Trade Union Bill

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

I shall try to entertain the hon. Gentleman. If he believes that turnout is so high for all these industrial actions, why is he so concerned about having a threshold that requires four out of 10 trade unionists to turn out and vote? If turnouts are high, where is the problem?

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

What was your vote? You wouldn’t have been elected.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. No shouting out. If Members want to intervene, they should stand up and do so.

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[Lucy Frazer]

I am about to finish.

The vote taken by the union will not garner public support and public trust that the representation of the unions demands, and it is for that reason that we should pass clauses 2 and 3 without amendment at this stage.

[Ian Lavery]

This is a Bill that nobody has asked for and that nobody wants. Even the latest polls in the national press show that the general public are opposed to this union-bashing Bill—this gagging Bill part two. It was the deputy chairman of the Conservative party who said it was about time that we stopped bashing the trade unions. Let us be completely clear on this issue. It is undoubtedly a ferocious, full-frontal attack on the 6 million-plus members of the trade union movement. I take exception to some comments that have been made, not by everybody on the Government Benches but certainly by a number who seem to want to distinguish between trade union members and ordinary people. The trade union members that I know and mix with are more than ordinary people; they are absolutely fantastic individuals who go the extra mile to try to help colleagues at every opportunity.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

A good friend of mine, a local community activist in my constituency, is very proud of her roots. Her mum is Evelyn Allard, one of the Dagenham women who took industrial action in pursuit of equal pay. Does my hon. Friend agree that under this Bill the employer might have prevented such an action from even starting, let alone succeeding, and the Bill will therefore have a particular impact on women?

[Ian Lavery]

There is no doubt about that. I fully concur with my hon. Friend about the impact this will have on women in particular. Whether we like it or not, the Bill will have a disproportionately negative impact on women in the workplace.

Getting back to these ordinary people, trade union members are taxpayers. They want their children to get to school in the morning, to counter the argument made by a number of Members on the Government Benches. Do people think that trade union members do not have children?

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the tone of this debate is very similar to that on working tax credits? How do Conservative Members think they can make the case for working people if they are going to be ideologically driven on the subject of working people? It does not make sense.

[Ian Lavery]

I fully agree and hope to develop that point.

This is the gagging Bill, part 2. It is about disarming any dissent, particularly in the public sector. When we look at the thresholds, the ballot provisions, the measures on agency workers and all the new clauses and amendments, we begin to see the big picture. The Bill is about criminalising working people and eradicating any resistance, particularly in the public sector and particularly with regard to women. Why are the Government bashing low-paid people in the public sector, imposing pay restraints on them and coming up with crazy ideas about stripping tax credits from hard-working, low-paid people? They do not want to give those people the right to fight back. That is what the Bill is about. It is about eradicating that dissent while the Conservative Government keep their foot firmly on the necks of the low paid who are struggling even to make ends meet.

[Mr Anderson]

My hon. Friend is right about the way that people are being treated at work, but the other disgraceful thing about the Bill is that it is a clear attempt to break the relationship between the trade union movement and this party. It is about undermining this party, which represents the people he is talking about, so it is not only the trade unions that will be affected but every man and woman in this country. If this party is less strong, the Conservatives will continue to discriminate against working people.

[Ian Lavery]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the Bill’s provisions on opting in to, rather than out of, the political fund. There has for many years been a gentlemen’s agreement that political funding should be decided on a cross-party basis. Many Conservative Members would agree that this is not the type of Bill into which they should insert a clause which would so greatly restrict the finances of an opposing party that it would struggle to fight a general election. As well as tackling the issue of dissent, the Bill is an attempt to ensure that the Opposition do not even have the finances to fight. It is about the Conservatives believing that they have the right to rule—not govern, but rule, and that is quite different.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. I cannot help reflecting on the comments of the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), who said that legislation should be appropriate to the time. We are in a time when industrial action in this country is at an all-time low. What problem to do with industrial action is the Bill trying to sort out?

[Ian Lavery]

We are in a time when more than a million people, most of them in work, are claiming family tax credits, and more than a million people who are in work and have families need to use food banks. I mentioned gagging and eradicating dissent. The Bill is about keeping people quiet.

[James Cartlidge]

The hon. Gentleman has slightly widened the debate, with tax credits and so on. He talks about us putting our foot on the neck of the poor. Does he think we are doing that by delivering the record lowest number of workless households that this country has ever seen?

[Ian Lavery]

That comment would give me the opportunity, if the Deputy Speaker were to allow it, to diversify my contribution. The Conservative Government have increased to record levels zero-hour contracts, lower-paid work and the number of apprentices, but before Mr Deputy Speaker chastises me, I will move on from that immediately because it is nothing to do with the Bill.

[Lucy Frazer]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that 788,000 days were lost last year in strike action, at a time when every party in this House says that productivity is key?

[Ian Lavery]

If that is the figure, so be it, but in every case industrial action would have been taken through the legal process and as a last resort by individuals who need to take strike action to make their voice heard. We have the most restrictive anti-trade union legislation in the western world, and to take a day’s action or any other type of action, workers have to go through all the hoops set out in legislation.

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. The hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) commented on statistics and days and hours lost. My hon. Friend will recall from Committee that the hours lost in the provision of transport in London were for reasons other than industrial action. The overwhelming majority of time lost is due to breakdowns, signal failure, overcrowding, leaves on the line and so on. Industrial action has accounted for barely 2% or 3% in most of the past 10 years. Is that not the fact that we are dealing with today?

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[Ian Lavery]

I fully accept that. If we want to talk about productivity, we need to look at that, instead of trying to highlight something that is not really a problem.

[Rachael Maskell]

Days have been lost through industrial action because the negotiators, whether that is the Mayor of London or the Secretary of State for Health, refused to come to the negotiating table, refused to talk to the trade unions, and have been spoiling for a strike, as we are seeing now over the junior doctors contract. Surely the Bill should be about improved industrial relations which give a voice to working people, as opposed to crushing that voice.

[Ian Lavery]

I entirely agree. As I said earlier, does anybody want this Bill? Has anybody asked for it? Even some of the major Tory party donors have said it is purely union-bashing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) said, and he was absolutely right, that is what Tories do. [Interruption.]

[Tom Blenkinsop]

The Minister just said that the Tories voted for it at the last election. You did not declare that as a policy prior to the last election. You also did not declare the NHS Act or the changes to the tax credits. If you are so proud of this planned legislation, why did you not declare it before the general election?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. First of all, I am not responsible. I want to clear that up. [Interruption.] No, “you” refers to me. Mr Blenkinsop, you were wrong: it is not me. It may be those on the Government Benches, but you said “you”. Secondly, we need to speak about the amendment. I have allowed some latitude, Mr Lavery, because you have been tempted away, and I know that you want to get back to where you were.

[Ian Lavery]

That is absolutely correct, Mr Deputy Speaker. I think the reason my hon. Friend spoke in the way he did is that Government Front Benchers were having a separate conversation and not listening to a single word he was saying. That is not unusual.

This Bill is simply here to do three things: to restrict the right to organise, to restrict the right to collective bargaining, and to restrict the right to strike action. I did not serve on the Bill Committee, but I listened to many of the arguments in the evidence sessions, which were quite enlightening. I think the Minister himself would say that the Government found it extremely difficult to get anybody who had a clue what the Bill was about to speak for them at the evidence sessions. One of their witnesses, the chief executive of 2020Health, spoke about facility time. Facility time is a huge issue in this Bill, as the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) said. He asked my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) whether it is right that Government Ministers can intervene to dictate on facility time in Scotland and Wales. I would ask whether it is right that Government Ministers can intervene in facility time in any workplace anywhere in the UK. The answer, quite simply, is that it is not right: they should keep out of the workplace with regard to the likes of facility time.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

The hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) pointed out that that self-same witness had no idea what life and limb cover was, nor did she know that it has been in existence since at least the early ’80s, if not the late ’70s, as a TUC agreement with the emergency services to make sure that there was always cover in the event of an emergency. The fact that witnesses called by the Government had no idea about long-term existing legislation shows how poor this Bill is and how poor the Minister’s work on it has been.

[Ian Lavery]

This individual, who runs a private health organisation the length and breadth of the UK, was asked if she had read the Bill. She said, “Not really.” She was then asked, “Have you read most of the Bill?” “Not really.” “Do you understand what facility time is?” “Not really. What is facility time?” She did not even understand life and limb cover, which is integral to trade union law, whereby if there is a problem that is a life and limb issue, trade union representatives will break off industrial action to ensure that people are safe. And, let me say, she was the best witness we had.

[Andy McDonald]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the existence of facility time is beneficial to the good running of any public authority or business, and that eroding it will cause immense difficulties in terms of productivity if union representation cannot be provided for union members in the workplace?

[Ian Lavery]

Absolutely. Many, many papers have been presented by professors, doctors and other experts with regard to facility time. There have been many battles on industrial relations problems over many, many years—decades and decades—resulting in a decent industrial relations policy that allows for facility time. Facility time could involve, for example, discussions on health and safety, avoidance of industrial disputes or avoidance of the progression of court cases. It is not about people sitting in an office on the telephone organising disputes—quite the opposite; it is about trying to avoid these disputes.

[Catherine West]

When I was a council leader employing thousands of staff, facility time was given to cope with all the casework as a result of the then Government forcing cuts on local government that led to many redundancies. We had to triple the amount of casework time, which was crucial in ensuring that that terrible period of redundancy was managed in a humane way that helped people.

[Ian Lavery]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments. If the Government start to decide how much, or how little, facility time individuals should have, there will be a breakdown in communication between the trade unions, the workforce and, indeed, the employers. In local government and the NHS, facility time is much valued and to the benefit of the general public.

If we applied the 40% and 50% thresholds to members of the coalition Cabinet prior to the election, not one of them would have been elected. We have to be fair and consistent with regard to thresholds. The average turnout for the police and crime commissioner elections was 17%, but nobody is saying that we should not listen to anything they have to say. The Government themselves were elected by only 24% of the electorate, but not many people are saying—although a lot of people are wishing it—that they should not have the right to govern. Fairness should prevail.

