Qatar: Migrant Workers

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what recent assessment they have made of the situation of migrant workers in Qatar.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we welcome the serious manner in which the Qatari Government are responding to concerns about the treatment of migrant workers. We fully support Qatar’s intention to reform the current labour law. We encourage the Government of Qatar to put forward a timetable for passing and then implementing the proposed legislation. We stand ready to support these efforts where we can.

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, the House should be aware that 964 migrant workers from India, Bangladesh and Nepal were killed on Qatari building sites in 2012 and 2013. There are many other countries with unrecorded deaths. This is all part of the run-up to the 2022 World Cup. Many migrant workers work under a system called kafala, a medieval bonded labour scheme. Will the Government exert maximum pressure on Qatar to enforce a ban on kafala and proper safety standards on the construction sites? If necessary, will they call for Qatar to lose the right to host the World Cup in 2022? Additionally, will the Government disqualify contractors guilty of poor health and safety practices from tendering for jobs in the UK?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the 2022 World Cup is a matter for FIFA. Since I know that there have been considerable allegations in Qatar that the British press are campaigning for the 2022 World Cup to be transferred to the UK, let me make it clear that we entirely accept that it was agreed the 2022 World Cup would take place outside Europe. We have no intention of applying for that particular competition. We might well be interested in a later competition and wish to campaign actively for that.

On the question of pressure on Qatar, we welcome the moves it is making, but I quote the United Nations Human Rights Council report on the situation in Qatar, discussed the other month:

“The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants welcomed the positive legislative developments in Qatar that had made it illegal for sponsors to confiscate passports. However, he noted the need for effective enforcement of that law”.

We are seeing useful developments in the rhetoric and legislative framework. The question of enforcement is a serious one.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

My Lords, I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Monks, in raising this issue. Qatar as a relatively progressive Arab state is in a position to give an example to many others around it, not least in the other Trucial states. In addition to the very high levels of fatalities and casualties on building sites, there is a steady flow of wounds and sometimes fatal injuries suffered by women working as domestic labour in the Trucial states, not least as nurses, cooks and nannies. May I therefore strongly support the argument that the United Kingdom Government, who have a special status among the Trucial states, should continue constructively to press Qatar to give the example that it could give to treat migrants in the way that it treats its own citizens?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Baroness for raising the question of domestic labour, which is also an issue across the GCC. In the UK’s contribution to the debate at the UN Human Rights Council, our representative made two recommendations; first, to:

“Reform the sponsorship system, removing the requirement for foreign workers to obtain permission before leaving Qatar or moving jobs”,

and, secondly, to:

“Reform the Labour laws to ensure domestic workers are legally protected and to improve the enforcement of these laws ensuring the rights of foreign workers in Qatar are guaranteed”.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Clinton-Davis (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that the views of Her Majesty’s Government can be very influential in this matter? Does he further agree that presenting views officially and not being silent would serve an immensely positive purpose?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government have a close relationship with Qatar and we constantly express our views. We do so also through multilateral and UN channels. One of the issues is that the sending states, mainly south Asian states, do not make as strong representations as many others about the position of workers in Qatar. I have to say in mitigation that the population of Qatar rose by 15% last year, almost entirely accounted for by foreign workers coming in. Part of the problem is that a huge boom is going on and the system does not have the capacity to cope with what is happening as a result.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, while I have every sympathy with the Question and think it is very valid, are we in a position to criticise others when in this country care workers looking after people at home are still being paid about £2 an hour because they get nothing for travel time between jobs? Therefore, it is time that we set our own house in order.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a very fair point.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, what discussions have the Government had—and this follows on from what the Minister said to my noble friend Lord Monks—with FIFA and with the British Football Association regarding migrant workers in Qatar and the 2022 World Cup?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am looking round to see whether the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, whose subject this is, is here. FIFA has had a great deal of conversations with the Government of Qatar and others. I have before me a workers charter agreed by FIFA and Qatar—

[Lord Bach]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister. What discussions have the British Government had?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The British Government of course have discussions with FIFA, but, like the International Olympic Committee, this is an autonomous body with which we have a dialogue, but we are unable to give instructions. We support everything that FIFA is doing to try to improve construction issues in relation to the World Cup 2022 and of course we have many other issues relating to the necessary reform of FIFA.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that workers are not allowed to join trade unions in Qatar? If they were, might not some of the problems we are talking about be better dealt with?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the workers charter issued in January refers to including workers’ representatives in forums to discuss labour conditions. I look forward to that being developed.

European Union Committee: Report on 2013-14 (EUC Report)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I think this is the third time we have had an annual debate on the work of this extremely important committee. I regret that we are very much at the last hour of a Thursday evening and keeping the staff here, and that we are rather thinly staffed on the Benches at the moment, because this is an extremely important committee. When the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, introduced this debate I thought about how long this committee has gone on and how closely many of us have been involved with it. When I first became a Member of this House, the then Clerk of the Parliaments, Michael Wheeler-Booth, enjoyed entertaining people in front of me by saying that when he was the first clerk to the committee one of its first witnesses was a rather nervous young woman academic. He gave her a double gin and tonic before she gave evidence to the committee to steady her nerves. The young academic was Helen Wallace, my wife.

Shortly after I joined the House, I was posted to Sub-Committee F and, because the chair resigned unexpectedly, I became its chair. I had an experienced clerk to train me and then found myself with an entirely newly appointed and totally inexperienced clerk called Christopher Johnson, whom I was expected to train. I think he has done quite well since then and I hope the committee is happy with the highly experienced clerk he now is.

We all need calm and reasoned debate on matters European and we all realise how enormously difficult it is amid the cacophony of ignorant prejudice all around us to hold to a highly reasoned and calm debate, often on highly technical issues, set out in highly technical language which, nevertheless, can touch on major UK interests and dilemmas. As some noble Lords may know, I have been involved very closely in the balance of competences reports. I hope noble Lords have followed these with increasing confidence because we have attempted to see them very much as a parallel process of evidence-based consideration of British interests in European co-operation and of how far the current balance of competences suits British economic, social and political bodies engaged with European policy.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, that the reason some reports have only just been given to the committee is that the third round of this four-round exercise was completed only some weeks ago, and the 11 reports were published on Tuesday of this week. These included the delayed report on the free movement of persons and the single market report on financial services and capital, which was mentioned in last evening’s debate and provides a high-quality analysis of some of those complicated issues.

The fourth round is now in process. We hope to complete that before the end of the year. It will include a report on subsidiarity and proportionality, a matter of active interest to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, among others. The fourth round has only seven papers, but because they are on complicated, cross-cutting issues, these will be some of the most difficult. I hope that this will all feed back into the work of your Lordships’ European Union Committee.

There is another report coming up on enlargement. The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, touched on how complex and delicate a subject that has now become. There is another on citizenship, voting and the related issues of individual rights within the European Union.

In the process of negotiating the balance of competences papers through three rounds now, I have discovered how much overlap and interaction there is between UK engagement with the European Union and with other multilateral organisations through which the UK pursues and negotiates its economic security, regulatory and political interests: the OECD, the OSCE, the WHO—within which the EU operates as a regional body for certain purposes, which I did not know until I read the balance of competences health report—the IMF, the Bank for International Settlements, the Food and Agriculture Organization and so on. There is a case for this House to consider in the new Parliament whether it should not at least experiment with one or two more committee inquiries that will look at how the UK works through other technical and specialised international organisations.

