prime Minister committed to a review of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 in 2020. By then I hope we will have made progress, built on the Act and gone from strength to strength. I hope that will lead us to achieve two things that may just turn the tide and result in the electorate looking at us as something other than pariahs: better government and honest politics.

--- Later in debate ---

[Austin Mitchell]

I think that that would be difficult to arrange. It is a political decision that is taken by the Executive. In a democratic party, I would hope that the Executive would consult the party. That did not happen before the elections that were called by my party when we were in power, but I felt that it should have done. Jim Callaghan certainly should have consulted me, because if he had called an election in October 1978, we probably would have won. He tended not to listen to my advice, however loudly it was put. That was a failure of Back-Bench power.

I am in favour of a three-year term. At a pinch, I would accept a four-year term. It should be a fixed term, with the ability to call an early election in extreme or difficult circumstances. If we had that, we would not have to have all the silliness of the recall legislation that we were dealing with on Tuesday. I have never known a more stupid Bill than the Recall of MPs Bill. I was not given the opportunity to vote against it, because there was no vote. All parties are grovelling before the electorate by saying, “Let us sacrifice ourselves and throw MPs to the wolves.” There would be no need for recall if we had a three-year term, because by the time the machinery of recall had cranked into operation, the three years would be over and the electorate would be able to turn everybody out and make a new choice.

I am being moderate by calling for short, triennial Parliaments. I am old enough to have been a Chartist, I suppose, but I am not espousing annual Parliaments, as the Chartists did. A three-year Parliament accords with the mood of the public, as we read it in the major polls and surveys. There is an alienated mood. People want to be heard. They are angry and upset. They want to have an influence, but they feel that MPs are not listening and that Parliament does not represent them.

[Mr Allen]

Will my hon. Friend just beware and look across the Atlantic, where there are two-year terms? The people in the Houses that are elected on that basis are permanently campaigning. On one level, that might be a good thing, but because it means that they are permanently having to raise money for their election, it might not be regarded as progressive.

[Austin Mitchell]

I am arguing not for a two-year term, but for a three-year term. In any case, there is a big difference. Although my hon. Friend is right that members of the House of Representatives have to raise endless amounts of money to fight elections, that would not be necessary in our system because we provide free television adverts for the parties. The money that members of the House of Representatives raise mainly goes to the television networks to put on attack adverts about the other side. That would not be necessary here.

However, I am arguing not for a two-year term, but merely for a shorter term. That is in accord with the public mood, because the people want influence—they want a say. They feel that MPs are not listening and that we are in it for ourselves. They feel that decisions are being taken on immigration, economic matters and all sorts of things, over which they have no control. They want to be heard. The only effective way of ensuring that they are heard, that I know of, is to have more frequent elections. That is why I am in favour of a three-year term. We are too remote from the people if we have long, five-year terms.

If we had the fixed three-year terms for which I am arguing, it would be necessary to make two concomitant changes. First, we would have to limit the tenure of the Prime Minister. In recent experience, at the end of six or seven years, Prime Ministers are barmy, have delusions of grandeur or even competence, or are just brain-dead and exhausted. A seven-year limit on prime ministerial power would be a good idea.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North has much more faith in the two-party system than I have, because his argument presupposes strong government for a long period. I am worried that the days of one-party government are gone. We must not forget that in the ’40s and ’50s, 90% of people voted for one of the two parties that could form a Government; now, the proportion is only two thirds. The system is crumbling. The parties are losing membership and are hollowed out. They are controlled by small coteries and no longer represent the two great divisions in our society.

The main parties are weakening and we are developing a multi-party politics. However much we attack UKIP, it represents a point of view. Whatever we say about the Liberal Democrats—Tory Members have been scathing about the poor Liberal Democrats, who have left sulking, and about their participation in government—they represent a section of the community. We also have the Scottish nationalists and the Greens. Multi-party politics cannot work without proportional representation. The system has to be changed.

The change that introduced proportional representation in New Zealand has been very successful. It ensures that all legislation has the support of a majority of the parties in Parliament. That is desirable, because it means that the public are consulted and have a say, and through their parties they influence the legislation. [Interruption.] I am winding towards what I would hopefully call a peroration, so I would rather not give way at this moment. If we have a change of that nature for shorter Parliaments—and I think we need one—it must be accompanied by proportional representation so that we can work with the system, and so that the multiple views of society are represented in this place, rather than it being the scene for a conflict between just two parties.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Allen]

Does the hon. Gentleman realise that he is making a strong argument for the direct election of the Government, just as we are directly elected? It would be terrible if he were to pay the price personally at the next election for the faults of the Government. The Executive should be for election so that members of the public have the right, which exists in most western democracies, of directly electing their Government rather than using him as a proxy.

[Sir William Cash]

I do not accept that proposition, but we do not have time to go through all the implications. I also completely repudiate his suggestion of a written constitution, and I suspect what the hon. Gentleman has just said has something to do with that.

The revelations by the right hon. Member for Yeovil about the coalition negotiations also implicitly accepted the argument that fixed-term Parliaments facilitate long election campaigns. That is where we are now. We are in an election campaign already, and questions arise about the amount of money that is being generated for financing purposes. That is a practical objection, the realities of which we are seeing as I speak. MPs are not expected to be very visible in Westminster during this Session, and I need only look at the Opposition Benches to see that only two Opposition Members are listening to this debate.

As was made clear in evidence to the House of Lords Constitution Committee, knowing well in advance when the next election will take place encourages Governments to manipulate the economic cycle to their maximum advantage. That is a not unknown characteristic of Chancellors of the Exchequer, and we will have the autumn statement soon. But that substantial question has to be addressed.

