Draft Dorset (Structural Changes) (Modification Of The Local Government And Public Involvement In Health Act 2007) Regulations 2018 Draft Bournemouth, Dorset And Poole (Structural Changes) Order 2018

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 General Committees

[Jim McMahon]

That is noted. I was in the Chamber for that point of order and Mr Speaker’s response, so I was aware of it. There is clearly a difference of opinion, and Christchurch Council has been robust in its position. However people want to view that, the council went out to its local population and those who took part were clear that they were against reorganisation—84% were against the proposed merger. I am not saying that that in itself is reason alone to block any reorganisation or merger, but simply to put that to one side as if not important, or to try to decry such public involvement, is not the spirit in which to go about it.

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which was in fact made earlier by one of his colleagues. I hope he appreciates that none of us—and, I think, none of the other councils—would have wished to force Christchurch into this position. From our point of view, it would be perfectly fine for Christchurch to be on its own, but unfortunately it is not a feasible operation. Christchurch is aware that it does not have the capacity to run all of its services, including county-level services. Therefore, the question is whether a small proportion of the population in Christchurch voting in the majority in a parish poll should be enough to derail the entire process for the whole of Dorset ex-Christchurch, including those residents of Christchurch who we believe will benefit.

[Jim McMahon]

I accept that point. The question is more about the spirit of the debate. We heard earlier that a third of councillors on Christchurch Council are in support, but of course two thirds are not. We need to be clear about what the regulations are and what they are not. The regulations contain a list of consenting authorities who are affected by the change. Christchurch is not in that list, but it is not made explicit that Christchurch has objected. It would helpful if that was made clear.

We want clarity about why a process of merger and reorganisation has started, and we want to be convinced about the consultations, evaluations and professional assessments that have taken place in terms of both the financial viability of local government and the role that local authorities have always had—to grow their local economies and be leaders of place rather than just leaders of councils—but are expected to do increasingly. If we get all of those lined up, even if there is dissent in some elements, and the case made is so overwhelmingly in the public interest, as lawmakers we must take that into account, because we are here to make good law, which does not always please everybody all of the time. I do understand that.

Some questions have been put to me, and I would be grateful for the Minister’s response. We have been asked to consider whether we ought to divide the Committee, and we are open-minded. Much will depend on the Government’s response as we try in a genuine way to get answers.

First, we want clarity about how the Government perceive the vote by residents in Christchurch. What weight does that carry and how can that position be reconciled in a future relationship? Many of us in metropolitan authorities have the scars of the 1974 reorganisation, which people still go on about in Oldham and still resent. It was seen as a takeover. Their local identities were cast to one side in favour of a new identity. It should have been there for administration, but incrementally tried to change the identity of a place and its people. A response on that would be helpful.

The point has been made a number of times that this secondary legislation is, in effect, retrospective. I would be grateful for a Government response on that. It would also be helpful for me to know what implications it might have for other potential mergers or reorganisations under discussion elsewhere.

We know that there are two primary routes. First, it can be initiated by invitation from the Secretary of State—we know that that process has happened in other places. The other route is local authorities coming together to apply to the Secretary of State for reorganisation and make the case for it. I would like reassurance that, when the Secretary of State initiates the consideration of reorganisation, we will not find ourselves in this situation—a local authority and local residents who do not support reorganisation are being forced to reorganise. Confirmation on those issues would be very helpful for the debate.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I will make two points. First, I will elaborate on the point that we exchanged views about in my intervention. I rather admire the persistence of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, who has fought a long-running and passionate campaign, and stirred up a great deal of passion in Christchurch. I recognise that there are concerns. Were it possible to have produced a situation in which Christchurch went, so to speak, UDI, I think we would all have been perfectly content with that in principle.

However, as the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton rightly said, it is the job of the Minister and Parliament to legislate in a way that provides for stable, viable and effective local government. I do not think that there is a solution in which Christchurch is on its own and can provide for its people any of those things. Therefore, the unenviable fact is that we are either all forced not to proceed in this way, or Christchurch has to be in one pile or another. It has ended up, in the judgment of the Secretary of State, as being in the pile that the councillors themselves proposed—namely, as part of the conurbation, which actually, geographically, it is.