The need for calm and reasoned debate, particularly on questions such as Russia and Europe, came home to me as I picked up my Daily Mail this morning and saw the full-page article by Stephen Glover which explains that it is the EU’s fault that the Dutch aircraft was shot down over eastern Ukraine. One need not go through the various stages through which he demonstrates that it is entirely the EU’s fault. There is no mention of the pressure from within Ukraine itself for closer relations with the European Union. In December 1991, I spoke at a conference in Kiev, when Ukraine had been independent for three weeks, at which the Prime Minister announced that among the two strategic aims of the state’s foreign policy was to join the EU within three years. I was then asked to explain why that might be a little more difficult than he expected. There was no mention in the article of the Bush Administration’s encouragement of Ukraine and other states to join NATO—“No, it is the European Union’s fault. President Putin is a splendid man and everything that is wrong with the country is the fault of those dreadful people in Brussels”. That means that we absolutely need detailed arguments demonstrating where British interests are better pursued at an EU level or better pursued at the national level, and thus to unpick, one by one, some of the arguments that are produced in the other direction.

The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, asked me a specific point about whether the Government had been invited to engage with the euro group and whether we have declined or not. I do not know the answer to that. I will draw it to the attention of my Treasury colleagues and promise that we will respond to the committee as soon as we can.

The noble Lord, Lord Bach touched on the extent to which the Foreign Office co-operates with the committee. As a Foreign Office Minister, I am impressed by the quality of FCO officials working on European issues, the balance of competences and a number of other areas. We are keen to co-operate as far as possible with the committee; that, of course, is part of the strategy of wanting to strengthen the role of national parliaments. Mr Lidington appearing before the committee before the June Council was seen as an experiment, but it is certainly something that we might well take further.

I would merely mention, in terms of what I understand are the Labour Party’s intentions for the other place, that the Commons European Scrutiny Committee proposals—to which the Government have now also responded—suggest that it would be more useful in the other place for departmental Select Committees to become more directly engaged with European issues themselves, rolling the European dimension in with the regular spread of sectoral policy in the United Kingdom.

Extending the role of national parliaments is one of the targets of the coalition Government’s EU reform agenda, which requires active engagement with the Brussels institutions and other national parliaments, with the National Parliament Office, which we maintain in Brussels, and with COSAC. I note the slightly mixed message about COSAC from the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. I am sure that it is much better than when I used to go to COSAC.

We are experimenting with reasoned opinions and yellow cards. Some other parliaments have already produced more reasoned opinions and yellow cards than either of the two Houses of the British Parliament; that is something that we clearly need to take further.

I take the various critical points that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made—that there is a shortage of time, which we need to discuss again at the Commission, that there has been resistance from within the Commission to reasoned opinions and that we need to strengthen links also between national parliaments and the new European Parliament, which is an issue to which we must all return.

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market]

Would my noble friend accept that a particular role for government departments in all this is the speed with which Explanatory Memoranda are issued. Certainly on my committee, we have had problems when the clock is ticking on the reasoned opinion taxi meter and we are still waiting for the Government’s Explanatory Memorandum.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We all understand that that is part of the problem and the pressure, and we are doing our utmost to look at that as well. I also take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that effective scrutiny necessitates the earliest possible engagement with developing areas of policy, looking at work programmes and strategic views.

I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, feels that the Government’s scrutiny performance has improved somewhat in the last year. It is one of those things on which we all have to maintain the pressure. Civil servants are always very busy and Ministers always have too many things in their in-tray, but we have to keep up the pressure on all that.

The noble Lord, Lord Bach, asked whether the Government’s evidence on the abuse of free movement rights could be shared with the House. Much of that is in the free movement of persons paper that was published on Tuesday. Having been very closely involved in negotiations over that paper, I might say that the evidence is not always entirely clear; that is part of the problem in discussing questions of free movement of persons and labour and the abuse of free movement rights. That is partly because we do not have exit controls in this country and partly because we do not collect all the central evidence. For example, I questioned at one stage an academic study that suggested that there were 40,000 British citizens receiving benefits in other states in the EU. That is an academic estimate, but nobody is entirely sure whether that is an exact figure. So there are many problems in addressing that very complicated issue.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, asked whether the UK had been diffident in its approach to the financial transaction tax. The Government have been very closely engaged with this issue since publication and, indeed, took a case to the European Court of Justice on that issue to raise the question of how far it would be appropriate for the European Union to move on that subject. We remain actively engaged.

The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, talked about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. That will be a central but extremely difficult issue for the coming year; we know that there will be lobbies not just in France and elsewhere but in this country that will want to raise negative issues about TTIP. That is something that we will clearly have to follow.

May I say, as spokesperson for the Cabinet Office and therefore dealing with a lot of data sharing issues, that I would welcome the European Union Committee looking further at aspects of the digital single market as well as data sharing and data protection? Some months ago, I asked for a briefing within Whitehall on the digital single market and officials from five different departments came to brief me, demonstrating just how complicated an issue it is. After all, this is all one issue in a complex, multi-levelled set of issues for government that is driven by the speed of technological change. I am constantly struck by how much faster technology is taking us down the road to online, cross-border transactions than we previously understood. The digital single market is a major priority in the Government’s drive for EU reform and it is part of the extension of the single market to services, as services and manufacturing intertwine and overlap. It will be a difficult issue also in TTIP, as data regulation, the cloud and the role of the US service providers hit the issue of data protection.

I am conscious of the time. I hope that I have answered most of the issues, but I see that there are one or two questions still to come.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Before the Minister sits down, I understand why he is in some difficulty in addressing the point that I raised about the claim that national parliaments are “the basis” for real legitimacy in the European Council, not in the European Union, not “a basis” for it. Of course he cannot take back the words that, alas, have been written in the response to the national parliament role report, but we are going to debate it again and I hope that he will report back to his colleagues the dangers they are taking if they turn the question of strengthening the role of national parliaments into a contest with the European Parliament. They will not get anywhere if they do that. It has to be pursued as a matter in which both national parliaments and the European Parliament have a role in assuring the democratic legitimacy.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I very much take that point. The new European Parliament is a rather more difficult body with which to co-operate than its predecessor, but I think it is extremely important nevertheless that we do co-operate. I am in the middle of making arrangements to go out myself with one or two others in September to talk to new Members of the European Parliament, British and others, with whom, of course, we must co-operate.

[Lord Bach]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. May I remind him of my final question? It was about the position regarding the new Commissioner and the Government’s response to him coming to a hearing at either of the two committees or both.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I apologise; I should of course have responded to that. The Government have no difficulty with the noble Lord, Lord Hill, coming to talk to the committee. I think that they would resist any idea that this should be a formal process through which the committee would decide whether or not it thought he was the appropriate British candidate. However, in pursuance of a close and continuing relationship with the committee, I am sure that he would be entirely open to coming to give evidence and to start what will be a continuing process. One of the sad disadvantages of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, being the European Union’s high representative has been that she has, perforce, had to spend much of her time outside Europe. She has therefore not been able to pursue one of the many useful roles of a commissioner from a particular country, which is to spend time maintaining a link between the public and political elite in her own country and the Brussels process. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Hill, is very anxious to make sure that that is seen to be part of his new role.

Census 2021

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in relation to the next census due to take place in 2021, whether they have now rejected the possibility of replacing the traditional census format.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government recognise the value of the census but believe that it is outdated in its current form and could be more effectively and more cheaply delivered. Decisions about its future after 2021 will be announced in the usual way but the Government agree with the conclusion of the Public Affairs Select Committee that the census needs to change.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

Has my noble friend read the Economist of 5 April? It said:

“Britain’s decennial population count has been saved. Now make it work better”.

The Office for National Statistics also stated in March that it,

“recognises that special care would need to be taken to support those who are unable to complete the census online”.

