House of Commons
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Prayers
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)
I beg to move, That the House sit in private.
Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 163), and negatived.
Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims (Amendment) Bill
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
This is a little Bill, although it is considerably larger than it was on Second Reading, but it is now fit for purpose, as the Minister might put it. I thank individuals on both sides of the House, including Opposition Front-Bench Members and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), and his team I also thank the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children for quiet support. Sometimes quiet support is best.
Finally, and most important, I thank the recently retired Met police officer, Detective Chief Inspector Dave Marshall. He has worked with me on a successful run of legislative changes to enhance the protection of children: six down, one to go—or one and a half to go.
The Bill will assist the prosecution of people who hurt children or vulnerable adults and those who stand by and allow such acts. It means that when a child is seriously physically harmed, or when the actual cause of death is not specifically identified, those who carried out the abuse or stood by can be prosecuted. The defence of passing the blame will go. If I have had one regret during what I hope will be the speedy passage of the Bill, it is that the maximum sentence is only 10 years, but I accept that it is appropriate when other sentences are available and can be considered.
Assuming that this is the last hurdle, I hope that the Bill’s progress through the other place is speedy.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
In 2004, the previous Government introduced the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act. Section 5 was written to address a particular situation: a gap in the law dealing with cases when a child had died at the hands of one or other of its parents, or other members of the household, and no one would admit to what had been done. To be guilty of the offence, the household member must have either caused the death or failed to take reasonable steps to protect the victim.
The NSPCC had campaigned on the issue, and the Law Commission did a great deal of work on it. While the 2004 Act was under consideration, there was a debate about whether the legislation should include serious harm cases and the point was made, both in this and the other place, that the term “serious harm” would need careful definition. Importantly, the then Government left the door open for the issue to be addressed again in the future. As the Minister at the time, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), said:
“I do not rule out extending the offence at some time in the future. It is important, first, to put in place the new offence. Let us get that right first and see how the provision operates. If appropriate, we may return to the problem at a later date.”—[Official Report, 27 October 2004; Vol. 425, c. 1473.]
Since the passage of the 2004 Act, between 2005 and 2008 alone the offence of causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable adult was used successfully to prosecute 17 people, notably baby P’s mother, boyfriend and lodger. It was clear that one of them caused Peter’s death, but the police could not prove which of them was directly responsible. As a result, they were all found guilty of causing or allowing his death.
Crown Prosecution Service data suggest that there is now a need to extend the law to cover cases of serious injury. In 2010, CPS prosecutors in six areas identified 20 potential cases involving children and three involving vulnerable adults that could not be prosecuted under existing legislation, but which they believe could have been prosecuted under the proposed new offence.
It is clearly time to return to the issue. That is why the Opposition support the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford). We congratulate him on all his assiduous work. The Government suggested two amendments, which were accepted by the hon. Gentleman. The amendments will strengthen the Bill and now, with cross-party support, I hope that this important measure will soon be on the statute book and be implemented quickly.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
I shall not detain the House long, but I just want to express my strong support for the Bill. I have only recently had the great privilege of becoming a Member of Parliament, and in the short time that I have been in this place I have learned that some of the most effective parliamentarians are those who do not appear on “Newsnight” every night of the week and are not always twittering and blogging and filling up the airwaves, but who quietly and effectively champion causes from the Benches of this House. Years and years of assiduous work for a cause can result in massive positive change for people’s lives throughout the country. We see today that there is no greater exemplar than the hon. Member for Molve Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), who over many years has championed causes.
Today a small gap in legislation is being filled and a problem tackled. That will lead to hugely beneficial changes, which will protect many vulnerable children from unspeakable abuse. We were all shocked when we saw what happened to baby P and others around the country. The measure will send a loud message that anybody who is caught perpetrating any of the crimes covered by the Bill will be brought to justice and feel the full force of the law. I congratulate my hon. Friend and commend the Bill to the House.
Mr Speaker
I am sure that the hon. Member—for Mole Valley—will appreciate the tribute that has just been paid to him.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I too congratulate the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) on pursuing this cause. I am happy to support the Bill. The definition of domestic violence is relevant not only to this Bill but to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill—I hope this change will go through, just as I hope we may at some point see some changes in the definition of domestic violence that is used in that Bill. I am pleased to support the Bill this morning.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
My first duty is to congratulate the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David). I think this is the first time that we have met across the Dispatch Box following the reshuffle on the Opposition Benches, so I welcome him to his place. I congratulate him on the crisp way in which he presented Her Majesty’s Opposition’s support for the Bill, following through on the support that his hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) gave it in Committee.
I join other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) on steering the Bill through the House to this stage. This very worthwhile measure would provide increased protection for children and vulnerable adults who are at risk of serious physical harm from members of their own household, and it is a prime example of my hon. Friend’s unstinting efforts to protect vulnerable people, especially children, from harm.
I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) about what makes an effective parliamentarian. My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley, who is my parliamentary neighbour, has had an outstanding wider political career, first as leader of a London local authority, for which he was properly recognised by Her Majesty, then in this place, starting on the Back Benches and then as a Minister with responsibility for local government, and after that, both in opposition and now, as an absolutely unstinting champion of children at risk. Mr Speaker, I know that you, along with the rest of us, have a special place for my hon. Friend for the work that he has done. You will recognise, as we all do, that when Members take up a cause and drive forward on a narrow agenda, it is remarkable how much progress they can make and how much influence they can bring to bear. The Bill—
Mr Speaker
Order. The Minister’s encomium to the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) will be appreciated by the hon. Gentleman and by many Members of the House. Of course it is perfectly proper for the Minister to spend some time focusing on the contents of the Bill, which doubtless he will do, but it would be very regrettable if the impression were to gain ground that he or others on the Treasury Bench were in any way reluctant to get on to the matters in the Bill to be promoted by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and I am sure that no such consideration is in the Minister’s mind.
Mr Blunt
You are of course entirely right, Mr Speaker. No such thought had crossed my mind; indeed, I have taken rather a limited interest in today’s remaining business because this is the only item on which I have focused my attention. My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley is also my parliamentary neighbour, so I hope you will be kind enough to allow me the enthusiasm with which I am able to present the Government’s support for the measure, and allow me to record my appreciation and that of the Government for the work that he has done in this regard. However, bearing in mind your advice, Mr Speaker, I am happy to turn to the Third Reading of the Bill before us.
Mr Blunt
The hon. Gentleman says I have a lot of pages to get through. Perhaps this is the moment to put on record my appreciation of the support that I have received from staff in the Ministry of Justice, who have helped my preparation and advised on the amendments that were tabled to the Bill at an early stage and which my hon. Friend accepted in Committee, which improved the Bill and allowed it to enjoy Government support.
As we have heard, the Bill’s purpose is twofold. It extends the offence in section 5 of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 to include cases of causing or allowing serious physical harm to a child or vulnerable adult, and it applies evidential and procedural provisions similar to those in section 6 of that Act to the extended offence. Extending the law in this way was contemplated when the original legislation was passed, and has continued to be urged since. The section 5 offence of causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable adult broke new ground, and the associated evidential and procedural provisions were controversial so a staged approach made good sense, but the existing provisions have worked as intended and we agree that the time is now right to extend them. Cases in which it is clear that serious harm suffered by a child or a vulnerable adult must have been sustained at the hands of one of a limited number of members of a household should not founder because there is insufficient evidence to point to the particular person responsible.
The crucial aspect of the section 5 offence is that the prosecution need not prove whether the defendant is responsible for causing or allowing the victim’s death, so the defendant will be convicted of the same offence whether he was personally responsible for the unlawful act that killed the victim or if he was a member of the household that failed to take steps to protect the victim when he knew, or ought to have known, about the risk of harm that existed in that household. This means that it is much harder for those co-accused of the death of a child or vulnerable adult to evade justice by virtue simply of remaining silent or of blaming each other. The section 5 offence has been used successfully in a number of cases, including the profoundly shocking one of baby Peter Connelly.
The section 5 offence is a serious stand-alone offence that carries a high maximum penalty—14 years’ imprisonment—but the aim was, and remains, that the person who caused the victim’s death should be identified and convicted of murder or manslaughter, if appropriate. Those offences, of course, carry life sentences. Accordingly, section 6 of the 2004 Act modified certain evidential and procedural provisions in relation to alternative charges in trials involving the section 5 offence. The modified procedures apply when a defendant is charged with the section 5 offence and with murder or manslaughter in the same proceedings relating to the same death. The procedures are intended to encourage defendants to give evidence, and to ensure that the more serious charge remains available if, during the trial, evidence emerges of who was responsible for the death. The Government consider the extension of those principles in the way proposed in the Bill appropriate and proportionate to the harm being addressed.
Restricting the extended section 5 offence to serious physical harm is consistent with the need to show a pre-existing risk of “serious physical harm” in subsection 5(1)(c) of the 2004 Act. The extended section 5 offence does not criminalise behaviour more broadly than is necessary. A broad offence that covered psychiatric harm, for example, could deter people from caring for vulnerable adults because they fear being prosecuted for failing to foresee a psychiatric injury. Similarly, restricting the modified procedures in clause 2 of the Bill to the more serious offences that are likely to be tried with the extended section 5 offence is appropriate, given the extraordinary nature of the provisions. A maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment for causing or allowing serious physical harm is proportionate when we consider the maximum penalties for causing or allowing death and for other offences of grievous bodily harm.
Concerns have been expressed about potentially criminalising those who are themselves vulnerable, such as victims of domestic violence; indeed, those concerns were raised during the passage of the 2004 Act, too. However, it is important to bear in mind the high threshold that must be met for an offence under section 5 to be made out. To prove the existing offence, it is necessary to show that the defendant either caused the death of the victim or allowed it by failing to take reasonable steps to protect the victim from a foreseeable risk of serious physical harm. What constitutes “reasonable steps” will vary, depending on the circumstances of the person and his or her relationship to the victim. The court will take all the circumstances into account.
If one of the defendants has been the victim of, or a witness to, domestic violence, the steps that the defendant could reasonably have been expected to take may be more limited than the steps that someone not suffering or witnessing that violence could reasonably have been expected to take. Depending on the facts of the case, the court may find that it was not reasonable for the defendant to take some of the steps that might otherwise have been available to them. The same principles will apply to the extended offence. In other words, the offence will be sensitive to the circumstances in each case.
As is the case with the existing offence, the extended offence will not apply when the serious harm resulted from an accident. Nor will it apply when there was one specific known risk within a household, such as a violent or abusive person, but the child or vulnerable person suffered harm from a different cause. The offence does not criminalise members of the household for allowing the serious harm if it was the result of an event that they could not have anticipated or avoided. The extended offence and procedures are intended, like the existing ones, to be a fair and proportionate package of measures.
As hon. Members know, the Government are committed to preventing the creation of unnecessary criminal offences. However, we consider the extension of the criminal law in the relatively limited way proposed in the Bill to be justified and appropriate. In reaching that conclusion, we have had regard to the possibility that those responsible for very serious injury may escape conviction; the vulnerability of both child and adult victims; and the special responsibility that members of the same household bear for the vulnerable with whom they live.
We have considered the evidence that is available on the harm that we are attempting to address by supporting this Bill. In 2010, chief Crown prosecutors in six Crown Prosecution Service areas identified 20 potential cases involving children, and three involving vulnerable adults, that could not be prosecuted under existing legislation, and that they believe could have been prosecuted under an extended section 5 offence, subject to the case meeting the two-stage test in the code for Crown prosecutors.
The Government have examined the Bill’s financial consequences for the Ministry of Justice, using two sets of data. The first set, to which I have referred, was provided by the Crown Prosecution Service and was about the potential number of cases. Our estimate, based on the CPS evidence, is that the annual cost to the Ministry of Justice of extending the section 5 offence will be in the order of £20 million a year. That is not an insignificant sum, but the measure will provide increased protection for some of the most vulnerable members of society. That is why the Government have decided to support my hon. Friend’s Bill.
My hon. Friend produced for us another set of data, supplied by a former member of the London Metropolitan police. Those data covered only children, rather than children and vulnerable adults, caught by the Bill. They suggested that the cost impact of the extended offence would, in a steady state of affairs, be £10 million a year. Having examined both sets of data, our view is that the cost is likely to be further towards £20 million a year, as we believe that the CPS study is rather wider and more comprehensive. There will inevitably be uncertainties about the case load and the likely sentence length that will arise from the new, extended offence, but I have set out the basis of our assumption.
The CPS data suggest that we are looking at around 150 cases a year, subject to the uncertainty to which I alluded. That forecast is based on the idea that the number of cases in 2010 will be representative of the number of cases going forward. The survey was undertaken by chief Crown prosecutors in Sussex, Northumbria, Merseyside, Norfolk, Hertfordshire and Thames Valley. They were asked to identify the number of cases in 2010 in which they had been unable to prosecute for grievous bodily harm or cruelty to a child, or grievous bodily harm to a vulnerable adult, because there was insufficient evidence on which of the members of a household who were in frequent contact with the victim was responsible for the injury. Those prosecutors identified a total of 20 cases involving children, and three involving vulnerable adults, that could not be prosecuted under any existing legislation, and which they believe could be prosecuted under an extended section 5 offence, subject to the case meeting the two-stage test in the code for Crown prosecutors.
Those areas collectively account for 15% of national Crown Prosecution Service business. If we extrapolate from those data, we get to a national figure of potentially 133 cases involving children, and 20 cases involving vulnerable adults. That is 153 cases in total, each of which, of course, will necessarily involve a minimum of two defendants. That is a broad estimate that makes assumptions about the volume of cases in the CPS areas that did not supply data, so the actual number of cases across the country could be larger or smaller. Of course, statistically, the size of the sample, as any statistician would make clear, brings its own level of unreliability to the data.
The data supplied to my hon. Friend indicate that over a three-year period from 2005-06 to 2007-08 there were 179 cases in which children suffered grievous bodily harm. Sixty-nine cases involved more than one suspect in a “Which of you did it?” scenario, and did not result in prosecution. According to the police, further scrutiny of those 69 cases identified at least 39 in which prosecution would have been probable had the section 5 offence been extended to include serious harm. That implies that there were about 13 cases a year over the past three years in London alone that would have been prosecuted under the extended section 5 offence.
We have been unable to verify the data—indeed, the police have acknowledged that they were partly supposition—which did not cover vulnerable adults. The CPS has looked at the papers provided by the police, but they contain insufficient information either to form a view on whether any of the cases could have been successfully prosecuted under an extended section 5 offence or in getting them to the CPS case papers. However, the financial implications are not insignificant if the Government are to accept the measure in the current financial climate. The fact that we are prepared to do so gives a sense of the importance that we attach to the measure and of our enthusiastic support for the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend. Members on both sides of the House have agreed to plug that particular gap.
You implicitly set me the challenge of managing to keep this going until 2.30 pm, Mr Speaker, but you will see that I have only managed to stagger on until 10 o’clock. Plainly, I did not begin to speak with any other intention, and it would be wholly improper to do otherwise. At least the time at which I shall conclude will satisfy you that I did not begin with any other intention.
Mr Blunt
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) tempts me, but I will ignore his remarks, as I wish to conclude by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley again, even at the risk of upsetting you, Mr Speaker, and by renewing my thanks to my officials in the Ministry of Justice who have assisted me in preparing the Government’s response to the debate. I am delighted to commend the Bill to the House, and I hope that its passage through another place will be equally successful.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Equality and Diversity (Reform) Bill
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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13:21 - The House divided: - Ayes: 0 / Noes: 0 - Question accordingly negatived.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
There are two things that my Bill seeks to do. First, it seeks to prohibit affirmative or positive action by public authorities, and secondly, it seeks to repeal the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002, which removed the selection of candidates from the usual laws against discrimination, and legalised discrimination in the form of all-women shortlists.
I believe in equality of opportunity and fair chances for all, which is why I am very much opposed to the concept of equality of outcome, which means fixing a result before a process has begun. In the case of jobs, that can take the form of targets or quotas and, ironically, it means that there cannot be equality of opportunity. As a Conservative, and not a Marxist, that is something that I do not support. Without fair chances, there is no fair system, and someone will always be discriminated against. The Bill seeks to take away the obsession with equality of outcome, which has replaced equality of opportunity and meritocracy. Just like democracy, meritocracy has its imperfections, but it is by far the best option in the end. Social engineering and fixing processes are not right, as they have in-built, deliberate unfairnesses, and consequently, they are not only imperfect but unjust.
I should declare at the outset that I am the parliamentary spokesman for the Campaign Against Political Correctness, an organisation that I commend to everyone. I can only assume, Mr Speaker, it is only an oversight that so far you are not a member.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Was the hon. Gentleman appointed or elected to that position?
Philip Davies
I think that I was given the position on merit, and I certainly was not given the job because I am a man. I do not think that I was given it because I am white. I would like to think that I was given the position on merit. Most Members know my views on political correctness.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
As my hon. Friend will be aware, many new Members may not know those views, so perhaps he would like to enlighten them.
Philip Davies
It is unlike my hon. Friend to be so off the ball as not to know my views on political correctness, but for his benefit, I make it perfectly clear that I abhor all forms of political correctness, the restriction of free speech, and the way in which we try to rig jobs to get a particular outcome. I believe in merit, and that merit alone is the best form of action. Political correctness annoys the vast majority of the public, but it is not only the silly things. People concentrate on them, but it is the sinister side of political correctness that I do not like, including the erosion of free speech and people being made to feel that they are some kind of bigot or are xenophobic simply because they express opinions that other people do not hold. That is why it is time for the silent majority to stop being silent and stand up against the scourge of political correctness.
The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
There is a genuinely serious and interesting debate here. For instance, 30 years ago, racist jokes were a staple for stand-up comics, and it was the early stages of political correctness that made that unacceptable. Would my hon. Friend like to see the return of the racist joke?
