Oral Answers to Questions

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It was a huge pleasure to go and visit my hon. Friend just before the last election. I thought it was a bit of a long shot, but none the less he made it here and he has been a fantastic Member of Parliament, standing up for his constituents. In Wales since the election we have 22,000 more small businesses, employment in Wales going up by 52,000, unemployment coming down and private sector growth. We see a real recovery in Wales and it needs my hon. Friend back here, standing up for his constituents and for Wales in the House of Commons.

[Sir Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

I have here a cutting from The Press in York on 24 April 2010, which says:

“David Cameron last night dismissed claims the Tories would put up VAT if they win the election”.

That was at the last election. Why should the public believe promises that he makes at the coming election?

[The Prime Minister]

I have given the straightest possible answer, and this time in government we know what needs to be done—we know the changes, and both sides of this House have voted for a £30 billion adjustment. Those on the Labour Front Bench voted for it too. We have set out what needs to happen with departmental spending, welfare and tax avoidance. The Labour party has said that half of the £30 billion must be raised in taxes, so we know it: there is a tax bombshell coming from Labour, and it is going to be, we learned today, a jobs tax bombshell. They wanted to do it before the last election, and they want to do it after the next election. It would wreck our economy and put up taxes for working people, and there is only one group of people who can stop it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor-General]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, and I pay tribute to those organisations in his constituency, which do so much to protect women and families from the scourge of domestic abuse. Last year, the CPS charged in 72,905 domestic violence cases referred to it by the police, which is the highest volume and proportion ever recorded—it is a 21% rise from the previous year. It is anticipated that the CPS will be dealing with up to 20,000 more domestic violence cases than two years ago.

[Sir Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

8. How many prosecutions have been initiated by the Serious Fraud Office under the Bribery Act 2010.

[The Solicitor-General (Mr Robert Buckland)]

The Serious Fraud Office has initiated prosecutions against three individuals under the Bribery Act 2010, with two having been convicted.

[Sir Hugh Bayley]

I spent more than 10 years arguing for a radical change in the law on bribery, which was passed as the 2010 Act, with all-party support, just before the last election. The OECD, which has criticised us in the past for not doing enough to implement its convention, thinks it is important that from time to time cases are brought before the courts. Will the Solicitor-General assure me that the SFO has adequate resources to investigate and prosecute cases of this kind?

[The Solicitor-General]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I pay tribute to him, as he is retiring from this place, for his assiduous work on this and other issues over the years. He rightly says that it is important for the reputation of this country that cases are brought, under either the new Act or the old Act. We must not forget that we have had a number of key successes in non-Bribery Act cases that predate the passage of this legislation, most notably the prosecution of Smith & Ouzman Ltd for bribes paid to Kenyan officials in relation to the electoral processes. We have had a number of successes, which we should celebrate.

National Statistics

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Sir Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

We move from a debate on the House of Lords to a matter of critical importance in the coming general election to elect Members to the elected House of our Parliament. We have already started the longest general election campaign in the UK’s history, which is the consequence, perhaps unintended, of a decision earlier in this Parliament to agree to fixed-term Parliaments. When voters cast their votes, they will make judgments on our respective parties, our leaders, the constituency candidates and the issues during the campaign. They will make those decisions based on the information available to them at the time. In the interests of transparency, accountability and democracy, it is important for the information upon which people make decisions to be accurate. Rex Stout, a US crime writer, wrote:

“There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.”

During the general election campaign, it is important that we have more of the former and less of the latter.

The guardian of the integrity and trustworthiness of official statistics is the UK Statistics Authority, which was set up in 2008 as a result of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, introduced by the Labour Government to remove political—that is, ministerial—control of national statistics, the Office for National Statistics and its officials. I had a meeting with Sir Andrew Dilnot, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, in October 2014, and he told me that Labour should claim credit for the creation of an independent statistics authority, and we do.

The UK was slow off the mark compared with other countries. Statistics Norway was established as an independent entity as far back as 1876, and it uses its independence to publish a dossier of key figures for circulation to the public before each Norwegian general election. The UK Statistics Authority did a similar independent and impartial job of publishing key statistics before the Scottish referendum. I hope that it will use its independence to do so again before the general election.

