NHS Reorganisation

Debate between John Pugh and Greg Mulholland

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Pugh]

I think it is Hobson’s choice.

This is not the first health reform—the last Government introduced more “step changes” than could fill an episode of “Strictly Come Dancing”—but it is certainly the biggest, the most expensive and possibly the most risky. The Secretary of State seems to have chosen for himself a path on which future generations will either put up statues to him or burn him in effigy. However, it is no longer his Bill; it is our Bill. No Secretary of State currently commands a majority in this House.

This Parliament may act like all the others hitherto—and, sadly, it usually does, as it has largely done today—but it is not like any other Parliament. There is no party in this House with a majority, so we should dump the tribalism, the point scoring and the political games. We can get round to doing what we have to do and what we need to do. We have the chance to scrutinise, to seek to amend and improve—and, if unsatisfied, the chance to reject the Bill on Third Reading. That applies to Members of all parties. It is not just “top-down reorganisation” of the health service that we should have dropped with the coalition; we should have dropped “top-down legislation”, whereby MPs simply become pawns in a wider political game, and conviction takes second place to coercion.

There has never been a Secretary of State who has looked at the NHS and found it to be perfect and incapable of improvement. That is largely because we demand so many incompatible things of it that any incarnation is unlikely to satisfy all. Each successive Secretary of State suggests proposals for reform, rather like the Flying Dutchman in a hopeless and sadly doomed pursuit of the ideal format for the NHS. I have to say that the current Secretary of State is probably better equipped for this eternal task than any others: he is committed, passionate, well informed—probably the best informed Secretary of State we have had for some time—and he is brave. He voyages on, undeterred by the siren voices of think-tanks from right and left and the warnings about costs and practical difficulties, and unfazed by the lack of enthusiasm, if the polls are to be believed, among the NHS crew and staff. Of course, as a Liberal Democrat I am disinclined to believe polls at the moment. He carries on, unmindful of the uncharted nature of the course he has set. In Committee, we found real gaps in the understanding of how things will proceed. It is not that he is unaware of the possible danger, but the big danger is that any potential shipwreck will cause us all to be engulfed if costs overrun, if productivity falls, if hospitals close, if waiting lists grow, if morale declines, or if the NHS appears to be denatured, privatised, and not safe in our hands. That is why Parliament’s role is so important in this context, and why good argument rather than the Government machine must prevail.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend is doing on the Bill. Does he agree that, as with the forestry decision, the coalition shows its strength when it actually listens to the concerns that are out there, and is that not exactly what we need the Government to do at this stage?

[John Pugh]

Indeed. In the circumstances that my hon. Friend cites, both coalition parties listened to the voices that they heard and took serious note of them.

It would be unsafe to draw any conclusions from the voting patterns today. Political gamesmanship and party loyalties will prevail. However, it is not necessary to hang around the Lobbies much to see that a corrosive unease is spreading through Government ranks, even in the most unlikely quarters, and to see how opposition hardens with every defiant, unbending rebuttal from the Richmond house bunker. We must accept that the Committee, for all its forensic talent, will not solve the problem; we must concentrate on Report and Third Reading, and on the debates that will take place offstage beforehand.

This is our Bill, not the Secretary of State’s. It will not come about unless we vote for it. Even the most calculating, the most tribal, the most ambitious of us—but not, possibly, the most stupid—must see the clear risks as well as recognising the opportunities. If we get it right, reform can take place with the grain of professional and expert opinion, without Ministers’ ceasing to be ambitious for the NHS, and with broad political support in the House and in the country, and arguably it will work better as a result. However, it will require dialogue.

It is a profound irony that the Government want to abolish what they call the command and control model of the NHS by means of a command and control model of legislation. Indeed, they issued a Command Paper over the Christmas period, but then Richmond house does not do irony. If Parliament is to help the Government to climb out of the hole into which they threw themselves last June when the White Paper announced the liberation of the NHS, we need genuinely constructive, open dialogue, and we need it to start here. Perhaps, in order to liberate the NHS, we need to liberate Parliament a little bit first.

Pubs (Planning Policy)

Debate between John Pugh and Greg Mulholland

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Greg Mulholland]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for that point. I was coming on to that exact case. To some extent he is right, but the unfortunate reality is that councils can, as things stand, adopt pro-pub planning policies. The scandal of that case is that Leeds city council did not even seem to realise that it could and should have adopted such a policy.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Is it not the case that under the sustainable communities legislation passed in the previous Parliament, there are opportunities and levers that are currently not being used?

[Greg Mulholland]

That is the case, yes, but there is another issue that relates to The Summercross pub in my constituency. I had a phone call from a legal officer at Leeds city council who said to me, “What is this Sustainable Communities Act and what relevance does it have to pubs?” Clearly, there is a large job to do in communicating with councils. Some councils are good—I will mention them in a minute—but some do not appreciate what is already there at the moment that could make a difference. Existing legislation does not go far enough, but if the guidance were clearer, it could make a difference.