Mr Speaker
If the Minister would turn round and address the Chamber, we would be grateful.
Damian Green
Does my hon. Friend not agree that the return of the racist joke as a comedy staple would be unacceptable? He says that all forms of political correctness are unacceptable, but does he not think that that is pushing it a bit too far?
Philip Davies
No, I do not. I do not accept that political correctness has helped with those things. I think that political correctness hinders the process of tolerance, as it builds up resentment that would not otherwise exist. I totally disagree with my hon. Friend, as I do not think that political correctness helps with tolerance: it breeds intolerance and resentment, which is why I oppose it in all its forms. I am not here to defend people who are intolerant of others, as that is unacceptable. Equally, I do not believe that people should be intolerant of people who happen to have a different opinion from them, which we often see in people who try to preach the language of tolerance.
It is not a question of my supporting intolerant or bigoted people, but I do believe in free speech. If we believe in free speech, we have to believe that people have a right to say things with which we disagree and which we may occasionally find offensive. That is the whole principle of free speech. Free speech does not mean that people are free to say only the things with which we agree—that is a nonsensical definition. The fact that I do not happen to agree with what somebody else says would not stop me defending their right to say it.
The Bill specifically tackles one of the worst forms of political correctness, which is institutionalised political correctness. The Bill prohibits the use of affirmative or positive action by local authorities. So-called equality and diversity measures have taken over where common sense used to prevail. The tick-box mentality has far-reaching tentacles in our schools, hospitals and emergency services. Everywhere we look there is evidence of this obsession.
My opposition to the whole equality and diversity agenda is, first, that it is total nonsense in its own right. The terms “equality” and “diversity” have no real meaning, and they do not necessarily sit comfortably together. Secondly, such measures are highly discriminatory and do not sit well with those being discriminated against or, perhaps less obviously, with those supposedly benefiting from the discrimination. Thirdly, they are responsible for increasing, not decreasing, racism and sexism, in my opinion. Fourthly, they are a total and utter waste of our money.
So-called equality and diversity is nonsense because we are told that it is all about being representative and that it is essential for organisations and businesses to reflect the community they serve. It is rather patronising to think that the rules have to be rigged to enable women or ethnic minorities to get a job. People from ethnic minorities and women are more than capable and are sufficiently talented to get a job in competition with people who are men and white, on a fair and transparent basis. They do not need to have the rules rigged in their favour in order to get jobs, and it is patronising to suggest that they do.
The people who are really racist and sexist in this country are the ones who see everything in terms of race and gender. I do not. The gender, religion and sexuality of the person applying for a job should be irrelevant.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Why does the hon. Gentleman think women are so under-represented in senior positions in industry?
Philip Davies
If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will come to that later. He raises an important issue and I will tackle it directly. If he feels that I have not done so, I invite him to come back to me later and I will have another stab at it for him.
The idea of businesses and organisations reflecting the community they serve is nonsense. A certain proportion of our local communities are criminals. A certain proportion of people are sent to prison. Are we really saying that, because it is so important that all organisations and all businesses reflect the community they serve, a certain proportion of every organisation should be made up of criminals because they make up a certain proportion of the population? That is nonsense. Nobody seriously believes that every organisation should reflect the community it serves. That is just trite.
Nobody—and I mean nobody—who I know is remotely concerned when white men are under-represented, so the issue is not really one of equality and diversity at all. The aim is to make some people more equal than others. To illustrate the point, I note that there seem to be very few male midwives about, yet nobody, to my knowledge, has seriously suggested in the House that there should be positive action to try and ensure that 50% of midwives are male. Similarly, the number of white men, or indeed women, who work in Indian restaurants up and down the country is not an issue, nor should it be. The first thing that crosses my mind when I go into a south Asian restaurant is how good the chicken madras is and how well it has been cooked, not what sex or ethnicity the waiters and chef are. That is the way it should be.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Has the hon. Gentleman looked at what percentage of people who apply to be midwives are men, and what percentage of men subsequently get a post?
Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point. I will deal with it later. One of the things that my Bill tries to repeal is the legislation providing for all-women shortlists. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman might like to ask himself the same question when it comes to the number of women MPs—how many of those people put themselves forward to become MPs, against the number who are selected. He may find the answer to his own question in that conundrum.
Apart from those whom one would expect to oppose equality and diversity measures, there are many others whom those who push political correctness would rather sweep under the carpet, as their views are inconvenient to the argument.
Mr Nuttall
On a couple of occasions my hon. Friend has referred to political correctness. Will he provide the House with a definition of the term?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Political correctness is one of those things that is very difficult to define, but people know it when they see it. I will have a go for my hon. Friend. I would say that political correctness is the promotion of positive discrimination and the restriction of free speech carried out in the name of minorities, but usually initiated by white male middle-class lentil-eating sandal-wearing Guardian-reading do-gooders with too much time on their hands and a misguided guilt complex. My hon. Friend may have a better definition and I am happy for him to offer one. That is my initial stab at a definition of political correctness.
Mr Nuttall
Is it true to say, then, that the political correctness agenda is not set by those whom the white middle-class males seek to “protect”?
Philip Davies
That is my experience. Most of these measures are not perpetrated by the people whom they are supposed to help. On many occasions the people in whose name it is supposedly done are the ones who feel most patronised by it and find it most unhelpful. I encourage my hon. Friend to go to the website www.capc.co.uk which gives some examples. There is a section there called “Not In My Name” where many people say how unhelpful such measures are for those in their situation, whether they are people who are gay, women, disabled or from an ethnic minority. There are countless such examples.
Philip Davies
My view about freedom of speech is that anything should be able to be said, except—the law is very good on this—for example, something encouraging someone to violence. That is unacceptable. It is clearly criminal. But people should be able to express an opinion, whether I happen to agree with it or not. If we go down the line of saying that there are certain things that people should not be allowed to say, we face the question who decides that. Who decides what people are allowed or not allowed to say? Whose values do we accept? The hon. Gentleman may be content that everything he says falls within the parameters of what is allowed, but what happens when he wants to say something that someone else has deemed not permissible?
When we have got to the stage, as we have in this country, where ordinary decent people are petrified about what they say in case some zealot somewhere down the line takes offence at it, which is the situation that many of our constituents find themselves in, we have a problem. For the country that is for ever going round the world trying to promote freedom, we should be well aware that some of our constituents feel that freedom of speech is being eroded under our noses.
It is telling that we are very precious in the House about the fact that we are allowed to say anything in the House and we cannot be taken to a court of law on the basis of what we have said. Our freedom of speech is totally and utterly protected. The hon. Gentleman can say something incredibly controversial and he cannot be taken to court on the basis of what he said. However, he seems to be suggesting that he should be able to say anything he wants in here but that everyone else, including his constituents, should be subject to some kind of state control over what they can and cannot say. That is not the kind of country I want to live in, even if it is the kind he wants to live in.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman slightly overestimates the value of freedom of speech in the House. It is true that a Member could, in theory, say absolutely anything, but you, Mr Speaker, would upbraid them if they misused or abused that freedom, as happened earlier this year with a Liberal Democrat Member. There are also things that we are simply not allowed to talk about in the House, most notably the royal family and their activities.
Philip Davies
That is a separate issue, but the hon. Gentleman has made his point.
The point my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) made about how the people political correctness is supposed to benefit do not actually feel the benefit has also been made by Anjana Ahuja. Writing in The Times, she explains how her opinion was once sought by the newspaper’s executives on how to attract non-white writers. The paper planned to offer internships to ethnic minority candidates who had graduated in media studies. She says:
“It was well intentioned but misguided, I ventured, because I knew of no colleague whose passport to these venerable corridors had been secured by such questionable means. There were historians, linguists, lawyers, classicists, philosophers, biologists, physicists, even an Egyptologist—but no media studies graduates. My view was this: if a brown writer sails in on an easier ticket than a white wordsmith, The Times would be construed as patronising rather than progressive and the intern would struggle against whispers of lowered standards…which is why, in the miserable tale of Ali Dizaei, the Scotland Yard commander convicted of corruption, the fact that sticks out most is the continued, seemingly pointless and possibly harmful existence of the National Black Police Association. Substitute ‘black’ with ‘white’ and an outdated collective becomes an illegal organisation that is morally impossible to defend. Why partition members of the same profession along the lines of skin colour? I would not join an organisation for black journalists (or female ones) because its identity lies wholly in the exclusion of white hacks (or male ones).”
Batook Pandya, director of Bristol-based charity Support Against Racist Incidents, has said of a positive action scheme that meant that fire service open days were limited to ethnic minority recruits only:
“None of these open days should have been closed to white communities. I couldn’t give two hoots if they are white, black, Asian, male or female—they should simply be the best person for the job.”
Roshan Doug, writing in the Birmingham Post, has stated:
“I don’t want people promoted purely on the basis of the colour of their skin—call it ‘positive discrimination’ or something else. To me that’s rather patronising—as if Asians and blacks are a little more than token staff to appease the CRE… I would like to see the best men and women for the job.”
I believe that people are appalled, and rightly so, when they hear that a white person has been turned down for a job because of the colour of their skin. The same people would be appalled if anyone, whatever their ethnicity, was turned down for a job simply because of the colour of their skin. When that happens, it inevitably leads some people wrongly to conclude that the benefiting group in question has asked for this special treatment. As I made clear earlier, that is not the case at all. Some politically correct do-gooder has tried to do the right thing or, as is increasingly the case and perhaps more worryingly, someone is trying to comply with equality law.
Speaking for the Liberal democrats on the Second Reading of the Equality Bill, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), now the Minister for Equalities, said:
“I turn to positive action. It seems completely illogical that we should be allowed to fast-track the training of ethnic minority and women police, but not be allowed to fast-track their employment. The rebalancing of the workplace is hugely important, and I do not disagree with the Leader of the House’s vision of the bank boardrooms of the future. When both the genders make a decision, it is likely to be more balanced.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2009; Vol. 492, c. 581.]
That is just the sort of thing that winds people up. If people want real equality, it must be just that, not some groups being more equal than others. What has a young, white male ever done to deserve being turned away from a dream career in the police force simply because he is the wrong colour and the wrong gender?
Mr Nuttall
That is a very important point, because it seems to me that, where positive discrimination is being exercised, young, white males are today paying a price for the fact that their forefathers were not subject to those measures in years gone by. Why should that be so?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Perhaps we also ought to reflect on the fact that in many parts of the country the people who are finding it most difficult to get a job are young, white males from very poor and deprived backgrounds. They are among those who are finding it hardest to find employment. It must be a double kick in the teeth for them to find that they are denied the opportunity to attend a fire service open day simply because they happen to be white. I really do not know why on earth should have a Government who are prepared to sit and tolerate that kind of thing.
Mr Nuttall
Does my hon. Friend think that those feelings may have played a part in the riots that took place this summer?
Philip Davies
I am not sure about that, to be honest, because it is very difficult to know. As far as I am concerned, the riots were largely born out of opportunism and criminality. I would not like to provide any kind of excuse for the behaviour we saw, but I do not doubt that many people feel a resentment and frustration that would otherwise not exist. I do not know whether the riots had anything to do with it, but I certainly think that the worrying increase in support for the British National party in recent years was born out of such frustration. It is no good Members complaining about the rise of such wholly unacceptable parties and then pursuing policies that are meat and drink to those parties. If we are to stop people voting for the BNP, we must remove the frustrations that led them to do so in the first place.
The cost of all these equality and diversity plans, action points, schemes and training courses is immeasurable, but one thing we can be sure about is that they cost an awful lot of money. I would always oppose such needless expenditure, but at a time when people are losing their jobs, having to tighten their belts massively and fearing what the future holds, it is even more inconceivable that so much money is thrown down the drain each year in the public sector on the equality and diversity agenda. The Government Equalities Office spent a whopping £62 million in the year to March 2011, and other Government Departments have their own equality budgets on top of that. That is before we get on to local police forces, hospitals, fire brigades and schools, which all have to spend their money on equality and diversity measures, taking it away from front-line services.
To give one example, the North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust is looking for an equality and diversity manager, with a salary of between £30,460 and £40,157 pro rata. The job description is “to act as a lead within the trust on the implementation of our equality strategy and action plan. The successful applicant will have a key role in developing the trust’s approach to the new NHS equality and delivery system.” Who in their right mind could think that an equality and diversity manager in an NHS ambulance service is a priority at this time, compared with a nurse or another ambulance driver? When someone dials 999, they want an ambulance, not an equality and diversity officer. What on earth is there to consider for the ambulance service? Surely if someone is injured they are looked after irrespective of their gender and race. It is all a load of nonsense.
There is another such vacancy, at the University of Greenwich, which is selecting someone to be its Equality and Diversity Champion, salary approximately £40,000—well, at least students now know where their tuition fees are going. The job description states:
“You will be responsible for promoting an integrated approach to equality and diversity issues across the university, and provide Schools and Offices with a point of expert reference and guidance on equality and diversity issues. You will work with other university offices to continue to improve our performance as an employer and further develop disability access for staff. You will be an experienced equality professional with an ability to develop and implement policy.”
Mr Nuttall
Would my hon. Friend like to venture how anybody could become qualified as an “experienced equality professional”? It rather suggests that there must be a whole career path for equality officers.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right, and that is part of the problem we now face, because the equality and diversity industry—that is what it now is: an industry—is incredibly powerful. There is now a huge lobby, and so many people’s jobs depend on the industry, that it is difficult to tackle, because as soon as anybody tries to argue against the point of such things, those people descend on them. My hon. Friend may well find that, and I am sure I will at some point.
Those people descend on others like a ton of bricks, because, although they believe in equality and diversity, they do not believe in the equality or diversity of other people’s opinions; everyone has to agree with them on being against such things; otherwise, they are not entitled to that opinion at all. It always amazes me how such people, who always preach tolerance and diversity, are so intolerant of other people when they have an opinion that differs from theirs.
I prefer the person who drafted the advert for the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University NHS Trust, who at the end of it wrote:
“Usual rubbish about equality, equal opportunities employer etc.”
That just about sums it up perfectly.
Mr Nuttall
I appreciate that my hon. Friend, for reasons that I know not, opposed last week’s motion to allow electronic hand-held devices in the Chamber, but one great advantage of now being allowed such devices is that I was able immediately to follow his advice, go to www.capc.co.uk and access the website of the Campaign Against Political Correctness. On it, there can be found the “Not in my name” section, where Bolaji Alajija, a 42-year-old student nurse from north London, says:
“I don’t see why there is all the fuss. What’s the harm in having a black doll? It’s exactly the same as a white doll. People shouldn’t be so sensitive.”
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I remind Members that, although they are allowed to use iPads, they have to make a speech without continuously reading from them. I am sure Mr Nuttall will take that on board.
Philip Davies
I am very grateful for your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker, particularly as someone who voted against allowing these wretched things to be used in debates. If anyone was ever going to convince me that I made the wrong decision in that vote, however, it is my hon. Friend, who has gone to an excellent website, and I certainly commend him for doing so.
The second part of my Bill tackles the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002. I was not a Member when the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Bill was debated, but it will come as no surprise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to know that had I been I would have definitely opposed it. I have a great deal of time for many of my female Conservative colleagues, we have some extremely able MPs and, for the record, I have excellent female staff. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the greatest Prime Minister this country has ever had was, indeed, a woman, but I do not particularly care if the House is made up of 10% women or 90%. For me, that will never be an issue, so the fundamental premise of the 2002 Act will always be totally flawed.
The most important thing for me is not how many men or women are in Parliament, but how many Conservatives there are in Parliament, and I challenge anybody who is obsessed with the idea that the most important end in itself is that we have more women in Parliament. If, for example, a Conservative male fought a marginal seat against a Labour female, would any of my hon. Friends campaign for her on the basis that it was so important to get more women into Parliament, or would they campaign for him? I venture that they would campaign for him, because I am sure that for all Government Members, apart from of course the Liberal Democrats, it is far more important to have more Conservatives in Parliament than to be worried about how many MPs there are of a particular gender.
During the Bill’s Second Reading on 24 October 2001, almost 10 years ago to the day, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), now the Home Secretary, said:
“I shall be honest with the House. There was a time when I never thought that I would stand up in the Chamber and support such a Bill.”—[Official Report, 24 October 2001; Vol. 373, c. 334.]
I wish she had stuck to her earlier opinion, as it would have been the more Conservative thing to do.
While my right hon. Friend supported the Bill, the former Member for Maidstone and the Weald, Ann Widdecombe, did not. In the debate, she said:
“The Bill is fundamentally wrong. I must ask this question; are all the men in this place sound asleep? Do they realise what the Bill means for them? Have they thought that positive discrimination for women can entail negative discrimination for men?”
The irony is that, as those in the House at the time were already Members, they did not need to worry about candidates, so the Bill was effectively about kicking away the ladder of opportunity from men who had not yet reached the House. I wonder how those Members would have felt if they had been told, “Sorry, I know you would make an excellent MP, but we’re going to stop you applying for the seat that you’ve lived in all your life, because you happen to be a man.” How would any men present today have felt if such a rule had applied to them?
Ann Widdecombe also hit the nail on the head, when during the debate she asked:
“What would that mean for a man in that constituency who had given to his local council the same lifelong service that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Helen Jackson)—
at the time—
gave to hers”?
Mr Nuttall
I had the honour of standing against the then Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough in 1997. Does my hon. Friend agree that she was able to succeed in a northern, working-class city without any positive discrimination whatever?
Philip Davies
Absolutely. My hon. Friend is entirely right. People such as Helen Jackson made their way to Parliament on merit alone, and they should be commended for that. I am sure that they would not have wanted it any other way.
Ann Widdecombe went on to say:
“Let us say that the man had worked there and escaped from there, and that he wanted to apply for the seat when it fell vacant. He would not be able to represent the constituency if all-women shortlists were in operation.