The public have a right to know how much the national debt, for example, has risen under the coalition Government; how much the deficit, the rate at which the national debt increases, has fallen; and by how much the Government have failed to meet their promise to eliminate the deficit by the end of the Parliament. The public have a right to know the waiting times for hospital treatment compared with under previous Governments. They have a right to know the crime rate and our trade and investment figures. Immigration will be a big issue in the election, and we want reliable figures upon which the public can make a judgment about the relative merits of the different parties’ policies on immigration. It might be sensible to have figures about the cost to the UK of membership of the European Union or statistics on the number of people who have lost access to legal aid.

Those will all be issues in the election, and I hope people will be able to make judgments based on good facts. I would like to see the UK Statistics Authority publish figures on such matters, but that is for the authority to determine, not for us as politicians. During the campaign, I would like the UK Statistics Authority to be able to respond quickly with a public statement offering clarification if there appears to be controversy between the parties on the facts.

The independence of the UK Statistics Authority, the result of a Labour Act, was a great step forward, but it did not go far enough. The authority’s independence and well-regarded code of practice for official statistics apply only to official statistics, not to all statistics published by the Government. On the Second Reading of the Statistics and Registration Service Bill in 2007, which I attended, the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers), who was the Conservative spokesperson, pointed out that only 12% of statistics published by the Home Office were designated as official statistics and would therefore become controllable by an independent statistics authority. She said:

“The Bill leaves intact the two-tier system between National Statistics and other official figures… the whole two-tier division should be abolished.”—[Official Report, 8 January 2007; Vol. 455, c. 44-45.]

The problem, which she rightly identified, is that the decision on which figures to designate and therefore quality-control as official statistics is taken by Ministers, not by the independent statistics authority. She cited Lord Moser, the towering figure of British statistics and a former national statistician, who described the decision to allow Ministers, rather than the statistics authority, to determine which statistics are official statistics as

“‘a very basic flaw’ to have a category of statistics that are ‘left totally’ in Ministers’ hands. He said that it was a formula for lack of trust”.

Nevertheless, the flaw identified by the Conservative spokesperson remained in the 2007 Act.

I came up against that flaw on 6 January 2014, when the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), claimed in the House that more money was being spent “than ever before” on flood defences. I took that claim to the statisticians in the Library because it was directly contradicted by figures that I had recently received from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in answer to a parliamentary question. The statisticians concluded:

“Departmental spending on flood defences in 2011-15 will be lower than it was in 2007-11 in both nominal and real terms.”

Indeed, the figures showed that spending would be £247 million lower.

As a consequence of the advice that I received from the Library, I wrote to ask the views of the UK Statistics Authority, and it agreed with the Library’s conclusion that flood defence spending had indeed fallen, not increased. The chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Andrew Dilnot, confirmed that to me in a letter and made—this is a longish quote, but I will read it because it goes to the heart of the issue—a further comment:

“Defra does not publish figures on flood defence spending as official statistics. There is therefore no obligation for Defra to comply with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics in relation to these figures. However, given the salience of these figures and the public interest in them, it is my view that it would…serve the public good if Defra were to consider publishing official statistics on expenditure by the relevant organisations on aspects of flooding and coastal erosion management in future. I have asked the Authority’s Head of Assessment to explore this matter further with the Department.”

Subsequently, there was a long correspondence between me, the UK Statistics Authority, the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Chair of the Public Administration Committee, and there were meetings with officials and Ministers. On 17 July, I received a letter from the former Secretary of State confirming that figures on flooding would

“become an official statistic, subject to the Standards in the Code of Practice”.

But it was his decision, not the decision of the UK Statistics Authority, to make the change, although it was proposed by the Statistics Authority.

The example about spending on flood defences is not isolated. On 7 October last year, the Statistics Authority criticised figures that the Minister for Security and Immigration cited when he claimed that passport applications were at a 12-year high.

On 21 February last year, Sir Andrew Dilnot wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) to criticise the use by the Department for Work and Pensions of unpublished management information on the performance of the Work programme. “Management information” is jargon used by Departments to describe the statistics that they produce themselves, rather than those produced as official statistics by the UK Statistics Authority.

