Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and Baroness Keeley

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 21st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I rise to support Lords Amendment 104B, which seeks to safeguard fans from the fraudulent abuse that is rife in the secondary ticketing market. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), I am really disappointed that the Government have repeatedly refused to accept the amendments to the Bill tabled by Lord Moynihan. In fact, for many years before that, they have failed to act as advised by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and her colleagues on the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse, supported by FanFair Alliance.

The Lords amendment includes the minimum of protection that fans deserve. It would ensure that anyone reselling a ticket has to show evidence that they have bought the ticket in the first place. As we have been hearing, that is a big issue in the secondary market, where ticket touts often list tickets that they do not own. The Lords amendment also aims to stop touts from listing more tickets to an event than they can legally purchase from the primary market.

If the Minister looks at Viagogo’s listings for BBC Radio 1 upcoming Big Weekend, he will see that touts based in Germany are selling more than 10 times as many tickets as can legally be acquired. He has said that measures to do anything about that are unenforceable, but that should not be an excuse. We cannot be standing here in this House and saying that a law that we could pass is unenforceable—it is ridiculous.

Another important measure in the Lords amendment is provision for a review to be published within nine months of the Bill passing. That is an urgent issue, and the Government must be ambitious in acting to tackle it.

I point out again to the Minister that action to crack down on ticket touting has significant support from the music industry and fans. Regulating against exploitative secondary ticketing practices is part of the manifestos put forward by music industry bodies including Live music Industry Venues and Entertainment and UK Music.

Many promoters, artist managers, venues and musicians have been highly critical of the market as it currently operates and called on the Government for urgent action to tackle the problem, but it is not just a problem for the music industry; foremost, as we have heard, it is an issue for fans. It is now commonplace for fans to miss out on tickets to sporting and cultural events only to see those same tickets on sale on a secondary ticketing site for far more money than they can afford.

With about a third of UK ticket buyers in the lowest socioeconomic bands, those inflated prices are reinforcing inequalities. The price of a ticket can make a significant difference to social and cultural inclusion, in some cases enabling marginalised or disadvantaged groups the opportunity to access events.

It is important that many venues and artists now endeavour to widen access to tickets by through-ticket pricing to certain groups, but that approach is undermined when touts use software to restrict fans’ access to the primary market and then force them on to resale sites such as Viagogo, which charge prices at the top of what consumers can bear, as we have been hearing. For example—this is disgraceful—I have been told that touts will buy up discounted tickets intended for young people, for people in wheelchairs, for carers and for others, and sell them on at the going rate on the secondary market to increase their profit margins. That has a serious impact on those consumers, who are then refused entry at the door, as well as impacting on the venue or artists that had subsidised tickets, and on the people for whom the lower priced tickets had been intended and who can no longer afford to attend the show.

I have spoken about music so far, but touting also affects other live events such as sport. Most recently, we have seen Viagogo listing up to 100 tickets for the England versus Iceland friendly at Wembley on 7 June, despite the fact that listing football tickets is illegal on unauthorised platforms—including Viagogo’s platform—for reasons of the safety of fans. When The Guardian journalist Rob Davies highlighted the listings on social media, Viagogo took down the tickets straightaway. Resale platforms should not be waiting to be caught out before complying with the law, but that is what we are seeing.

Another example of a secondary resale site having to be pushed into acting by media coverage was a recent BBC “Watchdog” report that raised concerns that some customers have not been able to receive a refund from Viagogo after being sent invalid tickets. Beth from Salisbury told the programme that she had booked a trip to Singapore to see her husband’s favourite band Coldplay as a thank you to him for his unwavering support during her cancer treatment. The two tickets to the show were bought through Viagogo for £500, but when the tickets arrived, the piece of paper said

“this is not a valid ticket”.

When she tried to get a refund, she was refused, despite the fact that Viagogo has a guarantee, apparently. In fact, it only refunded Beth’s money for the faulty ticket after the BBC “Watchdog” report. Given the weight of evidence of market dysfunction, which we have heard here and in the other place, it is disappointing that the Minister insists that the Government are already doing enough. If that is the case, why not agree to the amendment and see what comes out in the review?

[Sir Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady is making a good argument for what the Minister said—ensuring better enforcement of existing regulations. That seems to be the thrust of her argument, and what the Government say that they are delivering.

[Barbara Keeley]

It is just not happening. As we heard the last time we debated this issue a few weeks ago, just six people have been convicted of ticketing fraud—four of them in the past week. The exploitative practices that my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) and I have talked about continue to be rife on resale platforms. The Minister must accept that this derisory and dismal record must not continue. Labour has committed to a range of strong measures to crack down on ticket touts and fix this broken system for fans. Will the Government start to accept the weight of evidence and do the same?