The Act was a consequence of the need to build trust between coalition partners, and that is clear from all the books that have been written about the stitching up of the coalition. There was no agreement by the Conservative party that I would regard as proper agreement. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough said, we had a meeting at which we were told certain things about what was going on between the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats, and there was some doubt about that, if I may put it that way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

I totally agree. The whole question of House of Lords reform was also being advanced for party political interests.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley asked who should have the power to dissolve Parliament. Should it be the Prime Minister? I put it to him that holding that power is part of the authority of being Prime Minister. As my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) described it, part of the poisoned chalice of office is that the Prime Minister holds that power. By passing the Act, we have robbed the Prime Minister of part of that authority. We have robbed the Government of part of the authority of office that the Government live on a day-to-day basis, subject to the confidence of the House of Commons. That has been taken away and represents a fundamental change in our constitution.

The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) wants not only a written constitution and the continuation of fixed-term Parliaments, but the separation of powers. Basically, he wants an American constitution rather than a British constitution, but let us look at the American constitution. First, it is paralysed. It cannot get its deficit down and it cannot elect a strong Government. It can elect a President, but the separation of powers means that Congress can defeat everything the President wants to do. I do not think that that is a very good recipe. We do not want to follow that. In any case, the separation of powers is based on a misapprehension of how constitutions work. There is, in fact, no such thing as a separation of powers in any constitution. That was what Montesquieu thought he understood about the British constitution. The need for a separation of powers was the lesson that the American founding fathers thought they had learned from him about the British constitution. However, in the American constitution the President, the Executive, vetoes legislation and appoints the judiciary, and the legislature conducts pre-appointment hearings on the senior people in the judiciary. There is always overlap between the functions of government, and ours is a system of parliamentary government in which the Executive can hold office only with the permission of Parliament.

The Act has fundamentally altered the balance of power in our constitution. English votes for English laws, which many of us, including Labour Members, want, would require only a minor adjustment to Standing Orders and the running of the House, yet people are saying, “Oh, we’ll have to have a constitutional convention.” The Act made a far greater change but without a constitutional convention or any consultation; there was absolutely no debate. It was not even explained to the Conservative parliamentary party before we agreed to the coalition. It only became apparent that there would be a Fixed-term Parliaments Bill when the coalition agreement was published. Well, we have all learned our lesson, and the Conservative party will not be forming a coalition in the next Parliament until we have seen the coalition agreement in draft, and we will want to go through it line by line to ensure that such sleights of hand are not repeated.

[Mr Allen]

I hate to intrude on the private grief between the coalition partners, which this debate has become preoccupied with, but I cannot allow the hon. Gentleman to paint me as just a champion of the American constitution. Unlike him, I believe that the British people are perfectly capable of organising their own constitution, and they do not need him, other colleagues or the Conservative party to tell them what the constitution should look like. I would like them to work it out for themselves, and I have faith that they are perfectly capable of doing so.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am a little mystified by that intervention. If we are to make changes to our constitution, we need a mechanism by which to do it, and that will have to be done by elected representatives—it is called democracy; that is what we believe in—and so it will finish up here. If there was ever to be a codified constitution in this country, it would have to be debated and decided here, if perhaps subject to a referendum. I am mystified by the idea that in the estates, villages, towns and cities, the constitution is going to write itself, like some virtual programme on the internet. I don’t think so.

The Act is a fundamental and dangerous change to our constitution because it threatens the privileges of the House. I do not mean our special, personal privilege; I mean the protection of our freedom of speech from questioning by the courts. Under Article 9 of the Bill of Rights, what is said or done in Parliament cannot be questioned or impeached in any other place. However, the Act could result in the courts adjudicating on what kind of vote has taken place in Parliament, because it provides that the Speaker would have to write a certificate stating there had been a vote of no confidence or a two-thirds majority in favour of a Dissolution before the Prime Minister has the authority to go to the Queen and ask for one. It is possible that those votes could be disputed, and because it proceeds from an Act of Parliament, those disputes about who went through which Lobby and on what basis would end up being argued about in a court. This potentially runs a coach and horses through the very important question of parliamentary privilege.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

I meant to say “the right hon. Gentleman”. I stand corrected.

By setting out the general election timetable in legislation, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act removes a Prime Minister’s power to call a general election. Removing that power from the Executive and giving it to Parliament enhances the transparency of our democratic system and represents a significant surrender of political power. Fixed-term Parliaments also provide a number of practical benefits to both Parliament and the Government. They provide greater certainty and continuity and enhance long-term legislative and financial planning, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North said. They also afford greater political stability by giving future Governments foreseeable terms.

Some of the arguments that we have heard against fixed-term Parliaments are that they are inflexible, that they were conceived in a hurry and that the consequences were not fully thought through. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. It is also argued that fixed terms prevent a Government from ending and Parliament from dissolving when they reach their natural end, when it would be most beneficial for a new Government to take the reins. But as I have said, there are benefits to stability, certainty and transparency, and to those inside and outside Government being able to plan.

The question of flexibility has been raised in the context of the Scottish referendum and the need to change the timing of the next general election. Under the Act, the Prime Minister of the day is able to lay an order before both Houses to extend the date of a general election by a maximum of two months to deal with unexpected developments, although they must spell out their reasons for taking that step. The Act also provides for early elections to be called if a motion is agreed by at least two thirds of the House or without Division, or if a motion of no confidence is passed and no alternative Government are confirmed by the House of Commons within 14 days. I do not believe that that limits voter choice.