On 26 April 2013, Sir Andrew Dilnot wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher), making a similar criticism of Cabinet Office claims about the percentage of Government procurement going to small and medium-sized enterprises.

On 25 January 2012, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority wrote to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to criticise the figures that he had published on the nationality of benefits claimants and proposed that in the future such figures should be properly quality-controlled by the authority as official statistics before publication, although the Secretary of State refused that request.

The Statistics Authority has taken the Mayor of London to task many times for his use of figures relating to transport, juvenile offending, reoffending, crime and so on.

Last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) received a reply to a freedom of information request asking how many times since May 2010 the UK Statistics Authority has investigated complaints about the misuse of statistics by Ministers or officials in their Departments. He was told that it has happened on 312 occasions since the general election, or more than once a week. In 103 cases—almost once a fortnight—it resulted in a public statement by the authority, usually in the form of a publication of correspondence, as happened in the case that I cited about flood protection expenditure.

Clearly, the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 must be amended to give the UK Statistics Authority, rather than Ministers, the right to determine which Government figures should be designated as official statistics and therefore subject to the Statistics Authority’s rigorous code of practice.

The Conservative party supported that proposal on the Second Reading of the Statistics and Registration Service Bill, which set up the Statistics Authority, as did the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable), who also called for the end of pre-release to Ministers of statistics before they are published to the general public. He has been taken to task by the Statistics Authority since he became Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills for failing to do what he proposed in opposition. We all understand that it is easier to say the right thing in opposition than to do the right thing in government.

The proposal that the authority, rather than Ministers, should determine which statistics are official had tri-party support. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) was the first to demand on Second Reading that that should happen. He said:

“Would not the move to re-establish public confidence in statistics be advanced if the commission itself…could decide which series of data it published?”—[Official Report, 8 January 2007; Vol. 455, c. 24-25.]

I call on the Minister to say at the very least that he will discuss with his party leader and party whether that commitment should be included in the Conservative manifesto for the next election. I will raise the same thing with my party leader and write to the Liberal Democrat party leader. We should establish a cross-party consensus before the election to ensure that whoever is elected will make the necessary reform to confirm the independence and trustworthiness of the figures that the Government and the UK Statistics Authority produce.

I will speak briefly about two further proposals, the first of which I raised on Second Reading of the Statistics and Registration Service Bill. The House of Commons should establish a statistics Select Committee. I pay tribute to the excellent work that the Public Administration Committee has done on the oversight of statistics during this Parliament and to the Treasury Committee’s work in the previous Parliament, when it was responsible for scrutinising Government statistics. However, both Committees have many other things to examine, and they do not devote enough time to ensuring the integrity of Government statistics.

Secondly, the budget for the UK Statistics Authority should be determined by the House of Commons, not the Government. Between 2008-09, when the UK Statistics Authority was established by the Labour Government, and 2014-15, the funding for the Office for National Statistics has been cut by more than 25% in real terms. Consequently, the number of statistics produced, quality-audited and published by the UK Statistics Authority has also been cut, which is not good for public trust or public administration. The budget should be restored. It is a relatively small sum of money—perhaps an increase in expenditure of some £40 million. After all, the Government and the UK Statistics Authority tell us that the UK is now experiencing strong growth. It would be a serious mistake not to find that additional resource to give to the public the trust they need in Government figures.

I should like to see the establishment of either a parliamentary statistics commission, modelled on the Public Accounts Commission, which determines how much money the National Audit Office should have, to determine how much money the UK Statistics Authority needs to do its work, or a full-blown counterpart to the Public Accounts Committee—a special Select Committee, chaired by a Member of the Opposition, as is the Public Accounts Committee.

I am coming to the end of my time in this House; I will not be standing for re-election. I have had an interest in statistics all my life. I studied them as part of my degree and I worked for a number of years as a research fellow in health economics at York university and created statistics professionally. It is important for public trust in the Government and parties that the figures the Government produce are honest, reliable and trustworthy. We took a big step forward when we created the UK Statistics Authority as an independent Department that is not under ministerial control, but we have not gone the whole way. I hope that we can establish a cross-party consensus before the general election to make the necessary change to create a truly independent guardian of the figures that the Government publish.