In the light of both those statements, can my noble friend tell the House what safeguards there are to ensure that the roughly 20 million who are not literate online, and the half a million who were left out from the last census, will be able to take part in this new census?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government are of course keen to encourage people to respond online. The paper-based census takes a great deal of time to analyse and transpose. It was some 16 months from the last census in 2011 until the first data became publicly available. If more people do it online, that could all be done a great deal more quickly but in 2021, although we already understand that 80% of households now use the internet daily, there will of course be support from the usual recruited field force to assist those who do not use online materials.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, following the very pertinent question from the noble Lord opposite, can the Minister give the House an assurance that the new category—that is to say, since 2011—of Gypsies and Travellers will not be lost in any new system, because it has already yielded invaluable factored information about the disadvantage experienced by these communities?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think that all Members will recall that we use a field force to go and find the people who are the most difficult to get hold of and those in whom we are most interested. The Office for National Statistics estimates that the last census was some 94% complete. We suspect and fear that the 6% we missed were strongly represented among the most vulnerable elements of the population.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister referred to the delay last time between the census and the publication of the first results, and indeed to the further delays for the more detailed results. The forms are not complicated. Putting the information into databases and publishing it should not take 18 months, two years or even more. It is a simple task to get the information from the forms, whether the information is collected digitally or on paper, and then publish it. Can we have an assurance that the Government are looking at making this much more efficient and quick next time?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is part of our mission to try to get the information ready for use more rapidly. It is also part of our mission, and the Office for National Statistics and the Public Affairs Select Committee reports both touch on this, to use the administrative data that are available to the Government so that we do not just have a snapshot of where we are every 10 years but, rather, we can have a rolling set of information about what we have. For example, if you want to know how many children there are living in a local authority area, the Government have that information in the form of recipient addresses for those on child benefit.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, given that presumably there will be a census organised on a UK basis from London in the year 2021 irrespective of the technology that is used, can the Minister give us some commitment on behalf of the Government that figures relating to the number of Welsh speakers living in England will be collected? The figures at the moment relate only to Wales, and whereas other languages are collected in England they are not in relation to Welsh speakers in England. This is very misleading.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I note the noble Lord’s question. We have not yet decided exactly how many questions there will be in the next census. I should correct him, however: the census covers Great Britain. The arrangements for Northern Ireland are a little different.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s acceptance that the census needs to be updated. I also welcome what I take to be the Minister’s announcement today that the Government are planning to reuse administrative data to get more accurate and timely information. However, can he confirm that such reuse of administrative data will be coupled with a sample of annual household surveys to ensure that whatever conclusions are drawn from those data are accurate?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is one of the issues currently under consideration. We have some time yet before we go final for the next census. Administrative data are an important issue. At the moment the Government are involved in an open policy-making process with stakeholders to discuss how we might modernise the various structures of law that apply to different departments and different local authorities about how one collects administrative data. It is our intention in the autumn to publish a White Paper on this.

[Lord Stern of Brentford (CB)]

My Lords, I speak as the president of the British Academy and on behalf of researchers who are working on the big social and economic issues of our time. In thinking about the census design, will the Minister place a high priority on its enormous value in validating other surveys that are at the heart of much of the research on these issues in the UK? Without the ability to validate them against the census, it is extremely difficult to use those to their full extent.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are well aware of the relevance to the social science community of government data in all their forms. The administrative data, some of which are not yet available, are also of considerable importance to social scientists of all sorts. I know that consultations are well under way, including with the British Academy, and I am sure that they will be taken fully into account.

[Lord Harrison (Lab)]

My Lords, the previous census recorded the increase in the number of us who profess no religion. Will the Minister ensure that that question is re-examined as there was a lot of controversy about it last time?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there is a great deal of discussion about how many questions to put on the census on each occasion because the more questions you put on, the less likely it is that everyone will fill them in completely. That discussion is well under way, but we do not have to decide that until we are a good deal closer to the next census.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, with a multilingual Britain, will the forms be available online or offline so that everybody is able to fill them in and understand the full implications of their answers?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I do not have full information about how it will appear online, but I note the question about the many different languages. The administrative data include a very good indicator of the changing ethnic and linguistic composition of local authority areas. The best indicator about changing composition is the first language of children coming into reception class in primary school. That is a rolling indicator that the Government can use to supplement the census.

Cabinet Office: Efficiency and Reform Programme

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Risby]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what savings the programme of Efficiency and Reform, run by the Efficiency and Reform Group led by the Cabinet Office, has achieved since 2010.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, for the financial year 2013-14, the Cabinet Office Efficiency and Reform Group, which was set up in June 2010, helped government departments to make savings of some £14.3 billion. This follows £10 billion savings achieved in the financial year 2012-13, £5.5 billion in the financial year 2011-12, and £3.75 billion in the financial year 2010-11. These savings are calculated against a 2009-10 baseline.

[Lord Risby (Con)]

My Lords, the whole House will welcome the return to economic growth. However, given the continuing high deficit and debt, does my noble friend accept that living within our means and also controlling the cost of government remain vital objectives? Although I welcome enormously the progress that has been made so far, can my noble friend indicate any further progress on cross-departmental procurement activity and the effective involvement by SMEs in this whole process?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is a very broad question. Having seen this process close up, I have been struck by the extent to which Whitehall is a confederal system in which departments have to some extent resisted control from the centre. One of my favourite projects in this efficiency and reform scheme has been to centralise the collection of waste paper and build a closed loop system, from which we now save some £4 million—a small amount, but all contributing from building a much more effective system for recycling paper within Whitehall.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that not every saving is praiseworthy? For instance, I read in the report that £250 million has been saved on Network Rail repairs. Is it not better that we look first before some savings are made to ensure that they do not undermine the traffic and do not undermine the safety of our railways?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Of course, as with taxation, there are a range of different objectives in what you are attempting to save. However, much of what the Efficiency and Reform Group has been doing is to apply the sort of careful consideration of how best to ensure that you make the best use of centralised and long-term contracts, as supermarkets do in their relationship with their suppliers. The creation of the Crown Commercial Service earlier this year and of the Major Projects Authority in April 2011 are very important factors in making Whitehall officials more competent and efficient in dealing with the commercial world.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

We support any work that is done to cut costs, but is the Minister not slightly ashamed when he asks civil servants almost to count the paperclips when the Government then waste £1 billion on selling Royal Mail too cheaply?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Baroness knows that floating companies and making IPOs are always very difficult matters to estimate. We can go on arguing about that particular transaction for a long time, but I am very proud of what the Efficiency and Reform Group has included. I have not yet touched on the digital transformation in which, as we all know, the move from using paper to using digital in transactions with government offers enormous potential savings.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, asked a very wise question. Is it not the case that most of the savings will be made by destructive cuts in capital expenditure rather than cuts in revenue expenditure?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

No, that is not the case. If I may carry on about the Government Digital Service, it is a wonderful example of insourcing, bringing people in from the Guardian online and various other places and saving an enormous amount of money that was previously being spent on outside consultancies with large, usually American-owned IT firms. We have managed to save a lot of money and have produced a much better result. We have also saved a great deal by focusing on redundant property. For example, different government departments had 18 different buildings in Bristol. The efficiency gains that one can make from that are very considerable.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

The noble Lord gave a very interesting answer to the previous question—

[Lord Brabazon of Tara (Con)]

If we did sell the Post Office too cheaply, surely that pales into insignificance in comparison with the sale of the gold reserves some years ago.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I do not want to be too partisan on this question. I am focusing on the efficiency gains that this Government have achieved very creditably in the past four years.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, perhaps I may go back to the question before last as the noble Lord gave a very interesting answer. Can he tell us how much actually has been saved by the digital insourcing that he described?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The previous Government spent an enormous amount on outside consultants.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

But how much are you spending?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am sorry, but I do not have the figures before me on that. I shall have to write to the noble Baroness later. One substantial element in these savings has been the reduction in outside consultancy and outside contracts. The Government Digital Service has saved a great deal of money. I would go further and say that, in my experience, the quality of the people who work in the Government Digital Service is absolutely outstanding.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

But the noble Lord will write.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I will write.