Prior to the Act, a party could change its leader midway through a Parliament and that new leader would become Prime Minister. In that situation, the new Prime Minister would be under no obligation to call a general election for five years. Under the terms of the Act, however, the leader could still go to the country, although a vote in the House in favour of so doing would require a two-thirds majority. It is unlikely that the Opposition would withhold their support, for reasons of political consensus.

[Mr Allen]

The Minister is making a thoughtful and cogent speech. Now that we have a fixed-term Parliament and we know the date of the next general election, does he accept that that knowledge is the property of the British people? Does he agree that, if any incoming Government sought to repeal the Act and give powers to a Prime Minister who had not been directly elected by the people, that would create a real crisis of legitimacy and be seen as a power grab by the party that had won the election?

[Mr Gyimah]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the convention in this country is that a Parliament cannot bind future Parliaments. If a future Parliament wanted to repeal this Act, made the case and had the votes in this House, it could repeal the Act. The more substantive point, which has been made a number of times, is that in a five-year Parliament the fifth year is wasted. The truth is that be it a five-year, four-year or three-year Parliament, it is always possible to make the case that the last year is spent electioneering, so that point does not necessarily follow from having five-year fixed-term Parliaments.

The final point I wish to deal with is the idea that the Government have run out of steam. In the Queen’s Speech, we announced a full legislative programme; there were 16 main programme Bills, including five carry-over Bills and three draft Bills. That compares with 13 main programme Bills, including three carry-over Bills and two draft Bills, in the last Session of the previous Parliament. Our programme includes legislation dealing with serious crime, trafficking and modern slavery, improving access to finance for small business and pensions.

The hon. Member for Great Grimsby invoked Oliver Cromwell and his words to the Long Parliament:

“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing.”

I would say that the Labour Government were here too long for any good they could do and, be it on the economy, welfare, health or education, this five-year Parliament is doing a lot to get our country back on track.

Ofsted (14 to 17-year-olds)

Graham Allen Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Caton. It is also a pleasure to welcome the new Minister of State for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities on his first full day at work. I hope this debate will be a memorable start to his tenure. He and I have worked closely together on various issues over the years, and I hope he brings the same sort of energy, commitment and good humour to this important subject. I hope we can work together to do everything we can for the 14 to 17-year-old group that we call pre-NEETs—for those unfamiliar with the acronym, it stands for: not in employment, education or training. The idea is to catch those young people before they become proper NEETs and long-term youth unemployed, so I have called the debate to bring to the attention of the House some of the ideas we are developing in Nottingham to pre-empt the creation of those NEETs and long-term youth unemployed.

I have about 300 NEETs in my constituency. I will refer later to the fact that getting one of those young people into work will save the taxpayer an estimated £160,000. Imagine the benefits if we could get 300 of them into work; imagine the benefits if we could get my 1,200 or so long-term youth unemployed into work. So there is a human tale that I want to tell, but also a story that I hope will make the Chancellor salivate in terms of the savings we could afford the taxpayer and recycle some of that money into helping those young people make the best of themselves. We have a fair amount of time this morning. I will outline the positive ideas that we have in Nottingham and hope to get the support and encouragement of the Minister.

Ofsted is due to publish new guidance on that 14 to 17-year-old group this autumn, but it will be on inspecting the school provision for pre-NEETs. If we can follow it through locally with Ofsted, it should make it easier for schools to give this group of young people the structure that they need to thrive. I intend to bring lots of resources to bear on the pre-NEETs problem: first, the energy of the rebalancing the outer estates project in Nottingham North, of which I am the chairman-designate; secondly, our project bid for the youth engagement fund; and thirdly, a positive and productive relationship with all of those who are involved in educating these young people, especially Ofsted. I want to touch on each of those three resources that I think we need to direct at this problem.

I am leading the rebalancing the outer estates project with partners in my constituency of Nottingham North, and helping the 14 to 17-year-old pre-NEETs is one of our work streams. Rebalancing the outer city estates is a concept that local partners have developed over the past year in conjunction with the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Lord Heseltine, my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), the Big Lottery Fund, and lots of other partners, especially our superb local enterprise partnership, D2N2. We are putting that forward as part of the growth fund bid through the LEP.

I hope that, ultimately, the lessons learnt in Nottingham North can be taken to scale to help dozens of neglected and forgotten outer city estate-based constituencies throughout the UK. The Minister will know my record of starting things in Nottingham, trialling them, testing them and taking them to national scale, and this is no different. There are lessons, good and bad, from which we can hope to learn if we use the Nottingham North experience effectively, and it can work to the benefit of any Government that comes to power in the near future.

There are nine former council estates in my constituency. They illustrate the social and economic imbalance in the modern UK economy. They were visionary in their design—as in the garden city concept, there are no high rises or towers blocks. They were built to house those who worked in manufacturing, but those people have now lost their work-related identity following the loss of key employers. I am something of a microcosm: my father was a miner, but the mines have now gone; my mother was textile worker, but the factories have closed; my grandfather did 50 years at Raleigh bicycles, which has relocated to China; and some family members worked at Imperial Tobacco—John Player’s—which, sadly, has announced in the past few weeks that it too is closing.

One in five of the people in my constituency claim an out-of-work benefit, four out of six of my secondary schools are in special measures, and we have the lowest number of people going to university of any constituency in the United Kingdom. Our number of single parent households and free school meals is double the national average. However, I want to focus on employment and skills this morning. The number of unemployed claimants in Nottingham North is the ninth worst out of 650 constituencies in the UK. One in eight young people aged 18 to 24 are unemployed—1,190 on the last total. Nottingham North also has low levels of skills and qualifications. That is a poisonous combination. It is one of only 20 parliamentary constituencies in the UK that has more people with no qualifications than it has people with a degree level qualification. There seem to be particularly low levels of skill among the 25 to 29 age group. That is why there is merit in early intervention, going right back to the 14-year-olds and younger children to try to give them the skill base that is essential to their future development.