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Rob Wilson)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for York Central (Sir Hugh Bayley) on securing this important debate. I was sorry to hear the bombshell that he dropped at the end of his speech. I was not aware that he will be standing down at the May election. I pay tribute to him for his work highlighting the need for independent, accurate statistics, and for bringing the matter before the House.

Mark Twain wrote:

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

I am not sure that my colleagues in the UK Statistics Authority would agree. Statistics make a crucial contribution to good government in a modern democracy, assisting in the formulation and evaluation of policies, and in the management of the services for which the Government are responsible, encouraging and informing debate, and allowing people to judge whether the Government are delivering on their promises. High-quality statistics are also a key resource for business, academia and the wider community.

With increasing emphasis on evidence-based policy making and effective performance management, statistics have greater importance than ever before, and ever increasing scrutiny is placed on them, not least by the hon. Gentleman. Statistics must therefore be, and be seen to be, of the highest professional quality and integrity. I take his point on having accurate figures across a range of different areas with a general election nearing. Many of those statistics are available, but he is right that they must be independent. The UK Statistics Authority’s role as independent guardian of the use of statistics is essential in ensuring public trust in what politicians say. The designation of a statistic as a national statistic is an exemplar of best practice. It allows officials and the public to be confident that the statistics released represent the facts and have been appropriately caveated, considered and presented.

The UK Statistics Authority has rightly written to point out where politicians’ use of public statistics has fallen below the standards that the public expect. The hon. Gentleman highlighted examples of that on the Government side—his point on the number of complaints to the UKSA shows that it is doing a good job in dealing with complaints—but some of the more egregious examples come from the Labour party. I am delighted that he has given me this good opportunity to point out once again that the shadow Business, Innovation and Skills Secretary, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), claimed last year that the number of young people claiming jobseeker’s allowance had risen by 263% in the north-east since the election when, in fact, as the UKSA noted, the published official statistics show that the number of young people claiming JSA in the north-east fell by 27% between May 2010 and May 2014. He also claimed that there had been a huge increase in the number of people on zero-hours contracts, but the UKSA pointed out that it was not in fact possible to back up that claim with any official figures.

[Sir Hugh Bayley]

rose—

[Mr Wilson]

I will give the hon. Gentleman an opportunity to respond to those points in a little while. The Leader of the Opposition has been rapped on the knuckles for his claim that four out of five new jobs were being created in London. The official statistics showed that the reverse was true. He also said that only crisis-hit Spain had higher numbers of young unemployed people than the UK, completely ignoring the relative size of European countries and the share of young unemployed people in the work force. The Labour party also tried to claim that violent crime was rising by using the police recorded crime statistics, completely ignoring the much more reliable crime survey, which showed that violent crime was falling. In fact, the police recorded crime statistics have had their national statistics designation removed due to accumulating evidence that the underlying data on crimes recorded by the police might not be reliable.

[Sir Hugh Bayley]

It is kind of the Minister to give way and appropriate that he went through his examples of criticisms by the UK Statistics Authority of Opposition spokespeople. I acknowledge that Government and Opposition Members have quoted statistics erroneously, either wilfully or through misunderstanding them. However, that is not my point. My point is that the figures are produced by the Government and in Departments. It is important that there is independent scrutiny of the Government, whichever party is in government.

[Mr Wilson]

If I may, I will turn to some of the questions the hon. Gentleman asked. His first question was whether the UK Statistics Authority should have the statutory responsibility to designate numerical information produced by Departments as official—that was really what he was asking. The Government are aware that the UK Statistics Authority is in favour of that course of action, and we are considering it. His second question was on having a code of practice for numerical information that is not presently designated as official statistics. The UK Statistics Authority is against that, as it believes it will dilute the code of practice on official statistics by creating a lesser class of statistics. It would prefer a much broader definition of official statistics, which the Government are also considering.

The hon. Gentleman asked about manifesto commitments, which is obviously a matter under discussion in manifesto planning more widely. That will be done in the normal way in private conversations, but there are many pressures, and many lobby groups wish to inject such things into party manifestos. He raised the point of the creation of another Select Committee to look at and be responsible for statistics. I am not sure we need another Select Committee for that. There may be a case for giving extra powers and responsibilities to Select Committees, but I do not think we need a new one. That deals with most if not all his questions.