Deregulation Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this Bill contains important, sensible and proportionate measures to improve the regulatory regime in the UK in a wide range of areas. It is not a radical, wholesale overhaul of regulation. The coalition Government are not, of course, opposed to regulation. This Government believe in and will protect the sensible and necessary regulations that ensure that the safeguards are in place to protect people and the environment as well as to promote competition and economic growth.

However, if it is to protect the interests of consumers and the safety of the public effectively, regulation must be sensible and proportionate. In many areas in recent years, we have seen regulatory burdens grow out of all proportion, surpassing what is necessary and costing businesses and public services additional millions of pounds. The Government’s aim when coming into office was to reduce the administrative burden on business created by regulation, and to encourage enterprise, innovation and, most importantly, the creation of new jobs, which give this country long-term economic security.

In April 2011, the Prime Minister announced that this Government should be the first in modern history to leave office having reduced the overall burden of regulation rather than increased it. The one-in, one-out policy, and later the one-in, two-out policy were introduced as one of the major components of the Government’s strategy to achieve this aim, ensuring that the flow of new regulations is necessary, effective, justified and proportionate, in order to minimise unnecessary burdens on business.

The Red Tape Challenge was introduced in April 2011 to give business and the general public the opportunity to challenge the Government to get rid of unnecessarily burdensome regulations. More than 30,000 comments were crowdsourced online from individuals and businesses, harnessing the knowledge of those people faced with understanding and complying with these regulations. In the light of this public feedback, departmental policy leads presented a package of deregulatory proposals, which were then reviewed and challenged by Red Tape Challenge Ministers.

The intention was to reverse the default setting by asking departments to consider the legislation they are responsible for in a fundamentally different way. The starting point has been that regulation should be delivered in a non-regulatory way, unless there is good justification for the Government being involved. The Red Tape Challenge sought wide-ranging comment on a large number of regulations, from health and safety and environmental regulations, to housing and construction and insolvency law. The final report will be published towards the end of the Parliament, setting out the achievements made by the Red Tape Challenge and the one-in, two-out programmes in reducing the overall burden of regulation on business in this Parliament.

Looking to the future, legislation for new statutory deregulation targets was announced in the Queen’s Speech. This will require a target to be published for the removal of regulatory burdens in each parliamentary term, and for government to report transparently against that target. During the course of this Parliament, the Government have also invested a large amount of time in looking at how the agencies undertake the enforcement of these regulations, to ensure that they are measured and proportionate and not applied arbitrarily without thought to the impact on business.

The Deregulation Bill is thus a small but important part of the Government’s ongoing process of reducing the number of unjustifiable regulations. Much of what the Red Tape Challenge has done has been achieved by alterations to secondary legislation and administrative changes. However, during the course of the Red Tape Challenge process, many reforms were found that required primary legislation to fulfil. This Bill will create around £400 million in savings over 10 years and declutter the statute book of obsolete or confusing legislation. Those who have read all the way through to Schedule 20 will know that a number of 19th century statutes are repealed.

The Government believe that it is good housekeeping to review and tidy the statute book to make it easier for the users of the law. Several pieces of legislation were identified through the Red Tape Challenge as being no longer of practical use. The Government are using the opportunity of the Deregulation Bill to repeal those obsolete laws. This is in addition to the excellent work done by the Law Commission through its statutory law of repeal process, which principally focuses on repealing primary obsolete legislation.

The Bill was first published in draft and underwent pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which reported in December 2013. I look forward to his contribution to this debate, as well as those of three other members of that committee: the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey and Lord Naseby. The Joint Committee welcomed the concept of the Bill, saying it hoped that there would be more of the same sort in the future. The Joint Committee also suggested that the Bill could benefit from the addition of some more substantial items when it was introduced.

The Government accepted the primary recommendations of the Joint Committee and have added 30 new clauses to the Bill. The Bill was introduced to the other place in January of this year as a carryover Bill. It underwent extensive consideration in Committee and two days of debates on Report before being passed to this House.

Some of the key measures in the Bill are as follows. Clause 1 exempts self-employed people from Section 3(2) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, except those who are on a list of high-hazard industries or activities, which will be set out in regulation. The proposed change emanates from a recommendation made by Professor Löfstedt in his review of health and safety and will exempt around 2 million self-employed people from the health and safety legislation that is unnecessary for the work activities they are undertaking.

Clause 2 removes the power from employment tribunals to make wider recommendations to employers in discrimination cases. These have been identified by businesses as a burden and are often surplus to requirements because businesses, keen to avoid further tribunals, often undertake the necessary actions without any such recommendations needing to be made.

Clauses 3 to 5 implement some of the key recommendations of the Richard review, simplifying what apprenticeships are and the process by which they are developed and awarded, and providing the legislative basis for a new payment system to route funding directly to employers so that they are more responsive to their needs.

Clauses 21 to 26 implement the recommendations of the independent stakeholder working group on unrecorded rights of way that require primary legislation. They are part of a carefully balanced package of reforms that is supported by the full range of interests on rights of way, from the Ramblers to the Country Land and Business Association. Some noble Lords may have seen the useful briefing from the Ramblers that reached my inbox this morning. It is a remarkable consensus around the particularly emotive and contentious but important issue of public rights of way.

The reforms will make the procedures for recording or changing rights of way more streamlined and flexible but will also give local authorities more scope to use their judgment in dealing with insubstantial or irrelevant applications and objections, and enable the development of locally negotiated solutions. They will help towards completion of the definitive map and statement by the cut-off date, in current legislation, of 2026. There are also provisions to enable the right to apply for an extinguishment or diversion to be extended to all landowners, while enabling any public funding expended in that process to be recovered in full where an application is solely in the landowner’s interest. The provisions fit broadly with the Government’s aim of reducing regulation, of smaller government and of giving more power to local authorities and local people to resolve disputes.

Clauses 29 to 34 relate to housing and development matters. These include: reinstating the original qualifying period of three years for right to buy; relaxing restrictions on Londoners to rent out their homes for less than three months at a time; introducing a regime of optional building requirements for local authorities to support the Government’s housing standards review; and a clause addressing an unexpected judgment related to tenancy deposits.

Clauses 35 to 40 remove some of the outdated burdens relating to transport legislation, bringing legislation into line with practice; for example, removing the requirement on local authorities to seek permission from the Secretary of State to establish, alter or remove zebra crossings. This section also includes measures limiting the use of CCTV when issuing parking fines by post and removes the automatic reopening of formal investigations of marine accidents when new evidence, however trivial, comes to light.

Clause 43 removes the criminal sanctions which currently apply when householders make mistakes presenting waste for collection. A civil penalty regime will exist instead when a householder fails to comply with requirements and this causes harm to the local amenity. The Government believe this to be a more proportionate course of action.

Clauses 45 to 48 change the nature of child trust funds to bring them into line with the arrangements of the much more widely used junior ISAs.

Clauses 52 to 59 make reasonable and rational alterations to the regulations around alcohol and entertainment which have been discussed on a number of occasions in this Chamber since I became a Member. These include sensible changes such as removing the requirement on community film clubs to obtain a licence to exhibit films, while maintaining all the regulations related to age-related restrictions; and creating a new light-touch form of authorisation under the Licensing Act 2003 for community groups and certain businesses to sell small amounts of alcohol. This section also commits the Government to undertake a review of the alternatives to criminal sanctions for non-payment of TV licences.

Clauses 79 to 81 make some changes to legislation to make it easier for users of law. These are the power to spell out dates in legislation, enacting part of the Government’s good law initiative by creating a power to combine different forms of subordinate legislation, and a power to use ambulatory references for international shipping instruments.

