Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Tim Loughton and Baroness Chapman of Darlington

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend is right. He has been a pioneer in this area for a long time. The previous Government abolished the recognition, and they had 13 years to try to do something about recognising families in the tax system. Despite the easy words of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North, the previous Government did absolutely nothing in practice. That is the record on which they should be judged.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

If the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) is correct about his party being pro-marriage and wanting to prevent divorce, how does he account for the decline of divorce between 2003 and 2009? The divorce rate only started to go up again after 2010.

[Tim Loughton]

Very simply, because the number of marriages went down. The change in the divorce rate is a simple statistical manifestation of the number of marriages.

The Liberal Democrats, who are heroically represented here today by the lone star hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales), have perhaps been more honest about the married couple’s tax allowance, which they have never supported. Their leader has some bizarre reasons for not supporting it, but they have been absolutely honest. If they had not been involved in some sort of deal, of which we are completely oblivious, they might have been here to vote against the measure, and of course we are very disappointed that they are not here.

The measure will benefit 4 million couples, including 15,000 in civil partnerships and hopefully a good many who adopt the new status that the hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) mentioned earlier. My hon. Friends and I welcome the last-minute inclusion of the transferable married couple’s tax allowance in this Finance Bill. The allowance was promised in our manifesto, and it will initially be worth up to £210, but I contrast that with the up to £10,000-worth of subsidies rightly being made available for child care assistance—albeit that that will be available also for higher rate taxpayers whose household earnings may be as high as £300,000—which is still very far from a level playing field. That is why some of us, when the economy has recovered to the extent that it needs to recover after the car crash of 13 years under Labour, ultimately want to see a fully transferable married couple’s tax allowance—the full £10,500-worth, not just 10%. The married couple’s tax allowance is linked to the personal allowance in the Bill.

Future of English Heritage

Debate between Tim Loughton and Baroness Chapman of Darlington

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Mrs Osborne, to serve under your chairmanship. I am pleased to have secured this debate. English Heritage—or, to give it its correct title, the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission—is a national institution that has guardianship of some of our most treasured monuments, buildings and landscapes. The two most famous that spring to mind are Stonehenge and Hadrian’s wall, but it manages a great variety of sites throughout the country, as well as fulfils important duties in the planning and protection of our national heritage.

Hon. Members will know that the Government have consulted on a new model for English Heritage, which would see a new charity established to take over the conservation and management of the national heritage collection, while other responsibilities would remain with a smaller, renamed non-departmental body. The proposals have been welcomed in some quarters, and greeted with concern in others. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is working on its response to the consultation, and I hope today will provide an opportunity for hon. Members to ask questions, to voice any concerns or hopes for the future of English Heritage, and to contribute to the thinking of the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey).

The duties of English Heritage are set out in statute in the National Heritage Act 1983. They are to secure the preservation of historic sites and monuments, to promote the preservation and enhancement of conservation areas, and to promote the public’s enjoyment of ancient monuments and buildings. I am lucky to live near wonderful Durham university, which has a fabulous archaeology department where, some time ago, I studied mediaeval archaeology for a couple of years and looked in detail at the work of Sir Charles Peers who was, as colleagues may know, responsible for acquiring many of the sites for what was then the Ministry of Works. He was responsible and accountable, but was not always viewed in the best light by archaeologists because he swept away much of the archaeology from many sites and replaced it with immaculate lawns. That is what we are left with today.

The commission recognises that it is probably best known for its work in looking after the national heritage collection. The collection spans more than 400 historical sites and monuments that are open to the public, as well as more than 500,000 artefacts and 12 million photographs in its public archives. The sites range from Roman ruins to a 1960s nuclear bunker, and I am reliably informed that the collection includes both Charles Darwin’s diaries and the Duke of Wellington’s boots, although I have not seen them. It hosts 11 million visitors every year, as well as 445,000 free educational visits.

However, English Heritage’s work is far wider than just the collection. It has just under 75,000 members, who contribute to self-generated revenue, and gives out £24 million in grants every year for conservation projects. In addition, it advises the Government on heritage protection, designates places of significance to be listed for statutory protection, and advises owners, developers and local authorities on development decisions. In total, the commission advises on more than 17,000 planning applications every year, and it would be helpful if the Minister explained his assessment of developer-funded archaeology in this context and advice to local authorities on conservation areas. We have some conservation areas in my constituency, and any tampering with decision making on them will garner a huge amount of interest when it comes to residents’ attention.