In addition to our regular release of statistics, the Government are committed to being the most open Government ever. Through gov.uk dashboards, we are reporting Government performance on areas as diverse as blood donation, driving licence bookings and patent renewals. The public can see how we are doing as near as possible to real time, without spin or manipulation.

Statistics are part of the story of a Government, but they are not the whole story. We can challenge each other’s ideas and check each other’s numbers, but it is right that the UK Statistics Authority is there to call us to account. It cannot, however, become the referee in a game of political football, particularly in a general election period. Its job is far too important for that. We have obligations as politicians to be sure of our facts and to ensure that we are confident of the sources of our information. That is important, not only in presenting our achievements to the electorate, but in developing the right policy solutions for our country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wilson]

I thank my hon. Friend for the efforts he is making in his constituency to support the NCS. He spoke this year at the regional awards and promotes the programme in local schools. I am delighted that the NCS has taken part in every local authority across the country this year. There are projects now in Wales and Northern Ireland, and my officials are in discussions with the Scottish Government to explore the possibility of a pilot in Scotland.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

T4. During this Parliament, the National Statistics Authority has repeatedly had to write to Ministers to ask them to correct misleading or false statements on the growth of the national debt, the amount the Government spend on flood protection and much else, and to ask the Government in future to publish the figures as quality assured official statistics. Do the Government agree it is now time to change the law?

[Mr Wilson]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows that all correspondence to the UK Statistics Authority is publicly available on its website, but he will also know that it has responded to both the Government and the Opposition on the issue of statistics, such as when it wrote on 24 July concerning incorrect employment figures used by the Leader of the Opposition and a shadow Business Minister—

Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

At this late hour, I will not repeat any of the arguments made earlier in the debate. I will vote for the motion. I just want to make two points that have not been fully covered so far.

My first point is that in his speech the Prime Minister said that it might be necessary to take the fight against ISIL into Syria. I think that that probably will be necessary at some stage. He said that it might not be possible for him to seek authority from the House before doing so. He has undoubtedly taken legal advice about whether such action would be in accord with international law. Will he put a summary of that advice before the House at the earliest possible date, and will he share full copies of the legal advice in relation to action both in Iraq and in Syria, on Privy Council terms, with Opposition Front Benchers?

My second point is that our country’s security depends on a doctrine of collective security provided through NATO. The summit in Wales discussed ISIL and concluded that ISIL

“poses a grave threat to the Iraqi people, to the Syrian people, to the wider region, and to our nations”

and that if

“the security of any Ally is threatened, we will not hesitate to take all necessary steps to ensure our collective defence.”

We cannot opt out of the commitment made in Wales. We must, as a United Kingdom, bear our part of the collective burden. I could not hold up my head in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly if our country were to duck out and to leave it to the United States, France and our Arab partners to deal with this difficult problem. We need to contribute to global security and not be a passive consumer of security provided by others.

The decision whether to go to war, when it comes before the House, is always one of the most difficult and serious decisions that we elected Members of Parliament have to make. There is rarely a right answer as to what to do in such circumstances. We must look for the least worst option. Engaging militarily, though ugly, is necessary and I urge Members to vote for the motion.

NATO Summit

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, my right hon. Friend is right that what was interesting about this NATO conference was that it was one of resolution and unity in purpose. There were none of the sort of debates that might have been had in previous discussions about Iraq. There was real unity about what needed to be done, and part of that unity was not just about the Iraqi Government that were required, but the support—the active support—that would be needed from the regional players, in particular Sunni countries that can provide not only resources, diplomacy, aid and even military support, but real insights and input into the thinking of the Sunni tribes in Iraq, whom we need to rise up against this appalling regime.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

I welcome the readiness action plan, which will enable NATO to respond with greater force and greater speed in a dire emergency—provided the 28 member states are able to give political authority for its use quickly. In the bad old days of the cold war, the similar Allied Command Europe mobile force gave the SACEUR—Supreme Allied Commander Europe—pre-authority to use it in a dire emergency. If there is any question of pre-authority being given to use the readiness action plan, will the Prime Minister bring that proposal to the House for debate?