That is an unfortunate fact, but it does not—this is my second point—in any way justify overturning a set of proposals that have come from the people of Dorset and Dorset County Council. It is not a matter of the democratic tyranny of the majority. Rather, it is a matter of the viability of local government and local government services in our county. That is the main point that I wanted to make.

I am not by disposition in favour or reorganising Governments. My view is that, on the whole, when people reorganise Ministries, a lot of people change their desks, there is a great discontinuity and very little is achieved at the end of the day. What the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton said about the 1974 reorganisation echoes with me. I remember very well in the early ’80s when I was working in Downing Street that we were still wrestling with problems that had arisen as a result of that top-down reorganisation.

For the record, I opposed the top-down reorganisation that created the unitaries in Bournemouth and Poole and left the two-tier structure in the rest of the county, because I did not think that it would end up being viable. As a matter of fact, I think history has shown that it has not. I am not a proponent of top-down reorganisation. I am not a proponent of reorganisation at all. While I am at it, I think the biggest mistake of the Government in which I served for six years was our attempted reorganisation of the national health service which, as it turned out, would have been better not reorganised. I just want to make it entirely clear that I am not a mad reorganisationist—I may be mad, but I am not a reorganisationist.

What drove me strongly and passionately to support this set of proposals was something else completely. In West Dorset, I have one of the highest proportions in the country of frail elderly people. I am not alone in that—many of my colleagues from other Dorset constituencies have very high proportions of frail elderly people, and of course there are many others in other parts of the country. The provision of support and care for those people is the single biggest determinant of the effective functioning of the national health service in my part of Dorset.

That is not atypical around the country, but the lack of support for those people, in particular the lack of domiciliary care to look after them when they come back out of hospital, is not only a source of unending misery for many of my constituents—not just those who are directly affected but their relatives—but a colossal strain on the entire national health service, including the A&E and the back of Dorchester Hospital alike. Unless we resolve that, we will move in the next few years from having a massive problem to having a massive crisis in my part of Dorset and many other places. The number of frail elderly people is increasing apace in Dorset, as it is in many parts of the country.

If Dorset County Council had large funds available to solve that problem, that would be one thing, but it does not. It is highly cash-strapped. It is partly to blame for that, because its children’s services department’s budget is, as all my hon. Friends from Dorset know, under extreme strain due to mismanagement. However, it is partly not to blame—even if it did not have that problem in its children’s services department, it would not have the resources to look after the increasing number of frail elderly people. I am sure that the pressure being put on the Government to liberate more funding will in due course produce more funding, but I am equally sure that that will still be insufficient to deal with the matter, just as the increase in the precept was insufficient.

This is a real-life crisis for very many real individuals. It is not a game about local government. It is not to do with sentiment about where people happen to think they are part of. It is about something very much deeper: the life condition—the wellbeing—of frail elderly people in my constituency and of other people who are queueing up to try to be treated by a hospital that is under undue pressure because it has to deal with the consequences of the insufficient care of those people. There will be no realistic or feasible cure for that under any administration in the next five, 10 or 15 years except to achieve massive efficiencies.

The efficiencies that will be engendered by this reorganisation are partly administrative. The Minister referred to them. We believe that rather more than £100 million can be saved over a number of years. There is some precedent for that. We know what happened when our fire service was amalgamated with Wiltshire’s, the same thing is happening with our police service, which is being amalgamated with Cornwall’s and Devon’s, and we have already seen in my area and those of some of my hon. Friends the power of the amalgamation of the back offices of Weymouth and Portland, North Dorset and West Dorset Councils. We are now broadly financially solvent, exclusively because of that amalgamation of effort. We know this can be done, and it is very important.