There have been many discussions about how e-balloting would provide for a much bigger turnout. That is what the Conservative Government want, and I agree: we want more people to participate in the ballot, hence the threshold issue. It is terribly unfair to suggest that e-balloting is not a secure way to ballot individuals, because it is.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has been talking about the time we are in. It is pretty clear, as I understand it from what Labour Front Benchers are saying, that we are in a time of increased militant union activism. The shadow Chancellor has said:

“We will support all demonstrations in Parliament or on the picket line. We will be with you at every stage.”

Can the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) not see that what we are trying to do is to protect the public through increased accountability and transparency?

[Ian Lavery]

I do not recognise the words of the hon. Gentleman, who usually addresses issues in a much more productive way.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

On protecting the public, we ought to remember that when we fought in this place to ban hunting with dogs, it was the Tories—not trade unionists—who let the protesters on to the Floor of this House. When Conservative Members talk about freedom of speech, perhaps they should remember some of their own past activities.

[Ian Lavery]

That is a fair point, well made by my hon. Friend.

There are lot of examples of e-balloting, including its use in mayoral elections and by the Central Arbitration Committee. I am a great believer in balloting in the workplace and, indeed, in a hybrid of both methods, to make sure that people actually get involved in such important ballots.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

What kind of society are we moving towards when, under the proposed 50% and 40% threshold rule, a strike would be illegal even if 79% of the votes cast were in favour of strike action?

[Ian Lavery]

That is absolutely correct and spot on.

I will very briefly mention one other issue. The Conservatives are suggesting something that happens nowhere else in society—that those who do not cast a vote will be classified as voting no. That is outrageous and horrendous. It is undemocratic. It is against International Labour Organisation conventions and against European Court of Human Rights decisions. That will— I repeat, will—be challenged.

I end by simply saying that, in my view, there is no place in today’s society for this unbelievably brutal attack on hard-working men and women in the workplace. I predict one thing: that when ordinary people are pressurised too much, there will be a reaction. I predict from the Floor of the House of Commons that there will be civil disobedience because bad laws need to be changed.

[James Cartlidge]

I will speak primarily to amendments 15, 16 and 21, tabled by the Scottish National party, which relate to the clauses on thresholds and the termination of the ballot mandate. My understanding is that if they were added to the Bill, they would, in effect, be completely redundant because they would require the provisions to be agreed by all the devolved authorities and, interestingly, by the Mayor of London, who I expect would very strongly agree.

It was a privilege to serve on the Public Bill Committee, my first as a Member of Parliament. I can genuinely say that I, for one, have a great admiration for the union movement. As a new MP, I found it stimulating and interesting to cross-examine the five most powerful union leaders. I went up to them afterwards and shook their hands. In fact, Sir Paul Kenny, perhaps sensing my inexperience in these matters, asked me whether I would like to come and join him on a picket line to find out what it was like. I am not sure which picket line he was referring to—perhaps the Chief Whip’s—so I declined it on that occasion.

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[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend puts it extremely well.

I finish with this point. The hon. Member for Wansbeck asked what support there was for the Bill. We have heard from the CBI, the British Chambers of Commerce, bus companies, rail companies and, above all, the people who use the services. Even Len McCluskey issued a letter to the Committee supporting the 50% threshold. I accept that that was with e-balloting, but there is strong principled support across the country for changes on thresholds. I will leave it there.

[Ian Lavery]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Has the hon. Gentleman given way or finished? We need to get this right.

[James Cartlidge]

I am happy to take this point.

[Ian Lavery]

I need to clarify the point about Len McCluskey. Unite the union suggested that discussions should take place. It wrote to the Prime Minister suggesting that thresholds would be irrelevant if the Government introduced e-balloting in the workplace. That was the precondition.

[James Cartlidge]

I thought it was fair to give way to the hon. Gentleman, given that I had mentioned him a couple of times, but the best person to take those points forward is the Minister. On that point, I am happy to conclude.

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[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

The Trade Union Bill was my first experience of sitting on a Public Bill Committee. Our sessions were lively and often educational, like the previous speech. The bit about St Thomas Aquinas was greatly enjoyed in all parts of the House.

As a former public sector worker myself for 17 years, I know what it is like to cross a picket line. I enjoyed questioning union greats, including Len McCluskey. Today those on the Conservative Benches have been called Dickensian, Stalinist and draconian, but many of us firmly believe that trade unions are valuable institutions in British society. It is vital that they represent accurately the views of their members. This Bill aims to ensure that hard-working people are not disrupted by under-supported strike action, but it is the human rights considerations that run through the Bill that have been of particular interest to me.

The rights of workers to make their voices heard are, of course, important, and striking is an important last resort. We recognise that it is part of the armoury of trade union law. Article 11 of the European convention on human rights provides to everyone

“the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests”.

It is, however, important to recognise that article 11 is a qualified right.

[Ian Lavery]

Is the hon. Lady aware of the letter that the Prime Minister sent to Ministers only days ago—it was sneaked out—on the change to the ministerial code, informing Ministers that they can now ignore international law? Does that have anything to do with this issue?

[Victoria Prentis]

I am not aware of that letter, although I am aware that there is a debate on the issue. I am talking about the European convention on human rights. There is no proposal from the Government to renege on that at any time in the future, as far as I am aware.

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[Ian Lavery]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to place it on the record that I am a member of Unite the union and the National Union of Mineworkers.

[Mr Speaker]

We are extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman. It falls to each Member to declare his or her interests as they see fit. We are deeply obliged to him.

Trade Union Bill

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I have already addressed the hon. Gentleman’s concern. This is not a ban on strike action. This is about ensuring that our rules are modern and right and fit for today’s workplace.

We have consulted on which occupations within those sectors should be subject to the additional 40% support threshold. The consultation closed last week and we are now reviewing the results. We will publish the Government’s response and details of the scope of the 40% threshold by the time the Bill is in Committee in the other place. As I have said, these measures will not make strikes illegal or impossible. If union leaders can make a genuine and compelling case to their members, they will have no problem securing the votes required. I believe that the vast majority of industrial action is unfortunate and unnecessary, but it is important that workers are able to go on strike. If union members truly want to do so, I will not stand in their way.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

If the rules for thresholds set out in the Bill were applied to the election of MPs, can the right hon. Gentleman say whether he would be an MP?

[Sajid Javid]

First, as I hope the hon. Gentleman knows, in a general election the electorate do not face a binary choice. Secondly, everyone affected by the result of a general election has the right to vote. When a union votes on industrial action, only its members have the right to vote. Therefore, it is absolutely right that there should be a clear, effective mandate.

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[Sajid Javid]

I assume the hon. Gentleman is referring to e-balloting, but I am concerned about fraud and that the identities of people voting in a secret ballot may be revealed. In fact, the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy, which looked at the use of digital apparatus in elections, also shared those concerns. I do not think it would have been appropriate to suggest such changes.

Let me turn to political funds. The introduction of ballot thresholds will help ensure that unions reflect the will of their whole membership and that the views of every member count. Another way we are going to achieve that is through changes to the way in which political funds are managed.

[Ian Lavery]

The Secretary of State discounts e-balloting because of potential fraud. How about considering an amendment to the Bill with regards to balloting in the workplace, where there cannot be any fraud whatsoever? It will be democratised and there will be a huge turnout on every occasion, which is surely what the Secretary of State is seeking to implement.

[Sajid Javid]

I have clearly set out my concerns and we propose to make no change to the way in which ballots are carried out.

On political funds, first we will increase transparency on the way in which political funds are spent, helping members to make an informed decision about whether or not they want to contribute. The Bill places a duty on unions to report in greater detail on what annual expenditure over £2,000 is useful, helping members decide whether or not they want to pay into the fund. After all, freedom to choose without having all the facts is no freedom at all.

Secondly, unions will need to obtain the active consent of members to deduct a political levy. At present, members can, in theory, opt out, although many unions do not even tell new members that the political levy exists, let alone about them having to pay for it.

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[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend puts it very eloquently. This is an issue of transparency. It is about ensuring that when people, rightly, give money to any political party, they know that they are doing so and do it with their eyes wide open.

[Ian Lavery]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving away again. If this is about transparency, what about the hedge funds and big business, which donate fortunes to the Conservative party? Will legislation be put in place covering the need to ask shareholders and the workforce whether such donations can be made? That’s transparency.

[Sajid Javid]

I think the hon. Gentleman actually agrees with the rules that apply to businesses. When businesses make a political donation to whatever party, they rightly have to declare it and must be open and transparent. They often need the votes of their shareholders. These rules are absolutely consistent with that. The hon. Gentleman is surely not saying that there should be no transparency here.

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[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I have great experience of much of what is in the Bill. I have been on picket lines on countless occasions, and I have been assaulted on picket lines on numerous occasions. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell), I have taken part in strikes many, many times, as a representative and as a worker in the coal mines in Northumberland—and yes, those may not have been just day strikes; they may have lasted a lot longer. I have probably been on strike more than any of the 649 other Members of Parliament, apart from my hon. Friend. I have been involved in the check-off system, and I have been involved with certification officers. I have been hauled before them as a trade union representative, and I have defended people through them. I have vast experience of these matters.

This piece of proposed legislation is not really about picket lines, armbands and social media. In my view, it represents a savage industrial provocation that is rarely seen or experienced in any modern democracy. These measures are simply headline-catching bolt-ons, designed, like the proverbial three-card trick, to distract—in a very Tory tradition—those who show an interest from the true meaning of the legislation. Quite simply, the Bill seeks to crush the last vestiges of dissent against an increasingly authoritarian right-wing Government.

Let us look at the dubious record of the Prime Minister and his “compassionate” Conservatives during the last Parliament. It can be seen very clearly. It is a record of mass privatisation—of the Prison Service, the probation service and Royal Mail—and the carving up of the national health service to near destruction, the introduction of the bedroom tax, the butchering of council budgets in poorer areas, and the slashing of social security for the most vulnerable. And what happened to those who dared to stand up against the Tory agenda? They were gagged as a result of the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014.