Hospital Parking Charges (Exemption for Carers) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and Baroness Keeley

Friday 30th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I do not want to get distracted so early in my speech, but I will come to my local hospital during the course of my remarks, so I hope the hon. Lady can be patient. Of course, if I fail to deal with that point, she can always come back and chastise me for not having done so.

Let us look at the origin of the Bill. On 4 July, the hon. Member for Burnley explained it on her website blog—I am a keen reader of it, as I am sure are many others both here and in Burnley; indeed, I am sure that the Minister has a great regard for the hon. Lady’s blog. This is what she wrote:

“Having read through over 100 suggestions, and after much deliberation, I have finally chosen the subject for my Private Member’s bill: I intend to try to help carers by making provision for them to be exempt from hospital parking charges. During recent years, I have met with carers from across the constituency from different backgrounds, all of whom had different stories to tell but all with one thing in common: their willingness to support a sick person, whether it be a child with cancer, an elderly person with complex needs or a person attending hospital for regular treatments such as chemotherapy. All of these carers often have reason to be parked at hospitals for long periods and can incur charges which they can often ill afford. It seems to me that it is time we put an end to this ‘tax on illness’.”

Ten days later, however, the hon. Lady said something else in her blog; there was a subtle difference on which I would like to focus. She said:

“Many of you may know that I am trying, through the bill, to obtain free hospital parking for carers. Support for this is growing but, if I am to be successful, I really do need your help. I know from my conversations with so many of you, that hospital car park charges are a problem for many carers, who often spend a lot of time hospital visiting. If you are a carer, and this is a problem for you, please get in touch and share your problem with me. Sometimes it is more than the charge (though these are quite hefty and can mount up) because I understand that visiting, particularly for extended hospital stays during winter months, can be quite stressful and distressing, and queueing for parking can sometimes feel like the last straw. If I am to get this bill through government, I need plenty of evidence.”

In my experience, people usually get the evidence of a problem first, and then bring forward a Bill to tackle it. On this occasion, we seem to have had a more novel approach to legislation, which is to bring forward a Bill and then ask people for the evidence to support it. Personally, I view that as a novel approach, but I commend the hon. Lady for starting a trend that we may see more of in the months to come.

It strikes me from the hon. Lady’s blog that the Bill has been brought forward only on the basis of a worthy sentiment, from which very few people would dissent, because she was still collecting evidence to show the need for the Bill after she had announced she was going to introduce it. She did not look at the reality of situation, find a problem and then try to find a solution.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I have to wonder whether the hon. Gentleman listened to the beginning of my hon. Friend’s speech. She said that she had based the Bill on her own experience. She had been a carer, and she had had to pay the charges. I myself have asked constituents to get in touch with me about the issue. As all Members of Parliament should know, carers are busy, stressed people, who do not have the same time that everyone else has. All of us undoubtedly hear more about issues such as football governance than about caring, but there are 6 million carers in the country, and this is an issue for them.

[Philip Davies]

I entirely agree with everything that the hon. Lady has said. I do not think anyone would disagree with anything that she said about carers. She said that there were 6 million in the country, and that is a point to which I shall return. If we are talking about free hospital car parking, the number of people with whom we are dealing is clearly a factor, to which the hon. Lady has helpfully drawn attention.

[Barbara Keeley]

The hon. Gentleman really should have been listening. My hon. Friend’s Bill applies to carers who receive carer’s allowance, of whom there are 700,000. As I said a moment ago, there are 6 million carers, and at various times this will be an issue for them, but my hon. Friend has restricted her Bill to the 700,000 who do the most for caring and for society.

[Philip Davies]

We are already slightly all over the place with this Bill, and now the hon. Lady has drawn attention—probably not intentionally—to what a dog’s dinner it is. We are already arguing about how many carers there actually are, but in fact the Bill will apply to only a few of them, and the hon. Lady has just suggested that the vast majority will not even benefit from it. The hon. Member for Burnley has said in the past—and I may say more about this later—that the Bill is just a starting point, and that she intends to extend it further and further, so we have no idea where we may end up.

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[Philip Davies]

I am pleased to hear that. I am sure that it will be a matter of great reassurance to the East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust that the hon. Lady was not interested in its opinion, even though Burnley happens to be her local hospital. I was surprised to find, given that she is trying to make such a fundamental change to hospitals, that the one in her own constituency—Burnley general hospital—had not received a request from her to discuss the impact of her proposals. I would have thought that, as the MP for Burnley, she would have taken an interest in that. I personally believe that the people who tend to know best about things are the people who deal with them every single day of their lives, be they nurses, teachers or checkout operators in supermarkets. When assessing the impact of her Bill on hospitals, I would have thought that Burnley general hospital would have been a good place to start.