[Conor Burns]

The situation that my right hon. Friend is powerfully explaining is also the situation in the conurbation—in both Bournemouth and Poole. There are enormous pressures on adult social care. Given the demographics in both the conurbation and the rural part of the county, those pressures will increase over time. He mentioned the delivery of those services to his constituents by Dorset County Council. It may be worth pointing out that that authority also delivers those services to the other districts in Dorset, including Christchurch.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

That is absolutely true. The sad irony is that what I am saying is as important for the citizens of Christchurch as for the rest of us. I am sure that what my hon. Friend says about the need for accommodation is absolutely right. Bournemouth and Poole have been in the lead on the number of elderly people migrating to those parts for many decades, long before he came to occupy his distinguished position. His predecessor in that seat—I am long in the tooth, so I remember him well, as you will, Sir Henry—complained about the large number of frail, elderly people who had to be supported and the lack of money to do so. That is not a sudden development—it has just got much, much worse over the years. Finally, I will say something about the other kind of efficiency to which the Minister referred.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the courteous way in which he has dealt with these issues throughout. Would that that had been the situation with all my colleagues!

Putting that to one side, he has referred to the financial pressures. One of the consequences of what is being debated today is that Dorset County Council will no longer have the resources coming to it from Christchurch council tax payers, because Christchurch will be moved out of the county council area. That will reduce the income of the county council. From figures we have received, Dorset County Council receives more income from Christchurch than it spends on services in Christchurch. Therefore, can my right hon. Friend explain why the Government have rejected any suggestion that Christchurch could be part of a rural unitary? Can he also explain in answer to our hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West why, if both Bournemouth and Poole have those pressures, they refuse to merge together to save about £10 million a year, and insist that they will not merge unless they can also have Christchurch?

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I think it would be right, in the spirit of this discussion, if I were to answer that set of points fully and then move back to the remainder of my intended speech.

In the first place, what my hon. Friend says is absolutely right. It is a matter of undeniable statistics that, although costs reduce when Christchurch moves out of the county area, so revenues reduce slightly more. That is certainly true. Those figures have been taken fully into account in the calculation of the net effect on the rural county, as it will be in the unitary form. It is true that, from our point of view in the rural county, we would have been yet better off if Christchurch had been part of that. Speaking for myself, I would have seen no objection to that whatsoever from our point of view. I do not think any of my hon. Friends representing other constituencies in what will be the rural county would have had any objection either.

While we are at it, I regret that my hon. Friend decided to pursue the fantasy of joining up with Hampshire rather than trying at an early stage to join up with the rural county with some financial settlement, which would have made this much simpler. But that is past history, alas. I cannot answer in detail why the two unitaries in the conurbation believe it so essential to have the revenues from Christchurch as part of the overall transformation, but I suspect it has a great deal to do with what my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West mentioned just a moment or two ago: that the financial pressures on the two unitaries are also very great, for similar reasons.

Anyway, we are where we are, and the options we face are to have either no reorganisation or to have the reorganisation proposed before us. None of us can deny that those are the two available alternatives, which brings me to my last point—it is an important one and I hope Opposition Members consider it. It is critical to recognise that, although this reorganisation is, very importantly, about saving money by administrative overhead-cutting, it is not just about that. When there is one chief executive instead of many, one set of directors instead of many and one set of councillors instead of many, a lot of money is saved, but it is not about just that in the long run—it is not even primarily about that.

The biggest problem we face in dealing with the social care crisis in Dorset and with the interactions between social care and the health service, which is very typical in many parts of the country, is integration between social care, housing and the health service. Unless it can be so arranged that the individuals who are frail and elderly preponderantly live in places where it is affordable to look after them, rather than in far-flung distant villages where it is incredibly expensive to service them at the level of care they need and deserve, and unless absolute integration is arranged between the operations of social services and of the health service, we will not cure the underlying demographic pressures and problems for our health and social care service.