The Bill is an affront to democracy. It is simply part 2 of that gagging Act, and goodness knows what will happen in part 3. It is designed to tie the hands and close the mouths of trade unions and their members, and to slit the throats of the parliamentary Opposition while the Tories hack their way to a state shrunken by their crass and flawed ideology. It is designed to ease through swingeing cuts in the public sector with no organised opposition, to proliferate the low-wage economy, and to help the Tories’ friends and donors to make millions on the back of a disorganised, downtrodden and low-paid work force. Working people will risk criminal records simply to oppose this disgraceful Government.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who said that bits of the Bill were over the top—for instance, the requirement for pickets to give their names to the police. What is this, he asked—Franco’s Britain? No, it is Queen Elizabeth II’s Britain. I fully agree with that.

As for the issue of people attending picket lines and putting on armbands, numerous Members have said that it would be far better to put on a shirt that read “Blacklist me—I do not want further employment.” Why not put a target on the back, and then put on a big hat? And as for the issue of agency workers, I can see a problem with people on benefits who will be sanctioned if they do not agree to be bussed into places where there are disputes, and to break strikes.

The Bill is part of a jigsaw of legislation that the Government have forced through during more than one parliamentary term. They are extending the role of the certification officer in regulating trade unions, which includes the granting of a new power to impose fines. That simply means the introduction of a new trade union tax: the unions will have to pay for the investigatory powers of the certification officer. It is ludicrous, and it is against democracy.

I believe that the Government clearly understand that the Bill is in breach of the European convention on human rights. It is in breach of a number of European articles, and it is in breach of the International Labour Organisation convention. The Government realise that, but they believe that if they get the Bill through, appeal after appeal will mean that any decision will not be made for years to come.

The Bill must be opposed. It seeks to destroy freedom of association, collective bargaining, and the right to hold a view in the workplace. It must be killed.

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[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and declare that I am proud to be a trade union member. I am a member of Unite and of the Trade Union Group. I am delighted to show solidarity with the more than 6 million people who are part of the UK’s largest voluntary organisation—the trade unions.

I do not share the analysis of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) about the nature of the Bill, which attacks fundamental civil liberties and the democratic rights of trade union members. I believe that it is politically motivated. It will deepen the UK’s anti-trade union laws, which are the most restrictive in the western world. The changes will worsen industrial relations and push us further down the path to a more confrontational labour-relations policy. I abhor the thought that it could potentially criminalise firefighters, nurses, teachers and other workers who are simply trying to defend a fair and safer workplace.

The Government are demanding a democratic standard in relation to balloting not sought by any other organisation, or by many Members of the House. I was disappointed by the Secretary of State’s responses in the opening statements. If the Government want to enhance workplace democracy, I ask them to engage with trade unions on the introduction of e-balloting and secure workplace ballots, which would help to increase participation and turnout in trade union ballots.

[Ian Lavery]

Will my hon. Friend explain the benefits of e-balloting and workplace ballots?

[Grahame M. Morris]

There is a contradiction in the Government’s position. E-balloting is accepted for the first stages of the election for the Conservative party mayoral candidate—it is secure enough for that—and for secure workplace balloting on recognition agreements, which is enshrined in legislation, but e-balloting is not accepted in the Bill.

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[Boris Johnson (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

You are very kind, Mr Speaker. What the Bill in fact offers, contrary to what we have heard from Opposition Members, is a set of protections for two sets of working people: those who utterly depend on public services for their everyday lives and those who work in public services and find that they are often engaged in pointless, costly strike action because of the actions of a politically motivated minority.

I agree with everything in the Bill as proposed. It cannot be right that it is still possible to have a strike on the basis of a ballot that took place many months or, indeed, years ago. It is still technically possible to have a strike without a fresh ballot upon the removal of guards from the underground, a piece of modernisation that took place in the 1990s. It is utterly wrong that public workers should be subject to intimidation— sometimes reduced to tears—on the picket line or elsewhere. It is high time that that code of practice was put into law. Clauses 2 and 3 take us furthest and offer the greatest hope.

[Ian Lavery]

rose—

[Boris Johnson]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not give way.

Some kind of disruptive industrial action, bad enough to wreck one’s day, can take place on the basis of a tiny number of the workforce. To take a by no means untypical example, a strike was recently mooted upon the dismissal of an employee who had consistently failed to turn up for work, and a ballot was held by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. Fifty-four people were balloted. Of those, only 14 could be bothered to vote. Five voted for a strike and nine for action short of a strike. Yet, as a result of the vote—26% of the relevant electorate—people’s lives were disrupted during that day. People did not turn up to work. The London economy suffered. There was disruption.

Asbestos in Schools

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

I am extremely grateful for this opportunity to raise the important issue of asbestos in schools. It is an important issue not only for the people who work in the schools but for the parents of the children who are being educated in them.

The recent report on asbestos in schools is welcome, but it is unfortunate that it was not published earlier. We have been waiting more than eight months for its publication, which was always described as imminent. None the less, it provides a useful, informed and welcome background to the debate on the effects of asbestos in schools. Much of it is based on, or responds to, the publication of a report on asbestos in schools by the all-party parliamentary occupational safety and health group, which I chair. I am sure that this report would never have been produced had it not been for the work of the all-party group, the joint union asbestos committee, the GMB and the Asbestos in Schools Group. May I particularly mention Mr Michael Lees, who lost his teacher wife to mesothelioma and has campaigned consistently since?

Let me digress slightly by referring to an exclusive report in The Independent by Andrew Grice, who interviewed the Minister. The report states:

“The Schools Minister warned that Mr Cameron’s announcement of 500 more free schools in the 2015-20 parliament was ‘a number picked out of a hat.’ He warned: ‘The Tories want to scatter 500 new schools around the country, regardless of whether they will be good quality schools or whether they are actually needed. This is a barmy way to make policy.’”

The report continued:

“He added: ‘Worse still, it would mean a £4bn raid on other budgets, consigning children and teachers to crumbling classrooms and leaving some without a school place at all. It is impossible to justify.’

Mr Laws claimed Downing Street had not wanted to go public before the election about the need to tackle asbestos in school buildings, even though it was a ‘child safety issue.’”

I would certainly appreciate it if the Minister expanded on that in his response.

The Department for Education has acknowledged that children are more at risk from asbestos exposure than adults are. That is a significant step forward; it acknowledges that asbestos in schools is an issue. It includes a call for greater transparency from schools and employers, and makes it clear that asbestos training is compulsory for teachers and supporting staff. All those who are responsible for managing asbestos will receive training. That is well overdue, given the complete lack of awareness in many schools, as outlined in the report. There is also a welcome commitment to develop air sampling.

That is all a step forward but it by no means goes far enough. More than 291 schoolteachers have died of mesothelioma since 1980. They were dying at a rate of three per year in 1980, but the number of deaths has increased each year and they are now dying at a rate of 19 a year. The report acknowledges that caretakers, cleaners, maintenance staff and children are known to be at a greater risk. However, statistics do not show how many pupils have been killed by past exposure, as people often die more than 40 years after exposure, by which time they may have worked in a wide range of jobs. Let us not forget, however, that for every teacher working in a school there are 20 to 30 children and they are more at risk.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this Adjournment debate on a very serious issue. It is very important that we recognise that it is not only staff and support workers—the teachers and so on—but children who could contract asbestos-related diseases in school. Should we not be doing everything we can to take the right measures to reduce the incidence in children, rather than just looking across the board at teachers and staff?

[Jim Sheridan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that, and again I have to congratulate the National Union of Teachers on its assistance in dealing with this issue. The genuine concern is that we do not scare parents into believing that their children cannot go to school for fear of catching mesothelioma or other asbestos-related diseases, and we have tried to follow that approach through the report the TUC has drawn up. However, we say clearly in the report that action has to be taken. We also recognised that we cannot deal with this overnight and that the process has to be gradual, with gradual investment. That should start with some of the older schools being stripped of asbestos, and we could take things on gradually from there.

The review is somewhat complacent in places. It states that the Health and Safety Executive’s view is that schools overall are low-risk health and safety environments, similar to offices and retail premises. But there is a fundamental difference between offices, retail premises and schools, which is that schools contain children. The fabric of school buildings suffers considerably more disturbance and damage than most offices and retail premises. In addition, children are in the building for long periods of time and they are more vulnerable than adults to exposure to asbestos. However, most parents would not think that 4,000 to 6,000 people dying over a 20-year period as a result of attending school was low risk.

I am also surprised that the Government are unaware of the extent, type and condition of asbestos in schools. They have just completed a two-year survey on the condition of school buildings, which deliberately excluded asbestos. The review simply states:

“Based upon the age of the school estate, we can estimate that a majority of schools in England contain some asbestos, although the exact amount is unknown.”

That is an astonishing statement after a multi-million pound audit. If when the Government first came to office they had simply asked the local authorities, they would have found that the something like 87% of schools contained asbestos.

Although this debate is principally about schools in England, this is a UK-wide problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) on securing the debate and on chairing the all-party group on occupational safety and health. I had the honour, or otherwise, of chairing the asbestos in schools group, which has come under the umbrella of the hon. Gentleman’s all-party group, for which I am grateful. I also congratulate its lead campaigner, Michael Lees, who has received an MBE, and rightly so, for his tireless work in raising awareness and bringing about a change of heart. I think that it is quite timely to have this debate after the policy has been announced, although it might have been anticipated that the debate would be a call for that policy announcement. I think that it can be used constructively today.