Will the Minister also explain how the quality of preservation will be guaranteed in future? English Heritage is the custodian of last resort for heritage sites that are at risk and not otherwise being cared for. It would be a tragedy if the quality of curation that English Heritage has managed to achieve were diminished. English Heritage is currently a non-departmental public body. Its work is funded mainly by a departmental grant. Last year, its funding streams included grant in aid of £103 million, and just under £57 million was self-generated through membership, entry fees, retail and catering.

The reason for this debate is that the future funding and structure of English Heritage is uncertain. In December 2013, the Government published a consultation outlining a new model for the organisation, and closed it in early February. The model proposed would see English Heritage split into two separate bodies. One part would retain the name “English Heritage” but would become a charitable enterprise and would take on the management of sites in the national heritage collection. The charity would be fully responsible for the conservation and public use of sites, and would manage the collection for eight years.

The Government’s intention is to give the charity an £80 million one-off investment to tackle a significant backlog of conservation defects. That backlog has arisen, even with the grant-in-aid funding and the current arrangements, and there is concern that such a backlog could occur again. We need to know what the Government would do in that circumstance.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare an interest as a member of the all-party group on archaeology, which I helped to set up, and as a former student of Mesopotamian archaeology, which is slightly earlier than the mediaeval architecture that the hon. Lady studied. Does she share my concern that in some of the projections in the proposals, there seems to be no allowance for the fact that there will be a lot of disruption during the catch-up repairs that many properties will need, requiring many of them to close or part-close for a long time, which will seriously impact on the revenue they bring in in the next few years?

[Jenny Chapman]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. As a student of mediaeval archaeology, I believe it could be a fabulous opportunity to engage more people in our historic sites and to allow them to take part in or to witness the improvements, and to see the defects being put right. For me, there is nothing better than going into a building that is in a state of disrepair, where façades have been removed and rafters are exposed. That is a great opportunity, and I would like to see visitors welcomed. The revenue they would bring should be included in the process. English Heritage has become quite good at that over the years.

The money that English Heritage will spend on defects will be matched by another £83 million raised by the organisation from third-party donations. It is hoped that that will give a boost to the charity, which will be expected to become self-sufficient. Over the eight years, the Government plan to withdraw the grant in aid, and expect the charity to be self-financing by 2022. The remainder of the commission’s duties will continue to be performed by a non-departmental public body, to be called Historic England. Those duties will include advisory and planning roles, and will continue to be funded by grant in aid.

English Heritage does not mind the reforms in principle, particularly the ability to raise revenue through philanthropic and commercial opportunities. As would be expected, it welcomes the offer of the up-front £80 million to tackle the significant backlog of conservation work needed for the collection. Concerns have been expressed about the practical realities of the new model, and the risks that might arise in future. The most significant concerns, as the Minister will know, centre on the financial model, and whether a charitable English Heritage can realistically achieve self-sufficiency in the time frame allowed and retain it for the long term.

There is a basic concern about the nature of the collection. English Heritage’s collection is not the same as the carefully selected portfolio of the National Trust, which can turn down sites or choose to take on only new properties that come with an endowment to fund their upkeep. English Heritage has sites that have been gathered over decades—or inherited by the nation—because of their historical significance, and rarely because of their commercial potential. Many have been taken on by English Heritage because it is the owner of last resort.

Some 250 English Heritage sites—more than half the collection—are free at the moment, so the public can gain access to them without having to pay. We are talking about ruined abbeys and bits of old Roman wall that families visit as part of a walk through the countryside. The place that springs to my mind is Egglestone abbey, close to where I live in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman). It is one of the most beautiful places in the north. It is a ruined abbey set perfectly in the landscape. It benefits from not having commercial activity or gates and tea shops and other buildings around it. The ruins have been there for centuries, and it would be a real shame if visitors were charged to visit the site in future.

The Society of Antiquaries has tried to remind us that it is dangerous to present the collection as a portfolio of visitor attractions. It is a portfolio of national heritage, and less than half the sites are considered capable of generating income. There is some perhaps healthy scepticism over whether the collection has enough revenue-making properties, and will be able to generate enough of a surplus to subsidise the rest.

[Jenny Chapman]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because that is precisely the reason for this debate. In principle, there is no objection to the proposal, but there is deep concern about how realistic it is. All Governments have a track record of rushing into reforms with the best of intentions, but it would be a disgrace if this were allowed to fail. We need to know how the Government plan to act should that happen.