Using the evidence-based principles of the What Works centres, as well as Nottingham’s early intervention model, which has now been taken to scale in 20 different places with more to come across the UK, we are working closely with Government Departments to form a broad-based local partnership to develop and implement a rebalancing outer estates action plan. We have done a business plan, which has been submitted to the LEP and has got through all the hurdles so far, and we are looking for good news from it towards the end of the month. We believe that that can be taken to scale from the initial work that we do in Nottingham North.

We are also working closely with central and local government to propose and trial flexibilities, discretions, innovations and freedoms. Note, Minister: I am not putting in a bid for money and asking, “Please can you help us out with some more dosh?” This is all about letting us get on and do what we know we can do best in our constituency, and tailoring the one-size-fits-all regulations that governments inevitably need to put forward at national level. We are seeking that local discretion and some discretion to use existing moneys—not additional moneys—in a more single pot concept so that we can spend it how we feel is appropriate, which I think will deliver greater value for money.

We have very good relationships with officials and Ministers not only in the Department for Education, but in the Cabinet Office, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the Ministry of Justice. The Department for Communities and Local Government troubled families scheme is working with the Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing, which has been set up by DWP to facilitate data-sharing agreements between the local DWP, skills agencies and others, such as public health. That is quite central, because it will allow us to collect robust data, facilitate proper sharing between agencies and ultimately allow us to measure the impact of what we do. That is so important, because much of what we want to do in the longer term is about payment by results and social investment. Consequently, measuring outcomes so that they can be effectively monetised is a key part of this process.

Our aspiration is in our business plan and has the agreement of the LEP and others. It is that, emerging from this process, perhaps Nottingham North could help Her Majesty’s Government to explore the potential of our approach. We have suggested that it could be adopted in 12 cities within about three years, and perhaps in 24 cities during the next Parliament.

It is appropriate that I put on record my thanks to the Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), who took a great interest in what we are trying to do in Nottingham North. He was especially helpful in progressing the development of a new campus on our further education campus, which is part of New College Nottingham and is called the Basford Hall site. Anyone driving by there today will see builders demolishing the old campus and building the new campus in a £27 million development. We do not have many physical assets in the constituency, which consists of nine enormous council estates, but the catalyst in the middle is this redevelopment of the Basford Hall site, because we think it can be the hub for our local skills, including entrepreneurial skills, which we can use with our partners, community groups and social enterprises. Hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, we will be able to go to a second phase of development. There is enough land on the site that we can dream about starter units for the young people who go to the FE college. Much of the current activity there is construction, plumbing, painting and decorating, but green technology and many other things will go on that site, and there is the potential to put in starter units, low-rental units and lots of other things, one of which I will go on to talk about.

Our key ambition for our project is summed up as making every four-year-old school-ready and every teenager work-ready, and then carefully to craft a Nottingham North job offer for every individual on jobseeker’s allowance or employment and support allowance. We will continue to explore with the DWP the possibility of a Nottingham North social investment bond because, as I mentioned earlier, just one NEET going back into productive life will save us £160,000. Given the number of NEETs and people in long-term unemployment that we have, that is a very large pot of money that we could bring to bear if we do this work properly.

Having talked about the rebalancing project, the second area to discuss is a slightly more specific one around the youth engagement fund. I do not want this to sound too much like a funeral, but I will put on record the support and assistance that I have received from the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd). I regret very much that he is no longer in the Government, given the work that he has done; it has been a pleasure working with him. He has encouraged people locally to apply for the youth engagement fund, so we have put a bid together. We really want to initiate a 20-year behaviour change programme—it is pointless doing starburst, flash-in-the-pan, one or two-year projects, thinking, “Let’s throw some money at it.” We have to set out our stall. That programme would go alongside our 20-year early intervention work plan, which we have in our city of Nottingham.

In making the bid, we have put together a package that we hope will reduce the flow rather than the stock—I will use those economic terms. We need to use our existing providers to do what we can with the existing individuals, but we want to turn the tap off and start a process that will feed through and produce an intergenerational change by giving these young people what they need far earlier and way more upstream than is the case now. At the moment, we are firefighting and throwing money at a problem that is deep-rooted. I suppose that our bid and our objective could be summed up as, “Every young person work-ready in Nottingham North.” We will work with all the people locally, including some brilliant partners, to complete an individual pathway for every young person. That is perfectly possible. I said that the number of young people involved is high—it is way too high—but it is not so high that it is not manageable to produce a personal programme for each one.

We will do two main things in our package. The first one, which I am trying to do, is have a work-readiness coach for every child in secondary school. I am up with the jargon, so I use that term rather than being old-fashioned and saying, “careers adviser”—I was familiar with careers advisers when I was at school, but you certainly would not be, Mr Caton, as you are too young. In the six secondary schools in my constituency, current provision is lumpy—let me put it that way—but a work-readiness coach could give training skills and work advice throughout an individual’s school life, but with a focus on the period from 14 to 17. There would be professional, human and proper guidance delivered by a trusted and committed friend at the correct age, and tailored to the individual and their background; in addition, it would be given face-to-face. Time and again in the project and throughout this debate, the need for a known individual has come up: having all sorts of stuff on tap or accessible via a computer is not enough; for this group of young people, a face and personal contact is needed. They need to be able to pick up the phone and speak to a person, or to go and see them, to develop a relationship that literally lasts for years, so that that person gets to know them and can guide them in the right way. I understand from the experts that the best time to start this process is at the age of 13, or at key stage 3, because that is when these young people are at their most open, and supportive one-to-one interviews can make a huge difference, not least if they are supplemented by work experience that is not hindered by health and safety red tape. In that way, we can get these young people to raise their aspirations and focus their academic progression.