I will say a little about the asbestos in schools group. It has a very wide representation, including from the teachers’ unions, independent schools, industry and local authorities that have very good practice—that has brought home to me what varying practice there currently is across the country in managing asbestos. I took on the chairmanship of the group following a very sad experience with one of my constituents, Rosie. I had known her for a long time, having met her every time I went around canvassing, and I knew that she had been a peripatetic teacher. She came into my constituency office one day and was extremely ill, and within a few months she was dead. She died of exposure to asbestos. It was incredibly sad. We know that a very high proportion of our schools—at least 75%—still have asbestos in them. We know that at least 20 teachers a year die as a result. We know from the evidence that children are more vulnerable than adults. It seemed to me that there was a real mission to try to get change. I was aware that other countries were far ahead of us and, in some cases, had had policies in place for over 30 years—a fact that is much overlooked, or perhaps people do not want to look at that issue in this country.

It had been agreed before the last general election that there would be a steering group, with representatives from the asbestos in schools group and officials from the Department for Education, but the first job after the election was to get that group agreed and reconvened, and I am pleased to say that we did so. There have been so many meetings that I have been involved in, either at the Department for Education or here in Parliament, discussing the issue that it seemed at times that we would take two steps forward and one step back.

I found it difficult sometimes to understand and respond to the approach of the Health and Safety Executive. I felt that there was a mindset that asbestos in schools was just like asbestos in any other buildings. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North described very well why that is not so. Usually in office buildings there are no young people boisterously charging around, which can obviously happen in schools. Schools are a totally different environment, and within that environment are those very vulnerable children.

At an early stage, we achieved agreement that there would be some online training. A significant breakthrough occurred when we pressed for the Department for Education to liaise with the Department of Health on the matter. The committee on carcinogenicity then commenced a study. That was quite a breakthrough—rather a sad one, which confirmed what everybody who had been campaigning knew: that children are more vulnerable than adults and therefore asbestos in schools must be addressed. At that point, the policy review was commissioned, for which I thank the Government.

I welcome the key proposals in the policy review. Greater transparency from schools and local authorities is vital. Measures to assist schools in the effective management of asbestos is extremely important, as is compulsory asbestos training for teachers and support staff. I welcome the introduction of monitoring to see how well people are doing in managing asbestos. Something that we discussed at almost every meeting was testing to provide evidence about the fibres released into the atmosphere. I welcome the study in 50 schools. Even though 50 schools sounds like a small sample, the study will cost a very large sum—hundreds of thousands of pounds, I believe. That evidence collecting will be all-important.

I remain very concerned about schools that remain outside local authority control. If the Minister has time, I would like him to say a little more about how academies are to be encouraged to participate. Parents should be concerned. Free schools can be set up in almost any building. That worries me. I would like to be reassured tonight that academies and free schools will have the same monitoring as other schools, for the sake of our children.

[Ian Lavery]

It is not just monitoring that free schools and academies might have to take on board, but insurance as well. Whose responsibility is it to insure against future mesothelioma or cancer-related illness linked to schools?

[Annette Brooke]

That matter has concerned the group greatly. Of course, we have discussed it with the union representation and there is a recommendation that academies should be encouraged to participate in a risk-protection scheme. It would be helpful to know a little more about that. The problem affects all such buildings, regardless of their governance. The worry is that with such a wide range of governance, the same protection may not be given to children throughout the system. That is my concern.

A good start has been made and I welcome the fact that after so many years we have a policy. I agree that long-term strategies are needed. We need a complete audit and I regret that the two-year property survey of the condition of school buildings excluded asbestos. I hope that will never happen again, because it did not make sense.

We have made a good start to take us into the next Parliament. I feel fairly confident that children will be better protected than they have been, and that is the crunch point. Given the size of the task, we need cross-party support as we look to a more far-ranging policy in future. I hope that, with Members speaking in all parts of the House, we are laying down a marker that this has to be a cross-party approach, but meanwhile the Government have given great leadership.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan)for securing this debate and for giving us an opportunity to discuss an extremely important and, with the publication at the end of last week of the Department’s review of policy on asbestos, timely issue. I thank him for his significant contribution as a member of the Department for Education’s asbestos in schools steering group, and for his chairmanship of the all-party group on occupational safety and health.

The asbestos in schools steering group has done invaluable work in developing the review of asbestos management in schools. I thank all its members for their insights and dedication, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who has been a doughty campaigner on the issue for many years and who has chaired the steering group. I am particularly delighted that we have been able to bring this matter to a conclusion and to publish the review before the end of her time in Parliament, given her retirement in a couple of weeks’ time. I know that she would not have forgiven me if I had failed to get the review out in time. I am pleased for her that she has had the satisfaction of seeing all her work produce a positive outcome.

As my right hon. Friend mentioned, with the general election coming up, it is important that there is cross-party support for this campaign. It is therefore appropriate that as well as hearing speeches from a Labour Member and my right hon. Friend on the Liberal Democrat Benches, we have heard from another long-standing campaigner on the issue of asbestos in my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch). I welcome her comments and pay tribute to the work that she has done to champion this issue nationally and in her constituency. There are a number of issues, even in the review that we have published, that need to be taken forward actively in the next Parliament. It is therefore important that the cross-party consensus remains and that there are Members of the House who will continue to push the matter forward with Ministers in the new Government.

I join other hon. Members in recognising the campaigning of people outside the House, including Michael Lees, who has been mentioned by everyone who has spoken. He has been a great champion outside this place for ensuring that the issue of asbestos is taken seriously.

For my Department, nothing is more important than the health and safety of children and staff while they are in our schools. The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that those who are responsible for school buildings are equipped with the resources, information, guidance and support that they need to do their jobs effectively. I welcome this opportunity to update the House on the measures that we are taking to ensure the safety of our schools, as part of our extensive efforts to improve the condition of the school estate.

As the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North mentioned, last week we published a review of the Department for Education’s policy on the management of asbestos in schools As well as considering the available evidence, we invited stakeholders to tell us their views about the existing arrangements for managing asbestos in schools and how they thought we could help schools to manage asbestos effectively.

Based on the age of the school estate, we estimate that a majority of schools in England contain some asbestos. That is because asbestos was widely used in the construction of buildings in Britain, particularly between 1945 and 1975. The same is true of many non-school and non-education buildings that were constructed in that period, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware.

If asbestos is damaged or disturbed and fibres are released, they can cause serious diseases including mesothelioma, which is a form of cancer. The hon. Gentleman explained in vivid and striking terms the effect that that dreadful illness can have on people. I am sure that the House will agree that any single case of such a disease, from any cause, is a tragedy, and that we must all do what we can to minimise the risks.

The expert scientific view, which the Department obviously has to follow, is that asbestos can be managed effectively so that it does not pose a risk. Indeed, the national regulator of asbestos management, the Health and Safety Executive, upon whose expert opinion the Government base their policy and practice, advises that provided that asbestos-containing materials remain undamaged, it is often safest to manage them in situ. The experts say that effective management is often safer than removing asbestos-containing materials, because removal can greatly increase the risk that asbestos fibres will be released into the air and there is a risk that small quantities of damaged asbestos will remain after removal.

The Government are determined to do whatever we can to ensure that all those who are responsible for the safe management of schools, whether they are local authorities, academy trusts or free school trusts—I entirely agree with the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole made about such schools—governing bodies or school staff themselves, have the information, understanding, guidance and resources that they need to keep our schools, and all those who learn and work in them, safe from any risk of harm.

That is why we updated the regulations in 2012 to ensure the safe management of asbestos. It is why we have invested £5.6 billion over the Parliament in ensuring that schools and those responsible for their buildings have the funding that they need to improve their condition, ensure the safe management of asbestos and fund its removal where that is necessary. It is one of the reasons why we have introduced multi-year allocations for maintenance: we recently announced £4.2 billion of funding over the next three years, we are reforming our approach to target more effectively areas with the most need, and we are introducing multi-year funding to give those who are responsible the certainty that they need to plan ahead and manage their buildings effectively. It is why we have established the condition improvement fund, to enable academies in small trusts and sixth-form colleges to bid for funding to help with specific maintenance projects, including asbestos management or removal. Before the end of this Parliament we expect to announce another round of allocations to academies and sixth-form colleges, which in many cases will include asbestos as part of the works to be completed.

Our Priority School Building programme is removing asbestos wherever appropriate, as part of rebuilding some of the worst school buildings in the country, and the Government have long provided information and guidance on the safe management of asbestos. We undertook to review whether we could do more to tackle barriers to the safe and effective management of asbestos in all our schools, and I am grateful to all those who contributed to the review.

[Ian Lavery]

In the past, the issue of mesothelioma has been bogged down with missing companies and insurance companies, and we cannot have the same problem for potential claims for mesothelioma in schools in 10, 20 or 30 years’ time. Will the Minister clarify the position on insurance for free schools, academies, and those education centres outside local authority control?

[Mr Laws]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, that issue was not directly part of the review we published last week, so if he will allow me I will write to him before the Dissolution of Parliament to set out our thinking on those points. If he wants to make further representation on that issue directly to the Department—notwithstanding that we have only a short period before end of this Parliament—I would be pleased to receive it.

I pay tribute to the all-party occupational safety and health group, the committee on carcinogenicity, and members of our Department’s asbestos in schools steering group. I am grateful to all those who submitted evidence to the review, and to the many Members of the House who have taken a keen interest in this issue. I pay tribute to our excellent officials in the Department for Education. They have liaised directly with hon. Members on this matter, advised Ministers, and done all the really hard work on the review and the detail of the proposals.

The review that we published last week sets out actions in the following four areas that the Government are taking forward to build on our current approach. First, a key task is to ensure that all those who have a role to play are aware of their responsibilities and understand what they need to do to manage asbestos safely. We will soon publish new, more user-friendly guidance on asbestos management in schools, and we will work with our partners to ensure that it is widely disseminated. There can be no excuse for any person with responsibility for a school building not to know how to manage asbestos safely.

Secondly—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole said earlier, this is one of the most important conclusions in the review—as well as providing more guidance and support to those with responsibility for asbestos management, we must also ensure that they are held accountable and are doing their job effectively. Evidence from Health and Safety Executive inspection initiatives has demonstrated that although the majority of duty holders for schools manage their asbestos in compliance with the law, there is room for improvement. For example, an inspection initiative in schools outside local authority control during 2013-14 found that 13% of schools were not compliant with regulations and had to be served with improvement notices. Previous inspection initiatives produced similar results for other schools. In 2010-11, 17% of the schools inspected were served with improvement notices, and in 2009-10, 10% of local authorities inspected were served with improvement notices. None of the duty holders in that area should therefore have any level of complacency.