Moving on from the sites to those going to see them, the National Trust has pointed out that the targets for membership and visitor numbers, on which the new model relies, are what it would call ambitious. The predicted growth in membership is 86% over the next 10 years. Even in its most successful decade, the National Trust grew its membership by only 20%, and the trust is five-star outstanding in terms of its membership organisation. If it questions the nature of the membership target, I would listen very carefully. The model is also reliant on visitor numbers going up by a predicted third. I hope that that is the case—we want this to work—and that we see English Heritage attract more and more of our constituents to enjoy its sites, but it is quite a leap, and many of us are worried about what would happen if we fail to make that leap in membership, visitor numbers and revenue.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady makes good points about dodgy projections. Does she share my concerns about visitor numbers? The number of visitors to English Heritage sites in 2002-03 was 5.5 million. Ten years later, in 2012-13, it was 5.1 million, yet there is a big increase in the numbers forecast for the next few years. Of course, a fifth of visitors to English Heritage sites at the moment go to Stonehenge, where the entrance fee for the fantastic new visitor centre has been raised from £8 to £14.90. There has been quite a lot of grumbling by potential punters wanting to go there.

[Jenny Chapman]

I had not realised that it was almost £15 to go and see Stonehenge. That is well out of the reach of many family visitors, although I assume the pricing policies are used to encourage membership. Perhaps that has something to do with it. The hon. Gentleman’s point about the volatility of visitor numbers is worth considering.

The Heritage Alliance and the National Trust both point out how volatile visitor numbers are. They suggest that a sudden emergency such as foot and mouth, or even a couple of wet summers, which happen fairly frequently, can completely change the revenues and the cost of welcoming visitors to the sites. They both expressed the view that unless and until new English Heritage is able to build up reserves, the model must be considered financially precarious. That is not a situation in which we want to leave our historic monuments. Perhaps the Minister will explain how he decided that a charity would be the best structure. What governance arrangements will be considered for the charity? We need a lot of safeguards before we can feel confident about that.

The National Trust recommends that the building of reserves should in itself be included as a measure of success—I would make it a requirement of the new charity—so that we can have confidence that the charity will be able to survive unforeseen events such as extreme weather, flood damage and fire damage. More generally, the whole sector is concerned about the need for a contingency plan if the new model does not live up to the expected targets.

The Minister should hope for success, as we all do, but it would be reckless not to plan for failure. We have not seen what the Government have in mind. If the costs do not work out, the sites are too expensive and visitor targets are not hit, what happens? There is particular concern about what happens if the charity ends up with a shortfall: where does the money to plug that gap come from? It could be pulled from the budget of Historic England, which would have a consequence. It is intended that Historic England will protect a much greater array of heritage sites than just the national heritage collection. Will the Minister update Members on his departmental plans to ensure the model is sustainable? What contingency and risk management plans are being put in place in case self-sufficiency is not reached in the eight-year time frame?

Another concern that I want to touch on, which many of the respondents to the consultation brought up, is English Heritage’s duty as the owner of last resort. The consultation makes welcome reference to the fact that that will continue to be the responsibility of English Heritage, but there is an obvious question: will extra funding be made available should an urgent acquisition be necessary?

I have set out some of the general concerns that have been expressed. I genuinely look forward to hearing from colleagues about their concerns, and to hearing what the Minister has in mind. My constituents, and I think citizens all over this country, care a huge amount about our shared national heritage. They also care about the quality of curation, conservation and preservation. They care about the open access that they currently enjoy to many sites, and they are concerned that buildings should not be lost and that as yet undiscovered archaeological sites should not be tampered with lightly. I genuinely look forward to the Minister’s response.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Loughton and Baroness Chapman of Darlington

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We have some fantastic youth groups, voluntary organisations and people around the country with a passion for engaging young people and a knowledge of how to do so, who in the past have been frozen out too much from the local offer. In future, they need to be part of the offer for young people locally, and must work with local authorities and schools to ensure that young people get the very best opportunities.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

In Darlington, 50 young people at St Aidan’s academy should have got a C this year but got a D. That is not a one-off case; there are schools like it up and down the country. The Secretary of State has said that he is sad about this matter. Does he think that it is fair?

Safeguarding Children

Debate between Tim Loughton and Baroness Chapman of Darlington

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

I have known my hon. Friend for more than 30 years and she has never been anything but helpful. Her work on early prevention, which is germane to the Government’s work on neglect and early help, absolutely confirms that the sooner we can detect problems, such as detachment, deficiency and others—the work with troubled families is important in this respect—the more likely we are to step in at an appropriate time and in an appropriate manner to avoid such problems leading to greater harm to a child. She is absolutely right, as she knows, and as she knows I know.

Understanding families and the experiences of children within them can be complex and signs of what appears to be low-level neglect can be misleading. Yesterday, as I have said, we published materials commissioned from Action for Children and the University of Stirling to help on that.