Clauses 83 to 86 create a statutory duty for non-economic regulators to consider economic growth when carrying out their functions. This duty will be supplementary to, and will not supplant, the regulators’ other statutory obligations. It will make them take economic growth into account as they exercise their regulatory functions. Guidance on this has just been published. I hope that a copy has reached the Opposition Front Bench. There is a copy available in the Library.

The wide-ranging nature of the Bill should emphasise the Government’s comprehensive consideration of all areas of regulation to ensure that regulation is proportionate and necessary. Most of the measures are relatively technical and not politically contentious. No doubt we shall be told in the course of Second Reading that some are considered contentious. As such, this is an important step towards relieving businesses, individuals and public sector organisations of unnecessary administrative burdens, freeing them up to pursue economic growth for Britain without excessive regulation. The Government look forward to the detailed and expert scrutiny that this House can offer. I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.

Deregulation Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest of which the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, in his opening speech reminded me. My wife was a member of the previous Government’s Better Regulation Commission from 2006 to 2008. She reminds me that after the change of Prime Minister the previous Labour Government abolished it.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, reminded us that what the House of Lords does best, and what is indeed becoming our core role, is to examine the details of legislation placed before us. We can all agree that this Bill has a wealth of detail. Those who got all the way through to Schedule 20 understand that fully and thus we shall have lots to explore at the Committee stage. It is evident from today’s debate that there is particular concern over Clause 1 and Clauses 10 to 12. Many other clauses and parts of schedules have been warmly welcomed. Some have been queried, with much more information requested, and there will indeed be much to explore in Committee which will start when we return in October. I note what is being said about generous time being needed for that stage.

Between now and then the Government, as always, are open to consult off the Floor, with all those who wish to do so, including the Local Government Association, although not within this Bill taking on the whole universe of local licensing, which the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, perhaps suggested. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, requested hyperlinks to previous legislation. In informal consultations the other day, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, asked for a Keeling schedule for the entire Bill. We have noted both of those requests and will see what we can do. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, talked about the distinction between better regulation, smart regulation and fit regulation. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and others said, there is a difference between deregulation and re-regulation.

One of the things we have learnt over the past few years is that there is a constant need for adjustment and adaptation in regulation. We need to look constantly at what is no longer necessary, even as we look at what is now needed. We need a great deal more regulation of the internet, for example. If the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, were here, he would have linked the transformation of broadcasting with that of the transformation of the taxi market by things like Uber and the transformation of short-term lets by the arrival of Airbnb. These are all new phenomena that technology has pushed on us in what one of the contributors remarked as being this fast-changing digital world.

I note, however, that excessive regulation does sink economies. It was not until the crash of the Greek economy and finances that we discovered just how amazingly overregulated the Greek economy was and how much that held it back. I remember as a student the beginnings of the deregulation of the British economy by that nowadays underestimated politician, Edward Heath, in his deregulation of the retail market. The growth agenda is important and we always have to look at it in making sure that old regulations go even as new regulations are sometimes needed.

Underlying some of our discussions there have been suspicions of a hidden agenda: whether or not the health and safety culture is threatened—I wish to assure noble Lords that it is not; whether the BBC is about to be undermined; whether the proposals on marine accidents are really an attempt to get away from marine accident investigations. Again, I can assure noble Lords that they are not. We will come back to those issues in detail in Committee.

A number of other issues have been raised that are not currently within the Bill. The noble Lords, Lord Dubs, Lord Clement-Jones, Lord Grade and Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, referred to the issue of retransmission revenues. I listened with interest to some of this. I think I have received nearly a dozen communications from Virgin Media in Saltaire over the past 12 months. Since it put cable through Saltaire it is extremely keen for us all to subscribe and is sending me some extremely generously printed brochures almost every month.

I take the point that public service broadcasters should not be subsidising commercial enterprises. We are of course willing to talk to others about how and within what framework we address Section 73 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, although the Government may be reluctant to concede that that fits appropriately within this Bill.

I noted in Schedule 20 that anyone who keeps a pigsty is part of what we are now repealing. I am just old enough as a small boy to have visited farms where they still had pigsties and indeed once visited a farm where they were in the action of killing a pig. That is part of the thing that no longer takes place and therefore we no longer need it.

We also touched on busking and Sunday trading. I share the feeling of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that it is probably quite a good thing that we are not tackling Sunday trading as well as everything else on this occasion. Perhaps the next Government will wish to reopen that immediately.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked where the figures for savings from the Bill came from. Officials have prepared a summary table of the Bill and I am very happy to share this with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, following the debate and to put it in the Library for all noble Lords. It is part of the Red Tape Challenge. Many of these are estimates but we are fairly confident that they are not too imprecise.

Clause 1, the health and safety clause, has clearly set a number of concerns running. The prescribed list of high-hazard activities is now being consulted on. The consultation went out today and is available online. It will run for 12 weeks which means that it will be completed by the Committee stage and the regulators will thus be able to issue at least some guidance towards that by the time we are in Committee. The new regulations will use definitions of health and safety already present in law, which means that we are not changing the context of health and safety. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, I am informed that Professor Löfstedt wrote to the Commons committee in support of the clause as drafted. We will both investigate further to see who is quoting Professor Löfstedt more directly.

On the question on whether the number of self-employed workers is growing because of the expansion of bogus self-employed contracts, the Government are taking parallel action in other forums to stop the use of such bogus contracts. For example, in this year’s Finance Bill, the Government introduced changes to the agency tax rules to put a stop to the growing use of those requirements. This is not intended to allow any expansion in that area. We are looking at professional people who work at home and do not employ others. That is the category from which we hope to lift unnecessary regulations.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and other noble Lords raised the question of tribunals. There is no evidence to suggest that the wider recommendations prevent reoffence. That is why the Government decided to remove this burden. In one very clear recent case involving the Metropolitan Police and a diplomatic protection officer, the tribunal made no wider recommendations but the Metropolitan Police has made it clear that it recognises that there are wider concerns. I do not think this is such a difficult issue. There is some evidence, which was presented to the Government in the consultation, that this involved additional cost for smaller employers and did not produce great benefit for others.

A lot was said about taxis and private hire vehicles and I am sure that we will have an impassioned debate on this issue in Committee. We are conscious that there is a range of concerns including, as a number of noble Lords have said, questions of safety. The question of the use of private hire vehicles by others when they are off-duty clearly needs to be examined. However, we have looked at the Law Commission recommendations and are satisfied that taking these measures forward neither undermines the Law Commission review nor necessarily means that we will not take the Law Commission proposals into account at a later stage when it produces its Bill.

Parking has also raised a lot of issues for many noble Lords, with the question of CCTV and parking fines. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, that we have not considered the risks of removing the use of CCTV as we are not talking about doing that. There were a number of questions about how CCTV is used at a local level, on which all of us have slightly different and ambivalent views. Again, we will come back to that in detail in Committee.

On short-term lets, as someone who had never really thought about this problem previously, I listened with interest. I live close to Wimbledon where, every year, a number of well-off local people seem to let out their houses for two weeks at a time for remarkably large sums. I have to admit that the Wallaces had considered whether we should go away for two weeks. My wife, however, said no, because she actually likes going to Wimbledon herself rather than sitting and watching it on TV. There are some important issues about, first, what is now happening; secondly, why the regulations in London are different from those in the rest of the country; thirdly, how far the evolution of short-term letting through the internet is beginning to change the situation anyway; and fourthly, therefore, how we respond to that.

On the right to buy, we recognise worries about whether there is an underlying agenda and how this will affect the future provision of social housing. A problem we all face with social housing is that the previous Government did not build enough social housing and this Government have so far, disappointingly, not been able to build as much social housing as we would like. Part of what is required under the Bill is that councils which sell houses use the money to build new social housing as part of the deal.