The inspection initiatives highlighted a number of common issues. Some schools were found to have no written asbestos management plan, or had documentation that had been allowed to go out of date. Other common faults were a lack of asbestos training for in-house staff likely to disturb asbestos, and poor communication with contractors and other visitors about where asbestos was located.

To tackle those issues, our review proposes new measures to increase the transparency of asbestos management and the scrutiny of those responsible for it. We are now consulting on the best way to collect information from schools on how they manage their asbestos. We propose to ask those responsible for asbestos management in schools to confirm that their schools have an up-to-date management plan. We also plan to ask them if they are carrying out regular management activities, such as implementing procedures to prevent the disturbance of asbestos and communicating with staff and visitors about the presence of asbestos in a school. Once the Department holds this information, it will be able to take appropriate action to ensure that cases of inadequate management are addressed. This will be a significant step towards improving awareness and compliance, and ensuring that the proper management of asbestos is a priority in all schools that contain it.

I underline that this is ongoing work and we will be consulting. Inevitably, that consultation will run into the period of the next Government. The next Government will therefore also have to take some key decisions, which is why momentum is very important. In response to the specific question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, I underline that our expectations will be on all duty holders, whether local authorities, individuals schools or chains, to ensure that they are doing that job properly, and we will want to be satisfied that that is the case.

Thirdly, we want to improve the evidence base on the risks posed by asbestos in schools. The review highlights the lack of contemporary evidence about the levels of asbestos fibres present in schools. This is due partly to the limitations of existing techniques for sampling asbestos fibres in the air, but if we can design a reliable study it would be a significant step forward in our understanding of the risks and therefore how best to minimise them. We are working actively with the Health and Safety Executive to establish the feasibility and optimal design of a major new study into the background level of asbestos fibres in schools, and we expect the study to begin by 2016.

Finally, we will continue to invest in the school estate in a way that ensures asbestos can be dealt with adequately, so that over time and where appropriate we see a reduction in the number of school buildings with asbestos-containing materials. In the course of this Parliament, the Government are spending a total of nearly £18 billion on school buildings and new school places. On top of that, in February 2015 we announced a further £6.2 billion of funding to maintain and improve the condition of the school estate going into the next Parliament. Our extensive capital investment programme is targeted at those schools in the worst condition. Where appropriate, we reflect the risks posed by asbestos when making funding decisions. We give local decision makers the funding they need to prioritise asbestos-related works. By improving the condition of the school buildings in the worst condition, our capital programmes will reduce the presence of asbestos in the estate and the risks posed by the remaining asbestos.

The first phase of our Priority School Building programme is rebuilding or addressing the condition need of 261 schools in the worst state of repair. The vast majority of these schools are being rebuilt and so will have any asbestos removed when the existing buildings are demolished. The second phase of the Priority School Building programme, which we announced recently, will address condition need in a further 277 schools. We primarily used information from the property data survey to assess the scale and severity of condition need. However, we also gave applicants the opportunity to identify significant issues that would not have been identified through the property data survey, for example where the costs of safely managing asbestos are excessive and are of such significance as to affect the integrity of the building. All applications that stated that their school has a significant asbestos-related issue and provided relevant supporting documentation, were assessed by independent technical advisers. We took this assessment into account when prioritising the blocks to be included in the programme. All successful blocks within Priority School Building programme 2 will have asbestos issues dealt with appropriately, whether they were raised as a specific concern in the application process or not, because we might discover some of these issues when we go on-site.

We also directly fund the maintenance and improvement of academies and sixth-form colleges through the academies capital maintenance fund and the building condition improvement fund for sixth-form colleges, which are now being combined into the new condition improvement fund. A number of these schemes involve the removal of asbestos—for example, where an academy is replacing its boilers and pipework—and we also allow academies and sixth-form colleges to bid to this fund where they have significant asbestos that is proving difficult to manage.

Asbestos can be managed effectively—and is being managed effectively in the vast majority of schools. The review we published last week is just the latest step in these ongoing efforts. Working together, we can ensure that asbestos is managed effectively in all schools and over time in a safe and an evidence-based way. As the school estate is modernised and replaced, asbestos will be removed from school buildings.

I welcome today’s debate and the contributions from all hon. Members who have participated. Through our school building programme and the measures announced in the review, I hope that we will ensure that the schools estate is a safe environment for all pupils and teachers.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

That is not the Government’s policy and I do not agree with the suggestion. I take great pride in the fact that the brightest and best people in the world want to come and study at our excellent universities. It is great news that we heard just before Christmas that we have record numbers of overseas students applying for admission to university in this country next year. When they come here, they will receive the most cordial of welcomes.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Most companies pay the national minimum wage, but increasingly we have seen more companies not wishing to pay it and developing numerous professional scams—making individuals pay for uniforms, non-payment of mileage, bogus employment and bogus apprenticeships. What will the Government do to police the national minimum wage effectively in respect of these companies?

[Jo Swinson]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very serious issues and alludes to today’s TUC report, which I look forward to reading in detail. We have expanded the resources available for the enforcement of the national minimum wage; we have increased the penalties; we have introduced the naming and shaming scheme; and we will continue to clamp down hard on those companies that break the law. Many of the practices he outlined, which would seem to be in the report, are already against the law. The pay and work rights helpline in Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will also help to clamp down on these employers.

UK Company Supply Chains

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby.

This issue—human rights abuses in the UK supply chain—is an extremely live one. Whether it is the children of the Colombian coalfields, abuse in the sweatshop economies in Bangladesh, the exploitation of the workers in India in relation to the blood bricks, or the migrant workers in Qatar working in construction in the most inhumane of conditions, and whether it is British American Tobacco, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Glencore or many other multinationals, it is essential that everyone works together within the supply chain authorities to eradicate violations of human rights, from one end of the chain to the other.

We have an absolute moral duty to tackle and stamp out legally the human rights abuses that we see on an almost daily basis. They take many forms. We see women forced into prostitution, and children, men and often entire families forced to work in agriculture, domestic work, factories or sweatshops producing goods for global supply chains. As I say, this abuse needs to be stamped out.

In recent years, the extent of human rights abuses in the overseas supply chains of UK companies has come to light in a way that has emphasised the urgency around tackling modern slavery. At this early stage of the debate, I want to place on the record my thanks to Unite the union for its outstanding work on such issues. Had it not been for Unite, my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) and I would not have joined the fact-finding trip to the tobacco fields of North Carolina, which I will now discuss.

My hon. Friend and I were invited as part of a delegation to North Carolina by the American farm workers’ union, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. We had the opportunity to witness at first hand some of the many human rights abuses endured by tobacco industry workers in the fields of America. We heard disturbing stories of what is essentially daily life for them—instances of child labour, sexual exploitation of women and human trafficking. It was a world away from what we would expect in a developed country and the so-called “land of the free”, which is one of the richest nations in the world.

The working conditions that we saw were absolutely atrocious, with unbelievably long hours of manual labour in unbearable heat; squalid living conditions, which mean workers have a lower quality of life than inmates in UK prisons; and employers showing a total disregard for basic health and safety regulations by not providing gloves to workers picking tobacco plants, so that their skin is exposed to the toxic nicotine, which meant that many of them develop green tobacco sickness, an affliction with symptoms including nausea, intense headaches, vomiting and insomnia.

We visited about five farms. We also met many people working in the tobacco fields; men, women and even children. I have to say that it was quite harrowing. We listened to the testimonies of many people who were working in the fields. I will take just a little time this morning to outline what some of these people had to say. They were workers who were being exploited in the tobacco fields.

There was Hector, aged 49, who was from Wilson county. He said:

“I had an accident and the farmer didn’t take responsibility. I don’t agree with that…they made me suffer there in the field. I was working the tobacco and a harvesting machine cut off part of my finger. The farmer told me that someone was going to take me”—

to the hospital—

“but the hours went by and I couldn’t tell if he was telling me straight and there I was with my finger bleeding all the while.”

We visited Hector where he lived and at that time his hand was bandaged but he still had not been seen by anyone, days after the accident. At the same time, he was not being paid any wages, even though the accident was because of the negligence of his employer in the tobacco field. Many people were scared to speak out, in case there was retaliation by their employer; that is a huge issue in many of the places that I have mentioned.

There was also Sandra, who is only 13 and from Wayne county. She said:

“I started working in tobacco when I was seven. I work in tobacco because I’m thinking of my future. I want to go to college. My parents have a hard time paying for high school…and I have younger brothers and sisters that want to go to college, too. It’s important for me to work to help my parents, but there are many problems.”

There was Lorenzo, who was 26 and from Nash county. He said:

“If you have a contract”—

commonly known as an H2A visa—

“they treat you differently, but for us they lower the weekly wage. There’s no bathroom and if there is, you can’t use them; you can’t even go in because they are so dirty, and they don’t clean them.”

He said that when the inspectors come around the employers

“bring the bathrooms”—

that is, the portable bathrooms—

“and clean, too, but the inspectors leave and nothing changes”.

So the employers change things when the inspectors arrive to make them look an awful lot better than the dismal situation that workers usually face.

We visited some of these camps and saw some of these toilets. Can you imagine the squalid conditions that these people are living in? I said that those conditions were worse than those in UK prisons. However, to say that is a bit of a nonsense; you would not keep hens on an allotment in places such as those where these human beings reside, seven days a week and 24 hours a day. They were ashamed of the conditions themselves. And to see the toilets, one after another without any privacy shields between them for example, not cleaned for months on end—what sort of way is that to treat ordinary human beings?

We spoke to Gloria, who was 23 and from Duplin county. She said:

“Women with children have it harder. We have no support. If you go out with the contractor, in every way you get treated better. If you go out with him, you’ll get a lot of hours in the good jobs and if you don’t, your pay will suffer. We have to take care of our children! All I ask is that women get treated equally as men in the fields.”