“That would be the reality for men under this pernicious Bill, yet hon. Gentlemen welcome it as a great step forward. It is a massive step towards inequality for men, and the poor souls just let the women walk all over them. They do not appear to care what will happen to them.”
And Miss Widdecombe also said:
“I can tell the hon. Gentleman that when I entered a constituency selection committee and saw that most of the people there were women, my heart used to sink. We should not get the idea that discrimination against women is performed solely by men. It is not… If I had been in a selection committee anteroom with two men who had got there by beating off all the competition yet I was only there because a place had been reserved for a woman on the shortlist, I would not feel helped. I would feel humiliated, insulted and patronised. I am glad to say that my party never did that to me. —[Official Report, 24 October 2001; Vol. 373, c. 352-53.]
The fact of fewer women MPs is always blamed on discrimination, but in reality—certainly in the Conservative party—at the time of the Bill’s discussion roughly the same proportion of women who applied for seats were selected. The lack of women MPs is, therefore, much more to do with the fact that they do not put themselves forward.
As India Knight put it so well:
“I’ll tell you what the issue is with women in business or women and work”—
and this deals with the point that the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) made earlier—
“It is extremely simple. It is not to do with sexist dinosaur male bosses or with male-dominated industries crushing our genius. It is not to do with glass ceilings. It is to do, very straightforwardly, with the number of hours we are prepared to put in. If you’re happy to work a 16-hour day and never see your children, you too can become a master of the universe…. Few women are prepared to make that kind of sacrifice. This is entirely their right and good on them. However, it is surely both dishonest and intensely stupid to apportion blame—in the form of so-called corporate discrimination—to what is essentially a completely personal choice: power versus being there at bath time, conferences versus the park, business trips versus getting home in time for homework, giving ‘110%’ versus sleeping more than five hours a night.”
The words of India Knight address the point made by the shadow Minister.
The 2002 Act was supposed to be temporary, and apparently was supported on that basis. I do not know many “temporary” things that have run for more than a decade. As things stand, the Act has a further two decades to go, it having been granted a massive “temporary” extension in the recent Equality Act.
Some people will say that we need more women MPs so that we can be more representative and so that women’s issues can be addressed better. That is utter rubbish. It is ridiculous to suggest that women are more likely to be better represented by women and that men are better represented by men. I am very proud of the fact that I represent all my constituents—men or women—equally and to the best of my ability. I suspect—although I do not know for sure—that just as many women voted for me at the general election in Shipley as did men.
Mr Nuttall
Can my hon. Friend confirm that he also represents constituents of all races equally, despite being a white man himself?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that applies to all hon. Members. We treat all of our constituents equally and we represent all of them to the best of our ability, irrespective.
It is interesting that we keep hearing about “women’s issues” as this seems rather sexist and patronising. What are “women’s issues”? Many issues that are tagged as so-called women’s issues are also important to men. I have often heard that education is a women’s issue, but I would have thought that education was a family issue and was of just as much interest to men and fathers as to women and mothers.
I venture that the issues that a Conservative woman is concerned about are more closely aligned with the issues that a Conservative man is concerned about than they are with the issues that concern a Labour woman. The idea that certain issues are women’s issues is patronising and wrong.
Philip Davies
I have clearly been speaking in Swahili for the past half an hour. Yes, there is still sex discrimination, and it exists in the Act that my Bill is attempting to repeal. My Bill would make it illegal to have any form of sex discrimination. If that is the hon. Gentleman’s agenda, I presume that he will support my Bill in the Lobby, because it would prevent any positive action or discrimination. It would guarantee that there would be no sex discrimination at all. Jobs would be given on merit alone. I therefore look forward to his support in the Lobby later.
The argument that all of this is optional, and that no party is forced to discriminate, is also nonsense. All parties in favour of bringing the law in were obviously highly likely to use it once it was passed. I am sad to say that on some occasions even the Conservative party appears to have fallen into this socialist trap.
Some people will say that it is all very well my giving my views on this issue, because—as a white male—I have had it really easy. But I agree with Kenan Malik who says:
“I reject identity-based representation not only because the idea that one should be represented only by one’s own kind is, and always has been, at the heart of the racist agenda, but also because such representation acts as an obstacle to what you call ‘a genuinely participatory democracy’.”
I always find it strange that people can say that they are not sexist and racist, but happily support measures and notions that are just that.
The public’s view of all-women shortlists is also clear. At the 2005 general election Labour lost one of its safest seats, Blaenau Gwent, because of the party’s politically correct obsession with all-women shortlists. Those who voted in the election were not just men: it was clearly offensive to women too. Where does it all end—quotas and targets for people based on their sexuality, their eyesight, their hair colour or their star sign? If not, why not? Why limit it to just gender and race? Why not go the whole hog and have discrimination based on people’s background or hair colour or any of these other things?
I wish to play my trump card against opponents of this part of my Bill, and that is Baroness Thatcher. No whingeing, relaying of statistics, bleating on about unfair treatment or complaining about sexism can explain away Margaret Thatcher. Not only did she get selected as a candidate, which is apparently so difficult for women without this House rigging the rules in their favour, but she managed to become a Minister and, as we all know, a long-serving and excellent Conservative Prime Minister.
Philip Davies
The point is that women can—although not in his party or in the Labour party. In our party, almost 40 years ago, a woman was quite capable of getting to the top on merit alone. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman thinks that the women in his party have not been good enough to lead his party—
Philip Davies
If the hon. Gentleman thinks that the women in his party are more than capable of being leader, why have they not become leader? Is he saying that his party is sexist and does not allow women to become leader even though they are good enough to be leader? If he is saying that, he should not tarnish the Conservatives’ reputation by trying to impose ridiculous laws. He should tackle the sexism in his own party instead, if that is why he supports this nonsense.
Margaret Thatcher was leader of the Conservative party—the very party that is constantly accused of sexism and appears to want to beat itself up about it—more than a third of a century ago. It gets even better, because she was clear, years after leaving office, that all-women shortlists should be avoided. In her book on statecraft she says that
“the use of quotas applying to the appointment or promotion of individuals because of their collective identity or background is an unacceptable incursion on freedom, however well-intentioned the motives. Nor does it help those who are its intended beneficiaries. Individuals from these groups may well feel patronised; their professional reputations in posts which they would anyway have attained on merit are diminished, because they are thought to occupy them by special privilege; and they are likely to become targets of resentment and possibly even ill-treatment.”
If any male Members are still in favour of all-women shortlists I say what I have always said to them—“Come on. Do the honourable thing and, instead of shafting other men who are trying hard to get into this place, put your money where your mouth is. If it is so important to you that you want to support legalised discrimination, go ahead, resign your seat so a woman can be selected in your place.” That is the best thing that proponents of this approach could do, but it is amazing how few of them are prepared to do it. They are not so keen that there should be more women in Parliament that they are prepared to make space themselves to allow a woman in—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) says that I am talking drivel, but I look forward to him resigning his seat the moment the House rises so that a woman can take his place. Or is it that women should represent only other constituencies, not his? Until hon. Gentlemen are prepared to take that step, I am afraid that people will see through it as gesture politics of the worst possible kind.
People can say I am misguided, that I am missing something, that I need to be educated on the benefits of positive action and positive discrimination—but what would they say to all the people I quoted, who are from the very groups that equality and diversity moves are supposed to help? Would they say that those people were wrong and that they just do not get it, either, whatever “it” is?
This is a case of the emperor having no clothes. Most Members want to be seen to be in favour of nice-sounding ideals, and many confuse political correctness with doing the right thing. They do not want to be the ones to say that they do not get the whole equality and diversity agenda or, worse still, that it is having a negative effect on race relations and good community cohesion. I, however, am prepared to say that the emperor has no clothes. The whole concept of equality and diversity is, at best, a mistaken attempt to pursue a fantastical idea of equality, but, at worst, a dangerous piece of social engineering that encourages and praises discrimination against certain groups of people based on things they cannot change.
I do not believe that this is the right thing, and I certainly do not believe that it is a fair thing—and I am not alone. There are many, many people who agree with me. In an ICM poll, a massive 80% of people in Britain said that they were fed up with political correctness. Members will be delighted to hear that the poll was completely representative and covered a very diverse range of people. The vast majority of people in all categories said they were fed up with political correctness, including women and people from all ethnic origins.
Britain can truly hold its head up and say that it is not racist or sexist only when people are given jobs on merit, and merit alone. People should be given jobs regardless of their sex, age, race or sexual orientation, not because of any of these factors. This Bill gives the House a chance to vote for something that can undo one of the biggest inequalities around. It can vote to reintroduce fairness, to remove the clear injustice of equality of outcome in the name of equality and diversity, and to promote real equal opportunities for all. I commend the Bill to the House.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
I have been following the speech by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) very closely and taking a considerable number of notes. Unfortunately, I had to deal with something in my office but, alas, I could repeat almost word for word what he has said; however, I will not.
In my 17 years in the Commons, this is the most reactionary, right-wing, regressive Bill ever put to this House in a serious speech. The hon. Gentleman will probably take that as a compliment. However, there is something more profoundly serious at stake, because he represents a growing view within his party that the minor progress that we have made on equality in recent years has gone too far and should be reversed. The whole history of British legislation is precisely to use the power of Government and state to redress imbalances and unfairnesses, first, between those who did and did not have the vote—between the aristocracy and the non-noblemen in our communities—and, over time, through other positive action to ensure that there was full equality for all.
Some of the hon. Gentleman’s proposals are ridiculous. He suggests that there can be no “affirmative or positive action” in order to help people depending on their “sex”—I think he means gender. Presumably, that would outlaw the recruitment of women into convents because they were nuns and not men, or perhaps rugby players should now be hired not on the basis that they are trained, fit, male athletes, but that they are women.
The very first pamphlet I ever wrote as a political activist—
Mr MacShane
May I just make my points, and then I will give way? I do not mean to be discourteous, but I want to be brief because I am conscious that other people want to speak on other issues.
The very first political pamphlet I wrote in 1978 was an appeal to the BBC and other media organisations to hire journalists who were not white—at the time, we would say they were from the Asian or Afro-Caribbean community—because there was not a single byline reporter or presenter of that description on TV, despite the fact that by then we had hundreds of thousands, if not more, among our fellow British citizens and journalists I worked with, but in subordinate roles for which they had been able to offer themselves. I am glad, 30 years later, that that is not the case. We do not have a mono-coloured BBC or ITV or bylines in all our great newspapers evidently comprising only sturdy British citizens.
Mr MacShane
If it is on that point, of course I give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Philip Davies
It appears that the right hon. Gentleman has form in this regard. He was a white journalist who was insistent that somebody else should have to give up their job in order to make way for somebody from an ethnic minority, but apparently he was not volunteering to fall on his own sword. Now he is advocating that we should have more women in Parliament, and yet he still refuses to fall on his sword to help to make that happen. If he feels so strongly about it, why does he not have the courage of his convictions, put his money where his mouth is, and start doing the right thing?
Mr MacShane
The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong. I did fall on my sword, in the sense that the BBC made me do so by liberating me from its employment at the time. Whether I was replaced by a journalist from the black and minority ethnic community, I do not know. The point is that we expanded journalism, and yes, we went in for positive discrimination in the sphere of broadcasting, and I am very glad about that. Certainly, when the time comes for me to leave my position as MP for Rotherham, I will be delighted if there is an all-women shortlist. The real question that the hon. Gentleman’s party has to ask is why, even with the all the people put on to the A-list, there are still so few women sitting on the Conservative Benches.
Mr MacShane
I will take just one more intervention, because I want to make my contribution very short.
Mr Nuttall
Going back to the question of rugby players, does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that women’s rugby is a very popular sport?
Mr MacShane
Women’s rugby and football, and other sports, are very popular. On the strict reading of the Bill, it would be illegal for Rotherham, Wasps or Harlequins not to entertain the notion of a woman rugby player, but I do not want to go too far down that road.
The notion that I find exceptionally offensive is that we make no efforts to help people with disabilities. We are facing thousands of people being fired from Remploy because of the wicked actions of the governing party. These are people who will find it incredibly difficult to get jobs elsewhere in the normal labour market. Quite rightly, in the 1940s, after the war, we honoured our war veterans by saying that those who came out of the war with particular disabilities could work in normal jobs and have the dignity of labour rather than living on handouts and the dole—but according to this wretched Bill, that, too, would be illegal.
On religion, we had an interesting discussion this week in Education questions about whether Cardinal Vaughan school in London can maintain its Catholic identity or, as some might wish, should no longer do so. I think that my many Jewish friends would find it very offensive, but oh so typical of the chauvinist, nationalist spirit that now reigns in the Conservative party, that they cannot define who comes into their schools on the basis of religion.
The whole balance of legislation, going back to the abolition of the slave trade and Lord Shaftesbury stopping children going up chimneys, was precisely to alter law to give particular protection to people who would otherwise be unfairly exploited on the grounds of their socio-economic status. I find it profoundly distressing that in October 2011 we are seriously being asked to rip up every decent parliamentary value that we and our predecessors have fought for over the years.
This is a Friday morning debate, and we all know that these Bills never go anywhere, but this Bill is symptomatic of the entire approach of the Conservative party. The Conservatives are refusing to support the International Labour Organisation convention on domestic workers because that, too, is aimed at giving a little bit of protection to people of a particular socio-economic and sex, or gender, status who are facing the most appalling exploitation in this and in other countries. Conservative Front Benchers have nothing to do with this Bill, of course, but the hon. Gentleman speaks for much of today’s Conservative party. That is why the quicker it is replaced in government by a party or parties that support the standards and best values of Britain, the better.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I have listened carefully to what has been said in the debate, because I knew that it would be enlightening. I will make a few short points.
Of course I agree that people should secure employment and be promoted on merit. Unfortunately, often that is not enough to secure equal opportunity. Some people, such as Baroness Thatcher, may be exceptions to the rule, but very few people are exceptions to rules.
On positive action, I think it is entirely appropriate that, over a number of years, the Metropolitan police have taken measures to try to ensure that the police force in London is representative of London’s communities. I think that that makes them more effective and more acceptable to the public as a whole.
On the point about midwives, the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) needs to consider whether there is a significant number of men who apply to be midwives and are refused on the basis of their gender, or whether men simply do not apply for those positions because they prefer to apply for others.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Liberal Democrat party. Clearly, it is a source of some embarrassment to my party that we have failed to secure the election of any members of black and ethnic minority communities to Parliament.
Mr Nuttall
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. He is making some important points. I urge him and his colleagues not to feel embarrassed if they have arrived at this place on merit. There is no reason to feel embarrassed for that.
Tom Brake
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I would like to think that we have all arrived here on merit. The issue is that there are obstacles that often prevent others from arriving here on merit. He will know that, in politics, it is often helpful to have a network of people within a political party whom one knows and who are supportive. Often, women candidates or those from BME communities do not have the networks to help them progress in a political career. As he knows, there are other issues, such as financial issues. Anyone who wants to be a parliamentary candidate requires a certain amount of funding to support their political campaigning. That is not available to all.
I welcome the fact that the Liberal Democrat party has a leadership programme that aims to support women candidates and those from BME communities, to ensure that they are better prepared and better supported—financially, if necessary—so that they can compete on merit with other candidates.
Mr Nuttall
Would those funds be available to a young, aspiring, white, male politician from a working-class background or who is on benefits?
Tom Brake
I am grateful for that intervention, because the hon. Gentleman has given me the opportunity to confirm that that support is available to the sort of person he describes. That is because we recognise that people from poorer socio-economic backgrounds struggle to get elected as Members of Parliament.
Philip Davies
The right hon. Gentleman is hitting the nub of the issue. Does he think that the Conservative party, for example, would be much more diverse if it replaced Rupert from Kensington and Chelsea with Jessica from Kensington and Chelsea, which is what the legislation he is defending seeks to do? Does he not think that it would make the party more diverse to replace Rupert from Kensington and Chelsea with George from Newcastle? That point is not addressed by the legislation that he is defending.
Tom Brake
If the hon. Gentleman will excuse me, I will allow him to push for the particular balance that he would like to see in the Conservative party.
The hon. Gentleman gave a description of people who worry about equality and diversity issues, which I thought was quite an accurate description in some respects of those who are obsessed with political correctness. He said that they tend to be white, male and have too much time on their hands. I would add that they mourn the loss of empire, are bitter at the loss of their undeserved supremacy and are stuck in the last century but one. That would be an accurate description of those who are obsessed with political correctness.
The Bill has one merit, in that it allows us to debate these issues. We should acknowledge that although merit is a fine thing, in practice there are many fields of life in which merit is not sufficient to ensure that people make the progress that they should be allowed to make. I therefore hope that the Bill will make no further progress.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is a great joy to be here at such an exciting moment in the parliamentary calendar. I sort of congratulate the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on bringing forward the Bill, although it is a bit of a fib of a Bill because it is entitled the Equality and Diversity (Reform) Bill, whereas it should, of course, be called the Political Correctness Gone Mad (Abolition) Bill.
Chris Bryant
There is clearly significant prejudice against the hon. Gentleman in the Table Office. I should say that that prejudice is entirely shared by those on the Opposition Benches, and I suspect that it is shared a little by those on the Liberal Democrat Bench, which is a rather singular Bench today.
I start from the fundamental principle that we were all created equal. That comes from a religious position, although in my theology I am very heterodox—perhaps unusual for me. I believe that all human beings were created equal and that we, as politicians, should be seeking to ensure that that equality is reflected in the way that people are able to live their lives. I know humanists who come from a completely different perspective, but who end up at the same point of believing that we are all equal and that that equality should be matched in the way that we structure society.
The truth of the matter is that the world is not equal. There is inequality not only between rich people and poor people in a country, but between rich parts and poor parts of a country and between rich countries and poor countries. My fundamental assumption, therefore, is that it will always be a struggle to try to achieve equality, and not an easy one. One has always to try to match equality with fairness. Sometimes, when one is trying to achieve equality, which might be fairer in one regard, one ends up with another form of unfairness.