That is the first thing—having a careers or work-readiness coach in every school, who is dedicated to this group of young people and known to them. The second is to create a state-of-the-art Nottingham North work-readiness centre for those 14 to 17-year-olds who are least likely to go on to education or training from school, to build their social and emotional skills to work-readiness standard, and taking them out of school between one and three days a week. We are lucky to be rich in excellent social enterprises and local providers, including Building Engineering Services Training Ltd or BEST, Right Track, Groundwork, Futures, Aspley community centre and New College Nottingham. Using high-quality new premises in the brand new Basford Hall further education redevelopment that I mentioned earlier, we will show that we value these youngsters as much as those who are studying full time in our smart rebuilt schools across the constituency.

As one of the national advocates of social investment, I strongly welcome that our bid has to take the form of a social impact bond. I am asking my council and my LEP to guarantee the required 20% local participation, but I will try to ensure that we bring in a wide range of partners, including our excellent police and crime commissioner, our clinical commissioning group and schools themselves, which are able to use the pupil premium, so that they can all take a stake in what we are trying to do, even if they are providing only a tiny amount of money. That way, they will have a financial stake as well as an educational or social stake in our bid.

We are partnering Social Finance Ltd, which I know very well, to raise the initial investment that is required to pay for the delivery of the programme, and we are engaging with a range of social investors, including the Private Equity Foundation, Big Society Capital and many others.

I think that we are doing more than our bit and now I need the Minister to try to encourage Ofsted, which has done a lot of good work, to come to the party. Ofsted can become a tremendous power for good for the 14 to 17-year-old pre-NEETs. There are lots of well intentioned sentiments in Ofsted’s school inspection handbook about pre-NEETs. It talks about

“the next stage of their education and training”

and employment; about

“an appropriate balance between academic and vocational courses”;

about

“timely independent information, advice and guidance to assist pupils on their next steps in training, education or employment”;

and about lots of other good things. If Ofsted works with what we have done in Nottingham, as an exemplar of what can be done, I believe that we can turn those words into action. It is no good just having a framework and then not helping schools and young people through, and following through. That thread runs through this final passage of my speech.

The truth is that many heads of schools in disadvantaged areas with poor demographics will say privately that the education and inspection systems incentivise schools to place greater emphasis on those capable of getting five A to Cs than on those who cannot. The pre-NEETs group is often packaged and parked, destined to become expensive NEETs and long-term unemployed, although that is wasteful. With Ofsted, we can change that by attacking a number of issues together. I shall list a few.

First, there should be clarity about targets for pre-NEETs. We know that for a generation schools have been programmed to focus on their target of five A to Cs. There is a message sent strongly from the ground, including from my patch, from the people who are there. These people do not lack leadership and are not lazy; they get out of bed every morning to go to a difficult educational environment and are among some of the most courageous, capable people to be found in education. They deliver in all sorts of ways. Their strong message is that any additional activities relating to work-readiness for supporting the 14 to 17-year-olds need to be rigorously tested, inspected and, above all, targeted or that provision will be an afterthought.

Schools need to be targeted on where their pupils progress to: carrots for good progression to FE, work and apprenticeships and sticks for bad progression—NEETs, prison, etc. Then schools will not be penalised, but motivated, as they wish to be, to invest energy into work-readiness provision. Otherwise they will pay lip service or just will not be able to do it, however much they want to, given all the other pressures. We have to help them by setting that framework and letting them do what they know they would like to do anyway—to help that group rather than park it, sometimes, in training that is not as good as we would like. That will require Ofsted not merely to pronounce and inspect, but to encourage and guide—to be a bit more proactive— in a willing local partnership. That can be pioneered in Nottingham, if people are up for that and willing to do it.

Secondly, we need the right type of qualifications for demographies such as mine, which exist in dozens of constituencies. The DFE and Ofsted rightly acted to remove the over-reliance on equivalency qualifications, as they were called, that were seen as being used to boost overall GCSE figures. What was lost in that change was the fact that many pupils were following credible, well regulated courses that served their needs and aspirations. The pendulum has swung too far the other way, because by forcing schools down a more academic route, the needs of the 14-to-17 pre-NEETs are not being met.

Employers in the locality tell me that many of these pupils fundamentally lack employability skills: social and emotional capability; functional literacy and numeracy; a sense of responsibility about such issues as punctuality and attendance; and the chance to develop self-discipline, resilience and respect for authority. They lack achievable goals in relation to their aspirations and, most importantly, a sense of direction and progression that will give them life skills that will turn them into active, engaged citizens for life.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, not just for securing this debate but for the work that he has been doing in this area for some time. His list of issues affecting young people, particularly in hard-to-reach areas such as working -class estates, resonates, I am sure, with a number of hon. Members. Does he believe, as I do, that we need to ensure that best practice is replicated? Has he considered a template to be used throughout the United Kingdom, so that a new generation does not suffer the problems suffered by the generation that is out there now?

[Mr Allen]

I fully agree. If we can do this, even in one place, we can see what fails and what works. If we can have all the institutions working together in that one, tiny place—I do not want the Government to pass legislation and do something across the whole country—and prove, in the engineering sense, what can work, that will benefit everybody.