[The Prime Minister]

The short answer to that is yes, I will. As the hon. Gentleman knows, a lot of the detail of how the force will be constructed, who will contribute to it and how exactly it will work is still to be determined. The main thing is that the readiness of it is decided. May I take the moment, though, to thank him for his contribution to the NATO summit? He spoke as head of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly with great clarity and great support for what NATO is doing.

EU Council, Security and Middle East

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend speaks very good sense about this. Article 5 obligations are deadly serious and we would have to meet them if a NATO member was invaded by another country, so the point he makes is a good one.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

In Kiev over the summer the Ukrainian Prime Minister said forcefully to me that, whereas the pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine are fully and adequately armed by Russia, his own state Ukrainian forces do not have all the matériel they need. Will the Prime Minister tell the House what military advice and assistance we are giving to the Government of Ukraine?

[The Prime Minister]

As I have said, the assistance we have given Ukraine to date has been in technical, financial and governmental areas. We stand open, of course, to having discussions with it on a military-to-military basis, but providing arms has not been part of our plans.

European Council

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support. During what will be, as I have described it, a long and difficult campaign to reform the European Union and our membership of it, it is important to recognise that people need to see clearly that when Britain stands for a principle, it sticks to it.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

If the Prime Minister wants to strengthen Britain’s hand in any future renegotiation, it is important that he should be able to say that he represents the national consensus and that he has consulted other parties, business and the CBI, as well as the TUC, to set out clearly what changes he is after. What plans does he have to play this in the national interest rather than from a party political standpoint?

[The Prime Minister]

First, on this specific issue there were detailed cross-party discussions to ensure that we all did everything we could to try to stop the conveyor belt of the leading candidates. We should build on that. I set out a very clear agenda in the Bloomberg speech, including deep engagement with business. The British Chambers of Commerce and the Institute of Directors supported what I did at the weekend, and we will go on talking to British businesses to ensure that we deliver what they also think is right, which is reform of the European Union.

G7

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to give the issue further attention. At the G8 last year, we talked about encouraging leading countries such as France, Germany, Italy and Britain to partner up with nations and their security forces to try to strengthen their work in combating extremism. That is more urgent than ever, and there is a real opportunity at the NATO summit to put more flesh on the bones of that idea. As we do so, and as President Obama said in his West Point speech, we should not think that the only answer is a security and military one; we should be thinking about aid, development, advice and all the other things we can do to help the country.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Like the Prime Minister, I had the great privilege to be invited to attend the D-day celebrations in Normandy. It made me reflect on the dangers of sitting on our hands when another country is re-arming and acting aggressively. In the past five years, Russia has increased its defence spending by more than 10% a year in real terms, while defence expenditure has been reduced in Europe by an average of 10% over the same period. The UK has cut its defence spending by 18% in real terms. Does the Prime Minister think that now is the time to reconsider those cuts, stop them and start rebuilding our defence forces?

[The Prime Minister]

On the figures, this Government effectively froze defence spending in cash terms, which was an 8% real-terms cut. We are, of course, still meeting the 2% that NATO countries are meant to meet, and we are virtually the only country in Europe that is doing so, so I think we are in a strong position to say to others that they should do more.

Where I would perhaps part company with the hon. Gentleman is on the fact that our changes are about making sure that we have effective and deployable armed forces. Some countries might maintain spending or current patterns, but they do not actually have deployable armed forces for the things that are needed. That is what we need to get countries to focus on as they come to the NATO summit.

Debate on the Address

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Both the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister reminded the House that the day after tomorrow, 6 June, is the 70th anniversary of D-day. During the second world war, my late father rose from the ranks and was commissioned as an officer. He did not land in Normandy on D-day, but he fought in France, in the Netherlands and in Germany, and was awarded the France and Germany star. I have the great honour to have been invited by President Hollande to join the presidential tribune at the official international ceremony in Normandy on Friday.