The hon. Gentleman, in the way that he styled his comments and in the way that he styles his politics, runs away too much from the desire for genuine equality in society. I will raise with him some work that was done a few years ago. It showed that if there are two five-year-olds with the same IQ, in so far as IQ can be measured at the age of five, and one is in a family where the household earns more than £50,000 and the other is in a household that earns less than £15,000, five years later—this is quite frightening—the two 10-year-olds will not have the same IQ; the child in the richer family will have a higher IQ. Labour Members are passionate about ensuring that the child in the household with an income of less than £15,000 has a chance of realising their genuine potential. They should be able to retain the IQ that they have at the age of five until they are 10, 15, 50, 65 or 75. That is one of the many problems that I have with the hon. Gentleman's Bill.
Philip Davies
I am sure we can all identify with the issue that the hon. Gentleman raises, and that we all feel equally exercised about it, but surely the way to tackle it is through the education system. We must ensure that it looks after people of all abilities. Surely the solution should not be to allow the education system to perpetuate the current situation, then rig the rules for selecting people for jobs at a later date.
Chris Bryant
Indeed, many of us who represent valley seats in south Wales, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), who is in his place, know the long history of people fighting for better education precisely as a means of trying to rebalance and recalibrate that inequality in society. People do not need to have seen the play or film “The Corn Is Green” to know the educational ambition that often exists in many valley constituencies or other areas in the country with very high levels of multiple deprivation. All too often, however, it does not seem that the same educational opportunity is afforded to somebody in the Rhondda as it is to somebody in Chelsea.
I see the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) in his place—as a Whip, he is now unable to speak, so I can tease him remorselessly. Since he dispatched his close friend the former Defence Secretary from his post specifically so that he could become a Whip, I shall now enjoy teasing his silence. My point is simply that those in Chelsea, who have much greater financial resources, can ensure that they live in a good catchment area so that their child can go to a better school, or can afford to send their child to a private school. I was very fortunate that members of my family paid for me to go to a private school, but that is not available to the vast majority of my constituents or, I suspect, to any of them. That is why ensuring that the educational system genuinely provides equality of opportunity is vital.
The most distressing thing that I have come across in my time as an MP was early on. I bumped into a girl of 17 in Tonypandy and asked her what she wanted to do when she left school. She said she wanted to be a barrister, and I said, “Brilliant, how’s all that going? What are you going to study at university?” She said, “Well, I want to be a barrister, but I’ve been told by the careers service that girls from the Rhondda don’t get to be barristers.” All too often such depression of ambition can be self-perpetuating in communities, and that is why many of us believe in an aspirational form of socialism so that everybody has a chance to prosper.
Mr Nuttall
Does that not actually reinforce the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that the education system is at fault? The careers adviser should not have said that to someone who had that ambition. He should have encouraged her and provided her with the help and support she needed.
Chris Bryant
Absolutely—I agree with the second part of that intervention, although not with the bit where the hon. Gentleman encouraged me to agree with the hon. Member for Shipley. Incidentally, I prefer the former Member for Shipley, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), and I very much hope that he will have an opportunity to present his rather ludicrous Bill later.
Philip Davies
I am sure the vast majority of my constituents also prefer the former Member for Shipley and regret the fact that they let him go when they had the opportunity to keep him.
I do not know whether the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was watching “Daybreak” this morning, but if he was he will have seen my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) promoting her initiative called “If Chloe Can”, which is designed to raise the aspiration of young girls in particular who have the poverty of aspiration that the hon. Gentleman talks about. Surely that type of initiative, which the Prime Minister supported yesterday with a reception at No. 10 Downing street, is a more important way of dealing with the problem than rigging the selection rules for jobs.
Chris Bryant
There seem to be an awful lot of Ruperts and Jessicas and Chloes in the hon. Gentleman’s life. I think that the only Rupert who has ever crossed the border into the Rhondda constituency was Rupert Bear.
One of my experiences was as a curate in High Wycombe, a community that has a strong ethnic mix. A large community from St Vincent has been there since just after the second world war, and a large community from Kashmir and a large Polish community arrived in the middle of the second world war. I found that, all too often, in an unequal society the people who know how to shout the loudest get the best resources from national and local government. One of my problems with the educational system in this country, and for that matter with the national health service, is that all too often money has not followed need but has followed the loudest speeches. That is why I believe that we need equality legislation, and why I supported the legislation that the deputy leader of the Labour party brought forward in government.
Mr MacShane
I am following my hon. Friend’s speech with great interest, and I hope that it is only in its initial stages, because the Bill that follows really is a ghastly assault on privilege and fair play.
Is it not a paradox that, even with equality legislation, every single person currently in the Chamber is white, middle-aged and male? That is not the case with those slightly outside the Chamber in the civil servants’ box or the Serjeant at Arms’ seat, but it is—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. This is not relevant. We are dealing with the Bill, and Members should be speaking to the Bill. I am sure the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) does not want to get led all over the place. We have already seen that coming from the Government side, and I certainly do not want to see it coming from the Opposition side.
Chris Bryant
Thank you for that advice, Mr Deputy Speaker, although I think the hon. Member for Shipley will be absolutely scandalised to have been described as coming from the Government side.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I am not sure about being middle-aged, either, but do carry on.
Chris Bryant
I think you are middle-aged, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I am pretty much there as well.
The problem that I have with the contention made by the hon. Member for Shipley is that I still think there is a great deal of prejudice in British society. It is complex and arises in all sorts of ways. I have seen in my constituency problems at school for young black kids in a community that is almost entirely white, and sometimes black teachers have had a really rough time because of the kind of language that people use. Language that would no longer be heard in most other parts of the country, where there is a racial mix, is sometimes still used.
I would also point out that the suicide statistics for gay young men in particular are still quite phenomenal. A young gay lad is six times more likely to commit suicide than his heterosexual counterpart, and I would love to see the end of homophobic bullying in schools. It will be very difficult to achieve, because people are not born with a pink triangle on their forehead or whatever—it is something complicated that they have to discover for themselves, and children can be very cruel. Tackling such prejudice will always be one of the important things for Governments.
Philip Davies
I absolutely accept that there is still discrimination in society, and I certainly did not say that there was not. The point of my Bill is to try to remove it. My question for the hon. Gentleman is this: how do we tackle that discrimination? Surely the solution cannot be reverse discrimination in favour of people who were discriminated against in the past. Surely it is to remove all forms of discrimination.
Chris Bryant
Well, no, not quite. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the ambulance service, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned earlier, turned up at the household of a young Muslim woman who was in labour and having a difficult childbirth, and had absolutely no understanding of what was acceptable in a Muslim household. It would not be able to do its job properly. That is precisely why all public services need to be culturally sensitive not just to how Britain has always been but to how it is today.
When homosexuality was illegal—that era is fortunately long gone—and when David Maxwell Fyfe, as Home Secretary, ran a particularly nasty campaign of entrapment of gay men, some friends of mine, a couple who had lived together for many years, were burgled, but because they had only a one-bedroom flat, they were terrified of bringing the police round, because they knew that the police would investigate them for buggery rather than investigating the burglary.
I am afraid that there is a lack of understanding in far too many public services of how work could be improved by sensitivity to the ways other people live their lives—I would not say that there is deliberate prejudice, out-and-out racism, homophobia or sexism. In addition, many minority communities are simply forgotten by local authorities and the health service when they make their spending plans. That is one issue that needs to be addressed and one reason why the Bill is wrong.
Incidentally, there is significant cultural prejudice against the Catholic Church. I passionately disagree with the Pope on just about every issue, starting with transubstantiation. However, all too often prejudice against Catholics in society is quite marked and that is why it is not a good idea to ask people to give the name of their primary school when they are applying for public sector jobs. People will say, “Aha, this person went to the Cardinal Vaughan school! We’re not very keen on Catholics, so we won’t shortlist them.” It is illegal to do that, but it would be simpler and better if that element were taken out of the equation.
The hon. Member for Shipley said that he wanted a tolerant society. That phrase is very often used—I believe that an Archbishop of Canterbury started calls for a tolerant society in the 1960s. However, I dislike the concept of a tolerant society, because I think that a respectful society is far more important. “Tolerance” implies that although someone completely and utterly disapproves of someone who lives in a different style—
Chris Bryant
I will tolerate the hon. Gentleman in a moment. Unfortunately, “tolerance” smacks of reluctance.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman starts tolerance in the 1960s, because surely John Locke did that in his essay on tolerance. The theme has run through Whiggish behaviour, of which he is symbolic, ever since.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I cannot see anything about tolerance in the Bill. I think we will stick with the Bill.
Chris Bryant
There is nothing in the Bill about tolerance. Indeed, one of the main problems with it is that it does not even aspire to tolerance, which is one of the many reasons why I oppose it.
The hon. Member for Shipley said—I am not paraphrasing, but accurately recording what he said—that women and ethnic minorities do not need the rules to be rigged in order to get jobs. He feels that the current legislation is patronising, because women and members of ethnic minorities are perfectly able to get jobs. I am not sure that that is true. In fact, the evidence shows that, all too often, the rules are effectively rigged so that women do not get jobs.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether Labour men who supported all-women shortlists were surrendering themselves and falling on their swords. I merely point out that we are all about to lay down on our swords, because we voted through the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. I have no idea whether there will be a Rhondda seat or a Greater Rhondda seat, incorporating most of Caerphilly—that was my suggestion. I made no objection to all-women shortlists in the Labour party in 1997. I stood in High Wycombe, which was almost impossible for the party to win, and my election was not anticipated, although the Conservative party so completely destroyed itself in the 1997 election that I very nearly was elected.
All-women shortlists were then rendered illegal by court action. Interestingly, 10 Welsh Labour MPs stood down or retired before the 2001 election, and every single one was replaced by a Welsh Labour male MP—not a single woman was selected in any of those 10 historically safe Labour seats. I rejoiced that I was selected for the Rhondda in 2001, to many people’s surprise, not least my own, but it is none the less important that political parties have the power to retain all-women shortlists.
Philip Davies
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could explain why no women were selected. Is it the case that none of those women who applied for those seats was good enough to be selected, or is the Labour party in Wales riddled with sexism and so overlooked better-qualified women to select men? Perhaps he should sort out the problems in his own party and not impose those ridiculous laws on the rest of us.
Chris Bryant
No. Choosing all-women shortlists is entirely up to political parties. Labour chooses to use them.
The hon. Gentleman asked why men so often get selected for safe seats, which is a problem for the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Labour. There are all sorts of complex reasons. Part of the problem is how we do business in Parliament, and part of it is how politics is presented in the wider public domain. There could be other prejudices out there. However, the Welsh Labour party has been immeasurably improved by the fact that we have a large number of women representing not only seats in the Welsh Assembly and the Welsh Assembly Government, but heartland seats in Parliament.
The hon. Gentleman says that he does not care whether 10% or 90% of MPs are women, but I care. I want to strive to make Parliament as representative of the wider population as possible. That cannot be too narrowly arithmetical, but I want to see the full diversity of Britain in the Chamber. Otherwise, the work that we do is undermined. If people do not hear their voice expressed, there will be a problem. Incidentally, by way of another criticism of myself, there are probably too many MPs of a particular social background and too few of a manual working class background, unlike the position in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s.
Chris Bryant
I will move on a little if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.
We in the Labour party need to address those issues. Many Government Members criticise Labour’s relationship with the trade unions, but I make absolutely no apology for it. Many of the working class people who have come to the House have done so through the trade union route. They learned in the trade union movement how to do their politics and put their arguments, and they were financially supported so that they could put themselves forward for parliamentary nominations. They were selected on that basis, which is why I wholeheartedly support the relationship between the trade unions and the Labour party.
The hon. Member for Shipley seemed to suggest that there should be absolutely no limits to free speech. I mostly agree with him, and I believe in a free press. I worry sometimes about the direction of the Leveson inquiry. In my work in relation to the News of the World, my intention has never been to dismantle investigative journalism, which is an important part of how we do business and ensure our democratic rights. However, the hatred and the bigotry that some express sometimes goes beyond the pale. I want less hatred to be poured into the pool of hatred that is already out there. Some of the hon. Gentleman’s arguments are similar to those that Ann Widdecombe used when she was in the House. I found that they simply added to the sum total of bigotry rather than diminished it. We should all be striving to diminish it, and I am glad that we have laws that prevent the incitement of not only racial hatred but religious and homophobic hatred. As we have seen over recent years, that legislation has been all the more important in areas where there is a real social mix.
I also believe that Parliament has been immeasurably better for having had more women in it in recent years. I honestly think that were it not for the arrival of so many women some issues would not have been explored and addressed with anything like the seriousness with which they have been. One example is domestic violence. For centuries, a woman was regarded merely as a chattel or another household good for a man to do with as he pleased. Those laws were changed in the middle of the 20th century, but only in recent years did the police and the law start to take domestic violence seriously. I am certain that in my constituency and many others a large proportion of violent crime relates to what happens in people’s households or between domestic partners. I do not believe that the police would have the powers, will or resources to deal with that today had it not been for the arrival of significant numbers of women in Parliament.
I should note that today is the anniversary of the arrival of the first women peers in 1958. There were four of them, and they were a slightly strange lot. One was married to a viceroy, another was the daughter of a viceroy and another was a countess, so it was not exactly equality as we like to see it today. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), also known as the hon. Member for the 15th century and for “Question Time”, obviously likes that, however.
I am glad that the Government are moving forward with the issue of succession so that the prejudice—stemming originally from common law, not statute—that the succession should be subject to male-preference primogeniture should be changed. I also hope that the Government are moving—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We are drifting well away from the Bill. We enjoy the history lesson, and it is good that a lot of history is coming out today. However, it is certainly not relevant to the Bill; we are certainly drifting way off course. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will bring us back on course.
Chris Bryant
I do apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is just that clause 2 is entitled “Definition of ‘affirmative or positive action’”. The Prime Minister is seeking to change the legislation at the meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government next week and I worry that that could be seen by the hon. Member for Shipley as positive discrimination on the grounds of sex, listed in paragraph (b), and religion, in paragraph (g). I would hope that the hon. Gentleman was in favour of equality in the succession.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I wonder whether it might be right to look at the matter the other way round. Is this actually a rather dangerous Bill that would impliedly repeal positive discrimination in favour of Protestants in the order of succession—and, of course, of men as well? Has the hon. Gentleman considered that point?
Chris Bryant
I do worry about the prejudice in favour of Protestants, although the issue is even more complicated. It is not quite in preference of Protestants, but in favour of somebody who is able to take communion in the Church of England and subscribe to its articles of religion, a difficult thing even for most Anglican clergy, as well as be a member of the Church of Scotland. That is quite a tall ask.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that clause 2(1)(g) might be problematic for true equality. Incidentally, I would not often say this but I support the striving for equality in the House of Lords advanced at present by Baron Fellowes, who is worried that his wife will not be able to inherit her title, because women in this country are not allowed to inherit titles.
There is still a problem in this country. Only 22% of Members are women. In the Labour party, all-women shortlists have played a significant role in trying to bring about a more equal and representative House of Commons. When we move forward to an elected second Chamber, I hope that we will be able to use the same legislation.
Philip Davies
Does the hon. Gentleman not believe that in a democracy, whoever is in this House should be determined by the electorate—not by him, imposing quotas on who should be here and who should not and what the make-up of the House of Commons should be? Surely that should be decided by the electorate and the electorate alone.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is then arguing for a system of primaries in every constituency at every election. I have not heard him call for that. I may have missed one of his speeches; I have tried to listen to all of them, although sometimes I wander off. That is not the parliamentary system that we have grown up with. Under our system, local political parties tend to choose their candidates and the candidates are then presented to the electorate. In the end, of course, it is up to the electorate. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the situation in Blaenau Gwent. A rather more complex set of issues arose there in relation to why we lost the seat. I merely point out that we now have extremely fine new Members, both in the Welsh Assembly and here.
I still think that we will need measures to ensure that the House is more representative than it has been thus far. The hon. Gentleman referred to what he called his “trump card”—Mrs Thatcher. I think that that was deliberate incitement; he was trying to get the Opposition to rise to the bait, and I am happy to do so. Unfortunately, Mrs Thatcher did remarkably little for women. If anything, she is the rule that proves that the exception proves the rule.
In Mrs Thatcher’s period of government, the effect on women and household incomes, especially among the poorest, was devastating. Many communities that might have hoped for an opportunity to rise on the ladder of prosperity at the time were cast into the outer darkness. What she brought about was not, as she proclaimed, in the words of Francis of Assisi, peace, unity and concord, but division and discord. For many of us in the Opposition, she is not a trump card at all; if anything, she is a joker.
We believe that the equality legislation that we put in place was important and has enabled Parliament to be more representative than it was and to address issues that it would not otherwise have done. In the end, however, hon. Members will have to make a decision. Do they believe that the equality of humanity should simply be left to the market or do we need intervention before breakfast, before lunch and before dinner? I fall into the latter category.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
We have heard that the great lady, the noble Lady, the Lady of the Garter, Baroness Thatcher, is not to be called upon in this debate, so let us call upon Queen Elizabeth I instead. As she so memorably said, though her body might be weak, she had the heart of a king—and a King of England at that. She did not need special measures, advancement and protection to get her going; she did it through her own vim and vigour, her force of character and her great and noble ability that set the path for this great country for centuries to come.
Damian Green
I merely make the point that had the genetics fallen in a different way, she would never have become Queen, because of discrimination within the system of primogeniture.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
But she did become Queen. That is the point—that she was able to become queen because our constitution has always evolved gently and happily so that more and more people become included in it without necessarily being given a helping hand or a lift up. This is the key point to the Bill: we want to have equality of opportunity as an objective, but not equality of outcome. I think that is what has always divided the Conservative—the Tory—from the socialist: the socialist always wants equality of outcome. Socialists want to meddle and muddle; they want to socially engineer—or perhaps to engineer socially for the benefit of Hansard who do not like their infinitives to be split—and they want to make sure that they direct and control so that everybody should be made into a neat little machine. We have had this terrible socialist proposition recently that the elderly should sell their homes so that they can be put into properties that have fewer rooms. That is what it is all about; it is about controlling people, guiding their lives and taking away their freedoms.
