Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Debate between John Hayes and Baroness Primarolo

Monday 26th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

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

This is a Bill for the long term. As I said on Second Reading, Governments of all persuasions neglect the long term. Perhaps that is only human—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Perhaps Members leaving the Chamber could do so quietly. Secretary of State, that means you as well—we want to hear your eloquent Minister move the Third Reading.

[Mr Hayes]

It is bewildering, Madam Deputy Speaker, that Members do not want to stay and hang on my every word. It is bizarre. I know you agree.

On Second Reading, we said the Government were determined to put in place a strategy, backed by statutory changes, that allowed us to invest in this nation’s future. I was about to say that it is only human nature to focus on the immediate, on the imminent. It is easy to forget that the present is an illusion, as now becomes then in an instant; it is the past that matters and the future. As I said a few moments ago when we were debating the Government amendments, it is easy for Governments to neglect infrastructure investment for just that reason. This Bill looks beyond short-term political expediency to a future of greater investment—a future of more jobs, more opportunities and more growth. This Bill improves the funding and management of our major roads, streamlining the planning process, particularly for major projects, and so facilitating investment. It also supports house building; introduces rights for communities to buy a stake in new, commercial renewable electricity schemes; boosts our energy security and economic growth by making the most of North sea oil and gas reserves; and facilitates shale gas and geothermal development. This is a bold Bill, introduced by a far-sighted Administration.

A few moments ago, we debated some of the measures we will introduce to act on the road investment strategy—the exciting strategy I was delighted to be part of, alongside the Secretary of State for Transport, who is here, adding glamour and insight to our consideration today. He was its architect and under his stewardship it has come to pass. This is the most exciting road investment strategy for a generation, and this Bill makes the statutory changes necessary to deliver it. We have committed to Highways England remaining in the public sector. Let me repeat that this is not about privatisation; it is about a public sector organisation fit for purpose. We will not diminish the fundamental accountability to parliamentarians, which I am so keen will allow us to gauge, monitor and, if necessary, alter things over time, but without compromising the essential role of the new body to deliver the plans we have set in motion.

In addition, as the House knows, we have amended the legislation further to ensure better integration between local and national networks through route strategies. As has been celebrated throughout the House this evening, we have also committed to setting and reporting upon a cycling and walking investment strategy, acknowledging the strategic importance of those things for the first time. We have had more tributes tonight than a ’60s pop band for that change. In total, this paradigm shift to a longer-term vision for transport infrastructure will give the construction industry the certainty and confidence it needs to invest in people and skills for the future. That clear vision, with the confidence it breeds and the investment it will bring, is crucial to the health and well-being of our nation.

In planning we have a number of measures designed to help get Britain building. The Bill makes changes to speed up the approval of nationally significant infrastructure projects and to the discharge of planning conditions that will ensure planning applicants can get on and build without unnecessary delay. The small changes in the Bill will have an important cumulative impact: they will send a clear message to investors and developers that the steps to deliver these transformational schemes are as simple, sensible and straightforward as possible. We have responded to concerns and shared the draft statutory instrument on deemed discharge in advance. Our Land Registry reforms will enable proper record keeping and modern digital efficiency, with the aim of making dealings with property quicker, cheaper and easier.

On zero-carbon homes, the “allowable solutions” approach is cost-effective and practical, and it has been welcomed by the Home Builders Federation, the UK Green Building Council and Federation of Master Builders. We have also introduced new legislation related to planning. The abolition of the Public Works Loans Board removes—

HS2 Funding Referendum Bill

Debate between John Hayes and Baroness Primarolo

Friday 23rd January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Gillan]

I assure the Minister that I have never had any poverty of ambition either for my constituency or my country in all the years I have served both. He is claiming that the costs have now come down on phase 1. Will he tell us the new cost-benefit ratio?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The Bill suggests that we pose this question in a referendum:

“Do you support the use of …taxpayers’ money to pay for the construction of the HS2 railway?”