On the subject of capabilities, when I took Lord Heseltine to my constituency, we went to Right Track and met its chief executive, Stuart Bell, who said, “I’ve got 80 jobs available for any kid that walks through the door.” We both looked at each other and said, “No, don’t you mean you’ve got a job available and 80 kids are looking for it?” He said, “No, I’ve got the kids, but they haven’t got the wherewithal—the social and emotional capability—to work in retail and say, ‘Welcome, sir. Do you want a jacket or a tie today?’, ‘How are you?’ or ‘The weather’s nice’, or whatever.” That is the sort of basic capability and interaction they lacked. The vacancies were on the wall and Mr Bell was working with the kids to give them some of the basics that we would give our children, probably before the age of eight, at home in a normal environment, completely unconsciously.

That is what I mean when I say that measuring those kids on a five A to C basis is irrelevant. Measuring them on the demanding basis of what they should be attaining in terms of their own functional literacy and so on—a tough challenge—is exactly where they need to be. They will then attain and get self-respect and will, hopefully, spread that to their own children and raise good families of their own.

This is a complicated area—having looked at it for some time, I do not pretend to be an expert—and I certainly do not expect the Minister to be able to answer some of these questions on his first day. However, I hope that, when he has had a chance to get his feet under the table, he will consider whether he can work with us and Ofsted to review the balance on qualifications. Has the pendulum swung too far? Will he consider that, because it is quite urgent now? We need to get that balance right as this new Ofsted inspection comes in and, if we have the right qualifications going with it, the two things will be greater than the sum of the parts. We should ensure that there is a proper range on offer for demographies such as mine.

Thirdly, we should consider which roll children are on—the school roll or the FE roll—and all the complications that come with that. Schools are judged on how many pupils meet the requirement to achieve five A to Cs, including English and maths, and that judgment is based on all pupils in the year 11 cohort at census time. Pre-NEETS are therefore in danger of becoming victims of that system. Schools need flexible arrangements for these pupils, so they are able to develop through transitional arrangements to work and training.

Most of all, schools need to be freed somehow from the need to count all pupils in league tables as if they were all the same, because they are not. This means students at 14 onwards having a more sophisticated school roll, non-school roll allocation, so that they can benefit from a personally tailored vocational and functional skills programme. As schools receive funding for each student, there is an initial reluctance to have any more than a handful of their most difficult students offsite. I am not talking about the most difficult students, such as the young lads who might end up in a pupil referral unit; I am talking about the big chunk of those who will not get five A to Cs, who are not the really bad lads. That is a big chunk of the population.

As a result of the disincentive, every school tries to develop some sort of partial vocational provision or units on their campus and, for that reason, they cannot then work out block timetabling. Such timetabling would mean, for example, that my six schools could have a given period when those young people could go somewhere else together, forming a critical mass to make it work economically. With absolutely stringent, tested criteria, so that the system cannot be abused, schools need to be legally entitled to remove from their league table accountability pupils who are following certified programmes. By doing so, we will find meaningful progression for such pupils, many of whom could be characterised as white, working-class young people from former council estates.

At the moment, some of the provision is done under the table or with sleight of hand. We need to smoke the issue out, make it transparent and take action to make it clear that we are all working together. I do not pretend to have the issue buttoned down; I do not have a little policy document that I can hand to the Minister and say, “It has all been thought out and here it is,” but I know we can work together and find a much better way, so that we have a system that works for the kids I am talking about as well.

There are challenges. How can such kids be kept on the school roll, yet have a range of options externally? Who would be accountable for their outcomes, attendance, exam results and so on? Would the home school have to pay a premium for sending them to a further education institution? Many schools in special measures are facing financial difficulties. Would the student be removed from the home school roll? Many schools are struggling with falling rolls. If the Minister asks us to, we, working with Ofsted, would like to confront those challenges. With some flexibility and a little brainpower, we could trial that in my constituency, if the Minister felt it appropriate, as part of our rebalancing project.

“Destination outcomes” is a new phrase that we are using a lot these days. Post-16 progression routes need to be mapped for these learners, and we should aspire to put an offer in place for them to work towards at the start of a programme. A lot of the time, there is a sense of things being a package for a 14-year-old, moving on to a package for a 15-year-old, moving on to one for a 16-year-old and then one for a 17-year-old, rather than a sense of, “You should be working towards this end goal.” The goal might change, but if there is a sense of direction on roughly where someone wants to go, that can be set out at the start; the sense of “pass the parcel”, which a lot of these kids and a lot of the people involved with them feel, would diminish.

What a young person does in the September after leaving school is important, but we should be even more interested in what happens six months after that. It is okay saying, “We have pushed our pre-NEETs levels down and everyone is properly accommodated”, but then it is, “Oh my goodness, look at the NEET figure! We do not know where that came from. It has just shot up suddenly.” We need to measure where those kids are six months after they leave. That test must be on whether they have managed to stick with their college course, apprenticeship or whatever. That is a much more accurate measure. Working together, we should be able to organise a watertight data track for those kids.

Destinations need to be better factored into Ofsted’s inspections, so that efforts with the group are acknowledged and rewarded. Schools in my constituency are buying in external services to support the career progression of their students. Ofsted needs to acknowledge the exceedingly low “not known” numbers, which are being forced down due to the innovation fund, the good links between employers and schools and the role of the voluntary sector in supporting young people. Ofsted needs to work with that and make it even more standard in what it does. If we can pilot these ideas, we could help create an ever more demanding, but ever more helpful, Ofsted regime, which gets head teachers and principals to where they want to be.