When it comes to this Equality Act, to which my hon. Friend’s Bill would make splendid improvements, with some caveats that I may come to, it is desperately condescending to women. They do not want to be looked down upon as if they cannot cope. I am going to speak of the example of my younger sister Annunziata Rees-Mogg, who was the candidate for Somerton and Frome, where she fought a noble campaign. I discussed this with her and I said, “Actually, for the political advantage of the Conservative party,”—I am all in favour of the political advantage of the Conservative party—“perhaps we should have all-women shortlists.” It might not have helped me but it would have helped her and it might have answered a political problem for the party. She could not have been more strongly against it because she viewed it as condescending. She wanted to get the nomination for a seat on her own great merits—and very considerable her merits are, too. She did not want to be told she was a poor little thing: that is the sort of line an elder brother can use to a sister but it is not the sort of line that should be used by political parties or by the state. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) points out, from a sedentary position, that she lost. Well, she did because the Labour vote went down to 4%. Labour lost its deposit and that was to its horror when it discovered that the Lib Dems then supported us, so the aim to keep the beastly Tories out by voting Lib Dem failed miserably. Without that, she would have won by a landslide and I expect that next time around that will be the happy occurrence.
It is condescending to women to assume that they cannot cope without special measures and to people from what are genuinely minorities, because of course women are not a minority. Some of the time they are in the majority, although not at birth. There are more live births of boys than of girls, but women tend to live longer and therefore can easily be a majority of the population.
We have discussed Catholicism. The hon. Member for Rhondda said that he disagreed with the Holy Father on transubstantiation, but I cannot think why. It is clearly a very sensible and right doctrine. However, I do not think, as a Catholic, that I have any fear of discrimination, nor ever have had, although it did happen once to my father—my noble kinsman, as I ought to call him. He was going for a Conservative selection many years ago and was asked by one of the members of the committee if he would be able to go to the lord lieutenant’s funeral as he was a Catholic, at which point another member of the committee pointed out that actually the lord lieutenant was the Duke of Norfolk, so there would be absolutely no difficulty in my father’s attending his funeral. But he did not need special measures to help him. He had to get on and, if there was discrimination in those days, to overcome it, to strive and move forward—as, of course, Margaret Thatcher did and Nancy Astor too.
We have seen in the development and evolution of this House that it has become broader based. One might think that the days when it was simply knights of the shires, when the borough Members had not been let in, were glorious days when the knights of the shires could come in wearing spurs, as I believe we still can, to indicate that they represented a county.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I do not think we are going to have an argument and a history lesson across the Chamber. I am sure the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) will either intervene or be slightly more quiet.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Mr Deputy Speaker, I was shocked at such a sedentary intervention. I have never known such things in this House before.
But things evolved and we let the borough Members in, and we now look upon them as equals.
Chris Bryant
That probably takes the biscuit for lèse majesté—“We let the borough Members in”! I know that the hon. Gentleman has been here for a very long time in some shape or form, but to suggest that we have now become representative when he himself is the son of a peer seems a little odd.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his typically helpful intervention. Of course sons of peers should be represented, and they are a minority too. Perhaps as a son of a peer I should be given special help and intervention to help me to get through all the prejudice there is against sons of peers—not that I would ask for it or that I have ever noticed a particular prejudice against sons of peers. Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope that such prejudices never fall upon so distinguished a figure as yourself either.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend may have seen the press reports today regarding possible new legislation to allow females to take hereditary titles in the House of Lords. Does he agree that this is the way forward?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Well, I do not really like change as a general rule, and I would be very nervous about intervening in the line of succession to the throne. I think that the line of succession to the throne works very well and changing the Canadian constitution is a particularly difficult thing to do. With Her Majesty’s fantastically successful visit to Australia, we want everything to have a settled continuity of that succession. However, I think that the world has changed and that it may not be unreasonable to allow hereditary titles to pass through the female line, particularly if they are in danger of becoming extinct, because it would be a great sadness for titles to die out over succeeding generations with no new hereditary peerages being awarded. I must briefly declare an interest, because my mother-in-law would be able to resurrect a title if this law were to be changed.
Chris Bryant
Could she not just petition the Queen to allow her to hold it sui juris?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I think we are getting into too much detail about one’s relatives and we are also drifting, once again, away from the Bill. As much we are all enjoying it I think we had better come back to the Bill.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for bringing me back on track. I remember that there was a wonderful slogan of the Conservatives at one point, “Britain’s on the right track. Don’t turn back.” That is really what we want in speeches from this side—we want to stay on this right, Conservative track. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley is very much on the right Conservative track with his Bill about looking at opportunity, not outcome, and to place on public authorities a duty of fairness to behave properly and not to pick winners. We know that the state has tried picking winners in the past and it is not a good policy, because the state is not going to do that well. It wants to do things on merit.
I agree very much with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley on political candidates as well. They ought to be the ones the local parties want and not people sent down from on high. If the local parties want a man, that is up to them, and if they want a woman, that should equally be up to them. Of course we want to ensure that there is a very fine list of the best possible candidates that they can choose from, but they should have the ultimate choice and the ultimate authority. Those of us who believe in localism would like the law repealed so that it is unlawful to discriminate in that way. In safe seats, such as Rhondda, discrimination could give somebody a seat for life, with a significant income, which would be unfair to people who might have done the job equally well and may have been more wanted by the electorate to whom they were accountable. Parties need to be conscious of their power in safe seats.
There is, as always, a but. I was concerned about the point made by the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) who said that the Bill would outlaw nunneries because they could represent discrimination by a public authority in favour of women. I am not sure that point is right, because if Her Majesty’s Government or any other public authority—the Charity Commission, for example—were to support nunneries and monasteries equally, there would be a balance, and as there may be more monks than nuns in this country it might be positive discrimination in favour of men, if it were any discrimination at all. I do not think that criticism of the Bill actually holds. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Rhondda want to speak? It is very difficult to pick up all these sedentary interruptions, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman does not have to pick them up; he can choose to ignore them.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Your guidance is helpful to the nth degree. I am greatly appreciative of it and I shall now make sure that I imitate the deaf adder: charm the hon. Member for Rhondda ever so nicely, I shall not be able to hear. We remember the deaf adder from our scripture lessons; as the hon. Gentleman is a former vicar, he will no doubt be able to call it to mind.
I am slightly concerned that the succession to the Crown could be affected, but I think the Bill could be amended to make it absolutely clear that there will be no effect on the succession and that the discrimination that remains is germane until such time as it is settled on its own in a different way—if ever it is to be changed. As a Catholic, I do not think it is a good idea to open the succession to Catholics; it would make no sense to have a Catholic as the head of the Church of England and it would be a pity to disestablish the Church of England by accident.
I am broadly in support of the Bill. The real principle is that we must not be condescending to people who can do it for themselves. We must embrace freedom and liberty. We must let people have every conceivable opportunity and then let them strive, go forward and work to achieve what they can and what they will. We must not say that we have to make sure that the number fits the box. We must not take the broad principle, to quote a former Labour Cabinet Minister, that the man in Whitehall really does know best, because the man in Whitehall does not know best, and even if he becomes a woman she still does not know best. It should be left to individuals, and we should avoid this socialistic tendency to try to get equality of outcome, which we will in fact never achieve.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
It is always a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who spoke with such authority on the matter. I am a sponsor of the Bill and am obviously rising to support it.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for bringing us the Bill. Millions of people across the country will be saying, “Hooray” this morning because at last somebody has started to roll back the tide of political correctness. I am pleased to be joined in support for the Bill by my right hon. Friends the Members for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) and for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), and my hon. Friends the Members for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady), for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and for Kettering (Mr Hollobone).
I want to follow up one or two of the points made by earlier speakers. The first is about racist jokes. Over the years, the nature of comedy in this country has changed, but we must not think that because we have changed it means that racist jokes were restricted only to this country. I understand that in Canada jokes were often told about the Newfoundlanders—the Newfies. No one took offence. It was part and parcel of their way of life—their culture—just as we have Irish jokes. It is not demeaning in any way.
Like the Bill’s promoter, I am a Yorkshireman and we also have jokes about Yorkshiremen. Jokes about sections of the community are common. I have often heard my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs tell jokes about Lancashire, and, indeed, I have heard him telling jokes about people from Sheffield and Rotherham. Nobody took offence at that.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
They may not have taken offence, but as we both know, there is nothing about jokes on the face of the Bill. I know that an argument is being built, but I think we can move on from the jokes now—much as I am tempted by the mention of Yorkshire.
Mr Nuttall
Earlier in the debate the question was asked: can we take equality too far? Does it mean changing the nature of our society? Can we take free speech too far? In the same way, when I was young—
Mr Nuttall
Thank you. We always used to talk of lollipop ladies. Nobody ever suggested that there ought to be a recruitment drive for lollipop men and nobody thought it was demeaning in any way that there were lollipop ladies and not—as far as I was aware at that time—any lollipop men.
The Bill has only two main parts. The first two clauses relate to the prohibition of positive action by public authorities and the third clause repeals the legislation allowing for all-women shortlists, which I shall come to later. Clause 1 sets out the details of the prohibition of positive action and clause 2 contains the definition of the action that would be outlawed. Positive action, as it is often called, differs from positive discrimination in that it is actively intended to increase the representation in a work force where monitoring has shown a particular group to be under-represented in proportion to the profile of either the total work force or the local or national population.
Positive action permitted by the present anti-discrimination legislation allows a person to provide facilities to meet the special needs of people from particular groups in society in relation to their training, education or welfare and to target job training at people from certain groups that are under-represented in a particular area of work or to encourage such groups to apply for such work. That raises some interesting and difficult questions. What is the area in question that should be considered? If a business or a public authority is situated in the south of England in a predominantly ethnically white area, should they be exempt from the legislation? Well, of course they are not exempt, and it must be difficult for some public authorities in certain areas to meet the quota because it is impossible for them to decide what area they cover. Does one look at the town in question, or the county, or the country, and if so, which country? Does one look at the United Kingdom as a whole or just the make-up of England? Of course, many areas covered by the present legislation are not easy to determine.
An example is sex or gender, to which the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) referred. Very often, it might not be possible to know whether one has a certain number of gay or heterosexual people in one’s work force. Indeed, I would submit that the information is of absolutely no consequence or relevance whatever.
I should perhaps declare that before I entered this House, I was for many years an employer, so I know all about the rules and regulations that were imposed on my practice as a result of equality legislation. Before any of the legislation was in place, just off our own bat, I had a work force who were 95% female, so in fact, in my work force, men were not equally represented. No one suggested to me that when I came to employ another secretary, legal assistant or solicitor, I should start to select men; I always selected the best person for the job.
Chris Bryant
Whether a large proportion of the people the hon. Gentleman employed were men or women is neither here nor there. If, in putting together his pension package, he made provision for people to inherit only the pension of a spouse, rather than the pension of a civil partner or a person of the same gender, he would have been advancing a prejudice.
Mr Nuttall
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I believe that it should be up to the pension-holder to determine to whom their pension should go; it should not be anyone else’s decision. No question of prejudice should arise, as it should be up to the individual to determine. I do not see that there is anything wrong with that. It is perfectly all right, and it does not need any legislation to allow that to happen.
Chris Bryant
But it has needed legislation to make sure that the vast majority of company pensions operate in that way. Of course the hon. Gentleman is right to say that it should be for the individual to decide to whom their pension goes, but in the vast majority of cases, the old assumption was that it went only to a spouse, and not to anyone else. It required legislation to change that.
Mr Nuttall
That is a slightly different point. The hon. Gentleman’s point about pensions could easily have been dealt with by the individuals concerned dealing with the trustees of the pension scheme, and explaining to them that they wanted to change the rules of the scheme to allow their pension to go to a certain other individual. Of course, very often, there was no one forcing people to join the pension scheme; if they chose to join it, so be it. We now have a free market in pension schemes, so in the situation that the hon. Gentleman describes, there would have been a gap in the market and, in a free market, someone would have sprung up to provide pensions for people in exactly that position.
Mr Nuttall
It could have happened.
My previous comments related to positive action. Positive discrimination, affirmative action or discrimination generally means choosing someone solely on the grounds of their gender or racial group, or for any other factor, and not for their ability. We are now at the crux of the matter. I believe that, by definition, as soon as one positively discriminates in respect of any given group in society, one is automatically discriminating against another group. That cannot be right. The Bill makes a good start in tackling the problem, but it is just the first step on the long road to ridding this country of the culture of political correctness and dismantling the whole industry of diversity and equality.
There could be no better time, given the economic situation, for that to gather pace. I know from my experience as a practising solicitor that many small and medium-sized enterprises struggle under the burden of the legislation. We are not there yet—there is a long way to go—but if we could begin to remove the legislation that applies to public authorities, that would be a step in the right direction. All our public services are looking for savings but, because of the way in which the law is framed, the one area in which they are not allowed to look for them is diversity and equality legislation. They have to keep their army of officers to comply with the law and the tick-box legislation.
Under the Disability Discrimination Acts, positive discrimination in favour of disabled people is not unlawful, and if disabled people meet the minimum criteria for a job, they are guaranteed an interview. The only other exemption relates to the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002, which the Bill seeks to abolish. The Equality Act 2010 includes a provision giving employers the option, when faced with two or more candidates of equal merit, of choosing one from a group that is under-represented in the work force. There is a whole Government Department—the Government Equalities Office—that exists solely for the purpose of issuing and enforcing guidance, red tape and regulations on that legislation. It has published guidance for employers on how to make those changes and use them in everyday life. The provisions on positive action in recruitment are, I am pleased to say, entirely voluntary but, as we all know, the public sector has seized on them with great glee. There is no requirement for an employer to use either the general provisions or those relating to recruitment and promotion.
Positive action in that regard will be used in cases in which an employer reasonably thinks that people with a protected characteristic are under-represented in the work force or suffer a disadvantage connected to that protected characteristic. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley made clear, the problem is where we draw the line. Why not, for example, protect and give help to those who are particularly tall?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
What an excellent idea—there should be special benefits for everyone over 6 feet.
Mr Nuttall
I am pleased that my hon. Friend is interested in this matter. If someone, for the sake of argument, is 7 feet tall—there are people of that stature in society—an employer might secretly think that they had better not take on such an employee, because they might complain about the size of the company’s doorways and it would have to spend a fortune going round the building and enlarging all the doors. One can easily see how an argument could be made for heightist, stoutist or shortist legislation to be introduced—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I am sure doors matter to people who are over 2 metres—usually it is 6 feet 6 inches—but I cannot see the connection between the Bill and where we are being led, so I am sure the hon. Gentleman would like to bring us back now to the Bill.
Mr Nuttall
I will indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker. The point I make is where do we draw the line? I will leave—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. To help the hon. Gentleman, I have drawn the line at doors.
Mr Nuttall
I entirely accept that, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I will leave that point there.
The new positive action provisions make it clear that employers must not adopt policies or practices designed routinely to favour candidates with a certain protected characteristic of whatever nature, even where there is evidence of under-representation or disadvantage. All suitably qualified candidates must be considered on their individual merits for the post in question. Current positive action provisions in employment relate only to training or encouragement—for example, mentoring schemes for ethnic minority staff where they are under-represented in senior roles, or open days to encourage women applicants in male-dominated sectors. This merely serves to upset and discriminate against all those who are not allowed to take part in such training. Why should they not receive the same training just because of their racial background, sex or particular individual characteristics?
The Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002 was originally presented on 17 October 2001. The key objective of the Act was to enable a political party, should it wish to do so, to adopt measures that regulate the selection of candidates for certain elections in order to reduce inequality in the numbers of men and women as candidates in that party. In south Yorkshire in the 1980s I was regularly involved in the selection of parliamentary candidates. Of, say, 50 applications that we would typically receive for a seat, there would be on average 45 from men, three from women and two from ethnic minority candidates. It follows, therefore, that with 90% of the applications being from white males, very often a male was selected, but we were selecting purely on merit.
There were many examples, and there continue to be many examples in the Conservative party, of women who have succeeded on their merits. I know from Mrs Nuttall that she feels extremely patronised whenever there is any talk of special treatment being given to women.
Mr Nuttall
Mrs Nuttall does not mind special treatment of her from me—I think she expects it—but as a general rule that reflects the view of many women. If they are given special treatment, they feel that they are being patronised and that they can make it on their own merit without it. That applies equally to those from ethnic minority backgrounds. Many Members of this House have made it on their own strength without special treatment.
Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)
I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. Given the changes that his leader has instituted in his party, is he saying that there are Members on the Conservative Benches—women or members of ethnic minorities—who have not got here purely on merit?
Mr Nuttall
I am not saying that at all. There is a risk that others might regard the winner from an all-women shortlist as not having succeeded against the whole field of candidates, which is self-evidently true.
Mr Campbell
Is that the hon. Gentleman’s view? If so, would he care to name any of them?
Mr Nuttall
As far as I am concerned, all Members on the Government side of the House have got here on merit, but there are plenty of Members who succeeded in their applications as a direct result of the all-women shortlists that the Labour party introduced.
Mr Campbell
Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the changes instituted by his leader to try to make his party more representative have been a waste of time?
Mr Nuttall
I believe that all selections should be open to all candidates, regardless of their race, sexual gender or any other merits, that political parties, wherever they are in the country, should be free to choose who they want on merit and that the 2002 Act should be repealed, which the Bill seeks to do. The key objective of that Act was to enable a political party, if it so wished, to adopt measures to regulate the selection of candidates, but I do not believe that that is the right way forward. According to the explanatory notes that accompanied the Act, in the 1996 case of Jepson v. the Labour party an employment tribunal held that section 13 of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 covered the selection of candidates by political parties, which therefore constrained their ability to take positive action to increase the number of women elected to this House.