We are now drifting well away from the subject of the referendum and the total costs. We are discussing not the individual costs, Minister and Mrs Gillan, but that principle. I am listening carefully to the Minister, who could never be accused of not being ambitious and confident. I would like him ambitiously and confidently to return to the central proposition of whether there should be a referendum.

[Mr Hayes]

rose—

[Mrs Gillan]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker; I have been leading the Minister astray. However, my points have been in the interests of the taxpayers who would be consulted in the referendum. I do apologise.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

No apology is necessary; I am sure that nobody could lead the Minister astray even with the skills you show in representing your constituents, Mrs Gillan. Your points may be relevant, but we have been discussing only the minutiae and we need to return to the big picture.

[Mr Hayes]

If I may say so, Madam Deputy Speaker, you have done me a great service as well as the House—and not for the first time. Until now your generosity in allowing me to range widely has moved me. I anticipated that you would want me to return to the core of the Bill, and I will do so without further delay.

The core of the Bill is the proposal that a project—in this case HS2, but it could be any large infrastructure project—should proceed only on the basis of a further reference to the British people through a referendum. I flatly disagree with that, and it will not be accepted by the Government.

I was about to come to the end of my introductory remarks, but I am now inclined to make them my concluding remarks, given your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am minded to draw, as I briefly did earlier, on Edmund Burke, who said in 1774:

“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

Weigh those words—

“if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

In other words, the representative must not lack the confidence, vigour, energy and vision to make a case on behalf of his constituents for the common good and in the national interest. It has been the business of this House for more than 150 years to usher in some of the greatest projects that the world has ever seen. Those include the railways built by the Victorians, which have stood the test of time and still prove themselves as the veins and arteries of this country. In their day, the same criticisms were made.

I have the railways Acts of 1833 and 1837 with me here today. I have seen the Second Reading debates. I know the criticisms faced by those who proposed that first generation of great railways—those big infrastructure projects; they were very like the criticisms made in the House today. Those debates were very like those that we have enjoyed about whether these things represent a threat or an opportunity. Those politicians, those Victorian leaders and those Governments did not duck their responsibility—they did what Britain needed. Today we remain grateful for their decisions, because we still benefit from them.

Let me be clear: the west coast main line, which despite having been upgraded since those Victorian times, has at last reached its capacity. Even on moderate forecasts, that line—the nation’s key rail corridor—will be full by the mid-2020s, despite the £9 billion-worth of improvements in recent years. We cannot continue to make do and mend. We must make a bold decision worthy of our nation’s future, in the spirit of those great leaders of the past, as ambitious and confident for the next generation as they were for us. As parliamentarians, we are elected to serve not only the constituents that live now but those yet to come, for the decisions we take will affect them too.

We have a duty to support this kind of infrastructural investment—to make the difference, to shape the future, not to hesitate to do the right thing—and that is precisely what we will do. That is why I ask the House to reject the arguments, however well meant and well articulated, made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, and reject the Bill he has put before us.

Apprenticeships

Debate between John Hayes and Baroness Primarolo

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

This is the season of good will, so I am pleading for good will from hon. Members in making short interventions. I remind everybody in the Chamber that this is a very heavily subscribed debate with a time limit on speeches that may, at this rate, have to be shortened for each speaker. In the interests of good will, perhaps we could make sure that all hon. Members get to speak tonight.

[Mr Hayes]

Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker; I must not allow my legendary generosity to prevent Members from contributing to this debate.

To the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) I say:

“I loved thee, though I told thee not,

Right earlily and long,

Thou wert my joy in every spot,

My theme in every song.”

That is by the people’s poet, John Clare. I believe that the hon. Gentleman saved John Clare’s home with the involvement of a social enterprise. We share a passion for the people’s poet, as we share a passion for the welfare and interests of the people. It is just a pity that I am in the people’s party and he is not.