We are already seeing some notable successes from earlier intervention. I again pay tribute to the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who is no longer in the Chamber, for his work on that. For example, the integrated access team in Suffolk is taking and handling quickly cases that would previously have been dealt with by children’s social care, with a £7 million saving on top of better social outcomes for those children. Tower Hamlets is operating a multi-agency integrated pathway and support team to deliver early help, reducing by 50% the number of referrals to children’s social care. That is happening in practice, and we now want more of it around the country.

As the motion indicates, it is important that professionals know what early intervention works best. To support them in that, the Government have recently invited bids for the establishment of an early intervention foundation and we expect the foundation to operate independently of central Government to support the needs of local commissioners and to build a solid evidence base.

I referred at the start of my speech to the importance of a high quality social work work force. Building on the work of the social work taskforce established by the previous Administration, we have focused heavily on improving the capacity and capability of the social work profession. In 2011-12 we invested £80 million in a national programme of social work reform to improve skills for social workers and tackle high vacancy rates in child protection. Together, all those reforms will shift the child protection system from a culture of compliance to a culture in which children and families are at the centre and social workers and other key professionals spend less time in front of their computer screens and more time face to face with vulnerable families and children, which is what we all want to see.

The motion rightly refers to the importance of young people understanding the risks of abuse and sexual exploitation. Tackling child sexual exploitation is a major priority for the Government and it has been at the top of our agenda over the past 12 months. Back in May last year, I made a speech at a Barnardo’s event in which I highlighted the importance of its “Puppet on a string” report. I said then that sexual exploitation of children

“is happening here and it is happening now”

and I went on to say that

“I think it’s a much bigger problem than it may appear now on our radar.”

I fear I was only too right and that we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg.

For far too long, the issue was something of a taboo in this country. It was little spoken about, little appreciated and little acknowledged or dealt with. Few local authorities had much idea about how prevalent child sexual exploitation was in their areas and, as a result, there was a real and tragic failure to grasp the scale of the problem. The high profile verdicts in the recent Rochdale case and others show that the situation is changing. The country is at last waking up to the fact that child sexual exploitation is a real problem in this country, but although the issue has been extensively discussed and debated in the media, there is still a good deal of misunderstanding about it.

Much of the coverage of the case in Rochdale focused on the fact that the perpetrators were British Asian men and the victims white teenage girls. We must not shy away from difficult issues about culture—I have said that on many occasions—and the Rochdale case does raise very troubling questions about the attitude of the perpetrators, all but one of whom were from Pakistani backgrounds, towards white girls, but it would be mistaken, and dangerous, to assume that that is the form that child sexual exploitation generally takes. We know that perpetrators of that appalling crime and their victims can be found in all backgrounds, in all parts of the country and in all social and ethnic sets. As Sue Berelowitz, the Deputy Children’s Commissioner, told the Select Committee on Home Affairs yesterday, this is not just a crime that takes place in northern metropolitan boroughs. She quoted a police officer from a

“lovely, leafy, rural part of the country”

who told her that

“there isn’t a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited”.

We owe a debt of gratitude to several organisations and individuals for putting the issue on the map, such as Safe and Sound Derby and, in particular, Sheila Taylor, to whom I pay tribute. Barnardo’s also did an enormous amount to raise awareness through its excellent report and its continuing “Cut them free” campaign. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre carried out a major assessment last year and reported practitioners telling it

“if you lift the stone, you’ll find it”.

There are many others, including many local projects and voluntary organisations, with whom my Department continues to work closely. We acted, I brought together all the major players and in November of last year we produced the tackling child sexual exploitation action plan. That is one of the pieces of work in my Department of which I am most proud, and it is beginning to have an effect. It is intended to lift the lid on the true nature and extent of this crime and to set out practical responses to it, and as a result many practical measures are already coming into force, although we need many more to take effect.

We identified four key stages where we needed better intervention. We need better awareness among children and their parents. We need better multi-agency action to intervene so that we can help children and families who are caught up in sexual exploitation. Once they have been rescued from it, we need to help them get their lives back on track. Finally, we must secure robust prosecutions and improve court processes to ensure support for victims and their families, including ensuring that we do not retraumatise teenage girls and other victims, who have to go through the whole episode in court in front of a phalanx of defence barristers. That is why the Attorney-General’s influence and involvement are really important. We must and can do better and shortly we will publish a progress report on how a range of Government Departments and national and local organisations are implementing the action plan.