Damian Green
For the avoidance of doubt, given the interventions from the Opposition, I am happy to confirm that the Conservative party has never used all-women shortlists and that they fell into disrepair in the Labour party after an all-women shortlist produced a male candidate who happened to be the leader of a trade union.
Mr Nuttall
I am most grateful to the Minister for that intervention. The Opposition say that they support all-women shortlists, but as Members on both sides of the House will be aware, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) was selected as a candidate despite his gender. It is perhaps one of the biggest ironies that he was selected even though his wife, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), seems so keen to have all-women shortlists in all constituencies.
Philip Davies
Is it not also ironic that the Labour party has brought in all these massively talented women, apparently, through the use of all-women shortlists, but when it wanted to select a new leader it seemed to bypass all that talent that had been brought into the House and plumped for a man?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and perhaps the Labour party will consider selecting its leader on a rotational basis, with a male leader being followed by a female. As far as I am aware, the Labour party, unlike our party, has never had a female leader; perhaps it is time for half a dozen consecutive female leaders.
Chris Bryant
We have actually had two women leaders: my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) was briefly leader after John Smith died; and we had an interim leader in the form of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), the current deputy leader. More to the point, however, considering the trump card to which the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) referred—Baroness Thatcher—is it not surprising that not a single other woman has chosen to stand for the leadership of the Conservative party since?
Mr Nuttall
That is not surprising; it is just a matter of fact. The two examples to which the hon. Gentleman refers from the Labour party were of course simply temporary leaders, who held the post until they could be replaced by a man. We should read nothing into the fact that, since the great lady ceased to be leader of our party, we have not produced a further female applicant for the leadership. I am sure that in years to come females will apply and be candidates in such elections.
Chris Bryant
I do apologise; I misled the House. Ann Widdecombe stood, but she was voted off quite fast—as she was off “Strictly”.
Mr Nuttall
I will leave that there. We do not want to go into “Strictly Come Dancing”. I will not be tempted down that road.
It has been suggested that the most effective way to attract female parliamentary candidates is to introduce a new system of flexible parental leave, so that aspiring female politicians do not have to choose between a career and family life. But, as we know from experience, Margaret Thatcher entered Parliament when her two children, Carol and Mark, were just six years old. That did not put off Margaret Thatcher, and there is no reason why it should put off anyone else some 50 years later.
Those who consider putting themselves forward to become a Member of Parliament have to make a choice, as we all do, men or women, and it would be sexist if that choice did not apply to men, too. Hon. Members, surely on both sides of the House, recognise that participating in running our country is no ordinary job.
What started in the 2002 Act as a temporary measure that would last only until 2015 has been extended by an enormous 15 years, so the use of all-women shortlists will be permitted right up to 2030. It has been suggested that this debate provides a suitable opportunity for the House to consider whether all-women shortlists have been effective, and perhaps it is time for us to do so. They have produced women MPs, but that is quite obvious. What we do not know is how many good male candidates have been prevented from getting to this House as a result of the application of the Act.
The Leader of the Opposition, on the subject of all-women shortlists, recently said:
“People were sceptical about all-women shortlists but I think they have actually made an enormous difference to the numbers of women in Parliament.”
If that is not a statement of the blindingly obvious, I do not know what is. If all-women shortlists are employed, by definition that can have no other effect than to produce more women candidates and, if applied across the board, that would inevitably lead to an increase in the number of women MPs. That is hardly a great achievement to cite.
It has also been suggested that we need to take action to increase female representation on boards of companies, but it should be up to companies themselves to determine whom they have on their boards. I have no reason to believe that they do not choose the best person for the job. I read the other day that there has been an enormous increase in the number of women directors in the City of London. However, the percentage of the total has hardly increased at all, because what tends to happen is that companies appoint female directors to tick a box. We have almost reached “token woman syndrome” again.
The positive action in recruitment provisions in the Equality Act 2010 are entirely voluntary. There is no requirement for an employer to use either the general provisions or those relating to recruitment and promotion. I may not want to see any legislation to ban discrimination, but equally I would not wish to legislate to encourage discrimination. The Bill would even things up. It is not clear that we have seen any improvement in how companies operate, but at a time of increased difficulty for public spending we have to look at ways of cutting back, and pruning the whole area of equality and diversity legislation would be a good starting point.
Mention was made earlier of the “Not In My Name” section of the Campaign Against Political Correctness website, and I have one or two other quotes from people who do not feel that the whole equality industry has helped them. Mark Grohen said:
“As a gay man I’ve always thought myself rather lucky...I do not need to be told by politicians and do-gooders that I’m either vulnerable or incapable of looking after myself. I really dislike people’s obsession with what I do in the bedroom: I prefer it not to be the reason why I’m hired for a job.”
Chris Bryant
But unfortunately people are still murdered for their sexuality, as happened in public only a couple of years ago in Trafalgar square. That is why we need to ensure that the police services ensure that everyone is protected, not just the mainstream and the majority.
Mr Nuttall
The shadow Minister makes a perfectly valid point. I entirely agree that the police have to protect everyone equally, regardless of the colour of their skin, whether they are gay or straight, wherever they come from in the world, male or female. However, the existence of all the equality and diversity legislation runs the risk of upsetting those sections of society who feel alienated and discriminated against by that legislation. It does not help—in fact, it is counter-productive—for the Act to remain in place.
A lady—a female—who is half Chinese, said:
“For those of us who have pursued equality for so many years, it is disheartening to see how little has been achieved. Equality is not political correctness. In a truly equal country, the best candidate gets the job even if it is the Anglo-Saxon chap. There is a still long way to go.”
Paolo Fragale, who is a gay man of mixed race, said:
“As a gay man of mixed race I vehemently oppose positive discrimination and quotas. Apart from the fact that I find them patronising, I feel they are counter productive and only serve to further segregate people.”
Rachel Watts summed up the feeling of many women when she said:
“The majority of women in favour of ‘helping hands’ and special treatment are the ones who will gain the most from them.”
Perhaps the most difficult and sensitive area is those who are disabled. Frederick Bird said:
“As someone registered disabled, I would not object to not being given a job that I was not able to do due to my disability. Being realistic there are things that I cannot do and no p.c. rubbish can alter the fact.”
Mention was made earlier of the help that disabled people need. I am pleased to say that the Government, under the Work programme, are dealing with this as it should be dealt with—on an individual basis. It is simply not right to write off great sections of the community, whether they are blind or disabled in any other way, and say, “I’m sorry—you’re not able to work because of your disability.” We should do all we can for those who have a disability to give them tailored, specialised, individual help to get them back into the workplace, but that cause will not be helped by some artificial means of employing quotas.
My final quote comes from Denise O’Brien, a disabled female person who is also a lesbian. She said:
“Political correctness is making artificial differences between people unnecessarily. Special treatment for minority groups in a lot of cases breeds resentment from those not included who have genuine need of help.”
The Bill is a good start on a very long road that we have to go down. It perhaps says something about where we are with the equality and diversity agenda that in the recently published new edition of “The Solicitor’s Handbook”, chapter 2 is on equality and diversity, and it comes before the chapters on client confidentiality and conflicts of interest. I am sure that when someone goes to consult their solicitor they are more interested to know that their business is being dealt with confidentially and that there is no conflict of interest than whether the company in question has the right sort of tick-box approach to equality and diversity. This is a burden on small and medium-sized enterprises. It is no business of the Government to interfere in this way in how businesses are run. It provides an unnecessary burden in terms of the training that they have to do on a yearly basis in order to be able to demonstrate that they are complying with the diversity agenda.
In conclusion, this matter is perhaps best summed up by the quotation from George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”:
“All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”
It cannot be right that we need this legislation in the 21st century. Everybody should be treated with respect and tolerance. I have no objection to using the word tolerance. If it is used in its normal, everyday meaning, everybody knows that it means tolerating people and treating people from different backgrounds with respect. By starting along the road of removing some of the politically correct nonsense legislation, we would be doing our constituents a great service. I warmly commend the Bill to the House. I trust that it will receive resounding support on Second Reading, have a smooth passage through this House and the other place, and reach the statute book, much to the delight of my constituents.
The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
This debate has been even more educational, informative and entertaining than I had hoped and expected when I learned that I would be responding to it. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for the absence of my hon. Friend the Minister for Equalities, who is a greater expert on these matters than I am.
This debate has stimulated a discussion on the use of positive action in our society, particularly by public authorities and political parties. It provides me with an opportunity to explain the principles and the practice of positive action as it is used by the Government, and to clarify how it can be lawfully and helpfully used in different situations by public and private organisations, service providers, and political parties, which are specifically raised in the Bill.
I will start by correcting two small errors that have crept into the debate. First, my hon. Friend said that no one cares about any form of apparent discrimination against men. He raised the interesting and relevant subject of midwives. However, there is currently a debate about the paucity of male teachers in primary schools and that is a serious issue. I am sure that many hon. Members from all parts of the House have had the experience that I have had of going into a small primary school in their constituency and finding themselves the only adult male on the premises apart, usually, from the caretaker. We all recognise that that does not necessarily contribute to the quality of education. My colleagues in the Department for Education are concerned about this issue. It gets to the nub of the debate, because if a head teacher in such a primary school were faced with two candidates of equal merit, one of whom was male and one female, a lot of us would think it sensible for them to pick the male candidate. No doubt, the female candidate would feel that that was unfair and unnecessary discrimination, but in many ways it would be common sense.
The second correction is, again, purely factual.
Damian Green
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman before correcting one of the mistakes that he made.
Chris Bryant
I thought that the Minister might be about to do that.
I remember on one occasion a bishop saying to me that he was very worried because he had to appoint a clergyman in a deanery where all the clergy were gay, and he thought that it might be discriminatory if he did not appoint a gay vicar to the parish just because all the other vicars were gay.
Damian Green
I think that it would be foolish to enter into Church politics in that way from this Dispatch Box, so I will merely note what the hon. Gentleman has said. I wanted to correct him on a point that was perhaps not central to his argument. In referring to my former neighbouring MP for Maidstone and the Weald, Ann Widdecombe, he said that she had been voted off “Strictly” very early. That is not true. She went a very long way in “Strictly”, and indeed the BBC was panicking that she was going to win.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Not being an entrant of “Strictly”, I can be strictly authoritarian on this—we are going to stick to the Bill.
Damian Green
You did. I will very happily return to the Bill, Mr Deputy Speaker.
The aim of the Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley is to prohibit the use of positive action by public authorities in recruitment and appointment processes, and to repeal the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002. I shall start with the principles behind what the Government do.
Our approach to equality is built on two principles—equal treatment and equality of opportunity. I entirely share my hon. Friend’s dislike of equality of outcome as a political project. He said that it was misguided, and I certainly agree. However, the Government’s approach is built on the principles of equality of opportunity and equal treatment. That means building a society in which no one is held back because of who they are or where they come from. It means not uniformity but, rather, giving everyone an equal right to be treated fairly as an individual.
In our society, people can face discrimination and disadvantage because of who they are and where they come from. The Government need specific action to deal with such problems. However, the key to taking forward our equality strategy is to demonstrate that equality is for everyone by making it a part of everyday life. It is about changing culture and attitudes and tackling the causes of inequality rather than introducing more legislation. That is why we are working with business, local communities and citizens to promote good practice, transparency and accountability.
We can look at the history and concept of positive action. It is, of course, not new in UK legislation. The general positive action provisions have been in use for more than 30 years, having first been introduced in the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1976. Those provisions, which are sometimes called the training and encouragement provisions, have ever since allowed employers, both public and private sector, to take a range of voluntary—I cannot emphasise that word strongly enough—positive action measures to address disadvantage and under-representation in the work force.
There are many examples of such training and encouragement measures by employers, including the provision of mentoring and shadowing opportunities, the targeting of advertisements at particular groups by encouraging them to apply for advertised jobs, and the holding of open days solely for people with a particular protected characteristic that is under-represented in the workplace, in order to offer them an insight into the selection process that they would have to go through when applying for employment with that employer.
Over the decades since those provisions were first introduced, they have become both well understood and well used. The Equality Act 2010 simplifies and harmonises them, so that unlike previous legislation, under which positive action applied in slightly different ways to different protected characteristics, it now applies in the same way to all of them as long as the relevant criteria for their use are adequately met. For those who are confused by the jargon, a reference to “protected characteristics” means a reference to someone’s age, disability, marital or civil partnership status, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation or gender reassignment if applicable. What is new under the 2010 Act is that it extends positive action provisions to the limits permissible under EU directives, which allow member states to adopt specific measures to prevent or compensate for disadvantages linked to any of those protected characteristics. It introduces new provisions specifically related to recruitment and promotion, not recruitment and appointment as suggested in my hon. Friend’s Bill. He is slightly off the mark with that.
There is a real need to tackle under-representation and ensure that everyone takes part in key areas of our society, in civil, economic and political life. One could cite a range of statistics to show why positive action can be helpful in tackling the under-representation and disadvantage that are suffered across the board in some of the more desirable strata in our society. For example, there are only three ethnic minority High Court judges. There was much discussion this morning about the composition of Parliament and how the political parties approach it. Only 22% of MPs are women, but more than half the population are women, so that is a huge disparity. More widely, only one third of public appointments are held by women, and only 0.8% of local councillors in England are black and minority ethnic women, which is an extraordinarily low figure. In terms of active discrimination, one in five lesbian, gay and bisexual people say that they have been harassed at work because of their sexual orientation. Although progress has been made—[Interruption.] I will not respond to that sedentary intervention from the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the shadow Minister, for his sake. Although progress has been made, clearly more needs to be made in future.
Positive action can also be used to support the delivery of the equality duty, which requires public authorities to consider the needs of people with various protected characteristics, some of whom may be at a considerable disadvantage. In a bid to address such needs, public bodies could choose—I emphasise choose—to use the positive action measures to target those disadvantaged groups.
Before I respond further to my hon. Friend’s Bill, it might be useful to set out what positive action is, what it can be used for, how it can be legally used in different scenarios, and most importantly, what it is not. In this morning’s interesting debate, many hon. Members were sliding between attacks on specific legislation and examples of positive action, and a general dislike of political correctness. There is an interesting and genuine debate to be had both on the meaning of political correctness and on what it has meant in practice, and we could ask whether it has gone too far in some ways and not far enough in others, but that does not have much to do with my hon. Friend’s Bill—I will therefore stick to the terms of the Bill.
Positive action is a term used to describe a range of measures that organisations can use when people who share a protected characteristic—I have listed them—experience some form of disadvantage because of that characteristic; have particular needs linked to that characteristic; or are disproportionately under-represented in a particular activity. In the second scenario, the Bill would make it illegal for people to install a wheelchair ramp, because that would be positive action to help a particular group. I do not believe that my hon. Friend intends that, but as I understand it, that would be the effect of one of the clauses. It is important to look at the detail of what positive action can involve when we assess whether the Bill should make further progress.
When any of the three conditions apply, proportionate action can be taken to overcome that disadvantage—I again emphasise that the action must be proportionate, and that action “can” rather than “must” be taken. Action can be taken to overcome a disadvantage, to meet particular needs, or to encourage and increase participation in the related activity.
Positive action can be taken in relation to a wide range of activities covered by the Act as well as employment, such as education, training, service delivery and activities undertaken by associations and other organisations. Positive action is not about woolly-minded thinking, political correctness, reverse discrimination or sidelining men. My hon. Friend was both entertaining and in large part correct in attacking what he described as lentil eating, woolly minded, Guardian reading characteristics.
Damian Green
I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that I really do not eat lentils—nor do I own a pair of sandals, nor do I for pleasure read most of The Guardian. I find The Guardian extremely useful for one thing. If I ever wake up and feel my political energy flagging, I read the letters page of The Guardian and that reminds me why I am a Conservative and why there needs to be a Conservative Government in this country—if only to keep people such as that out of power. So The Guardian serves a tremendously useful purpose in my life.
Positive action is about counteracting the effects of historical discrimination and disadvantage by providing opportunities for those who are disadvantaged or under-represented to gain skills that would enable them to compete fairly and openly for jobs and to reach their potential. There are practical benefits for businesses attached to the use of those measures and I shall return to them later. However, I very much take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall); we need to consider the needs of businesses, particularly small and medium-sized ones, although as I say there are the practical benefits.
A common misconception confuses positive action and positive discrimination; some people talk about the two interchangeably. It is important to establish that there is a clear distinction between them. Positive discrimination is treatment that favours a person solely because they have a particular protected characteristic, irrespective of whether there are special circumstances. In other words, the treatment discriminates in their favour whether or not they experience a disadvantage connected to that protected characteristic or have particular needs that are different from those of people without that protected characteristic.
Positive discrimination is generally unlawful in this country and will remain unlawful in most cases, although we should note that it is not unlawful to give more favourable treatment to a disabled person than to a non-disabled person. The intention behind that is to provide a level playing field for disabled people, who have been widely recognised to be disadvantaged in the field of employment, in society and in accessing services, without being open to legal challenge by non-disabled people.
Positive action, as I outlined, is about ensuring that any action taken has to be a proportionate means of achieving the aim of tackling or addressing disadvantage, encouraging participation in activities and meeting the specific needs of people with protected characteristics. It is essential for any organisation using positive action to ensure that the measures being taken do not unlawfully discriminate against people outside the group that they are seeking to help. The provisions in the Equality Act 2010 that relate to positive action make that very clear.
I am sure that my hon. Friends who have spoken in favour of the Bill would agree that many in our society have experienced historical disadvantage and under-representation in numerous sectors and professions, including in economic and political life, and many still do. Of course, significant progress has been made in recent decades to improve things.