At the moment, the county council has no influence on social housing policy. It is very difficult for the health service to know with whom it is meant to be negotiating because the many different councils have different relationships with those frail and elderly people and are involved in some way or another in looking after them. Various Labour and Liberal Democrat Members and I have joined together in an effort to cure this problem eventually at a national level, by seeking to persuade Her Majesty’s Treasury to create a hypothecated national fund to look after both health and social care. That proposition was adopted by all the Select Committees of the House in the Liaison Committee, and is being considered by the Prime Minister. I very strongly hope that, as a nation, we will move in that direction, but it will not happen tomorrow.

Meanwhile, we in Dorset desperately need to be able to create that level of integration if we are to tackle at the root a problem that is causing human misery as well as great strain on those operating in both our social care and our health service system as professionals. On those grounds alone, if there were no other, if there were not large local support and if it had not been the case that this came from the bottom up, we would still need to do this. Those are enormously important supportive things.

The problem social care and we need to tackle it. The only way we will do so is by carrying through this integration, so I very much hope the Minister will have his way in doing the right thing.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset. I agree with many of the more general comments that he makes about the need to ensure that we get more rationality in the operation of services at local government level, and better integration of social services and the health service.

It was interesting that my right hon. Friend said that he was not in favour of top-down solutions, and then referred to the fact that Christchurch going in with Hampshire would be a fantasy. Christchurch was in Hampshire until 1974 when, in such a top-down proposal, it was forced out of Hampshire into Dorset.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

My hon. Friend’s history is impeccable, but does he recognise that the problem is that Hampshire does not want to have Christchurch back?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My right hon. Friend is wrong about that. In the discussions with Christchurch, Hampshire said that it needed assurance that it would be a net beneficiary of the resources from Christchurch in Hampshire rather than in Dorset. Christchurch tried to persuade Dorset County Council to make that information publicly available so that Hampshire could be reassured that it would benefit financially from having Christchurch transferred back into Hampshire.

Unfortunately, even as we speak, Dorset County Council has not finalised the desegregation costs of splitting Christchurch at the borough council and upper tier levels from the rest of Dorset. We are told that those figures will not be available until the middle of June.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at the whole context of this debate and the whole Hansard report, I think that he will reach the conclusion that a clear undertaking was given by the Government.

Perhaps I can pray in aid the written opinion—it was referred to earlier—from Nathalie Lieven QC at Blackstone Chambers in response to a request from Christchurch Borough Council. In it, she says:

“I was shown…various passages from the Hansard debates where the Minister appeared to assure Sir Christopher and another concerned MP, Edward Leigh, that the power would be used to persuade Councils to have a conversation about merger rather than to force them to merge against their will.”

Nathalie Lieven QC goes on to say:

“Debates in Parliament are only admissible”—

that is, in a court of law—

“where the meaning of the statute is unclear and ambiguous. In this case s.15 is perfectly clear on its face, so what the Minister said is not admissible to seek to prevent him from acting under s.15. The correct forum for holding the Minister to account, for arguably giving an assurance that he is now reneging on, is in Parliament itself. The courts will not enforce an assurance given to Parliament, and will be clear that this is a matter which should be raised in Parliament. On the face of it there does seem to be an inconsistency between what the junior Minister was telling Parliament”—

that was in November last year—

“and the decision of the SoS in this case, but this is a matter…to raise politically, rather than giving rise to a legal argument.”

So we have a situation where leading counsel takes the same view as I take, and took, and indeed relied upon during the consultation period in the autumn of 2016.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I think my hon. Friend’s answer to the Opposition spokesman was a very long way of saying no. I want to get it on the record that the rest of us—I think I speak for all my other colleagues in Dorset—do not see this whole process in the way that my hon. Friend does.

First of all, as my hon. Friend has just quoted his own legal counsel as saying, the Act is perfectly clear in the powers that it gives the Secretary of State. Secondly, there is a world of difference, as the Opposition spokesman said, between this situation and the Government getting through Parliament a top-down reorganisation that is resisted by the people and local governments in an area. That may or may not be a good thing to do in some cases; it is not what is going on here.