On optional building regulations, Clause 32 will not amend standards related to safety. It will allow for certain requirements to be adapted locally, but will provide for the range of what standards are permissible to be set nationally. I am happy to discuss this further with the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and others as part of the consultation between now and Committee stage.

[Lord Rooker]

The Minister referred to 12 weeks earlier. We are going to have at least 12 weeks between Second Reading and the start of Committee stage. That is very unusual. I can see at least 800 or 900 amendments. If events take their course, they will not be tabled until 10 October. Would it not be a good idea for the staff of the House, and the Minister’s own staff who are providing those responses, if we were able to table amendments from, say, 1 September rather than have to put them all in on the day we come back, which would not be conducive to having a decent debate on the Bill? It is a bit unusual, but we are in unusual times. We can do it if we decide to do so. Perhaps the Minister could take some advice and come back on that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a very constructive suggestion. I will take it away and we will discuss it.

On short-term lets in London, I am told that the question was included in the consultation issued in February last year on a review of the property conditions of the private rented sector. Nearly 100 responses were received and the Government will publish their response shortly.

One of the happy surprises I have in facing this Bill is that my initial feeling that the rights of way clauses of the Bill would be the most difficult turns out not to be the case. The Ramblers, the Country Land and Business Association and others have written to me to say that they are united in asking for no further amendments to this part. I hope that we can all hold to that. It is remarkably unusual to find a situation in which all those involved in a deeply contentious area, which has been contentious for a very long time, have come to an agreement and are asking us to put it into law. Let us see how far we can get on that following their consensus.

The noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, and others asked about the TV licensing review. As a matter of course, I can tell him that the terms of reference will be laid in the Libraries of both Houses and the review itself must begin within three months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

That was not the main purpose of most of the comments, which was to allow for a discussion of the terms of reference of that review on the Floor of the Chamber. Simply to place them in the Libraries is not sufficient. Will the noble Lord reconsider that?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am told that the Government are currently committed to putting the terms of reference to both Houses at a later stage. I think that the noble Lord is asking for an early consultation. Again, let us talk off the Floor and see how far we get on that. My noble friend Lord Gardiner speaks for the DCMS and it may therefore be particularly appropriate that he would speak on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, was particularly concerned about the potential growth of alcohol consumption. I hope that in Committee we will be able to reassure him about what is proposed in these measures, which I recall have been discussed in terms of local arrangements allowing local communities to have events with fewer hoops to jump through in what I am told are community and ancillary sellers notices. The intention is strongly that this will be limited to a small part of any business that is allowed to do so. We do not see hairdressers offering gin and tonics to those who come to have their hair cut, which I think was almost what the noble Lord was suggesting, and other matters of that sort. Again, we will explore that further in Committee.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, had concerns about the repeal of the duty of the Senior President of Tribunals to report. I am told that, since the duty to report was introduced in 2007, other and more effective feedback mechanisms have been introduced—the production of a report by the Senior President of Tribunals no longer represents the most effective way of providing feedback. What the tribunals now do is to introduce summary reasons in employment support allowance appeals, starting initially on four sites. These summary reports have been found to be more useful than what was done before. Again, I am happy to talk further if that helps.

I have taken a lot of time and I have not talked about the closure of small prisons or the whole relationship between the Law Commission and this Bill. It is perhaps time for a short debate on the future role of the Law Commission as there is quite a lot of interest in that.

Before I close, I will talk about the question of the growth duty and in particular the EHRC, because I know there is a lot of concern about that. We are considering the question of how far the growth duty extends to non-economic regulators. Again, that is something that we will discuss further. We look forward to a lively and lengthy Committee stage. I congratulate all those who have read the entire Bill all the way through to the end of Schedule 20. I beg to move.

Bill read a second time.

Political Parties, Elections and Referendums (Civil Sanctions) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the draft order laid before the House on 5 June be approved.

Relevant document: 2nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 1 July.

Motion agreed.

Elections: Weekend Voting

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether moving United Kingdom elections from Thursday to Sunday has been considered in order to minimise disruption, especially for parents and schools.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have no current plans to change polling day from Thursday to Sunday.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that brief reply, and welcome the news about the success of online registration that he has already referred to. I wonder if more thought can be given to this important issue. The biggest single thing that has not been covered in debates on electoral issues is the cost of days lost for millions of schoolchildren—and often, no doubt, their working parents—on election days. Does the Minister agree that this adds an extra dimension to the argument that should be considered in the interests of our education system?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the previous Government conducted a consultation exercise in 2008 on whether or not to move the day of voting to the weekend. The majority of responses to that consultation were against such a move. Of course, there are additional costs of transferring voting to a Sunday. If one were to have voting on two days over the weekend, it is likely that those costs would be in the order of £100 million-plus. I know that the Department for Education has suggested that schools that have to close for voting should use that day for staff training as a means of minimising the loss of teaching time.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, is not the fact that elections take place on a Thursday and children are not in school a good way of ensuring that they know that something is happening? Would it not be a very good thing if teachers had to ensure that the day before an election they explained about elections? At least then we would have one day when democracy was discussed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, my first ever awareness of politics was during an election in the early 1950s when we had a fight in my primary school playground about which side one should be on in the election. I have no memory of why we fought and which side we were on, but we did know that something important was going on.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Is not the cost for pupils potentially the loss of 10 days schooling over a school life? Can the Minister tell us how many fee-paying schools are required to close on a Thursday so that the pupils lose that educational opportunity?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is a very fair question. We will clearly have to investigate which public schools we can use for polling stations in the future.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Will my noble friend accept that, although I have the greatest of devotion to my noble friend who asked this Question and am a firm supporter of the European Union, this is one continental habit that we do not need to take on board? It is important for schools to take seriously their part in the community, and children learn considerably if the teachers are sensible enough, as the noble Baroness suggested, to use this time to explain to children what happens. I do not believe that they would do that were it on a Sunday.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the table I have seen of the days on which other industrial democracies vote covers every day from Monday through to Sunday. The majority of Roman Catholic countries vote on a Sunday. Almost all Protestant countries vote on other days of the week.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that one of the original objections to voting on a Sunday was that there might be rather too much advice or direction from the pulpit as to how people should vote? Does he recall that our party suggested that there should be two-day voting at weekends—Saturday and Sunday—but with reduced hours so that there would not be any conflict with religious observance? However, he has not answered the specific Question with which this discussion started: what is the actual impact on business, on the economy and on families from the disruption on Thursdays? We need to know and there seem to be no hard facts.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, elections cause a certain amount of disruption on whatever day of the week one holds them. That is unavoidable. The question of where the disruption falls depends on what day is chosen. On the question of the role of churches, I am reminded of the occasion when I took a young Liberal called Elizabeth Barker, now the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, whose father had been the Minister at Saltaire Methodist church, to Saltaire Methodist church one day when I was about to stand as parliamentary candidate in Shipley, and the sermon was wonderful. It did not quite go so far as to say that people should vote for the candidate who was there but it got very close. I would like to hope that the church will do things like that in the future.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has a point. Does the noble Lord agree that it is time for a root-and-branch review of polling day and that using schools should be a last resort for the community? We should look at other options and dismiss them from the whole process of voting.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is only six years since the previous Government looked at this. I am not aware of any strong pressure for change and there are disadvantages with all other days of the week. If we were to move to weekend voting there would be a strong argument for having two-day voting and that would be a much more complicated exercise in other ways.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, we are getting the conception that all schools close on voting days. In my locality we vote in the village hall. In the next ward to us they vote in the village hall. Are there not enough community centres and village halls for people to be able to vote in them and for schools to remain open?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

A whole range of places, including church halls, are indeed used for polling stations. It often happens, however, that the primary school is the most convenient place in a village or town district for people to get to and for disabled people in particular to be able to go into.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that whether an activity is disruptive or not depends on the value of the activity? I do not find many people agreeing with me about how disruptive football matches are.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I merely reiterate that not all schools that are used as polling stations have to close entirely for the day of polling. There is some disruption, so it is a problem, but it is not a universal problem.