Just for clarification, when she said that women have to “go out” with the contractor, that is what she means—women must give the contractor sexual favours to ensure that they get equality in employment with the men in the tobacco fields. It is an absolute disgrace that that is continuing in what is, I must add, the land of milk and honey.

There was also Maria, who was 26 and from Greene county. She said:

“We get pesticides sprayed near us when we work and we don’t know what they are. This season—”

the 2014 season—

“I got sick from the chemicals and one day I was sick in the bathroom and the supervisor came and told me I had to get back to work. When I couldn’t, he told me he didn’t need me anymore and that was my last day working there.”

Those are a few of the testimonies we heard.

There was also the case, which has become well-known now in North Carolina, of a chap who was feeling pretty poorly after working in the 110° or 120° temperatures in the tobacco fields. The farmer said, “Well, you cannot leave: this is your job,” and sent him to sit under a tree in the shadows in the hope that he would recover. At the end of the day, everybody went home and did not realise that this chap had not come back to the camp with them. They were not too concerned, but as the days went on they realised that this chap had not come back and were slightly worried. So they decided to go back and look, following his traces from where he was in the tobacco field to the tree under which he was supposed to recover, only to find that his corpse was still sitting there, decomposed. Nobody had been to see whether he was recovering. That is why we raise these issues today.

Of course, a lack of regulation causes these poor conditions. Here we have a catalogue of atrocities that amounts to less of an American dream and more of an American nightmare. This is largely due to the lack of regulation in the tobacco farming industry. Labour standards are generally weaker in America. This, coupled with the inadequate resources provided at both state and federal level, means that it is near impossible to ensure that employment rights are enforced.

It is equally damaging that agricultural workers are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act, which denies them the fundamental right of the freedom of association. With no collective bargaining structures in place and with the precariousness of their employment, workers see no alternative to withstanding the appalling conditions and abusive treatment, particularly as many of them are undocumented workers, originally from central American countries, such as Guatemala and El Salvador, with the overwhelming majority hailing from Mexico.

FLOC, with its president Baldemar Velasquez, has for many years been playing a leading role in trying to get these abuses eradicated. It estimates that at least 20,000 tobacco farm workers are not unionised, in an industry where joining a union would be essential in providing the necessary protection in the workplace. With this in mind, it is of the utmost concern that, as workers in those tobacco fields supply companies such as British American Tobacco, many people in this country could be unwittingly supporting this form of modern slavery.

My hon. Friends the Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) met representatives from BAT on 29 October, and although BAT expressed sympathy with the workers in question, it refused to be proactive in regulating its own practices, as confirmed in writing in its letter of 10 November 2014. BAT has also ignored calls for it to use its influence as an owner and customer of Reynolds American to urge that company to sign up to the Dunlop Commission, a mechanism already in place in America, which would give guarantees to tobacco farm workers on Reynolds American contract farms, a source of tobacco for BAT.

BAT was prepared to meet colleagues who had been on the delegation, and others, but there seems to be some difference in views about how that meeting concluded. My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North believes that although BAT listened it would not be happy to do very much about using its influence, as I have suggested. BAT says that the meeting was quite helpful. Does the Minister think that this is the way that a modern company should operate, waiting for legislation to compel it to protect employment rights and the human rights of tobacco farm workers on contract farms in its US supply chain?

Urgency is needed to tackle this issue. Worryingly, stories such as those I have mentioned from North Carolina are not uncommon. The reality is that, over the last decade, current measures have failed to tackle modern slavery in our supply chains. We have seen first hand how the lack of regulation of the industry in America breeds worker exploitation, so the focus must be on imposing regulations on all companies throughout the world that feed into supply chains in Britain. Companies should have to report on their working conditions and those of their suppliers, to ensure that we have transparency in our supply chains and that we can help reduce the risk of modern slavery.

We should be focusing on this issue through the Modern Slavery Bill, which is currently going through Parliament. We need to look at procedures for the investigation and monitoring of modern slavery risks, both in UK organisations and their global supply chains; we need support and access to remedy for victims of forced labour and modern slavery; and we need to train staff and suppliers to draw on expertise and advice to remove confusion over lines of accountability with companies down the chain. We need greater clarity in lines of accountability of businesses of all sizes, which could be achieved through introducing minimum reporting standards, effective scrutiny bodies and enforced penalties. These functions should be monitored as part of the anti-slavery commissioner’s duties.

Like most hon. Members in this House, I welcome the vital role played by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority in managing and mitigating risks of slavery in the food and agricultural sectors, but I urge its expansion to deal with other high-risk areas, such as fisheries, apparel, construction, cleaning, care and hospitality. All authorities responsible for inspection, monitoring and enforcement of labour standards should work proactively to identify abuses of labour standards and act effectively if modern slavery is found. Truly to tackle modern slavery, the Bill must address this.

Thousands of temporary workers in the UK fall between the cracks of labour inspection and regulation because they are not covered by the GLA. UK labour inspectorates should take proactive measures to ensure protection of workers from abusive and fraudulent recruitment practices. Companies should also seek to ensure that migrant workers do not pay a recruitment fee, including in their country of origin. These fees put them in debt bondage, which is a critical factor in forced labour and trafficking for labour exploitation.

In conclusion, I hope that the Minister shares the view that I have wholeheartedly expressed here, which is that Britain should not tolerate human rights abuses in our overseas supply chains or indeed modern slavery in any form—a view shared by many of my hon. Friends in the House. Does the Minister agree with me that freedom of association agreements would make all the difference in improving the rights of employees of multinational companies? Will the Minister support the extension of the GLA and its use as a model for good industrial relations practices?

Greater scrutiny and regulation in our supply chains are long overdue. We need to take a stand on the world stage to show that Britain will not profit from exploitation. With this in mind and Britain’s industrial reputation at stake, I invite the Minister to say why the UK does not insist on proper legally binding corporate social responsibility reporting, and why we do not push harder for better regulation at the international level to hold multinational companies to account. I finish by saying that anyone who saw the things that my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and I saw in the tobacco fields of North Carolina would be truly ashamed that the supply chain in the UK is contributing to modern-day slavery. Those individuals were treated like animals and worked like animals.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

Our £1 billion youth and community strategy helps to ensure that lots more people engage in and enjoy sport. Sport England has also recently invested £70 million in improving facilities.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

The Newcastle United supporters trust fully supports Labour’s football governance strategy, which will mean that for the first time supporters will be guaranteed a place on the board. Will the Minister join me in congratulating the trust on developing a credit union in the best interests of the supporters and people in the north-east?

[Mrs Grant]

I am very happy to congratulate the hon. Gentleman. I know that supporters always have the best interests of their club at heart, and I think that it is very important that their voice is always heard.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing to the attention of the House the fact that it is not just businesses that create apprenticeships, and that community groups like Whitwick community group can play a vital role. They are directly contributing to a very good piece of news we have had this morning, which is that the number of young people not in education, employment or training has fallen again, by 136,000 since last year.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

A sure-fire way to increase apprenticeships in the UK would be to treat the apprentices fairly in terms of wages. They have had an increase in the last five years of 23p per hour. They get £2.73 per hour in wages. It is an absolute outrage. Is it not time that we matched the fine words and rhetoric with decent pay for our young people?

[Nick Boles]

Of course the hon. Gentleman is right, which is why we introduced the apprenticeship minimum wage, which did not exist until we did so, but he is also right that we need to make sure that the level is fair. Nevertheless, the chief value of an apprenticeship for the young person is the training and the preparation it gives them to create a career, so we need to strike the right balance: we need to make sure we set this at a fair level, but also encourage more employers to create apprenticeships, so that more young people are in education and in training and not on benefits.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

Yes, I am a great supporter of Lowestoft college, which it was a pleasure to visit last year with my hon. Friend. It has a centre for the promotion of engineering and training in the offshore industry, which is so important to the town, and I will do everything I can to support it.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

T4. Blacklisting is a scourge of any civilised society. Will the Secretary of State guarantee to the House that the confidential documents currently being withheld by the Government relating to the Shrewsbury 24 dispute in 1973 do not include extensive details relating to individuals who have been blacklisted and the companies operating this very sharp practice?

[Vince Cable]

We have debated this issue in the House before—I think the hon. Gentleman spoke on it, and I responded—and we take it very seriously. I have had conversations with the Information Commissioner to ensure that the injustices of the past are properly dealt with, and as I have said to the hon. Gentleman and the Opposition spokesman, if Members have more concrete evidence that has not been properly investigated, they should bring it directly to me.

Skills (North-East)

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Guy Opperman]

With amazing ability, my hon. Friend has touched on the next key point of my speech. It is not just about numbers; it is about the quality of apprenticeships. It is also about the skills pilot that we have managed to secure in the north-east matching the types of apprenticeship starts to the sorts of businesses in the north-east, to ensure that they are specifically focused and provide what business needs. The Adonis report talked about exactly that point.

In preparation for the debate, I blogged, tweeted and invited comments on the matter. Who says that social media do not work? I was deluged with ideas and contributions, and I thank everyone for taking the trouble to get involved. I was contacted by businesses, trade organisations such as the north-east chamber of commerce, health trusts and even the Department for Education, which was keen for me to advance and support some of its ideas. I spoke to three businesses in particular. SCA is the second largest manufacturer in my constituency. It employs some 400 people, and it is a manufacturing success. Richard Sutcliffe, the factory manager at SCA, has said:

“There is a need to acknowledge that the technical skills/engineering skills that are needed in manufacturing are not currently in place; we are continually striving to encourage and develop the young talent of today.

As the number of apprentices over many years has reduced and many employees come towards their retirement we have a challenge in industry as a whole to plug these gaps. By linking with schools and educational establishments we are keen for people to realise and see that an apprentice scheme is a great/equivalent alternative to university and we must remove the stigma that still exists in some areas.