The assurance that my hon. Friend hopes he got from the Secretary of State, but which the Secretary of State never gave, was that Christchurch would have a veto on the whole reorganisation, even though the reorganisation is earnestly desired by and desperately needed by the rest of the county. It is perfectly proper that the Act should give the Secretary of State the power, as my hon. Friend’s legal counsel admits it manifestly does, to accept a plea from almost all—94%—of the people of Dorset for reorganisation, even if 6% of them, or the majority of 6% of them, do not like it.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My right hon. Friend has made a long intervention, but he misunderstands my point about leading counsel. Leading counsel is saying that it seems quite clear that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and I were given an assurance that has now been reneged upon by the Government, and that redress is to be had not through the courts, but politically. That is why I am raising the matter in this Committee. There may be quite a lot of people in this Committee who regard it as very poor form for the Government to go back on their word in terms of an assurance that has been given to Parliament. Indeed, I raised the issue with Mr Speaker on a point of order in March 2017. Mr Speaker said it was not right to think that just because there had been a change of Minister or Government, the word given to the House could be reneged upon.

The first time I had any inkling that the Government were minded to renege on that undertaking was in March 2017. That is when I raised the point of order on the Floor of the House. I also wrote to the Prime Minister expressing my concern. As a result of that letter, she intervened. In the end, although it was expected that the Government would announce a “minded to” decision on the application in March 2017, they did not do so. There was then a period of purdah, as my right hon. Friend will remember, for the local elections. That was then closely followed by the general election, which amazingly was only just short of one year ago.

After the general election, all the Conservative councillors who had been re-elected in my constituency wrote to the Prime Minister asking her to intervene in this matter to ensure that Christchurch Borough Council was not abolished against the consent of the people. The Prime Minister wrote back in October 2017. In her letter of 9 October, she said:

“I understand that conversations are now continuing between the affected councils and interested parties to see if, and how, an agreement can be reached that is supported by all of the councils.”

The clear implication of that was that the Prime Minister accepted that there had been an undertaking that all councils should reach an agreement, with the emphasis on the need for councils reasonably to participate in this rather than just saying, “We are not talking to you.” That was the concern expressed in that debate. If a council had an absolute veto, it could say, “I am not prepared to parley with you. I am not prepared to have any discussion.” The Government perfectly reasonably said, “We want to encourage councils to enter into discussions and debate to try to move forward with consensus or consent.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

My apologies, Sir Henry. If it is unparliamentary, I will. I did not intend that. They really could not give a—

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

A fig!

[Simon Hoare]

My right hon. Friend, as always, has the pithy word that I sought in vain.

Our constituents really could not give a fig how the product is arrived at as long as there is a product for them to access and a service for them to use.

Draft Insolvency of Registered Providers of Social Housing Regulations 2018

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2018 General Committees

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

May I, too, say what a joy it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans?

I reflected, as the Minister was speaking, that it is always good to be a lucky politician. The Minister will probably count himself as lucky. All his predecessors in the housing brief did not have the advantage of serving in a Government that have at last stumbled on the political importance of housing. In that sense, we all enjoyed the romantic introduction to what could otherwise have been a technical but important speech.

This is an important issue, and I reassure hon. Members—as much those on my own side as the Government’s—that we will certainly not seek to divide the Committee on this occasion. Nevertheless, I will probe some of the issues that the Minister raised. While the draft regulations are technical and sensible, we need to know that they will actually do the job that we and the Minister want them to do.

In that context, the Minister rightly raised something that the Department tells us in the impact assessment: that a failure to protect the social housing assets of an insolvent provider would mean that tenants were at risk of losing their homes or having their rents increased to market levels; that much-needed affordable housing would be lost; and that the taxpayers’ investment, through affordable housing grant, could be lost. We agree with the ambition to avoid that situation. In fairness, as was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse and the hon. Member for Harrow East, the protection of tenants is fundamental in this.

In that context, will the Minister clarify the operation of objective 1 on financial stewardship and objective 2 on the protection of tenants’ rights? It is right and proper that we have those two objectives, but my concern is that if objective 1 takes precedence over objective 2, and if realising market value, possibly for taxpayers but certainly for creditors, becomes the dominant issue under it, how will we operationalise objective 2—the protection of tenants’ rights and the transfer of any assets to another social housing provider? That will be the nub of the statutory instrument when it comes into operation. That is a technical point, but it would be helpful if the Minister talked us through exactly what that means.