With so many people currently not in employment, education or training, we must do more to extend the ladder of opportunity—the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. It is absolutely vital that in getting apprenticeships to fill a bigger space, we not only allow them to redefine our sense of what we understand as higher learning—I shall speak about that, too—but use them as a vehicle to allow for re-engagement of those who are currently unable to contribute in the way that we both want them to by getting a job, keeping a job, and progressing in a job. Through our access to apprenticeships programme, which we piloted as a result of my determination to do exactly what the hon. Gentleman described, I believe that we can provide just such a vehicle to get those who were failed by the system the first time around and who do not have sufficient prior attainment on to a level 2 course.

The drive for greater quantity must be matched by a determination that quality will grow in tandem. First, we will strengthen the English and maths requirements for apprentices who have not yet achieved a level 2 qualification. Those subjects remain essential for long-term employability and progression, so from the 2012-13 academic year all apprenticeship providers will be required to provide opportunities to support apprentices in progressing towards the achievement of level 2, GCSE or functional skills qualifications. They will be measured on their success in so doing.

Secondly, we will launch a rapid employer-led review of apprenticeship standards to identify best practice, ensure that every apprenticeship delivers the professionally recognised qualifications that employers need, and ensure that the Government are maximising the impact of public investment.

Education Bill

Debate between John Hayes and Baroness Primarolo

Monday 14th November 2011 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendment 28.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

With this it will be convenient—

[Mr Hayes]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

If the Minister could just hold himself back for a second, with this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Lords amendment 29, and amendment (a) thereto.

Lords amendment 36, and amendment (a) thereto.

Lords amendments 39, 43, 47 to 71, 99 and 100.

[Mr Hayes]

My enthusiasm to rise to speak to the amendments is indicative of the thorough scrutiny that the Bill has enjoyed here and in the other place, and of the spirit in which that scrutiny has taken place.

If I may, I shall speak first to Lords amendments 47 to 71, which make important changes to schedule 12 and further strengthen the provisions that strip away unnecessary central controls over the governance and dissolution arrangements of further education colleges and sixth-form colleges.

You, Madam Deputy Speaker, with your usual assiduity, will have seen those provisions in the context of the Education Act 1944. In bringing that legislation to the House, the then President of the Board of Education as he was known, Rab Butler, said that it is not possible

“to start colleges ‘out of the blue,’… It is essential that the House should realise that direction by the State from the top is not the right way to administer this vast matter. What is wanted is to encourage the desires, appetites and feelings of those who wish for different forms of adult education and then to try to meet them as far as possible. As long as we follow that line, I can tell the House that it is our desire to reform and bring up to date the adult education system and to make a great stride forward in this regard.”—[Official Report, 12 May 1944; Vol. 399, c. 2261.]

Just as a stride forward was made then, so a stride forward is being made now, although I would not claim to be as great as that very noble and distinguished gentleman, Mr Butler.

In speaking to these amendments, however, the important thing to make clear is the Government’s absolute unwavering and unabridged commitment to the creation of a freer, more responsive further education and skills system—one that is based upon the principles of fairness, shared responsibility and freedom from central Government controls.

I say that not for any doctrinaire reason, but simply because of this enduring truth: unless we make the system sufficiently nimble to respond to dynamic demand, it will not be fit for purpose. Through the Bill, and in that spirit, we propose to remove a raft of unnecessary and prescriptive duties and to reduce the control of the Government and their agencies over the affairs of colleges.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Perhaps I may help the Minister by saying that if he returns to his notes, his diary might not get so full.

[Mr Hayes]

That is wise advice, Madam Deputy Speaker, and it is taken in the spirit in which it is given.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the amazing increase in apprenticeships that he has outlined. I met my local college, Stourbridge college, and other colleges last week, and they reported a huge increase in apprenticeships over the past six months. Is he aware of another route into apprenticeships, which emerged during a meeting that I had the previous week with Stourbridge jobcentre? It reported that among 18 to 24-year-olds a route in was via two-week work experience placements. In many cases, they were being converted into apprenticeships.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. It is very interesting to hear of the extensive commitment that the Minister has personally to apprenticeships, and indeed to hear the point that the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) has made, but we are discussing Lords amendments. Although Lords amendment 36 is about securing the provision of apprenticeships in certain regulations, the debate is going a little wide of that. Perhaps the Minister could relate his comments to the amendments.