An apprentice at SCA can also move on after their initial training to complete a degree, giving the person a solid footing in a working environment, a keen skill that can take them in many directions and the opportunity to start life without the burden of excessive debt. We need to encourage and help people realise apprentice schemes are key, current and available for all types of people, whatever their ambitions might be.”

I could not have put it better myself.

I want to give examples of two other local businesses. The first is Egger, in my constituency, which is the biggest private sector employer in Northumberland, with more than 550 employees. Recently, £4 million has been invested in an engineering academy for more than 40 apprentices and other engineering staff, which I opened last month with Michael Egger. He clearly sees his employees as the key to the future prosperity of the business, and the academy is the latest phase in more than £100 million of investment in the Hexham plant over the past six years. Egger’s importance cannot be overstated; it is responsible not only for 550 local jobs, but for 1,500 other jobs that are linked in through forestry and other businesses. I was lucky enough to work on the factory floor as part of Children in Need. I was not very good, but it was a great experience. I particularly liked meeting the apprentices, who were, by and large, from Hexham. They had started in Queen Elizabeth high school and been on away days and visits to the factory, after which they followed the apprenticeship path, which enabled them to get a local job with a local firm and live at home. That, surely, is the way forward.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this important debate to Westminster Hall. Are the valuable apprenticeships that he has mentioned ones that last for three or four years, in which apprentices work on the shop floor and in college, and are guaranteed a job at the end? In other words, are they indentured apprenticeships as we knew them, or do the apprenticeships last only six months, with only the possibility of the job at the end?

[Guy Opperman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution; it is a perfectly fair point, which the Adonis report deals with. The north-east skills pilot is an attempt to achieve that. Some are shorter apprenticeships—no one would deny that—but the majority are exactly what he and I, who are of venerable years, would understand to be a traditional apprenticeship. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is looking at me as though I am ageing him too much. I am sure he is still a stripling.

Yesterday I spoke to Bob Paton, another of my constituents from the Hexham shire, who took time out to come and talk to me on exactly that issue. He described the apprenticeships offered by Accenture, a big multinational of which he is a director. Accenture’s IT apprentices spend three years in the business and complete coursework and college work on a repeated basis, at the end of which they can achieve a university degree. The apprentices are working and learning, and they achieve both an apprenticeship and a degree.

[Guy Opperman]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that point. He was not quite in his place when I said that my key desire arising out of this debate was for a technical college for Northumberland, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. At the moment, there is the potential for a college linked to Hitachi in Durham, but we need something in the northern part of the north-east to address the skills gap between school and a job, which is central to fulfilling the manufacturing and engineering demands of our businesses.

[Ian Lavery]

I apologise for missing the start of the debate; I was not late, but it started slightly early. I have not heard the hon. Gentleman mention Northumberland college in Wansbeck, which has developed into a really good force for further education, apprenticeships and meeting the skills gap. We really need to encourage Northumberland college and the Kirkley Hall campus in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, because the college has great potential.

[Guy Opperman]

It is in no way the hon. Gentleman’s fault that he missed my elaborate description of how wonderful Northumberland college is, because we started early. The Minister and I went to Kirkley Hall and visited parts of the site. As the hon. Gentleman knows, another branch of Northumberland college has opened in Hexham, so quite a small hub has expanded to other parts of the region. That addresses the hon. Gentleman’s point and that made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith).

When Bob Paton came to see me yesterday, he told me that Accenture is not only increasing its job numbers, but recently took on 38 new IT apprentices, working with the local college. He reckoned that he had

“the biggest and best…higher level IT apprenticeships in the country,”

and the programme is expanding. We do not just need manufacturing and engineering apprenticeships, but IT apprenticeships. We need to encourage people to take on such jobs.

I could give other examples, but I do not want all my speech to be about the fact that Nissan is offering enhanced apprenticeship programmes, enabling new recruits to work in manufacturing production; the fact that Sembcorp Utilities UK is recruiting 100 new apprentices aged 16 to 18 to do three-year apprenticeships from 16 onwards; the fact that we need more work like that of the North East Skills Alliance for Advanced Manufacturing, chaired by Nissan and the Engineering Employers Federation; or the fact that the North East Skills group does good work.

I cannot praise enough the campaigns run by The Journal and my constituent, Brian Aitken, who has pushed the excellent “Proud to Back Apprentices” campaign in the past year. Nor can I praise enough events such as the north-east engineering and manufacturing careers conference, which brings teachers from across the region together to hear first hand about opportunities in the sector, or schemes such as the primary engineer scheme, which encourages girls and boys from a very young age, in first and primary schools, to become the engineers of the future, by forging links with local businesses. I welcome the work of the local NHS trust and the Department for Education in boosting schemes such as the apprenticeship bursary scheme for the early-years profession.

I want to turn to the North East local enterprise partnership, because we cannot discuss skills and apprenticeships without addressing the role of the LEP and the Adonis report. I pay tribute to everyone involved in both the organisation and the report—in particular, Ed Twiddy, Paul Woolston, Justin Welby and Andrew Hodgson, the latter of whom specifically addressed the problem area of skills.

We in the north-east welcome the fact that we have been chosen for the skills pilot. That sends a message that the north-east is not only open for business, but a skills hub and a destination for the sorts of jobs we wish to see. I call on the Minister to set out what the skills pilot is doing and what the next steps will be if it is successful. How can key local businesses and stakeholders influence the development of the skills revolution in the north-east? We do not need a route map set in stone by Government, but we do need a clear direction of travel, allied to the Adonis report, setting out the hurdles we need to cross along the way.

No other region has addressed its strengths and weaknesses as the north-east has with the Adonis report. It was business-led, written by experts, apolitical, hard-hitting and realistic. It pulled few punches. It celebrated the region’s assets and successes, but acknowledged that successive Governments have struggled to improve job numbers, the skills deficit and university starts, or to grow the regional economy, which was such a powerhouse in days gone by. At the heart of the report lies a desire for more and better jobs. It identified the crucial lack of private sector employment, but, to quote from the report:

“More jobs alone will not re-balance the economy. The North East needs higher skilled and higher paid jobs to produce an economy which matches others and provide the quality of opportunities its residents and young people need to prosper.”

An alternative way of looking at the problem was provided by the recent debate on how Governments, of any form, can address the cost of living as the election approaches. I was interested by the comments of Ross Smith from the North East chamber of commerce and industry, who tweeted, following an article in the New Statesman:

“My answer to this is ‘it’s skills, stupid’—alas that doesn’t fit with easy election messages or election cycles.”

That builds on the famous Bill Clinton comment—“It’s the economy stupid.” I asked Ross to expand on his comment yesterday, as part of the consultation for my speech, and he said:

“The most important factor in raising living standards in the long term is to increase skill levels, so that people can play a more productive part a stronger economy, and be rewarded accordingly.”

He is right and his tweet was right.

My copy of the Adonis report is well thumbed and much written on. I urge everyone interested in addressing the problem to read the report. We need action from big employers, and I have set out what some have been doing. We need the support of media and key partners; it is welcome and expanding. I will address university technical colleges briefly in a moment.

We also need a north-east schools challenge, based on the successful London challenge, to support local partners to achieve a step change in local education. I support the efforts of the local authority seven, and we will talk in the House on another occasion about how the LA7 should be fully supported by one and all. I will, however, make one particular point now. There is a slight problem for small businesses, which are struggling to get the niche, tailored skill sets for their apprenticeship demands. Given the lack of time, I will write to the Minister on that point to set out the issue in more detail.

I shall finish on the point about university technical colleges or UTCs. We need to encourage more people to build vocational skills and not to stop doing so at 16. A key solution in the Adonis report is the creation of UTCs in the north-east. The Adonis report demands four UTCs, but frankly I would take two. We have one in Durham, and I would very much like one in Northumberland or Tyne and Weir. As UTCs have been established across the UK, their success has been dramatically transformative. I will make it my mission to see a UTC created in the northern part of the region. I hope that is something for which the Minister can offer his support. Although the south of the region is making progress, the message is obvious: we need far greater links between business and schools. UTCs make a difference, so we need one.

We can be in no doubt that skills, and apprenticeships in their many forms, are the key to the further improvement of every bit of the north-east, job numbers and growth. The north-east is the cradle of manufacturing, engineering and much more. We are powering the country out of recession. We are the only region with a positive balance of payments. Give us the tools to do the job.

[The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I will respond to as many of the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) made in his excellent speech as I can. He is a passionate supporter of not only Hexham, but the whole north-east. He made a strong case in an important debate. One particular reason why it is good news that we are debating the north-east approach to skills and apprenticeships is that the region is blazing the trail and is at the forefront of some of our policy thinking, which I shall come to later.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visits to Newcastle college and Northumberland college earlier this year with my hon. Friend. We were photographed in an empty shell of a building and I very much look forward to seeing the college now the new building is up, running and, I understand, buzzing with learners. That is just as well, because the number of over-19s in further education in the north-east went up by 6% in the last year for which figures are available. There is clearly an increasing demand for education and skills at that level, among not only employers—we heard a lot of stories that corroborate the evidence I have on the demand from employers—but students as well.

My hon. Friend mentioned the need for university technical colleges in the area. We warmly welcome all applications for UTCs. We approve those proposed by the strongest groups in areas where new schools are needed most and those that have rigorous education and recruitment plans. I am sure he agrees that it is important to ensure that new provision is rigorous and responds to the needs of local employers, not least because UTCs provide the opportunity for employers and universities to work together, and therefore drive up the standard of technical education between 14 and 18. We are considering the south Durham UTC application, with others we have recently received, and we have interviewed the applicant group. Applicants will be notified of the outcome in the new year. Lord Nash and the Secretary of State will make the decision in due course.

My hon. Friend also talked about the need to improve standards and quality in the skills system. I strongly endorse that point. Last month’s report by the OECD, comparing skills levels across the whole developed world, was a stark reminder of how much more we need to do. We—England and Northern Ireland—were the only country in which the skill level in maths and English of our 15 to 25-year-olds was no higher than that of our 55 to 65-year-olds. In the long-running debate about whether more exam passes mean better education, that is extremely strong independent evidence that we have to stop that flatlining and start improving our standards, because every other country in the developed world is doing that. That is hugely motivating in the task of driving up standards, especially when youth unemployment is far too high, although thankfully it is now falling. At the same time, there are increasing skills shortages, some of which my hon. Friend mentioned.