We have already discussed who currently decides hospital car parking charges. The hon. Lady is right that such matters are decided locally. We should also note that there are guidelines around hospital car parking charges. NHS services are responsible locally for their own car parking policies for patients, visitors and staff. Back in August 2014, the Government published new guidelines on NHS patient, visitor and staff car parking principles—I hope the Minister will expand on this matter when he responds to the debate. They are guidelines only; they are not mandatory. The car parking guidelines recommend the provision of concessions to groups that need them, such as disabled people—both people with blue badges and people who are temporarily disabled—frequent out-patient attenders and visitors with relatives who are gravely ill. The Government guidelines on car parking charges say:

“Concessions, including free or reduced charges or caps, should be available for the following groups: people with disabilities…frequent outpatient attendees…visitors with relatives who are gravely ill…visitors to relatives who have an extended stay in hospital…staff working shifts that mean public transport cannot be used…Other concessions, e.g. for volunteers or staff who car-share, should be considered locally.”

It was also reiterated in the previous Parliament that relatives of people who are gravely ill or who require a long stay in hospital should also be exempt from car parking charges. The then Health Minister made that clear in an answer to a parliamentary question, in which he set out the people who should be exempt as far as the Government were concerned.

[Barbara Keeley]

What the hon. Gentleman is showing is the fact that we have a postcode lottery on this matter now. I want to give him a recent example that was given to me of relatives of somebody who was gravely ill and who then died on the 13th day that she had been in hospital. They were helpfully told, “If you had been coming here one more day, you would have got free car parking.” That was said to a distressed family on the day that their relative died. Does he really think that that is a suitable way for hospitals to go on?

[Philip Davies]

Everyone will have a massive amount of sympathy for the relatives in that example. However, I must point out to the hon. Lady that this Bill will not end terrible situations such as the one she has just described. Even if this Bill is introduced, there will be very many other similar cases, for which we can all feel sympathy. I am not entirely sure why she thinks that this Bill will eliminate any other terrible situation involving someone paying car parking charges; it will not.

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[Barbara Keeley]

No one on the Labour Benches is suggesting that the Bill will eliminate the issue; it will ameliorate it and send an important signal to carers, who repeatedly find themselves in this situation. The example I gave was to show how badly some hospitals behave.

[Philip Davies]

If I had a pound for every time somebody brought forward a private Member’s Bill, or supported a private Member’s Bill, on the basis that it would send a signal, I would be a very wealthy person. Unfortunately, the problem is that we do not pass legislation to send signals. We pass legislation to bring something into the law of the land. The hon. Lady has sent a signal by making that point in this debate. If the whole purpose of this was to send a signal to show how important carers are to the country and how important it is that hospitals show some compassion for carers when they come to visit hospitals, the hon. Lady has achieved that by making that intervention. Perhaps therefore she may feel satisfied that we can leave the matter at that. We have all sent a signal about how important carers are, and I now want to move on to the Bill that is being proposed, which goes way beyond sending a signal.

We already have Government guidelines that set out a range of people who they think should be exempt, all things being equal. When hospital car parking charges were debated back in September 2014, the Minister stated that

“40% of hospitals that provide car parking do not charge and of those that do, 88% provide concessions to patients. However, I am aware that there are 40 hospital sites—which is 3.6% of hospitals in acute and mental health trusts—that have charges and do not allow concessions to patients who need to access services. As a Government, we want to see greater clarity and consistency for patients and their friends and relatives about which groups of patients and members of staff should receive concessions and get a fairer deal when it comes to car parking.”—[Official Report, 1 September 2014; Vol. 585, c. 89.]

Furthermore, in his latest position on the Bill, Lord Prior said that NHS organisations must have autonomy to make decisions that best suit their local circumstances and community interests, and that although the principles provide clear direction and leadership, a one-size-fits-all policy is not appropriate for car parking.

Although the Government have given strong guidance on where concessions should be made for hospital car parking they have, rightly in my opinion, left the final decision to be made by the hospital implementing the policy. Therefore, importantly, each hospital sets its own parking policies and is not required under law to make any exemptions. The Bill today will be the first time that Parliament has intervened to demand that hospitals give free car parking to a particular group of people.

The Government have set out guidelines about the people who, in their opinion, should be exempt from parking charges, or should receive concessions. They are people with disabilities, all frequent out-patient attenders, visitors with relatives who are gravely ill, staff working shifts who cannot use public transport and visitors to relatives who have an extended stay in hospital. Why does the hon. Member for Burnley not believe that those people should have the same benefit as regards hospital car parking charges as the people she includes in the Bill? Is she saying today that the people in the list I have just given are not as important as the people she wants the Bill to cover? Does she think that people with disabilities are not as important as carers? Is she saying that their needs are not as great? Is she saying that staff who cannot get there by public transport are not as important as the carers to whom she refers? Why are the carers so much more important? We all agree that they are important, but why are they so much more important than all the other vulnerable groups who she has spectacularly not included in her Bill while the Government are saying to hospitals that they should make some provision for those people? There is a great unfairness in her proposals.