[Baroness Heyhoe Flint (Con)]

My Lords, if one is looking for a two-day voting system, perhaps all sports venues could open on a Sunday. It would increase attendances; the venues could offer free tickets to youngsters; and people would discover the joy of voting and the joy of sport—at the risk, of course, of offending my right reverend friends on my left.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, all sorts of suggestions have been made about where people might vote, including at supermarkets. One objection to choosing a particular chain of supermarkets in which people might vote is that, as we all know, there are certain gradations of supermarket. Depending on which supermarket one chose, one might possibly bias voting in one direction or another.

National Voter Registration Day

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to encourage educational establishments to take part in National Voter Registration Day 2015.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government welcome all initiatives that promote democratic engagement and increase electoral registration, such as National Voter Registration Day. The Government are keen to work with organisations that encourage young people to register to vote and look forward to hearing further details of next year’s event in due course.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank my noble friend for that standardised reply. I wonder if he might not consider actually giving a bit more substance to what he said. Given that we had a debate last week about British values, one of which is democracy, would it not be a good idea to do what has happened in Northern Ireland with the school initiative, where electoral registration officers go into schools, talk about democracy and its importance, and encourage young people to register to vote? Could we not consider a pilot scheme in the rest of the UK?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, with the approach of the general election next year, it is a bit late for pilot schemes. The Government have given £4 million to local authorities to promote registration among vulnerable groups. I am aware of three local authorities, Dumfries and Galloway, Ceredigion, and Redcar and Cleveland, that have specifically allocated some of this to looking at how to register young voters. In Ceredigion’s case, it has an explicit partnership with Bite the Ballot while doing this. We encourage all those activities. I remind the noble Lord that electoral registration is managed at the local level, which as a former local councillor he will well know.

[Baroness Hanham (Con)]

What progress has been made on individual electoral registration? It is very important for young people to know about the democratic process, but as part of that they must also know that they have to register in order to vote.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, online electoral registration was introduced four weeks ago. I have the figures only for the first week and we were extremely encouraged by how many people had registered. We hope that we will have the figures for the first month by next week. That is part of why we think that we have moved on from the Northern Ireland experience, in which electoral registration officers took paper forms into schools. We think that young people are much more likely to register online. The experience of 2010 suggests that the registration rate rises rapidly in the few months before a general election. It rose by 700,000 in early 2010. We expect that to happen again.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not a simple truth that electoral registration is a waste of public and taxpayers’ money, and that we should have dedicated expenditure to the areas where there was an abuse of the electoral system?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not entirely sure that I understand that. There are a number of problems with electoral registration. We have various categories of voters, including the substantial number of people in London who are citizens of the European Union but not of the UK. I have been very impressed by the sheer difficulty of getting access to some of the dwellings that are now behind gated communities, so we must spread our effort into them. Of course we are focusing on the vulnerable categories, with which we are well familiar.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that organisations such as Bite the Ballot, of which I am honorary president, can register an elector for 25p, while the figure for the Electoral Commission has gone up to £25 per individual registration? Can we somehow encourage more work in the voluntary organisations, which are going into schools already and doing things to this end, and can we as a Parliament say that we want the highest number of new youngsters possible on the register, even before the coming general election?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we need a range of activities by a range of different organisations, including political parties, of course. We touched on citizenship education yesterday. The activities in schools—I hope that Peers and others will help in that by going into schools—are all part of the effort we need to make to engage young people in the registration process.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, why do the Government not send registration forms with every student loan?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is partly because we want people to register to vote online. It is more efficient and cheaper. A number of efforts are going on with universities to ensure that students are also encouraged to vote. There will be various activities during Freshers’ Week. I will take that back as a suggestion but we feel that we are covering this in another, more effective way.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, the Question is about encouraging educational establishments to encourage a whole new generation of people to engage in the electoral process. Of course, next year is a hugely significant year, with the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Can we not only encourage our schools to use this as an opportunity to really inspire people to think about civil participation, citizenship and so on but find some imaginative ways to give people the information in the educational packs that will be used next year?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, certainly. We trust that the churches will play their own role, and perhaps we will have mentions in sermons of civic duty and what one should render unto Caesar as well as unto God.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, why do we not require young people to register?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, in this country, it has not been compulsory to vote or to register to vote. That would raise all sorts of questions about civil or criminal penalties, and some fundamental questions about the relationship between the citizen and the state. This country has not wanted to use compulsion where it can possibly avoid it.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, might I take the noble Lord back to the original point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, which is the Northern Ireland experience? When individual voting was introduced there, there was an alarming drop-off in the number of young people registering, so we already know that that is a threat on the horizon. Northern Ireland came up with a good solution—the schools initiative—which effectively dealt with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, raised about formally registering all pupils. Surely, on the basis of the experience we already have from Northern Ireland, we should embrace that initiative and get schools to register all pupils when they come up to the age of 18.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government’s mechanism encouraging schools to use Rock Enrol!, a slightly different package, has so far received a fairly good take-up from schools. We very much want schools to encourage their pupils to register online, but we are having a dialogue about it with schools and teachers.

Chilcot Inquiry

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their various contributions to this debate. The Government are also disappointed and frustrated that it has taken a good deal longer than we—or the Labour Government, which set up the inquiry—had originally hoped to complete the exercise. However, let me stress the exceptional nature of this inquiry.

I entirely welcome and agree with the emphasis of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Ely, on this not being a matter of partisan debate between the parties. We need to get at what went wrong and the constitutional implications of what happened. We therefore want to keep this out of the election campaign, so far as we can. The sort of timings which the noble Lord, Lord Owen, suggested are well understood in government, in terms of not getting too caught up in the pre-election atmosphere.

Let me remind all noble Lords of where we started. The Chilcot inquiry was announced in June 2009 to identify the lessons that can be learnt from the Iraq conflict and the occupation which followed. It has looked at the UK’s involvement in Iraq in the period from the summer of 2001—at the time that the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, announced the inquiry, that was some eight years previously and it is still less than 13 years away—to the end of July 2009, which is now some five years past. The inquiry embraces the run-up to conflict, the military action and its aftermath and the way that decisions were taken and it aims to establish as accurately as possible what happened to identify lessons to be learnt.

We have not previously published documents less than 30 years ahead, except in the most exceptional circumstances. Part of the delay and part of what has been going on is the product of having agreed that we will publish documents relating to recent events and referring to people who are still in active political life. That is part of the exceptional circumstances in which we are working.

Since 2009, the inquiry has taken evidence from more than 150 witnesses; it has travelled to Baghdad and Arbil for discussions with Iraqi politicians; to Washington to meet officials from the United States Government; to France to talk to French officials; it has met the families of British personnel killed in Iraq; and has read more than 100,000 UK Government documents. When Gordon Brown announced the inquiry in the House of Commons, he said that the committee would have access to the fullest range of papers, including secret information, and, as the noble Baroness has quoted, that,

“No British document and no British witness will be beyond the scope of the inquiry”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/6/09; col. 23.]

It takes a long time to work through 100,000 documents, to consider where there are sensitive issues remaining and, in the process, incidentally, to consider a number of other documents which had not been provided to the inquiry. These are the supplementary ones which were discovered and have been provided in recent months. The inquiry is examining difficult and complex issues. The inquiry has estimated, it has told us, that its final report will be more than 1 million words.