Philip Davies
No doubt what my hon. Friend said about historical disadvantage is true, but does he think that just because black people, for example, have been discriminated against in the past, white people should be discriminated against now as some kind of reparation? Channel 4 has training courses that are open only for people from ethnic minorities. Why should somebody who happens to be from a white working class background and wants to get into the industry be deprived of doing so just because of discrimination that took place in the past?
Damian Green
I return to the point I have been making for the past couple of minutes about the distinction between positive action and positive discrimination. Specifically on the training courses my hon. Friend mentions, if a job were open only to people with a particular characteristic, that would be discrimination and would be unlawful. However, saying that one is finding it very difficult to attract a particular group of people even to think about applying for a job, and perhaps having an open day or some training aimed specifically at those people is positive action. At the relevant point—at the point of offering a job—everyone should be treated equally and there should not be any discrimination. Positive action is about trying to ensure that nobody is excluded from operating on their own merits or from applying for a particular job or position.
There was a debate a few minutes ago about the different measures used by different political parties in attempting to encourage more women to come into the House of Commons. I think there was a very neat dichotomy in that the Conservative party adopted measures short of all-women shortlists such as encouraging, mentoring and training, which resulted in a large number of new women colleagues for my hon. Friend and I in this Parliament, which we both welcome. The Conservatives did not go down the very crude route of the all-women shortlist that the Labour party introduced in the late 1990s, so there are different ways of achieving what is a desirable thing—equality of opportunity. Some ways are discriminatory and some are not, and the Government’s policy seeks to ensure that we maintain that very important distinction and continue to have positive action so that everyone can be treated equally, but that we do not inadvertently fall into the trap that my hon. Friend rightly warns us about of discriminating against those who do not have the particular protected characteristics. In many ways, that is at the heart of the debate: we need to maintain that distinction.
One of the Government’s aims is to speed up the rate of progress in achieving gender equality in various sectors, particularly by promoting gender equality on the boards of listed companies and by increasing female representation in politics. Progress on those fronts can be attained using the wide range of measures that are available to companies and other institutions under positive action. My hon. Friend and others will have heard the Prime Minister recently acknowledge in the House that the use of positive action is necessary on occasions to redress gender disparities in boardrooms and in politics.
In any case, lest we forget and think that using positive action places huge regulatory or financial burdens on bodies—my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North made that point—the use of any positive action measure is entirely voluntary and there is no mandatory requirement for any organisation to use positive action. If an organisation thinks there will be no real benefits to it from taking positive action measures, it does not have to do so. The voluntary nature of positive action means there are no associated mandatory burdens on organisations if they do not take such measures. That point is significant but is often missed in these debates.
Before I address the use of positive action in matters of recruitment and promotion, I should like to draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley to clause 2 of his Bill, which would make it unlawful to use positive action for any of the listed protected characteristics as well as for socio-economic status. The current positive action provisions do not permit measures to be taken to address issues solely relating to socio-economic inequality. He might be aware that the Government were not persuaded by the arguments for a public sector duty relating to socio-economic inequalities in the 2010 Act and that they have already decided not to commence those provisions, which will be repealed at a future date. I hope that he and I can agree on that point if on no other.
I turn specifically to the effect of the Bill, the aim of which is to prohibit the use of positive action by public authorities in recruitment and appointment processes. The Bill would, as drafted, create a two-tier system under which it would be lawful for private organisations to continue to use positive action measures in recruitment and appointment processes, but not for public authorities. That would mean that public authorities would not have the same benefits of opportunity open to them in recruitment as private sector organisations. Not only does this disparity seem unfair, but it could be confusing for employers, especially private organisations that deliver services under contract to or on behalf of a public authority, but which may not normally be considered public authorities themselves.
I make it clear that the provisions in the Equality Act 2010 contain explicit built-in safeguards to ensure that they are not misused. The provisions allow the use of positive action specifically in the process of recruitment and promotion in limited circumstances. Positive action can therefore only be used in the process of recruitment and promotion for specific purposes: to overcome or minimise a disadvantage, or to increase participation in activities, or where the candidates are as qualified as each other to carry out the job under consideration, or where the action is a proportionate means of addressing the particular disadvantage or under-representation, and where the employer does not have an automatic policy of treating people who share a protected characteristic more favourably than those who do not have protected characteristics.
To help employers who want to use positive action to do so lawfully, a step-by-step practical guide to using positive action when making appointments is available on the Government Equalities Office website. It will help an employer to ask all the relevant questions and ensure transparency at every stage of the recruitment and appointment process.
Remedies are available to possible victims of positive action. Any participant who deems that the positive action measures used by an organisation in its recruitment and promotion process have not been fair to them, or a person who believes they have been deterred from taking part in such a process, could bring a claim against the organisation. It would ultimately be up to any employer using positive action in recruitment to ensure that the assessment process is proportionate to achieving the aim of addressing a disadvantage or under-representation, that it is transparent and that they can sufficiently justify how they make a choice between candidates.
It cannot be too strongly emphasised that the principle of merit should always apply in any recruitment or promotion process that uses positive action measures. As I have already said, under these measures, a person cannot be appointed solely because they possess a certain protected characteristic that is disadvantaged or under-represented in the workplace. That would constitute unlawful discrimination.
An employer faced with making a choice between two or more candidates who are as qualified as each other to undertake the post in question can take into consideration whether any of the candidates possesses a protected characteristic that is disadvantaged or disproportionately under-represented in the work force. However, this does not mean that the candidates under consideration have to be identical in every respect. Any consideration of merit should take into account the relevant facts of their competence, ability, experience and any formal qualifications that may be relevant to the particular job.
Among other things, the Bill would put a stop to the setting and pursuit of targets in relation to recruitment and promotion. Targets are not quotas, nor are they the same as positive action. Targets are the end that an organisation wishes to achieve, while positive action is, essentially, the measures that an organisation can take in order to achieve its aim. Targets allow organisations to direct a range of programmes, initiatives, products and services at particular groups of people who are under-represented in certain activities, or because of poor take-up of services or activities. Such action would enable these groups to acquire the necessary skills to compete for jobs or to access services tailored to their specific needs. It is perfectly permissible in the UK to set targets that are intended to provide an incentive for people to improve and achieve certain goals.
Of course, targets are not limitless; they either evolve as an organisation’s priorities change over the years, or they come to their natural end. I think there is a fear that this is an endless path going in one direction. Clearly, an organisation may decide that it has done what it needs to do to meet a target that it has set itself for representation within its work force, or its boardroom, or its parliamentary party or whatever, and at that point the existing legislative framework entirely permits the organisation to get off the track and continue its normal business as it would have done if it had never introduced those measures.
As I mentioned, an important priority for the Government is to increase the number of women in the boardroom and in civic and public life. The key to achieving that is not through the setting of strict employment quotas such as reserving a number of posts only for women, which would in any case be unlawful—I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley and the House that the Government have absolutely no intention of changing that position—but through the use of voluntary measures and initiatives.
The difference between the targets that I have been talking about and the quotas that my hon. Friend is rightly sceptical about is that the target can be worked towards naturally over a period spent developing people in order that the organisation can hit the target, whereas a quota must be filled whether or not there are suitable people available to fill it. That is the absolutely crucial practical distinction. If we tried to force organisations to fill quotas, less qualified people would be appointed to positions, which would be unfair on those who were better qualified, and in the long term damaging for the institution concerned. If the legislation currently in place had that effect, or indeed that intention, I would share all my hon. Friend’s worries about it, but it does not, and just as the distinction between positive discrimination and positive action is key, the difference between targets and quotas is absolutely key. We have a sensible, practical set of measures that can allows organisations to improve themselves, not something that is over-burdensome.
Philip Davies
I am interested in what the Minister has to say. Will he clarify this point? I understood from what I have read in the media—I concede that one should not always believe everything one reads in the papers—that the Government have let it be known that if boardrooms do not hit the target set by Lord Davies, if they do not go themselves voluntarily to hit that target, the Government will act. Can the Minister assure the House now that if they do not hit the artificial, arbitrary targets that Lord Davies set in his report, the Government will not act?
Damian Green
I do not accept that the targets are necessarily arbitrary or artificial. We are very keen that organisations should hit their targets for women in boardrooms; the Government strongly welcomed the Lord Davies report and we are now at the stage of working with business and others to ensure that the recommendations are implemented effectively without recourse to some of the measures that my hon. Friend would regard as draconian.
I am happy to report to the House that good progress has been made in implementing the recommendations. In May, the Financial Reporting Council launched its consultation on changes to the UK corporate governance code. The headhunting industry has agreed a voluntary code on diversity, which was launched in July 2011. The Association of Executive Search Consultants will champion the code to its members, and there is an increasing and strong sense of ownership and action in FTSE 100 businesses, including company secretaries, who will in many cases be the key figure in the organisation.
Philip Davies
I really must press the Minister on this, because some things are more voluntary than others. If the Government say to organisations, “This is what we expect of you; if you don’t do it, we will force you to do it,” and the Government then start reporting progress, that is not voluntary—at least not in my eyes. It is a very curious definition of “voluntary”. If businesses do not hit the artificial target in Lord Davies’s report, will the Government act? From what the Minister says, it sounds as if the Government will not act and force businesses to take action if they do not do so themselves.
Damian Green
What I am saying is that the bodies are already acting themselves, so the undesirable outcome of which my hon. Friend is fearful will not happen. I have talked about various organisations; let me mention specific companies. Centrica, BT and Barclays have all provided programmes or initiatives to assist in the recruitment, retention, development and advancement of women and persons from other protected groups in the workplace, and to broaden their career aspirations. That makes the point that I alluded to earlier: good and constructive use of positive action is not woolly-minded, or political correctness gone mad, or whatever the cliché du jour is; it has practical benefits for the organisations that voluntarily opt for it.
I refer my hon. Friend to a report published in 2008 by the CBI, the TUC and the Equality and Human Rights Commission entitled “Talent not Tokenism: the business benefits of workforce diversity”. It showed that diversity in an organisation promotes productivity and efficiency, and increases market opportunities. Several UK employers recognise the benefits of positive action; it fills skill gaps while generating a more diverse work force. That added diversity in turn gives employers a better understanding of customers’ needs, opening up new markets and attracting new business.
More businesses than ever, including FTSE companies at all levels—those in the FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and FTSE 350—are using voluntary positive action measures to improve the diversity of their top management and boards of executive and non-executive directors. Lord Davies’s report, to which my hon. Friend referred, acknowledged that corporate boards perform better when they comprise experienced people with a greater range of skills, perspectives and backgrounds. His report indicated that there is a business case for increasing the diversity of corporate boards, and especially for gender-diverse boards, so that businesses can draw on the full range of available talent and achieve effective governance and performance.
To address my hon. Friend’s point directly, Lord Davies’s report ruled out the setting of mandatory quotas to compel businesses to appoint female directors to their boards, so my hon. Friend is right not to believe everything that he reads in the media. The statistics are stark. The proportion of women on FTSE 100 company boards is 14.2%, and the figure is 8.9% for FTSE 250 companies. Previously, almost half the FTSE 250 companies had no women director on their board. A recently published report by the Cranfield School of Management on the progress made on some of the recommendations outlined in the Davies report shows that, for the first time, a minority of FTSE 250 companies have all-male boards. Moving down the size scale, FTSE 350 companies face an even greater challenge in increasing female representation on their boards.
My hon. Friend may have heard of the 30% Club, which comprises a group of UK company chairmen, if I am allowed to use that word, who are voluntarily committed to bringing more women on to UK corporate boards. The 30% Club supports a voluntary target to ensure that every UK corporate board has at least 30% female representation by 2015.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I think that the Minister is going slightly wider than the Bill, so could he perhaps drag it back to public authorities?
Damian Green
I shall certainly drag it back to public authorities, and indeed specifically to the proposal by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley to repeal the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002, in which I know you have a particular interest, Mr Deputy Speaker. The effect of the Bill would not be what I think my hon. Friend intends, because the majority of that Act has already been repealed by the Equality Act 2010. I urge him to look at schedule 27 of that Act—the repeals and revocations schedule—which repeals most of the Act that he seeks to repeal. The 2002 Act has largely been repealed because the provisions relating to elections in England, Scotland and Wales are now contained in the Equality Act 2010. Repealing what remains extant of the 2002 Act would not achieve what I assume to be the aim of the Bill, as the provisions relating to the selection of election candidates would continue to be permissible for registered political parties in Scotland, England and Wales if they chose to use them.
What remain extant of the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act are provisions that relate solely to Northern Ireland. The 2002 Act amends the Sex Discrimination (Northern Ireland) Order 1976, permitting political parties to adopt single-sex shortlists when selecting candidates for elections to certain bodies. Repealing the 2002 Act would only create further confusion and disparity, as the provisions relating to electoral shortlists could continue to be used in England, Scotland and Wales, but not in Northern Ireland.
In any case, we consider that the provisions relating to the selection of election candidates remain a legitimate tool for parties that wish to use them. The provisions enable registered political parties to take action to address any disparity in their representation of men and women in elected office, including the use of women-only shortlists. We have had a great deal of discussion about the under-representation of women elected to the House—only 144 of 650 Members are women, equating to about 22% of MPs—and it is widely agreed across the House that although progress has been made, it is not yet complete and there is a need for political parties to make the House more representative of the diverse population in this country, because that will enable us to deliver better governance.
I should point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley and to the House as a whole that the use of those provisions is time-limited, as they are due to expire in 2030 when, we hope, the representation of women in political or other elected office will have increased significantly. The provisions do, however, contain a power to allow a Minister to extend their use beyond 2030 if insufficient progress has been made in increasing female representation. Given the fact that we have given ourselves two decades to achieve that aim, I hope that we can do so without requiring that extension.
By attempting to prevent the use of positive action under what I hope I have persuaded hon. Members are entirely appropriate circumstances, the aims of the Bill contradict Government policy to promote fairness, equality and diversity and to tackle under-representation in targeted areas such as “women on company boards” and “elected office”. Many public authorities have long used forms of positive action in relation to matters connected to recruitment and promotion, and they strongly support the continued use of those provisions. Some registered political parties have successfully used these measures in recent years and, as far as I am aware, there is no opposition from any of the major political parties to using positive action to redress gender representation.
The key thing to remember is that the use of any form of positive action in our country is entirely voluntary, whether it is in providing services, in employment-related matters, in increasing participation in particular activities, or in politics. Organisations will use the provisions only if there is a real benefit for them in doing so. Without the use of positive action, it would not be possible to develop the initiatives outlined in the coalition programme for government to tackle the numerous barriers to social mobility and equal opportunities that exist in our society in relation to age, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation. It is not possible to build a fairer society without being able to take the necessary measures to end discrimination in the workplace; to promote gender equality on the boards of listed companies; to promote improved community relations and opportunities for people of black and minority ethnic backgrounds; to provide internships for under-represented groups; and to fund targeted mentoring schemes to help under-represented groups to start businesses. It is clear that my hon. Friend’s Bill would remove this voluntary but important opportunity for organisations and political parties to make strides in tackling the continued disadvantage and under-representation experienced by persons with protected characteristics in work forces and in civic, public and political life across the UK. To stop the use of positive action would cause a major setback in the progress already made in addressing disadvantage or under-representation in our society. I therefore urge my hon. Friend to withdraw his Bill.
Philip Davies
With the leave of the House, may I thank everybody who has contributed to the debate, those who supported my Bill—I particularly thank my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) for their typically robust comments on my behalf—and those who contributed to the debate even though they did not agree with me?
It is sad that in this age it is so difficult to persuade Members of the merits of the principle that people should be given jobs on merit, and merit alone. It is like pushing water uphill to try and make the case for that basic and, I should have thought, obvious proposition. On that note I shall conclude the debate and press the motion to a Division.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The House proceeded to a Division.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby.
The House having divided: Ayes 3, Noes 39.
Master’s Degrees (Minimum Standards) Bill
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This Bill would resolve a straightforward question—should some universities have the right to award a free master’s degree, while at every other university hundreds of thousands of students have to work hard to earn theirs? It is difficult to believe, but the practice of converting a bachelor’s degree into a master’s without exams, extra study or tuition fees still exists. Only some 3,000 lucky bachelor’s degree graduates of only two universities—Oxford and Cambridge—are able to list an impressive-looking postgraduate qualification on their CVs each year, for nothing more than a £10 administration charge, and without even the £10 fee at Cambridge.
In what must rank as one of the most byzantine relics of a bygone era—other than private Member’s Bill Fridays—these complimentary master of arts degrees require nothing more than a 21-term period to elapse after matriculation before these fortunate few graduates have their bachelor’s degrees automatically upgraded. Neil Dodgson, a Cambridge professor, says that
“many find it offensive that we should award a degree for doing nothing more than being able to breathe for three years.”
In contrast, the vast majority of ordinary postgraduate students have to earn their degree the hard way, often paying a £4,500 or higher tuition fee, studying for a year or more, completing coursework, exams, dissertations, and so on. Many of those who earn their master’s degrees are completely unaware that they could be competing for future employment with candidates declaring their MA(Oxon) or MA(Cantab) at the head of their CV. Is that really fair? Clearly not.
Eleven years ago, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education said:
“The Masters title causes much misunderstanding...most employers think it always represents an award for postgraduate study”.
A survey the agency conducted found that more than 60% of recruiters were unaware of the honorary nature of this so-called higher degree.
The time has come to end this anachronism, and a growing body of opinion believes it is time to draw a veil over these arrangements. I should state for the record that I do not blame anyone from Oxbridge for taking the opportunity presented to them—chance would be a fine thing. But if we set aside the cheeky sense of privilege, even the most battle-hardened defenders of elitism have to admit that the total and utter lack of merit behind this apparently great award is unfair. Indeed, it is now surely in the best interests of modern and open Oxford and Cambridge universities for them to voluntarily relinquish this privilege and prove that they are beacons of genuine learning and earned distinction.