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[Philip Davies]

Absolutely, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Although there are no official statistics on this matter, in the NHS car parking impact assessment for 2009, the Department of Health provided an estimate of the revenue raised from hospital car parking charges as a whole, which was in the range of £140 million to £180 million. University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust raised £1.5 million from car parking in 2004-05. This measure would clearly leave a substantial hole in NHS hospital budgets.

As I have made clear, one consequence of the Bill would be increased car parking charges for people who do not apply for the free parking. One of my concerns is that we have already seen considerable increases in car parking charges at hospitals. Wye Valley NHS Trust has increased its average hourly rate from 33p in 2013-14 to £3.50 in 2014-15. I would be loth to put any additional cost on people who are using that car park. The Whittington health trust in London doubled its average hourly rate from £1.50 to £3, and Medway Maritime hospital in Gillingham increased its price for a five-hour stay from £5 to £8. Given that we are already seeing such huge increases in parking fees, I would not want to pass a Bill that would see people paying even more.

That point was highlighted by the British Parking Association in 2009, following the scrapping of hospital car parking charges in Scotland. It said:

“Car parks need to be physically maintained, somebody somewhere has to pay. Charges were not introduced to generate income but rather to ensure that key staff, bona fide patients and visitors are able to park at the hospital. Without income to support car park maintenance…funds which should be dedicated to healthcare have to be used instead.”

[Barbara Keeley]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman has been speaking for an hour and nine minutes, and we are now getting a lot of repetition. Many other people want to speak.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

In fairness, it is for me to decide whether there is repetition. I certainly do not need any advice. You should not be questioning the Chair’s ability to hold the speaker to account. I am sure that Mr Davies is well aware that many people wish to speak and that he wants to hear those other voices. He is in order, but I am worried that we will get into repetition. I certainly do not want to get bogged down in the maintenance of Scottish car parks. I am sure that he will move on quickly.

Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and Baroness Keeley

Friday 1st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

If I hear the hon. Gentleman correctly, and I may not have done, this sounds like a red letter day for me. It appears that he has agreed to change the wording of his Bill to suit my views. This is the first time an amendment of mine has been agreed in advance; they are not usually agreed even when tabled at the appropriate time. If I am right, it has been a successful day at the office for me and my time has not been wasted.

I say to the hon. Gentleman that the Government are already doing a good job in introducing greater rigour into the apprenticeship scheme. I would not want to do anything that inadvertently led to that being weakened, so I am not convinced that the Bill is the way to go. I shall come to what local authorities and public bodies should focus on when deciding on procurement, which does not always go well.

Trying to have a top-down approach, which is what the Bill encourages, is not necessarily the way forward. A bottom-up approach is far better. It is better to leave businesses to ensure that apprenticeships are tailored to their needs. The problem with the Bill’s approach is that we will end up losing the idea that apprenticeships should be set by businesses to suit their approach; the issue will become a tick-box exercise for companies to achieve a contract.

Companies will not necessarily introduce an apprenticeship because there is a job at the end of it and they really need the skill; the danger is that the whole thing will become a form-filling exercise: “Oh, if it will help us get a contract, let’s just say that we’ll take on an apprentice. There won’t be a job for them at the end, but the costs of putting the person through an apprenticeship is x and we’ll get a contract worth y. We have done the calculations, and it’s worth our while taking on an apprentice—five, if we have to.” That company would know full well that at the end of the period there would not be a full-time job for the apprentice, who would have spent time on a false prospectus, hoping that something would happen.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

We are talking about local areas, and I will talk about the situation in Salford if you call me to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have had cases of the revolving-door apprenticeships that the hon. Gentleman mentions. A council or other public body would quickly know that a particular contractor was doing that, and they would not fall for it twice. There is a protection in that if the public body had a bad experience once, it would know not to have it again.

[Philip Davies]

I understand the point, but local authorities would have to undergo an awfully long learning process. If somebody takes on an apprenticeship lasting a year, two years or three years, as the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish envisages, only to find out that a job was never going to be available at the end, it will take at least three years for the lesson to be learned. There is no telling how many contracts could have been awarded in that time. The situation would just roll forward.

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[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman is very lucky, then, but his Bill applies not only to his local authorities but to all of them, including mine, which is also run by the Labour party. I cannot say that I necessarily have the same faith in my local authority as he does in his.