[Mr Hayes]

I was not going to be encouraged to speak lyrically about work experience, although I could, but I hear and value what my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) says.

Amendments 36, 43 and 100 deal specifically with the so-called apprenticeship offer. As I said, apprenticeships play a key role in promoting growth and prosperity in British business and give renewed hope and purpose to our young people, who are so affected by the present climate. Through the Bill, we are redefining the apprenticeship offer. We are moving away from what I regard as an unrealistic guarantee that sought to require the Government to tell employers whom they should and should not employ. The previous Government took the view that the House could place a duty on the chief executive of skills funding to fund apprenticeships for anyone who wanted them. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) intervenes from a sedentary position, but he knows that in practice, the previous offer was undeliverable. There was much discussion of this matter in the other place. I pay tribute in particular to Lord Layard, who made this case forcefully and with whom I have enjoyed many discussions. He also writes persuasively about happiness —I read a recent essay from him on that subject. Happiness is all of our aims, is it not, individually and communally?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stuart]

I am always focused on happiness. I thought I could increase the Minister’s sense of contentment if I attempted to correct him. Under the previous situation, there was an obligation not to fund an apprenticeship for anyone who wanted it but to provide one, outwith any ability necessarily to ensure that an employer came forward. That is why the Minister and the Government were right to make that alteration, not withstanding the complaints of Opposition Members.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am very glad that the hon. Gentleman got his point on the record, but we are not debating the previous Government’s record or apprenticeships generally; we are debating amendments on quite narrow points in the Bill. I know the Minister is really eager to come back to that.

[Mr Hayes]

As you say, Madam Deputy Speaker, we are debating the character of the apprenticeship offer. This Government take the view that we need further to refine the legal framework for apprenticeships. The debate on this subject in the other place was on the character of that duty. Lords amendment 36 places a new duty on the chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency to make reasonable efforts to secure employer involvement in apprenticeships. That is so important because we have changed assumptions of the nature of apprenticeships. We take the view that apprenticeships should intrinsically involve employment—making an offer separate from employment seemed nonsensical.

I make that point because until relatively recently, some apprenticeships—programme-led apprenticeships, for example—were not tied to employment in quite the same way. Lords amendment 36 was the outcome of a great deal of hard work and good will, as I have described. The overtures made to me by Lords Layard, Wakeham, Willis and Sutherland persuaded the Government and my noble Friends to devise an amendment that satisfies the wishes of those who want to place a clear duty in the Bill, but not one that the Government think is undeliverable.

Although I know some feel that I have summarised the Lords amendments all too briefly, those amendments put apprenticeships, the freedoms about which I have spoken, the changed inspection regime, the different role for the Government, the new emphasis on skills, and the mantra—I decidedly and deliberately put it that clearly—of freedom, flexibility, innovation and dynamism, at the very heart of this legislation. I think they improve the Bill significantly and I look forward to hearing whether the Opposition think so too.

Regulatory Authorities (Level of Charges) Bill

Debate between John Hayes and Baroness Primarolo

Friday 13th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am very grateful to the Minister for supplying the House with so much information, but I am struggling to ensure that he remains in order. I understand his point about burdens, but the Bill relates to fees already charged for services, not to increasing those fees. I would be grateful if he returned to that specific point.

[Mr Hayes]

It might be helpful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the whole House if I explained how what I am about to describe is directly relevant to the advice you have offered.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. It might be helpful, but I have said very specifically to the Minister that this one-clause Bill, as Mr Speaker previously pointed out, is about fees charged, rather than burdens. The Minister must stay in order. If he does not, I will intervene on him again, so perhaps he will reflect on what might be helpful in those circumstances.

[Mr Hayes]

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

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

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