Relevant inspections are at the heart of these ideas. This is a plea, on the Minister’s first day, to track us on progress over the next 290 days before the election, and to track Ofsted and our partners on how we can innovate to build a more effective inspection service, for the benefit of our 14 to 17-year-olds, by pre-empting NEETs and youth unemployment. A smarter system for measuring young people with complex needs is required, rather than their being measured against a “norm” group. I repeat: alternative provision for work-readiness is fine, but if a school is then faced with the consequences of that in the exam profile on their cohort, it is self-defeating, because heads will not do that. We need to facilitate heads and principals to do what they know to be right. They know what they can deliver. This is not rocket science—they know they can help those kids, but we have to reduce the disincentives in that.

To their credit, the Government have recognised the problem and have scrapped the five A to C measure for summer 2015 onwards in favour of the new “Progress 8” measure, which gives a much more rounded picture of every child’s progress in a school. That significant breakthrough having been made, however, it has to be followed through by the Department and, above all, by the inspection regime.

Ofsted, too, deserves commendation for recognising the need to address the issues. It says it wishes to go further than it did last year. The progress last year was great, but it has now told the House of Commons Library, which asked it a question on my behalf:

“We are adding some increased reference to advice and guidance into the school inspection handbook for Sept 2014”—

that is a couple of months away—

“which should increase the focus on the quality of advice offered to young people and their careers education. Schools will be assessed on whether they ‘provide timely independent information, advice and guidance to assist pupils on their next steps in training, education or employment.’ Inspectors will explore the extent to which the school has developed and implemented an effective strategy for ensuring that all pupils in years 8 to 13 receive career guidance; the impact of this guidance in helping young people to make informed choices about their next steps and how well what is provided is meeting the needs of all vulnerable groups of students, including reducing the numbers who do not continue to education, employment or training.”

There is more:

“There will also be references to destination measures as one of the factors for inspectors to consider. The extent of any NEETs will be taken into account, depending on the structure of education in a specific area.”

All those things are incredibly welcome, as are the drive, sentiment and good intentions behind them. I have publicly put on record, and repeat again, how good and positive that is from Ofsted’s point of view, but we now have to make it happen on the ground—in reality—so that it is more than just a question asked at an inspection that then disappears. If we are to tackle 14 to 17-year-old pre-NEETs, we have to have Ofsted as part of that team following through, encouraging and ensuring that the guidance is implemented, as well as inspecting.

One quibble is that the schools are about to break up for the summer holidays, and the new handbook, which I have just quoted parts from, courtesy of the Library, is not yet published. Will schools in my constituency or that of any Member have the time to take advantage of the good things in the new guidance and get them up and running for September, when the kids come back? I doubt very much that they will. I hope the Minister will facilitate getting that handbook, if only by a question, to Ofsted and into the hands of the heads and principals who can use it and put it to work. They can then talk to their local Ofsted inspectors to make it a reality.

I hope that the Minister has a little more success in reaching the Ofsted HQ team than I have had, although I must immediately say what wonderful people we have in local and regional Ofsted; they have been very supportive and encouraging. Given the chance in my area to co-operate with Ofsted and to demonstrate how we can help the inspection regime, we could make a real difference. I am thinking of our youth engagement fund, the rebalancing project, our schools and Ofsted working together, and great guidance. Let us make it work. We can do that.

I have a number of other issues to touch on briefly, because I consulted with people in my area and a number of suggestions were made. I want to put them on the record. First, family support, because we are not talking only about what happens at the school; the issue is about bringing all the other services together and ensuring early intervention with families and others to ensure that we support the child outside school as well. Secondly, schools staying open, so we need to ensure that in high-NEET areas they have the funding to operate on a 46-week year, not a 39-week year, to reinforce continuity and positive learning. Thirdly, employers—local chambers of commerce, local small and medium-sized enterprises and LEPs—should come to the party, bringing their capabilities to speak not simply formulaically because there is a little money in training, but with real passion: to get involved, to take on individuals and to work very closely with what we are trying to achieve.

Finally, there are a number of things around technology. Sometimes we look for new technology to be a shortcut and a cheaper way to get information to people, but that does not always work in a demography such as that in my constituency. We may be piloting particular proposals and schemes, but many young people in my area do not have access to iPhones or the internet. Moreover, they cannot use phones for conversations; many of the students in my area cannot be accessed when they run out of credit. Ofsted, the Department, the National Careers Service and others come forward with apparently great things that might work in other constituencies, but they need to have an eye to what will actually help NEETs and pre-NEETs.

To sum up, I am making an offer to the Minister and, through him, to Ofsted that Nottingham North’s rebalancing the outer estates project will work hand in hand with schools, Ofsted and all our local partners to pilot an exemplar of the new Ofsted framework. We will try to make that work, to show how far the envelope can be pushed and, I hope, to be an example to others. The project will be backed up by work-readiness coaches in every school, a work-readiness, purpose-built college funded by us through the youth engagement fund and, perhaps above all, an in-depth and wholehearted collaboration and partnership.

In that way, we can demonstrate how the pre-NEETs group can be removed from the bureaucratic, one-way conveyor belt to NEETs and long-term unemployment and on to a genuine pathway to work and self-motivation. It is a great prize, which will save the taxpayer millions of pounds otherwise spent on the costs of failure. More importantly, it will turn wasted lives into productive and happy citizens. The Minister has not had long in his new role, but if he works with me, as I hope he will, he will have long enough to make a real difference for the young people I have been discussing.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

It is a great pleasure, Mr Caton, to serve under your chairmanship in this first debate to which I have been invited to respond in my new job. I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen)—he is an old friend only because we have been friends for a long time and not for any other reason—on securing this debate and bringing to it his customary insight, passion and wisdom.