The problem is that all the existing requirements are not only leading to lots of burdens for small businesses in getting their hands on some of these lucrative contracts but causing lots of confusion for the local authorities themselves. Adding further requirements on to local authorities regarding public procurement would cause even more confusion. I am concerned about this because of what happened in Bradford council. A report was produced that showed a major lack of skills and expertise among council staff in Bradford tasked with getting the best deals for its suppliers. Bradford council spends about £350 million a year with outside suppliers and holds more than 1,500 contracts. The council’s corporate overview and scrutiny committee revealed a major skills shortage not among the people who were doing the contracts but among the staff who buy the goods and services and commission the works from the suppliers. It seems to me that, occasionally, the staff, who are already trying to juggle all these documents in order to get the best deal, are just not up to the job. I do not see how asking them to consider something else as part of the public procurement process would help them in their efforts to get the best deal for the council taxpayer.

[Barbara Keeley]

I think that we are all, like the hon. Gentleman, supporters of small businesses, but they could really benefit if larger companies provided more training, particularly higher level apprenticeships. Small businesses would then benefit from taking on an employee who had done an apprenticeship with a larger company. Does the hon. Gentleman not see the general benefit, particularly to small businesses, of more training and the completion of more apprenticeships?

[Philip Davies]

I take the hon. Lady’s point and I will come on later to the view of the Federation of Small Businesses on the Bill and whether it thinks it would be to its advantage. For the moment, I want to stick to the point about the capability of the people in public bodies who are giving out contracts.

The report on the contract procurement process at Bradford council found that, of 170 council employees doing procurement work, none—not one—was actually trained in it, and that staff lacked a

“widespread understanding of both UK law and European directives related to procurement and commissioning”.

The report brings into doubt the argument advanced by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish that passing an extra Act would clear up any confusion, because Bradford council staff did not have any understanding of UK and European law anyway. Adding another law would not help; it would probably make them even less likely to understand the law.

The report goes on to say that, among a 20-strong dedicated procurement team, there was a

“shortage of procurement skills and expertise”,

that the team was

“often asked to conduct tenders at short notice and are unable to maximise value improvement”,

and that officers were

“often restrained and inflexible in their approach to procurement and were becoming very compliant and rules orientated”.

That goes to the heart of one of the dangers of this Bill. Procurement should be a relatively straightforward process. It is about trying to get the best possible service or product at the best possible price, thereby generating the best value for money for the purchaser—in this case, the taxpayer. That is what people should focus on when doing procurement.

The problem is that there are so many rules, regulations, documents and policies that the basics of what procurement should be about are getting lost in myriad other factors. The Bill does not help address that problem, which has left Bradford council taxpayers out of pocket because they are paying more than they should for contracts. As the report states, officers were

“inflexible in their approach to procurement and were becoming very compliant and rules orientated”.

I fear that the Bill would make what has already been identified as a problem in local authorities such as Bradford—I do not have a great deal of faith in Bradford council, but I am sure it is not alone in this—even worse. People would focus on the wrong things—nice-to-have things—and forget about the big picture and what they were supposed to be doing.

Social Care (Local Sufficiency) and Identification of Carers Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and Baroness Keeley

Friday 7th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley]

I do, and I will come on to the issue of student carers. The Bill explores student carers for the first time. I do not know why the issue has not been discussed more in the House, but it is vital that we, as constituency Members, take note of it.

Joint strategic needs assessments done at local level do not link care provision with work, and that is why the clause is important. The Department of Health has an upcoming event on developing care markets, the invitation to which we received yesterday. It says:

“the ability to choose from a variety of high-quality services should be available to all people in a local area, regardless of who pays for their care.”

Age UK, in its support for my Bill, commented on that Government aim to give people who need care and support a greater choice. It said:

“this cannot become a reality unless local care markets work effectively to provide people, including those with specialised needs, with appropriate services. Whilst we welcome proposed duties in the draft Care and Support Bill that would require local authorities to take steps to ensure that appropriate services are available this falls a long way short of a requirement to ensure sufficiency. We will certainly be advocating for a Bill or subsequent regulations that will include more specific duties on local authorities.”

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on introducing the Bill and bringing the plight of carers to the House. We all owe carers a big debt of gratitude. The Bill is littered with phrases such as “practical steps”, “reasonable steps” and “sufficiency”. What does she consider sufficient and reasonable, because the Bill does not make that clear, and how much would those steps cost?

[Barbara Keeley]

I will come on to the sufficiency measures, which are similar to a provision in the Childcare Act 2006, which placed a duty on local authorities to report on the sufficiency of child care in their area. The key thing is to ensure, first, that local authorities have a good enough picture. At the moment, the only picture they have is of what they are commissioning and providing, and, as I said, 80% of people who need care are self-funding, and their needs and whether they are being met are not looked at all. We therefore have a huge gap in information on the needs of those people and whether they are being met. There might be a need for nursing home beds for people with certain categories of dementia, and unless they were paying for them, local authorities would have no idea whether those existed. That information does not exist for all the people living in an area who needed that provision. As I said, health bodies and local authorities do joint strategic needs assessments, but they are not taking account of the fact that that can help people to work. We are trying to ensure that, as with child care, there is such provision, so it is similar to that measure.