Under any sensible structure, one of the duties placed on lenders is that they operate due diligence. Those lending to one of the companies caught under the statutory instrument have an obligation to protect their shareholders and owners—that is a legal duty—and to ensure that the housing company operates in a prudent fashion. Of course, the more we insure lenders against risk, the less due diligence is part of their motivating force, so it is important that creditors know they are responsible for ensuring that their lending to housing companies is prudent. I hope the Minister will comment on that.

My third point is perhaps the most important. When Cosmopolitan Housing Group almost failed in 2012, the regulator acted promptly and in a way that secured advantage both to the public weal and to the tenants of Cosmopolitan, who were transferred to the Sanctuary Housing Trust. That is the way the system ought to operate, and I congratulate those who were involved with it at the time. The best thing in such a situation is to ensure that we do not repeat Cosmopolitan’s journey to self-destruction.

In 2014, Altair published a report, which was commissioned by the Minister’s Department, looking at the lessons to be learned from Cosmopolitan, and it asked how we prevent housing associations from operating in an imprudent way that puts their organisation, and more importantly their tenants and public assets, at risk. That would potentially lead to the use of powers in this statutory instrument. Of course, we do not actually want the statutory instrument ever to be brought into operation. We want prevention, rather than remedy.

Altair’s report came to a number of conclusions about how the regulator and the boards of housing companies should operate, and about what duties should be imposed on those companies. My question to the Minister—he may not have chapter and verse on this—is, how far can we be assured that the governance regime that let people down in the Cosmopolitan situation is not being replicated by housing associations up and down the country? That touches on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse made. One of the drivers of this problem, to the cost of my erstwhile constituents, is housing associations that see their corporate objective to be growth, rather than growth that is consistent with their original purpose, which is to provide social and affordable housing for their tenants. We need to guard against such wrong ambitions, and we need to ensure that corporate structure and governance of housing associations is secure enough to guarantee that we protect tenants’ rights and public assets.

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

I am following the hon. Gentleman entirely. Does he agree that the biggest exposure is one that the report does not dwell on—I am not quite sure why not—which is that housing associations that match liabilities to rent are doing so on the basis of an unusually low interest environment? They have quite large roll-overs of their debt, which occur at various times. One could imagine not just one, but a swathe of housing associations, if they have not managed their financing portfolios correctly, hitting a moment when interest rates, for some reason or other, rise unexpectedly. I am quite worried—I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is—that that is not one of the things on which the regulator for social housing appears to be focusing at the moment.

[Tony Lloyd]

The right hon. Gentleman raises a very important point, because that is where risk comes in. Frankly, not every housing association has the same depth of experience as the right hon. Gentleman on these issues. There has to be the capacity to ensure that the regulator is in a position to secure the public interest against precisely that.

There is another risk. Although the right hon. Gentleman is right that borrowing against rental income is one form of exposure, a lot of housing associations have been asked to put themselves in this position. They accept that, in order to advance the interests of the housing association, they will build for sale and invest part of those proceeds in social housing. That is a legitimate and necessary operation for housing associations, but, of course, it is a different kind of risk from those that housing associations have been asked to consider in the past. Some will absorb the new culture well, but some may not. The question of financial risk is very real and that emphasises the point I was trying to make to the Minister. Given that prevention is better than remedy, we need guarantees that the regulator has absorbed the lessons of Cosmopolitan a few years back. In fairness, the regulator performed well at the time. However, having absorbed those lessons, we now know that across the whole piece of the housing association family we are measuring risk and are in a position to blow that early whistle, where appropriate.

There are three issues, essentially, for the Minister to address. First, how does objective 2—the transfer to another social housing landlord—operate with respect to the duties under objective 1? Secondly, how can we guarantee that tenants maintain tenancy rights, in terms both of the rent they pay and of the longevity of tenancies and so on? How do we guarantee that financial risk is being properly measured to prevent the need to use these regulations? Thirdly, the issue of due diligence is important. I look forward with interest to hearing the Minister’s comments.