Let me briefly relate the sad story of The Summercross pub, because it is a classic example of the problem here. The Summercross was one of my local pubs in Otley. It had been a pub since 1871 and it was the only pub of that name in the UK, so it represented a little bit of British history. It had gone through the usual story of changes of ownership and successive tenants. Every time the pub did well, the rent went up. Rather ominously, it was bought by a London-based developer, but the tenant who came in did a very good job of turning around the pub and making it successful and profitable again. It attracted the customers back by serving excellent local independent beer. However, a deal was struck over his head, initially without his and his wife’s knowledge, to sell the pub to a Leeds-based developer for a very large profit—something like £1 million for that one sale. The London-based developer, Phase 7 Properties, had bought the pub as a predatory purchase, seeing it as a potential development opportunity because of the weakness in planning law. Scandalously, the landlord and landlady were give a few weeks to clear out of The Summercross, which was their home as well as a small business, a community pub and a popular live music venue.

A campaign was launched to try to save The Summercross. However, the London-based developers, who went off with £1 million in their pockets after owning the pub for just two years, said, “Sorry guv, nothing to do with us any more. You’ve got to speak to Chartford Homes in Leeds.” Then Chartford Homes said, “Well, it’s nothing to do with us, because we didn’t close the pub, but actually now we want to build houses on it.”

Then a battle ensued. The community conducted a vigorous and well run campaign, and they managed to fight off the first planning application. They obtained figures to show that the pub was profitable and viable, and so the first application was kicked out. However Chartford Homes was cunning and, frankly, it had an awful lot of money—£1 million more than was clearly sensible—tied up in the pub. So it transferred the ownership, or at least proposed at that stage that the pub be taken over by a company called Westwood Care, its sister company with shared directors. Westwood Care then came back with the wonderful, cuddly proposal to turn this historic building into a care home.

Sadly, that proposal went to the plans panel of Leeds city council. What happened next fits exactly with what my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) has talked about. The members of the plans panel in Leeds felt that they could not refuse that application in planning law. I am afraid that the main reason was that Leeds city council has no policies in place that recognise the importance of pubs, so it is Leeds city council’s fault that The Summercross closed.

The actions of Leeds city council can be compared with those of Bradford city council. Just up the road from Otley is Ben Rhydding, a suburb of Ilkley. Bradford city council stood by the community there and was prepared to take on the owner of the Wheatley, the local pub—in that case, it was Punch Taverns. The council won and the Wheatley is now a popular and thriving pub again. But Leeds city council is frankly clueless when it comes to the protection of pubs and planning policy, and it needs to address that failing.

It was incredibly frustrating during the planning process to hear the chair of that plans panel whispering to officers, “Pub viability is not a planning consideration, is it? We can’t consider that.” The chair also said, “The only planning protection policies that exist are to do with rural villages, aren’t they?” Both those statements are incorrect and both were made in what is supposed to be a quasi-legal setting.

Pub campaigners and other members of the local community in Otley saw planning officers present the developers’ own proposal. It was a PowerPoint presentation from the developers. The word that local people used when they saw that presentation was, “Corruption.” They said, “Surely this can’t be right? It’s corruption.” I said, “No, it isn’t corruption. There is no corruption there.” However, it is the farcical reality of the planning process, which means that a set of planning officers can present exactly what the developer wants to do and make some comments on it. And what does the community get? They get three minutes to make a few comments. I am afraid that the decision to close The Summercross ignored the reality that it was a profitable pub. The figures to that effect were presented. Instead, the members of the plans panel said, “There’s nothing we can do in planning law to stop that.” I am afraid that that sort of thing is happening up and down the country.

I want to issue a challenge to my hon. Friend the Minister today. I appreciate that this is a difficult issue in planning law. However, we all agree that there is some moral ownership of a local pub by the local community. Surely, if we believe in everything that we say, there must be such moral ownership. As my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty has said, the community must have a right to have a say over the future of its local pub, especially when the pub is successful and, as in the case of The Summercross, other companies are knocking on the door and phoning me to say that they want to take on the pub but are unable to do so because of the grubby deals that have gone on between two developers behind the backs of the landlord and the local community.

The London-based developers, Phase 7 Properties Ltd, owned The Summercross and allowed a tenant to run it for two years. I do not think that it ever visited the pub themselves, which it had an agent to run. Does it have the complete right, as the legal owner of the building, to do what it wants over the heads of the community that, as I have said, must have some moral ownership? I say that it does not have that right. That situation must be recognised, in a realistic way, in the planning process.

Higher Education Fees

Debate between John Pugh and Greg Mulholland

Thursday 9th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Greg Mulholland]

All I say to the hon. Gentleman is that sometimes Governments are wrong, and sometimes one needs to have the courage to say so. I am doing that today.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Summarising this debate so far, one has to accept that the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable), though very wise, does not know for certain that he is right, and that the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham), though equally wise, does not know for certain that he is right. Does not the House need an opportunity to assess the results of whatever policy we adopt today, and not do something that is purely irreversible?

[Greg Mulholland]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. There simply has not been an adequate evaluation to allay the very real concerns out there.

I am going to talk about the pledge. I did not sign just one pledge, I actually signed two: the National Union of Students pledge in this very House, and the Leeds university union pledge at the university. I do not regret signing either, but that is not the sole or, even, most important reason why I shall vote against the Government today. I shall vote against the Government today because I simply cannot accept that fees of up to £9,000 are the fairest and most sustainable way of funding higher education.

Before I became a Member, I opposed the Labour Government introducing fees in the first place, and I opposed the Labour Government introducing top-up fees. I said at the time, as did many hon. Members including courageous Labour Back Benchers, “This will lead one day to huge increases in fees and become a never-ending path.” Sadly, that has been shown to be absolutely correct.