The Bill does not go into detail because that is usually done in regulations which would be decided after the Bill had been passed. These are matters that can be debated and decided in Committee. However, in placing new duties on local authorities we are aware that we want regulation to be as light touch and low cost as possible. That is why some of the language is hedged around with phrases such as “reasonable steps”. We do not want to put expectations on local authorities that they cannot meet in the present environment.

[Philip Davies]

That was a helpful response. To get to the nub of the issue, does the hon. Lady believe that the House should pass legislation to provide certain duties, at whatever cost, which should be met, or does she accept that only a certain amount of money can be afforded and that the question then is how best that can be allocated?

[Barbara Keeley]

We are talking about a reporting duty. If local authorities, working with their health partners, do not report on social care provision, no one else will. Those of us interested in these matters ask questions, but we do not get very good information. Sending freedom of information requests to every social care authority in the country is not the best way for national organisations or Members of the House to get such information. We are asking for a picture of the market to be held in each local area. I am not suggesting a move in a direction in which the Government are not already going. The Government now expect local authorities to be what they call “market shaping”, taking action to drive the market. We are saying that they do not even have a picture of what exists now. Until we have such a picture, which is not just gathered by freedom of information requests, the expectation of the Department and the Government of local authorities is perhaps not reasonable. It is not a budgeting duty but a reporting duty.

I was dealing with sufficiency and the reporting duty and saying that organisations such as Age UK believe it is important that local authorities have a view of the sufficiency of their local care services. To expand on a point my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West has made, the way local authorities are currently cutting back on what they pay in fees for social care beds and nursing home beds is actually creating market distortions, because some providers are simply moving to areas where there are more self-funders. In Greater Manchester, for example, all the nursing home providers might move to Trafford, which is a wealthier borough, and we would not have proper provision in Salford, part of which I represent. What is happening in the market could result in that kind of distortion, and that should be spotted.

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[Barbara Keeley]

I agree; that is a very good point.

[Philip Davies]

I wonder whether the hon. Lady is being unfair to universities by saying that there is a gap in the provision of information for student carers. I do not doubt that she knows more about the subject than I do, but my local university, Bradford, has a very extensive policy on student carers, with lots of information about what help could be provided. In saying that there is a gap, does she think that he might be doing a disservice to universities such as Bradford, which are clearly doing an awful lot to help student carers?

[Barbara Keeley]

I am very glad to hear that Bradford does that. Professor Luke Clements of Cardiff university, who helped to draft the Bill, says that it depends on having the right sort of vice-chancellor with go-ahead policies. It is not only I who believe that there are gaps; so does the National Union of Students, which understands these things. Particularly in Scotland, the websites of people who are standing for representative positions in the NUS show that they are all campaigning on Fair to Care and asking universities to have a carers strategy. It must therefore be the case that lots of universities, including those in Scotland, do not have a carers strategy. We are asking that a policy be put in place to recognise carers’ needs and tell them where to go for support. I am glad that the Bill would remedy the situation whereby perhaps hundreds of thousands of student carers are left to struggle alone with the difficult demands of juggling their caring responsibilities alongside studying.

The Bill deals with vital issues for carers and for disabled people. I thank Professor Luke Clements and Carers UK for their help in drafting the Bill. Emily Holzhausen and Chloe Wright of Carers UK have provided much extra support in preparing for today’s debate, and I thank them for that. I also thank Kate Emms of the Public Bill Office for her sound advice and help. I thank all the co-sponsors of the Bill for their support for the measures it contains. It has been good to know, as we have worked on this, that the issues involved in social care and the need to identify carers, young carers and student carers generate such great cross-party support.

The provisions in the Bill should be taken forward, and I hope that we will get the chance to discuss and, if necessary, modify them in Committee. Five million carers, including young carers and student carers, depend on our progress on measures that will help them, and I hope that we do not let them down.

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[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have not been left with much time, but I am conscious of the fact that other people wish to speak. I will therefore try to be as quick as possible, as is customary for me on such occasions. It is a pleasure to have you back in the Chair.

I commend the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for her closing remarks, because they got to the nub of the debate. What is important is that today’s debate has raised the issues that are important to all of us. We all want to support carers. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), I remember my mum acting as a carer for my granddad and her father, Charlie, who had cancer. She dedicated many hours to looking after him and other family members came and helped. I understand from first-hand experience how important it is that we give as much support to carers as possible.