Space Industry Bill [Lords]

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

It is an honour and a pleasure to speak from the Back Benches for the first time not quite in a lifetime but in very many years. It is a particular pleasure to speak in a debate on a Bill that I helped to shape, as the Minister generously acknowledged. I am grateful both for his words and for the words of the shadow Secretary of State. It has been a pleasure to work on this subject, and indeed on transport more widely, with colleagues on both sides of the House.

Reflecting during this sojourn on the Back Benches, I thought that parliamentary and political life constantly gives the impression, perhaps the illusion, of permanence, but in practice it offers the reality of impermanence; all things we do here are ephemeral. Knowing that guides and shapes how we behave; nothing lasts long. However, it is vital that Governments do things that are long lasting, far sighted and strategic, and not simply piecemeal or reactive. Of course Governments must deal with the day-to-day events, the week-to-week affairs of the nation, but they must also set their sights on a more distant horizon, what Kennedy called a “new frontier” and what popular culture called “the final frontier”—of course no frontiers are entirely final for me, as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, but none the less it is important that Governments do just that.

Governments in democratic polities struggle to do that, partly because of those daily and weekly imperatives; partly because no one wants to take responsibility for big decisions that might go wrong and so it is easier to deal with small things that can be corrected quickly; and partly because the five-year electoral cycle means that they get no credit for planning and thinking through things that might bear fruit 10 years or more later. Governments in democratic polities have a history of not doing those long-term things, so I am pleased to see that this Bill is an exception to that general thesis.

The Bill sets out a way forward for the space industry that is far sighted and strategic. It is vital that we should do so, but there is another challenge for Government in this respect: creating a legislative framework that is sufficient to allow and, indeed, encourage further investment, but not going so far as to attempt to predict an unpredictable future. This is a highly dynamic sector and the technology we are debating this evening will be unrecognisable by the time this Bill bears fruit those five or 10 years down the line, as it grows, alters and metamorphoses. Someone mentioned Reaction Engines earlier, and I was pleased and proud to go there as a Minister to see precisely what it is doing, and to witness and begin to understand—I say no more than that—the technological changes it envisages in propulsion. It is developing a whole new method of propulsion, which will change assumptions about the speed with which we travel and therefore open up all kinds of new chances to do so.

The speed and pace of technological change requires Governments to know when to be modest, as well as when to be bold. This Bill attempts to square that circle; to walk that tightrope, and it does so reasonably well. I acknowledge what the shadow Secretary of State said: when we do that, we risk—perhaps that is too strong and I should say open the possibility of—a great deal of secondary legislation. This Bill is, in essence, a framework, which will require further measures to bring it to life as we are clearer about what is required. That secondary legislation deserves proper scrutiny and should come to this House for consideration in exactly the same agreeable, convivial, co-operative and collaborative spirit that has engendered during the course of our considerations of these matters thus far. None the less, we need to have proper scrutiny, of a non-partisan kind, as we enjoyed in another area we have been debating recently—electric and autonomous vehicles. My legacy is so wide and deep that I hesitate to go further, because we could speak about so many things. I am a man of the future with an eye to the past.

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Hayes]

Now I see the past coming back to haunt me.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I wish to echo my right hon. Friend’s tribute to himself, as he was indeed a visionary on electric vehicles and there will in due course be a Hayes electric vehicle launched in this country.

[Mr Hayes]

My right hon. Friend and I enjoyed many happy moments—it seemed much longer than that—on the Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill Committee recently. His contribution to that Committee, may I say with absolute seriousness, was very important. It helped to shape and hone the legislation in a way that, had he not been there would not have happened. I could say the same about colleagues on the other side of the Chamber, too. Proper scrutiny in this House does improve legislation and we should never assume that we are merely going through the motions—that is not what this House is about. At its best, it is the very apex of good democratic polities.