We have heard from three Members who are the very models of modern Members of Parliament and are not content just to respond to casework and to make speeches in Parliament, but seek a deep understanding of the issues affecting their constituents and think creatively about long-term solutions to those problems. They do not stop there, but devise programmes and initiatives in their constituencies to bring partners, businesses, charities and public sector agencies together. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said, they even raise money personally to fund some projects. That is what being a Member of Parliament is about, and I wish I could claim to be nearly as good a one as my hon. Friends.

There are many phrases and much jargon that a newly appointed Minister must get to grips with. We have heard some jargon this morning—work readiness—which I do not like any more than I like any other jargon. I feel peculiarly un-work-ready this morning, having had less than 24 hours to get my head around the issues. Nevertheless, I have the advantage of the superb work of my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), who properly earned the respect of colleagues in the House for his indefatigable energy, enthusiasm and drive.

I join hon. Members in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), the former Minister for Civil Society, who is one of the most decent and honourable men in politics. I regret that he is no longer in his role, but I know that he will continue to work hard to support the charitable sector and to help turn society around through the good work of people in that sector.

My understanding, which is high level and brief, is that when the Government came to office in 2010, we inherited a system in which there were brave intentions, but fundamental dishonesty. The fundamental dishonesty lay in the fact that we said to many young people that if they studied a range of courses and collected qualification confetti, they too would be able to share in the benefits of our growing economy. That was not true. It was not true in 2010 when the economy was not growing and it was not even true in 2007, 2006 and 2005, when our economy had been growing for a very long time, but a huge number of people—for all their GNVQs and other qualifications—were not able to share fully in the benefits of it. That fundamental dishonesty is the key challenge that we have tried to face with the help of the fantastic Alison Wolf and others. We have tried to identify the core skills that are essential for every young person to acquire if they are to have a chance to share in that economic prosperity.

In my previous job, my simple mission was to get more houses built so that young people could have a chance to own their own home, as my generation and previous ones have done. In this job, I have an equally simple mission to ensure that every young person acquires the skills they will need to share in our economic recovery. We have made substantial progress even while coming out of one of the deepest recessions for several generations, but we have not made enough and we are not satisfied. We will not rest, and the work will continue right up to election day and long afterwards to ensure that that mission is fulfilled.

I believe that we were right, as hon. Members on both sides of the House recognise, to scrap some of what my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole described as the GNVQ fiddle and some of the qualifications that purported to give people the equipment to get a job, but did not. We were perpetrating a fraud and it was entirely right that we got rid of that fraud. However, I have heard clearly from the hon. Member for Nottingham North and my hon. Friend that perhaps that reform has gone too far. I am not saying yet whether I agree with them, but I promise to talk to them and other hon. Members—and to the Chairman of the Select Committee, who may have similar concerns—and to understand where that concern lies and consider how we can preserve the massive gains we have made while dealing with any issues.

The other important thing we have done is to revive, restore and re-inspire the apprenticeship concept. It had become a low currency in our education and training system and I am glad to say that that is no longer the case. We are on track to deliver 2 million apprenticeships over this Parliament—not just 2 million in number, but 2 million high-quality, long-term apprenticeships that people who run businesses and other organisations value and that provide real ways of getting young people into good, long-term employment.

In the few minutes remaining, I want to deal with some of the specific points raised by the hon. Member for Nottingham North and others. On performance measures, the hon. Gentleman was good enough, as he always is, to acknowledge that the progress 8 measure is an important step forward in addressing some of his concerns. I will be very happy to explore with him whether that measure is absolutely the best answer, the only answer and the complete answer. I am glad that he welcomes it and I look forward to talking to him further about that.

The hon. Gentleman talked about a desire to engage with Ofsted at national level, having rightly and properly praised Ofsted in his own area. I will be straightforward with him. I will secure him a meeting with officials at national level at Ofsted and I hope that he will then meet me to discuss the outcome. I cannot promise always to agree with him, but I promise to engage with him and to talk to him as he makes progress.

I want to refer to a couple of the programmes to which my hon. Friends the Members for Brigg and Goole and for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) referred because they are tremendously important. They have new university technical colleges opening in their constituencies, and that is a superb initiative. Like most good Government initiatives, it was invented by a previous Government, developed by a later Government and is now being further developed by the present Government. I strongly welcome it and I am delighted that those two communities have benefited from it.

The National Citizen Service initiative is important, and I am proud to claim a small portion of the authorship. In opposition, I was responsible for developing that policy and for creating Charity Challenge, which is now the leading provider of the National Citizen Service. I am particularly delighted that the Labour party is an enthusiastic supporter of the National Citizen Service and look forward to it being developed and offered to all teenagers as they reach the appropriate stage, whoever is in government.

I acknowledge the important work of the Imagination Library. I did not know about it, but I am even more keen on it now that I know that Dolly Parton had something to do with it. It is a fantastic project, and it is fantastic that my hon. Friends are being so constructive in supporting it and ensuring that they can offer it to their constituents.

I am tremendously privileged, lucky and happy to have been given this job. Like poor Manuel, I know nothing at the moment, but I am keen to learn and this debate has been the most fantastic tutorial that a new Minister could possibly have. It would be hard to find four Members of Parliament with more passion, commitment and knowledge. I look forward to learning from them and working with them. I hope that together, we will ensure that young people have the skills they need to share in our economic recovery.

[Mr Allen]

Will the Minister come to Nottingham to see the work we are doing?

[Nick Boles]

I will be delighted to do so.