The event ought to make us all reflect on the things that we and France have in common—for example, the defence agreement concluded between our two countries when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, which has been supported by both Prime Ministers since; and the support we gave to France during its recent military operation to protect Mali from being taken over by terrorists. It should remind us, too, of the overwhelming and continuing importance of the transatlantic relationship. Above all, of course, it should remind us of the courage and sacrifice of British and allied servicemen and women who secured the freedoms that we as Members of this House enjoy every day that we sit and speak here and every time we stand for election.

This year is also, of course, the 100th anniversary of the start of the first world war. Both that, and the second world war, should make us reflect on the severe consequences when defence and deterrence fail.

Russia’s occupation of Crimea and its destabilisation of eastern Ukraine is a wake-up call that we should all hear. It is 25 years since the fall of the Berlin wall, and since that time our country and others in our alliance have put out a hand of friendship to Russia, helping it to build more democratic institutions and a more liberal free-market economy. We have helped it to join, for instance, the World Trade Organisation and, indeed, we have tried to build a partnership between Russia and free Europe to replace the sterile zero-sum game of the cold war and its military and nuclear stand-off. Yet Russia’s actions in Ukraine indicate, I believe, that that trust in partnership and co-operation, which we made, has been betrayed.

We, I suppose, had notice of Russia’s new aggressive foreign policy in 2008 when it was at war with Georgia. We have seen Russia’s occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, so Russian policy in Ukraine shows that President Putin is establishing a pattern of behaviour—a pattern of unacceptable and illegal use of Russian force. Are we seriously expected to believe that the appearance of heavily armed, well-trained and uniformed militias in eastern Ukraine has nothing whatever to do with the Kremlin? Are we to accept that the Potemkin referendums in Crimea and eastern Ukraine reflect real public opinion in those areas, and are we to believe that the human rights of 97% of Crimea’s population were in imminent danger from the other 3%?

President Putin’s policies in Ukraine are bad enough, but, worse still, he has said in his speeches that he reserves the right to intervene—militarily, if he judges it necessary—in other countries with Russian-speaking minorities, including NATO member states, such as the Baltic states, Poland and Romania. I have just returned from a weekend representing our country at the NATO parliamentary assembly held in Lithuania, so I can tell hon. Members that in the countries that border Russia or are close to it, there is a real sense of apprehension—a recognition that the Russian bear has broken loose from its chain and is acting irresponsibly, aggressively and illegally. Those countries want support and solidarity from their allies to control that behaviour.

Those are countries to which we as members of NATO have made the most profound commitment possible through article 5 of the Washington treaty, whereby an attack on any one of us is deemed an attack on us all because we are mutually committed to collective defence. President Putin is, I believe, testing that commitment, so I view it as essential that at the NATO summit in September this year we reaffirm article 5 and show through our actions that we mean it.

We should ask ourselves why President Putin feels so emboldened and so willing to test us by annexing Crimea and threatening eastern Ukraine. I think that there are four principal reasons. The first is that Russia, having been enriched largely by petrodollars, is now stronger economically than it was a decade or two ago. Secondly, a number of countries in central and eastern Europe have become too dependent on Russian energy and are therefore less willing than they otherwise would be to criticise Russian foreign policy. Thirdly, under Obama’s presidency, the United States has announced a policy to pivot, or rebalance, its foreign policy away from Europe to address new threats in east Asia and the Pacific. Fourthly, President Putin has watched as we in this and other countries in our alliance have cut our defence spending. Over the last five years or so, since the banking crisis, we have cut our defence spending while Russia has increased its expenditure.

What, then, do we need to do to deter further Russian aggression? On the economic front, we need sanctions. We certainly need to reduce our dependence on Russian exports. In relation to energy in particular, we need to reduce European dependence on Russian oil and gas. I believe that there is a key role for the European Union here, as this is not something that the UK or any individual country within the EU can do on its own. This need should be reflected in the energy Bill announced in the Queen’s Speech. We clearly need to generate more energy from renewables in this country and across the EU, while we also need to improve energy conservation and energy efficiency.

We need, of course, to frack more. I listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) about the need to be sure about the science, but we certainly have to produce more energy of our own so that we are less dependent on energy from Russia—and we need to import more from alternative sources, such as from central Asia through the new southern pipeline and from north America as it produces more gas, which we should import as liquefied petroleum gas.