The Sunday Telegraph remarked that the rate of spending had increased over the past two to three months. That is partly because the website has been revamped and expanded in order to cope with the amount of information which will be downloaded on to the website as it is published. It is a part of the preparation for publication.

As part of the process of drafting the report, the inquiry has sought the declassification of material from many thousands of documents from the Government. It says in my brief that this is absolutely unprecedented. If there is any comparison it would be the Saville inquiry in Northern Ireland, which also took a great deal longer than had been hoped, partly because the complexities it raised were much more difficult than had been understood fully at the beginning. As Sir John Chilcot has acknowledged, the process is labour intensive for both the Government and the inquiry. He said in November last year that he was grateful for the work done by departmental teams to deal with the disclosure of documents.

I hope that noble Lords have seen the letter of 28 May from Sir John Chilcot to Sir Jeremy Heywood as Cabinet Secretary, published on the website the following day, that agreement had been reached on the principles underpinning disclosure of material from Cabinet level discussions and communications between the UK Prime Minister and the President of the United States which the inquiry has asked to use in its report. My understanding is that most of the work on the 200 UK Cabinet meetings from which extracts will be provided has now been completed and that the inquiry is now working on the UK-US documents.

Again I have to stress that we regret that it has taken so much time, but we also recognise the sheer complexity of what the inquiry is working on. I have talked to a number of the Cabinet Office people assisting the inquiry and I am impressed by the pace at which they are now working and the hopes that they have that we are now within sight of the end.

The answer on the Maxwellisation process, which comes next, is that the second letters have not yet gone out but we hope to send them out within the near future. The Maxwellisation process will then take, we hope, a matter of weeks rather than months. The Prime Minister has stated clearly that it is his hope that the inquiry will be able to provide a report before the end of the year.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

Will my noble friend specifically address the important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Owen? I recall very well, as a Member of the other place during the time—I am not sure whether any of my colleagues are here—the very specific information given to the House of Commons in preparation for that vital debate and vote. Will my noble friend give the House an explicit assurance that there will be careful consideration by the Government of precisely how we as a Parliament are going to look at the parliamentary implications of the Chilcot report? In that connection, it would be intolerable for the end of this Parliament to come before we yet had sight of the Chilcot report and its recommendations.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I understand fully what the noble Lord says and indeed what the noble Lord, Lord Owen, has said. I stress that this is an independent inquiry that the Government have stood back from, so the Government do not control what is happening in it. However, I entirely understand that when it is published it will be for Parliament, and a number of parliamentary committees, to take on board how much information was given and what the implications are for further information from the agencies and other aspects of government. That will be part of the follow-on to publication.

[Lord Dykes]

The noble Baroness was rightly concerned about the delay in Maxwellisation. My noble friend has just said that there is now a further delay in the letters going out. That seems to be excessive, bearing in mind all the delays that there have been so far. Could he explain to the House why there is this further delay?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The Maxwellisation process, in which those who are named in various aspects of the report are given a chance to look at those areas where they are named, depends of course on the prior decision being complete about exactly what will be used in the report. The most sensitive areas will be those that involve the minutes of Cabinet meetings and discussions with the United States. That is why you cannot go on to the Maxwellisation process until you have finalised the question of how far you are able to publish. I reassure noble Lords that my understanding is that the inquiry is trying extremely hard to publish as much as possible. This is an unprecedented expansion, lifting the traditional veil of secrecy that has covered Cabinet meetings and other such things in the past.

A number of noble Lords raised other questions. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Owen, that it was a historic mistake not to have a Suez inquiry. I would say that his remarks on the Cabinet Secretary were ungenerous. The Cabinet Secretary who was originally put in this position was of course the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell; it was the institution of Cabinet Secretary, not the person, and “the Cabinet Secretary” includes those who assist him in the Cabinet Office. From my limited interactions with them, I have to say that they are a first-class team; it is not simply one individual.

The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, talked about rumours that he has heard in Washington. We have all heard many rumours in Washington. Since I am not privy to what is in the inquiry at present, I cannot comment on them; no doubt that will come out when the report is published.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

Does the Minister agree that if the British and American Governments knew, before action started on the ground in Iraq, that the famous weapons of mass destruction had in fact been in bottles—they were that kind of weapon—and that they were already in Syria, that is not a fact that should be kept from the public in consideration of this matter?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is precisely the sort of thing that the inquiry will be looking at. I do not know how far it will go into the question of the evasion of sanctions in the period running up to war. Neither do I know whether the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, gave evidence to the inquiry; that is something else that might be covered.

The noble Lord, Lord Morgan, raised some large constitutional questions, which of course will be there. When the report is published, we will dive into it and draw what conclusions we can. The parliamentary vote on Syria was itself partly a reflection of the sense in Parliament that the Government were not entirely to be trusted on some of these issues.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, evidence was given on the question of sanctions. It was given by Ann Clwyd MP.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for that. I hope that the inquiry may have touched in some detail on that issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Morgan, said in a very strong way that we need to expose and bring to justice the guilty men. This—as Sir John Chilcot has said on a number of occasions—is not a judicial inquiry; it is a historical inquiry intended to get at the evidence as far as possible. The question of guilt is one which perhaps a number of other people, such as the noble Lord, may wish to push once they have the evidence in front of them.

I hope that I have covered most of the issues. It is ungenerous to say that Sir John Chilcot could have been bullied by the Cabinet Secretary. He and his team have been remarkably robust on this.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton]

I wish to say, not as a politician but as a member of the public, that the explanations that the Minister is giving are extraordinarily helpful—which is why this debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, is very useful. The more that that can be got across to the public—the complexity involved, and the secret documents—the better it will be. I still feel very strongly that we need to get there, but we all think that. It is very helpful that those matters are explained to a wider public. After all, we have a responsibility to the wider public, and we are sometimes out of touch with what they think.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I should also have acknowledged the important point that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made—that it is vital that we maintain and re-establish public confidence in public inquiries and in our political institutions as such. One of the biggest problems, which we all share, is the extent of public and media cynicism about the political process in this country. This inquiry is working with great care. Again, I stress that this is an independent inquiry—the Government are not in charge. The four active members of the Chilcot inquiry group are those who are responsible for what emerges, although of course a great deal of negotiation has gone on about the extent of publication. That is a very important part of ensuring that this is not in any sense a whitewashing inquiry.

On a previous occasion I was criticised by one or two noble Lords for suggesting that the Franks inquiry on the Falklands War was not entirely thorough or rigorous. I went back to the review that I had written in International Affairs on the publication of the Franks inquiry to demonstrate why I still hold that opinion. This inquiry is very thoroughgoing. It is being conducted by a number of people whom I personally trust and respect, and who are unlikely to be defenders of the “secret establishment”, so to speak. We very much hope that the report will appear before the end of the year; the Prime Minister has said that publicly. We are doing all we can—with a number of very hard-working officials, who are themselves doing all they can—to complete the final stages of the process of clearing these very difficult and delicate documents so that we can send out the second stages of the Maxwellisation process to those who will be named in the report. We will then move on from that to the presentation of the report to the Prime Minister and, we hope, to publication as soon as possible.

[Lord Desai (Lab)]

My Lords, given the complexity of the process and the point that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, made, that we should not publish it in the new year, would it not be best to wait until after the election, when a Labour Government are in power?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we want to publish as soon as we can, and before we descend into the election campaign.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is, above all, an honourable man—of that I am totally convinced. Will he give the House an unequivocal assurance that no Government of whom he is a part will allow the publication date to become part of political tactics in the run-up to the general election?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have already agreed that the Government are well aware that it is highly undesirable that publication should run into the election campaign. I stated clearly that I share the views of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, on what that means as regards publication. That is part of the context in which we are operating.

House adjourned at 7.34 pm.