Hon. Members will also be aware that last month the Secretary of State asked the Deputy Children’s Commissioner to provide him with an accelerated report from her office’s inquiry into child sexual exploitation in gangs and groups. Although it is clear that most children who are sexually exploited are not in care, we know that children who are in care are disproportionately represented in the numbers of victims of this crime. The Secretary of State asked particularly for recommendations on how to keep children in care homes safe from this abuse. We have just received that accelerated report, and we will publish it within a matter of weeks alongside the updated progress report, into which some of the findings from Sue Berelowitz’s report will be factored and, as a result, some urgent streams of work will emerge.

We are already taking action on children missing from care, and it is clear that the figures the police and my Department publish are not consistent. That is simply not acceptable. We are now working with the police and local authorities to bring a more consistent approach to figures collected nationally and locally. We need to know the extent of the problem so we can challenge poorly performing local authorities and come up with the right solutions.

I am particularly grateful for the work the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) is carrying out through the all-party parliamentary group inquiry into children missing from care. I look forward to receiving its report next week and will consider its recommendations very closely. I have promised that it will inform the new guidance we are looking to publish in that area.

Of course, safeguarding children in care is only one aspect of our wider reform programme to transform the care system and improve outcomes for the most vulnerable children. Key is ensuring placement stability and good parenting—as we have heard from hon. Members today—whether through adoption, foster care or children’s homes. We also want to improve the support given to care leavers, another group vulnerable to sexual exploitation. We must ensure that children who leave care live in good accommodation and are well supported.

The reference in the motion to multi-agency working has a particular relevance in relation to tackling child sexual exploitation. Local safeguarding children boards have an absolutely central role in overseeing much of the work set out in our action plan. There is growing evidence that LSCBs and local authorities are getting a better picture of child sexual exploitation in their areas and taking steps to address it. But it is clear that some are still not giving this issue the priority it requires. They need to do so without further delay.

There is one final area that I want to mention in particular. Improving the safety of children who use the internet is an urgent priority, including reducing the risk of harm through contact with strangers and the viewing of harmful content. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby mentioned a particularly horrific site that was raised yesterday. The Government are working, through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety or UKCCIS, which I chair jointly with a Home Office Minister, to help to keep children and young people safer online. The council is focused on practical action, both by individual members, and collectively.

We have made real progress across a number of areas. The four major internet service providers have signed a code of practice that will see by October 2012 all new broadband customers presented with an unavoidable choice of whether to activate parental controls. Major retailers and manufacturers of internet-enabled devices such as mobile phones, laptops and internet-enabled TVs are developing solutions to increase the availability and awareness of parental controls at point of sale. UKCCIS has also published advice and guidance for internet companies to use so that parents get consistent information about keeping their children safe on the internet.

In conclusion—

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Tim Loughton]

All right, but I am really trying to finish.

[Mrs Chapman]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I hesitated to intervene, given the speed at which he was going, but I did not want to miss the chance to raise with him a very real concern for people in Darlington about registered sex offenders. At the moment, offenders are not required to register their online identities as a matter of course. Sexual offences prevention orders are used to do this job, but it is not a requirement as a matter of course. When people have a known history of child abuse and deliberate grooming, it is very important that they are required to register their online identities as a matter of course.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady makes a very important point. Rather than go into detail now and take more time from Back Benchers, I would be happy to look into it if she would like to have a conversation with me and send me some details.

This is a huge, complex but deeply important subject and one that must remain a key priority for the Government and the Department in particular. The documents we published yesterday are intended to help create the new culture that we are determined to see. It is a culture that is not overly focused on compliance and dependency on central prescription and guidance; in which front-line professionals who work to keep children safe from harm no longer have their judgment stifled by what has all too often been pointless—albeit well intentioned—bureaucracy, made up of unnecessary rules and targets; and which has the needs and well-being of the child at its centre. It is apparent from the motion that the Government and the Opposition share the same goals in relation to the safeguarding of children, and I believe that the important reforms I have outlined will be welcomed by hon. Members on both sides of the House. I congratulate again the shadow Secretary of State on bringing this important subject before a slightly reduced audience in the Chamber today, because it is really important to a much bigger audience outside the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Loughton and Baroness Chapman of Darlington

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

I share some of my hon. Friend’s concerns and I know that she has written to the Secretary of State on the matter. She will be aware that we are currently reviewing personal, social and health education, of which sex and relationship education is a key part. It is crucial that whatever we do should be age appropriate. I would welcome her further input into the review as it proceeds.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss the future of buildings at Mowden Hall in Darlington? The local council, residents and a property developer have an alternative site that will save money and create jobs. It will require quick decisions and innovative thinking. Is he up for it?