The most important thing about today’s debate, which the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West made clear as she summed up, is that we have gone through the issues that we hope will be addressed by the Government. They have produced a draft Bill and presumably legislation will come before the House in the not-too-distant future. All the issues that have been debated today, including the contents of the private Member’s Bill, can be debated during the passage of the Government Bill. Amendments can be made at the Committee and Report stages of that Bill, and far more time than we have been allowed today will be available to scrutinise those measures. We all hope that, at the end of all of that, we will have a measure that we can all agree upon, if that is possible, and that gives the best possible support to the carers who need it. The important thing is not whether this specific Bill gets through to the next stage, but what the overall outcome is. That will be determined by the Government’s draft Bill, and that is where it is best left.

I will move on to discuss the specific issues. It is important to look back at the history. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who presented the Bill, said when I intervened on her— I apologise if I get this wrong—that the Bill is about putting reporting responsibilities on local authorities. It goes far beyond that, however. Clause 1 introduces a

“duty to ensure sufficient social care support”.

That goes far beyond the reporting of that support.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North said in dealing with an intervention, the Bill comes after more than a decade of the hon. Lady’s party being in government, and she is now calling for more to be done. It was only in 2008—I seem to remember that the hon. Lady was a Minister at that time, although I could be wrong about that as well—that her Government published an update to the carers strategy that was introduced in 1999. The update stated:

“By March 2011, we will have invested over £1.7 billion for councils to use to support carers in a range of ways through the annual Carers Grant. This includes £25 million a year announced as part of the New Deal for Carers for emergency break provision.

We have also committed a further £22 million to cover the costs of the establishment of information services via a helpline and a training programme for carers and information service, and £3.4 million to directly support young carers through extended Family Pathfinders and support for whole-family working.

We are now investing over £255 million on new commitments as part of this strategy.”

It seems to me that the hon. Lady is asking in the Bill for things that her Government claimed were already happening. Perhaps she will explain why her Government did not do what she seeks.

[Barbara Keeley]

It is quite clear from all the excellent contributions to the debate that Members understand that this is not just about allocating budgets. It is about having the right processes and about people taking their duties seriously. We can throw any amount of money at carers’ breaks or anything else, but if carers are not identified, if GPs ignore the fact that people are carers or if young carers are not taken seriously at school and are bullied and intimidated, it does not make any difference how much money is sloshing about. That is why the specific reporting and other duties in the Bill are so important. The Bill is mostly about having processes and procedures in place and ensuring that health and other professionals take them seriously.

[Philip Davies]

I could not agree more. I totally and utterly endorse what the hon. Lady says. Joking aside, it is refreshing to hear an Opposition Member say that it is not just spending money but getting results that is important. All too often, spending money was all it was about under the previous Government. It was about input rather than output. I am delighted that she wants to concentrate on output, as I do.

I contend that much of what the hon. Lady seeks to do in the Bill is already happening in one form or another. She might argue that it is not happening as well as it should, and I am sure that it could always be better. She may well argue that it is happening better in some parts of the country than others, and I suspect that will always be true whether or not there is legislation. When she referred to the lack of support for carers at universities, I pointed out the excellent work that Bradford university does to support carers. I believe that the same work is done at Leeds university. I have certainly seen a document from that university about the support that it wants to give to students who are carers. I argue that much of what she wants is happening anyway in various places, and there is certainly nothing to prevent them from happening even without the Bill. I am sure that if all of us, including the Minister and the hon. Lady, contacted universities, showed them best practice from other universities and urged them to follow suit, their vice-chancellors would be happy to do so without the need for further legislation. There are other, more imaginative and perhaps quicker ways of achieving her aims than going through the rigmarole of passing the Bill.

Much of what the hon. Lady seeks is covered in the Government’s draft Bill and White Paper. I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) that the hon. Lady introduced her Bill before any of that was known, so she was absolutely right to do that, but we are where we are. Given that the Government have adopted in the White Paper much of what she wants, we can safely leave the Minister to carry on. We all accept that he is a capable and decent person, and he has given the House assurances today that will have reassured us all about how he intends to proceed. He has said that he wants to involve the hon. Lady in the discussions about the Government’s draft Bill before it proceeds, and I am sure she knows that he means that. We can rely on the Government to introduce the best aspects of her Bill, so we do not need to proceed with it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North made the point, which the Minister reiterated, that some of the duties that the hon. Lady’s Bill would place on local authorities, although well meant and with a positive element to them, could take money away from the front-line resources that we want to go to people who need them. It could instead have to be spent on further reporting, strategies, documents and other things that could eat up a considerable amount of local authorities’ money before we know it. I am not sure whether that approach is desirable. As I said, there might be some desirable ends, but overall it is more likely to take money from carers than to give them support.