On the pivot, we need to recognise that the security risks identified by the United States in east Asia are real and that by addressing those risks more directly, the Americans will bring a benefit to us in Europe as well as to themselves. We face many cyber-attacks in this country: they affect our government and our businesses, and they even affect eBay. Many of those attacks originate from China, so this is not some zero-sum game: more American interest in east Asia is not necessarily bad for us in Europe.

We need to grapple with the issue of defence spending. Since 2008, Russian defence spending has increased by more than 10% a year in real terms. That means that over the last five years it has increased by more than 50% in real terms. Over the same period, defence spending by NATO’s European allies has been cut by almost 10% in real terms. President Putin, of course, draws a conclusion from this. In the UK, although we started from a higher base than many of our European allies, according to the Government’s public expenditure statistical analysis published last year, our defence spending between 2009-10 and 2014-15 has been cut by 18% in real terms. Some people are arguing for further cuts as we bring our troops home from Afghanistan. Indeed, Government expenditure plans assume that the MOD’s delegated spending limits will fall in real terms from £32 billion this year to £30.7 billion next year, which means a cut of a further £1,321 million.

The Government told us that the cuts made in previous years were necessary because of the state of the economy. We should, perhaps, pass over the fact that the economy was growing again at the time of the 2010 election, having fallen into recession following the banking crisis, and also the fact that we suffered a double-dip recession as a result of the coalition Government’s economic policies. However, all of us—Members on both sides of the House—now agree that growth has returned, and although there are other pressing needs for public expenditure, I believe that further defence cuts next year would be wrong. Further defence cuts would send the wrong signal to our allies—especially our European allies, who often look to the United Kingdom for a lead on defence matters, because we are one of the very few countries that still spend more than 2% of their gross national income on defence as NATO recommends. They would send the wrong signal to President Putin, and they would send the wrong signal to the NATO summit which we are hosting in south Wales in September.

I believe that now is the time for us to ask our leadership—the leaders of our parties on both sides of the House—to put national security first. We should ask them to stop cutting our defence expenditure and start rebuilding our security forces, and if we do so we shall be in a much stronger position to argue at the September NATO summit that others should do the same.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hugh Bayley]

Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that, equally, 1.5 million British citizens live in other EU countries, using their social services, drawing pensions from them and using their health services? If we were to shut the doors on the rest of the European Union, those EU countries would shut the doors on the Spanish costas. Where are we going to find 1.5 million homes to house these people should they come back? How are we going to find the money to provide the social services for Britons who live abroad and benefit at the moment? Surely he must recognise that it is two-way traffic.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Uncharacteristically, the hon. Gentleman exaggerates, to extremism, what I was saying. I was not saying that we should shut the doors; I was simply saying that we need to repatriate immigration powers to this Parliament so that we can control the numbers. I say again that if we do not listen to our electorates, who are telling us that the pace of change is too fast, we will all be in trouble and we will increasingly find extremist parties such as UKIP winning a greater share of the vote. We want to see moderate change and in that equation we have to take into account the size of the territory of each country. This country is one of the most populated in the world, when we take out the uninhabitable areas of Scotland, Wales and northern England where it is difficult for people to live. France is twice the size of our country but has the same population, and Spain is three times bigger but has the same population. They have the capability to take more people than we do. We need to be careful with the pace of change.

The Opposition are criticising the number of houses we are building. Of course we need to build houses, but it is very controversial in a constituency such as mine, 80% of which is an area of outstanding natural beauty. One reason we need more houses is the number of people coming into this country, so we need to be careful about the pace of change.

In conclusion, Madam Deputy Speaker—I am sure you have been waiting to hear that—this country has been one of the great internationalist countries of the world. We have been incredibly good at getting out into the world. Your native land, Scotland, has been one of the pioneers of going out into the world, which is why we need to keep this country the great country it is—the United Kingdom. Let us say to the Scots, “You are warmly welcome in that United Kingdom; we need you; this is what made this country great.” We need to get out into the world, we need not to be little Englanders and we need to trade with the rest of the world. Ultimately, our people will benefit if we do that.