We have introduced faster and more robust intervention processes for failing colleges and we driven up the quality of provision through a new and more rigorous Ofsted inspection framework. We are reforming qualifications so that we fund only those that employers sign off. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has managed to read Nigel Whitehead’s report, but its recommendations are sensible and are about driving rigour and responsiveness through the adult qualifications system.

That brings me to the proposal by the north-east LEP. My hon. Friend mentioned that it is one of three LEPs through which we are piloting a new mechanism to ensure that there is local influence over the use of the skills system. He said that he was thrilled that the north-east LEP was chosen for the pilot. I would go further: the north-east LEP invented the idea and brought it to us. We were impressed by it, and two other LEPs came on board to ensure that the mechanism was piloted in more than one area. The north-east LEP is not only a leader on piloting; it is a thought leader on how we can ensure that the skills system is responsive to local need.

My hon. Friend asked for details on how the proposal will work. The proposal is that 5% of funding for all adult provision outside apprenticeships will be allocated if, and only if, the provision is in line with LEP priorities. The LEP will have sign-off. Rather than giving 5% of the funding to the LEP, we have instead said that the LEP will have the final say over what is essentially a quality payment—the final 5% of all adult skills funding outside apprenticeships. That will ensure that the whole provision is targeted at LEPs’ needs. There is good collaboration in the north-east between the LEP and colleges, and the proposal will help to incentivise education providers to look to the strategic needs of business—not only directly but through the LEP—and ensure that the LEP focuses on that. Our job is to ensure that there is enough flexibility in the funding system to allow providers to switch provision according to the needs of local private or public sector employers. That will ensure that the system is filling skills shortages.

In the past, when there have been shortages of training in one area, people have come to the Minister and said, “There is a shortage in this area. Can you fix it?” There is one thing I know for sure, and that is that I do not and cannot know, through a central bureaucracy, the skills needs of every area. It is far better to try to make the system responsive to local need, instead of trying to direct solutions to skills shortages from Whitehall. The proposal is about making it easier for colleges to respond to the needs of employers.

The proposal is also about providing capital for skills provision. Capital funding will follow LEP priorities from 2015-16. Very recently, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills announced that we would be financing a further £330 million of skills capital in 2016-17, which provides the long planning horizons that many crave. Those horizons have been too short term in the past.

I pay tribute to the work of all those involved in getting the pilot with the north-east LEP up and running as a policy. It will hit the ground running from September 2014. That policy is part of a broader attempt at making the skills system more responsive to employers. I mentioned that it does not cover apprenticeship funding, which is because we have a broader set of reforms on how apprenticeships are funded to ensure that funding is directly responsive to employers’ needs. We will be working through employers. The taxpayer rightly pays a subsidy towards apprenticeships, because if someone is in an apprenticeship, they are not only doing the job but learning. Apprenticeships benefit the employer, the apprentice and wider society. Recognising that, the taxpayer subsidises apprenticeships. We are changing how they are delivered so that the employer has more of a say over what training happens within an apprenticeship. That will ensure that the training fits the needs of the apprentices and the employer, which will drive up standards.

My hon. Friend quoted the views of a local site manager and talked about spreading the word on the benefits of apprenticeships. As the Minister responsible, I could not agree more. It is just as competitive to secure an apprenticeship at a top employer, such as Rolls-Royce or BT, as it is to get into Oxford or Harvard.

[Ian Lavery]

Does the Minister, like me, welcome the announcement by Northumberland county council earlier this week that it has an ambition to double the number of apprentices linked to the council? It is looking to employ 360 apprentices directly with the council. Some 23 apprenticeships will be immediately created, adding to the total of 134 already on the council’s books already.

[Matthew Hancock]

I had not heard that, but at face value that sounds absolutely terrific. We have a goal of making it a norm in this country that every young person who leaves school goes to university or into an apprenticeship. Rather than trying to push them one way or the other, we want to ensure that there are good choices available on either side. Increasingly, employers, whether private or public sector—including Northumberland county council—are introducing an apprenticeship stream in addition to a graduate scheme. The civil service has just brought in an apprenticeship fast stream to match its graduate fast stream. This week, MI5 and MI6 announced that they are introducing an apprenticeship scheme in addition to their more traditional graduate recruitment. That is happening across different businesses and different parts of government. Someone can now become an apprentice spy, which is interesting, although MI5 and MI6 have not yet told me all the details that someone would learn.

We have an ambition, but we will only be able to persuade people that it is the right ambition so long as we continue to drive up the quality of apprenticeships. The very best apprenticeships are world class, but we have to ensure that quality goes up across the board. We have brought in some tough measures to increase quality by ensuring that all apprenticeships last a minimum of a year, that the English and maths requirements are stronger and that there is actually a job. In the past, some apprenticeships happened without a job attached. Those measures have meant that we have had to remove some low-quality provision. In the medium to long term, that is undoubtedly worth it and will ensure that the apprenticeship brand remains strong.

I agree strongly with the point that several hon. Members have made, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), that apprenticeships need to reflect the whole economy. The old industries in which apprenticeships were strong, such as engineering and manufacturing, are important, but it is also important that apprenticeships cover the whole economy as it is today. They should include professional services and computing, for instance, in a way that they did not in the past.

The north-east LEP is one of our thought leaders, and we listen carefully to its suggestions. I am watching the pilot’s progress closely to see whether it should be spread more broadly. There is no stronger advocate for the passion with which the north-east is coming together to deliver on skills training and ensure that everyone reaches their potential than my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham, although my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South and all the other hon. Members who have spoken in this debate are strong advocates, too.

Child Abuse (Northumberland)

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Campbell]

I appreciate that, but when there are nine accounts of sexual abuse and vital evidence suddenly disappears, something has gone wrong. It would be silly to ask for an inquiry into an inquiry—I do not think that has happened before—but I sometimes wonder whether we should do that.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is brave to raise this matter. Child abuse cases are always difficult, but does he agree that all accusations and allegations of child abuse from sufferers should always be fully investigated and that no stone should be left unturned until a satisfactory conclusion, is reached for both sides?

[Mr Campbell]

That is right, and I do not know whether Operation Rose did that, but the attitude at the time was that such things happen in homes. Most people took that attitude, including the police. To mention Jimmy Savile again, it was also the attitude in the BBC. We must get a grip on that and get through the barrier for people like Terry Priestner. He wanted to raise the matter for publicity because other inmates with him in the homes were also abused. He knows them, but he does not know where they are, and he wants them to come forward. He is pleading for them to come forward with him, so that abusers such as Jimmy Savile and other celebrities, as well as people who worked for Northumberland council, do not get away with what they have done. Mr Priestner was in its care and he should have been looked after.

It is a minefield when there are also innocent carers. The report referred to innocent people whose lives were ruined, and it is awful if innocent people are accused. Many cases were dismissed, and only six or seven people went to jail. After everything, not many were convicted.

Terry Priestner made his point well. He never left my door. I thought he might go away, then the matter would have been out of my hands—we MPs do not like such matters—but he came back to me again and again, and as his MP, I had no option but to raise an Adjournment debate. I hope that I will receive a canny reply from the Minister.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

It is good to see you back in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell) on securing this important debate and on bringing the matter to the attention of hon. Members. As he set out in his forceful contribution, we are all too well aware that there continue to be shocking and appalling revelations of child abuse—particularly involving our most vulnerable children, who are unable to live with their families. My Department takes the issue extremely seriously. I had an adopted brother who was brought up in a children’s home in the late 1970s, so I am all too alive to the issues raised by some of those who were in residential care during that period.

I was saddened to hear that Mr Priestner does not feel that he has received the justice to which he thinks he is entitled following abuse that he has testified to and which was set out today. He experienced that abuse as a child living in children’s homes in Northumberland between 1969 and 1976. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will understand that I cannot go into a commentary on individual cases, and that the police investigation is an operational matter for Northumbria police.

However, I understand that the protecting vulnerable persons unit within Northumbria police’s crime department has investigated the allegations. I also understand that, following substantial inquiries, it has not been able to take any further action in relation to Mr Priestner’s allegations. I appreciate and understand that Mr Priestner must feel extremely frustrated about that. If he remains unhappy about how the police have handled his case, he can, of course, raise his concerns with the Independent Police Complaints Commission, who will independently review how the investigation of his case was carried out.

Ensuring that vulnerable children are protected is one of the state’s most important responsibilities, whatever the care setting. As hon. Members have said, any case of child abuse is completely unacceptable. When allegations are made, we should always follow the evidence, wherever it leads, and ensure that no stone is left unturned.

[Ian Lavery]

Where does that leave victims who decide to tackle the problem of the abuse they suffered if they go to court and the evidence no longer exists? It is no good having an investigation when the papers may have gone. It might be helpful in one way, but it does not help the individual who suffered abuse over a sustained period.

[Mr Timpson]

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) said, unfortunately there are cases in which the veracity of the evidence presented to the court could have been greater than it was; some victims therefore feel let down by the efforts that the police made in good faith to bring the case to court with the highest possible level of evidence. We deal with that by ensuring that we have the best possible people and systems in place to carry out the investigation and to set out the case so that we do not miss the opportunity for convictions. In the past, there have been too many cases of failure to obtain convictions.

The fact that abuse occurred in the past makes it no less tragic. I am sorry that Mr Priestner has been living with that. The hon. Gentleman knows that, as a result of the terrible abuse that many children experienced in children’s homes, two major reviews into historical abuse were carried out in England and Wales. Sir William Utting’s report “People Like Us” was published in 1998. It was a comprehensive review of safeguarding for all children living away from home in England and Wales. Sir Ronald Waterhouse’s report “Lost in Care”, into historical abuse in children’s homes and foster care in north Wales, was published in 2000.