[Barbara Keeley]

Do the hon. Gentleman and his colleague, the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), have a view on the billions of pounds that could remain in the economy if people do not give up work to become carers? If local authorities draw up the local sufficiency picture, it will help carers to stay in work. If carers stay in work, they are earning money, they are not on benefits and they pay tax and national insurance. Does the hon. Gentleman not see that there is a balance to be struck? I am sure that the sufficiency reporting duty will in no way match the billions of pounds that would be lost if 1 million carers give up work to care.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady makes a fair point although I cannot speak for my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North. If he had not been cut short we might have learned his view of the sufficiency measures, but perhaps we will hear it at a later date. I do not want to get bogged down or I will be criticised for trying to talk out a Bill that I have no intention of talking out. On this occasion—one for the record books—I endorse what the Government are doing. I wish the Minister well in developing the strategy, and I hope that we get the outcome we seek. In all honesty, however, we can do that without the Bill, and if the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South had known the Government’s plans at the time of the ballot for the private Members’ Bills she might have chosen a different issue. As she must acknowledge, the Government are doing much to go down the route she has advocated today.

Use of the Chamber (United Kingdom Youth Parliament)

Debate between Philip Davies and Baroness Keeley

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Barbara Keeley]

I hope that I speak for all Labour Members when I say that we support the motion.

[Philip Davies]

Will the hon. Lady give way? Or has she finished her speech?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a poor show when, although it is apparently so important for the Youth Parliament to sit in this Chamber, the main Opposition party can find only about two minutes’ worth of things to say about it. It clearly cannot be all that important to them if they have nothing to say in support of it.

[Barbara Keeley]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady would not give way to me, but because I am of more generous character than she is, I will give way to her.

[Barbara Keeley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman.

It is easy for Labour Members, because we are unanimous on the subject. It is the backwoodsmen on the Government Benches who are raising all the objections.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady talked—very briefly, I must say—about the views of young people, and the importance of their perception of the House of Commons and its relevance to them.

May I tell the hon. Lady something that she might want to bear in mind when considering what people think of the House of Commons? It comes back to something that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) said in his earlier intervention, which was not dealt with particularly well. The hon. Lady started off by saying that the previous Labour Government set a precedent with last year’s debate.

[Barbara Keeley]

To clarify that, my point was that moving the motion was a precedent, not that the debate itself was a precedent.

[Philip Davies]

We are very grateful in this place that we have our Hansard reporters, and we can all read tomorrow what the hon. Lady actually said. We certainly heard that she said that it was a precedent.

The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said that it was an experiment last time. However, if anyone wants to cast their eyes back on the account of last year’s debate, they will see that it was made abundantly clear by the Government and others who supported the principle that the debate was a one-off.

Therefore, the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) and those supporting her stance are saying that what the young people in the Youth Parliament should learn from the House of Commons is that we cannot believe a word anybody in this House says, because they say one thing one year and they then go and completely reject the solemn promises they made at that time. If that is the kind of message they want to give to young people, that is very interesting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley]

The debate is not about the Shipley youth council or the West Yorkshire youth council, but about the UK Youth Parliament. Young people want to meet young people from other parts of the country and to debate issues with them. If this was just a local matter, one could appreciate that they would feel the way that the hon. Gentleman suggests, but it is not; it is a UK-wide Youth Parliament.

[Philip Davies]

No one is arguing that the UK Youth Parliament should not have a national meeting, but that is not what is before the House. We are discussing where it should have its meeting. I am sure that the hon. Lady will concede that the Youth Parliament members could meet in Westminster Hall or the House of Lords. If her prime purpose is that they should meet, that is not an argument for why they should meet here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am not sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult, although knowing my hon. Friend as I do I shall take it as a compliment. He would not wish to suggest anything else.

The point that I am making is that the motion is wholly illogical. It makes absolutely no sense whatever, because all the justifications for allowing the Youth Parliament to sit here are justifications for allowing lots of other organisations to do the same. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South and the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark made the great point that one of the great features of the Youth Parliament debate last year was that so many people from ethnic minorities took part. If that is the rationale for allowing it to be here, presumably the hon. Lady will advocate that the Muslim Council of Britain should have its meetings here. If we want lots of people from ethnic minorities here, the council would be a prime candidate.

[Barbara Keeley]

In raising the point about ethnic diversity, the hon. Gentleman misses the point. The point is that the UK Youth Parliament, through its work and how it elects its members, is more diverse than this House. That is impressive.

[Philip Davies]

That may well be the case, but is the hon. Lady really suggesting that any organisation that happens to have a more diverse make-up than the House should therefore be entitled to have a debate here? That is the logic of her position. The make-up of the Youth Parliament may well be more diverse, but that is no argument for allowing it to have a debate in this Chamber.