I have written to both universities challenging them to reconsider voluntarily and phase out these arrangements without the need for legislation. Unfortunately, they are gambling that no one will disturb their long-standing privileges. But there is still time and I hope that the Minister will join me in urging Oxford and Cambridge to take seriously the palpable objections to these give-away degrees. They undermine valid qualifications from other universities. They entrench an artificial distinction between students and higher education institutions. They confuse employers and create the risk that genuine achievements are misrepresented. They demoralise those who spend years of their lives to achieve something that others get for nothing. They risk devaluing the genuine calibre and reputation of British higher education. Some will argue that this is a harmless practice and that everyone knows that it is not really a masters degree. Unfortunately, however, not everyone is in the loop, and plenty of people will be hoodwinked by the free degree.
I could argue that one solution is to allow everyone with a bachelor’s degree the same chance to get a free master’s thrown in, but that would be daft. Instead, I propose a simple, and surely uncontentious Bill. It would require the Quality Assurance Agency to report within three months on the measures necessary to establish a minimum standard—a very minimum standard—of academic achievement for all master’s degrees awarded by higher education institutions in England. Hon. Members may be surprised to learn that there are no basic or fundamental yardsticks of that sort to ensure academic rigour across the board, but sadly that is the case. A simple threshold would ensure that future postgraduate degrees are all awarded on the basis of the proven hard work of students who have undertaken a course of study. Basic standards and fair play should not be too much to ask. The time has come for us to end this unmerited and confusing patronage once and for all.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
As always, it is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie). I seem to recall that I was in the Chamber some months ago when his Bill was introduced by way of the ten-minute rule process, and as a consequence of that, we are here today debating its Second Reading. I am sure that he is pleased that it has reached this stage so swiftly.
In most United Kingdom universities, the MA—master’s of arts—degree is a free-standing graduate degree awarded by examination. I should say at the outset that I approach this subject entirely without any prejudgment of the case, because I did not attend either Oxford or Cambridge, or, indeed, Dublin university. I did a rather unusual thing, in many ways. I think I am probably in a minority in the House in that I obtained my bachelor of law degree by correspondence through the university of London.
It had always been my intention to try to go university after I had completed my secondary education, and most people thought that that would happen, but in those days, 30 years ago—I hardly dare say it—the number of universities and the application process was rather different from today. One had to apply to various universities and was given grades that one had to achieve in order to meet the requirements of the course that one had applied for. I had applied for law degree courses, which usually came back with quite a high requirement in terms of the grades that had to be achieved in order to attend. In the event—it is a matter of record and widely known—I did not get the grades that I needed to be able to attend such a course.
Thirty years ago, much like today, the economic situation put unemployment high on the national agenda. It seemed to me that the purpose of education was to get a job. In the summer of 1980, I was therefore faced with a dilemma: did I sit around, unemployed, and hope for something to turn up, did I take an alternative further education course, or did I look for a job? As luck would have it, I got the job that I applied for as a trainee legal executive. I accept that I am very fortunate because I have applied for only one job in my life.
I make that point not to digress, but because it leads on to what happened a few days later. I was offered the opportunity to go to Hull university, not to do a law degree, but to do a degree in economics, philosophy and sociology, or some other three-study degree. I thought long and hard, and had many sleepless nights thinking about whether I should give up the job that I had just got and do a course that I did not really want to follow at university. I was told that it might be possible to swap courses, but I decided not to go to university in the conventional way, but to stay at the small firm of solicitors that I had joined. I was forced to continue my legal education at night school, studying in the evenings and at weekends. I started at Richmond college doing the trainee legal executive exams, as they were in those days, for the Institute of Legal Executives.
It was only after I had been doing those studies for a couple of years that I realised that if ever I was to achieve my long-term ambition of becoming a solicitor, I needed to obtain a law degree. In those days, it was far less common than it is today to obtain a law degree by correspondence. In a nutshell, it meant that one had to do the same exams to the same standard as everyone who had attended the university of London as an internal student, without the benefit—although some might think it a disadvantage—of living in London and attending the lectures. It required a degree of rigour and self-denial, because at evenings and weekends it was necessary to stay in when ones friends were going out and doing the things that 18 and 19-year-olds do. Actually, I was probably in my early 20s by the time I had started the degree. I had to persevere down that route.
Chris Leslie
I am very interested in the hon. Gentleman’s personal history, but he will be aware that time is pressing and that the sitting finishes at 2.30. It would be useful to hear from the Minister and others on the specific issue of the integrity of the master’s degree. I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman was swift with his remarks.
Mr Nuttall
I hear what the hon. Gentleman says. I will address that point in detail shortly. I just wanted to make the point that I am in no way biased about the merits or otherwise of someone having an MA from Oxford, Cambridge or Dublin after their name just because I did not go down that particular route. In fact, the first time I came across the practice—I had not known that such things were possible—was not until I was at the firm of solicitors that I mentioned. One of the partners who had joined after me had been to Cambridge, and he had a law degree. Upon paying whatever the requisite fee was, he became a master of arts. It was only through chatting with him at that time that I discovered the practice. I hope the House will therefore accept that my comments are made in the light of that background, and that I am completely neutral.
I understand that the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin award BA graduates MAs without postgraduate work after an allotted period. At the university of Dublin, those who have a bachelor of arts degree may proceed to the degree of master of arts after a period of three years and payment of a fee of €637.
I accept that concerns have been raised about the practice in previous years. They were perhaps first noted in the House back in 2000, when Jackie Lawrence, the Labour MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire, tabled an early-day motion. I understand that it was signed by more than 50 right hon. and hon. Members, and that it proposed, I believe for the first time, that the Oxbridge MA be phased out. In the same year, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education—the university standards watchdog, if I can call it that—reviewed the issue as part of its attempts to create a uniform system of master’s degrees for employers in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. One can well understand the need for some form of standardisation across the universities sector, so that employers know what they are dealing with.
The practice of what might be called the ancient universities—I think that is the correct term for Oxbridge—actually dates back to mediaeval times, when study for a liberal arts degree typically took seven years and the degree was awarded in two parts. The bachelor of arts degree was awarded at the end of undergraduate studies, then the master of arts degree was undertaken, which gave the student the licence to teach. Until the 17th century, the Oxbridge student completed the study of the BA and then usually remained at the institution for a further three years. As is the case today, the student became a full member of the university after being awarded the MA degree. I understand that that is one reason why most students take up the opportunity to move from a BA to an MA. I would be interested to know whether anyone has the precise statistics on that.
By the end of the 17th century, for reasons that are not known nowadays, the system had completely changed and the MA was awarded to candidates without the need for them to continue their studies any further. I should briefly add that American universities developed the doctorate course, with the effect that the MA began to hold a place above the baccalaureate and below the doctorate. The university of London adopted that model, moving away from the mediaeval practice. Newer universities followed that lead, with the result that the practice at Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin, which might be called the Oxbridge and Dublin model, is now considered by some to be an anomaly.
At Cambridge, the MA is conferred by right on all those who have obtained a BA degree not less than six years from the end of a graduate’s first term of residence, providing that they have held their BA for at least two years. An MA degree is not available at the university of Cambridge as a postgraduate qualification.
On the other hand, the Oxford MA degree, following long-standing tradition, like at the university of Cambridge, is a mark of seniority within the university that may be conferred after a period of 21 terms—seven years—after matriculation. An MA is not available at the university of Oxford as a postgraduate qualification. Oxford’s guidance to students on the Oxford MA states that
“the Oxford MA is about reaching a new status within the University and not an upgrade of your BA or an additional qualification.”
It is perhaps worth mentioning a couple of the comments that Oxford and Cambridge made following remarks by an academic at Cambridge university’s computer laboratory in May last year. Cambridge university’s council said that the degree was valuable. It stated:
“The council believes that the (MA) degree continues to serve valuable purposes which outweigh any negative external perceptions of it. The QAA (Quality Assurance Agency) is well aware of the degree’s status and has not expressed any concerns about it.”
According to Cherwell, an independent student newspaper at the university of Oxford, a spokesman from the Oxford university press office said that the issue had been raised by an MP, and that it was therefore difficult to gauge public opinion on whether the system should be changed.
I understand that the universities have concerns about how up to date the research was on which the QAA has based its findings. Although there are concerns about the nature of Oxbridge MA degrees, they are not widespread. I have met dozens of employers over the years, and I have never heard one of them say that they are confused by the Oxbridge and Dublin system of awarding MA degrees. I am also not aware that any business has been duped or suffered any loss as a result of employing someone from Oxbridge or Dublin who has gone down the route of having their degree upgraded in that way.
In the same way, when speaking to graduates of other universities who have undertaken a course of study for their MA degree, I have never come across any ill-feeling towards Oxbridge graduates because of how they have achieved their MA award. One has to ask whether it is such a problem that it warrants the abolition of the long-standing and traditional practice of those two ancient universities. In many ways, it marks them out as special; today most people would still accept that having an Oxbridge degree is different and more special than having one from other universities.
The fact that the Oxbridge MA is awarded in replacement of, and not in addition to, the award of a bachelor’s degree is particularly noteworthy. To me, that strongly makes it clear that it is based on academic rank rather than academic merit. The four ancient universities of Scotland—St Andrew’s, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh—award MA degrees as first degrees in certain subjects, as do Dundee and Heriot Watt universities. How Trinity College Dublin awards MA degrees is similar to how Oxford and Cambridge do.
Oxbridge MA degrees are distinct in purpose and nature. For example, they give the right to vote in elections for the chancellor of the university. The universities and the QAA make it absolutely clear that the MA degrees are not academic qualifications. The granting of master of arts degrees is, I believe, a matter for the universities themselves to consider as autonomous institutions primarily responsible for academic standards. I wonder to what extent they would welcome what one might call the intrusion into their affairs by the House.
UK universities have thrived under the existing system; recent statistics show that only the United States of America boasts more institutions than the United Kingdom in the top 200 of the Times Higher Education world university rankings for 2011-12. In the light of that evidence, there is nothing to suggest that the qualification is damaging their world-class reputations. Both Oxford and Cambridge offer a range of taught master’s degrees, none of which is called an MA. We must not lose sight of the fact that there are real inequalities of opportunity in education. In the last year for which figures are available, just 40 of the 80,000 pupils eligible for free school meals made it to Oxbridge.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is now going wider than what is in the Bill. He should go back to talking about master’s degrees.
Mr Nuttall
It is certainly essential that qualifications awarded by higher education institutions meet national academic standards to ensure that the world-class reputation of our United Kingdom higher education institutions is maintained. I will listen closely to the rest of the debate, but, on balance, I am probably minded to follow my normal instinct—“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
It is probably right that the issue should remain primarily within the remit of those individual universities. However, I can well see why folk might think it rather strange that in this day and age this ancient anomaly is allowed to survive. However, it does not seem to cause anyone any great problem, concern, upset or loss. I would need to be convinced by yet more evidence, which I have not seen so far in the debate, that this is an appropriate time to end this long-standing practice. I shall listen closely to the remainder of the debate.
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
I am honoured to have my first run out at the Dispatch Box in my new role as shadow Minister for competitiveness and enterprise on the seventh anniversary of my maiden speech in the House, which I delivered from the other side of the Chamber. I have to say that I much preferred it on that side of the House and I hope, for the good of the country, that we will change places with the current Government very soon.
I was enthralled by the speech of the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and I am grateful to him for saving me the cost, expense and trouble of buying his political memoirs. I shall just look at today’s Hansard to learn about his political upbringing.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) on bringing the Bill before the House. He mentioned during his ten-minute rule speech on the Bill in February and again this afternoon that most postgraduate students who hope to receive an MA will often undergo further intense study, will have their knowledge and application tested by examination and will often pay substantial tuition fees for the privilege. He is right to suggest that we should question whether it is right and fair to have a dual system of obtaining MAs under which some people work hard for a substantial period and others simply attend a particular institution and pay a £10 admin fee. It is also right that we pay tribute, as he did, to the hard work and dedication of tens of thousands of postgraduate students.
It is important to say at the outset—and the hon. Member for Bury North alluded to this—that the relevant framework for England, Wales and Northern Ireland published in 2008 states categorically:
“The Master of Arts (MA) granted by the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge are not academic qualifications.”
Similarly, the Scottish credit and qualifications framework published in 2009 states that in a small number of universities in Scotland the Scottish bachelor’s degree is entitled “MA”, although that, too, in most cases, is not a master’s degree.
I shall address the reputation of UK universities and the importance of overseas students in a moment. First, let me say that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East is right to suggest that many students who are thinking of coming to study in our ancient universities might be unclear about the status of an MA from one university to another. Of course, they would undertake research—and perhaps they should not think of undertaking an MA if they cannot do such rudimentary research—but I stress, as I think my hon. Friend would, that clarity, fairness and transparency would be beneficial to all concerned.
There has been much discussion in recent months about the future shape of the UK economy and how we will pay our way in the world in the face of intense global competition. It is clear to me that this country needs to play to its strengths and provide help and support to those areas of economic activity where Britain leads the world and has an ambition to continue to lead the world in future. One of these world-beating sectors is undoubtedly higher education. Britain has led the world and has an enviable reputation on higher education institutions. As the hon. Member for Bury North said, the Times Higher Education world university rankings for 2011/12 show that three of our universities are in the world’s top 10, with the only other country in the top 10 being the United States. Of the world’s top 200 universities, 32 are British—a figure that is again surpassed only by the US. This broad base of excellence in higher education should be celebrated and nurtured as much as possible. For the particular discipline of science and engineering—an academic discipline in which we should aspire to lead the world, and one that should have considerable marketable commercial opportunities in the modern global economy—three British universities are in the top 10.
We have seen a real success story for higher education institutions in this country in the past decade. The sector educates about 2.5 million students annually, with a 28% increase in student numbers in the past 10 years. Some 400,000 overseas students attend our higher education institutions each year, largely because of this country’s leading reputation in higher education, particularly postgraduate education. This provides the national economy with an additional £2.5 billion each year. It is particularly interesting, and relevant to the subject under discussion, that full-time postgraduate numbers have increased during the past decade by almost three quarters, largely due to the increase in non-UK students, who tend to study at postgraduate level.
Our higher education institutions are true incubators for innovation, undertaking research and development at master’s and PhD level. Postgraduate students at our higher education institutions are undertaking research, and providing the learning and knowledge that will be applied commercially to supply modern products that British companies can then sell to the rest of the world. We should be celebrating and supporting them.
In those circumstances, it is important that there is clarity and transparency to ensure that students who wish to study for a master’s qualification are fully aware of its requirements and standards. In March 2010, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education published a new reference point, “Master’s degree characteristics”. The QAA states that the
“landscape for master’s degrees in the UK is flexible and diverse”,
which is something that the Opposition certainly want to encourage and develop.
One of the reasons the higher education sector in the UK is appreciated throughout the world is its flexibility and diversity, and the Opposition do not want to put that at risk. We fear, however, that the Government’s changes to HE will hinder choice, reduce the subjects on offer at postgraduate level at our HE institutions and ultimately undermine Britain’s global competitive advantage in higher education.
As has already been said, HE institutions are autonomous, and they will do as they see fit, based on what they wish to achieve for themselves and their students. I do not want to propose anything that would put that under threat. I also do not want to burden the sector with additional or excessive regulation, particularly when it is enduring the biggest upheaval in its funding arrangements for many years. The Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East is not particularly bureaucratic or excessive. It promotes transparency and clarity, and does nothing to undermine either the reputation of our higher education institutions or the unique historical shape and culture of our ancient universities. We believe that some of the issues raised could be best explored further in Committee, so I hope that the House will give the Bill the fair wind it deserves and allow it a Second Reading.
The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) on driving the House to focus on an interesting curiosity in our higher education system. I declare a kind of interest as one of the people who did indeed shell out—eventually—to buy my MA, in order to vote in the elections for the chancellor of the University of Oxford and for the professor of poetry. I declare that interest.
Let me describe briefly exactly what the Oxford and Cambridge MAs are. The Oxford regulations set out clearly their understanding of the degree of master of arts: in essence, the holder of the degree of bachelor of arts or bachelor of fine art may with the approval of their college apply for the degree of master of arts after the 21st term from his or her matriculation. The current fee for admission at Oxford is £10, and the qualification confers membership of convocation and the right to vote for the chancellor and the professor of poetry.
Membership of convocation is part of the argument. As Oxford’s regulations suggest, it is a means whereby all graduates of the university
“have an opportunity for some continued formal involvement in the life of the university, supplementing…the links that colleges develop with their old members.”
Chris Leslie
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister at the beginning of his speech. Is there a particular reason why use of the title master of arts is needed to confer those rights? Surely, he must admit that the university could confer the rights without the confusing mark of master of arts.
Mr Willetts
I will turn later in my remarks to the challenge, which the hon. Gentleman has raised again, of whether the arrangement is confusing, but, historically, the way in which membership of the convocation has been conferred is through the MA. Obviously, it provides those rights to vote that I mentioned. Of course, it has been considered from time to time, both in Oxford and Cambridge, whether that arrangement should continue. For example, in the Franks review of Oxford, its anomalous nature was noted, but it was decided that it was overall a feature of the system that should be preserved.
The Government of course attach great importance to rigorous national academic standards, and I agree with what the hon. Member for Nottingham East said and with the remarks by the shadow Minister, whom I welcome to his new post and to the debate. We share pride in the world-class reputation of higher education in the UK, and we have a shared recognition that that international reputation depends on confidence in the standards of our universities and confidence that they are properly regulated through independent quality audit. Higher education councils have a statutory responsibility to ensure the quality of the higher education provision that they fund, but primary responsibility for academic standards and quality rests with individual universities and colleges, each of which is self-governing and has its own internal quality assurance procedures, complemented by the external quality assurance carried out by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. The QAA is the key agency in ensuring that quality control, and we support and value its work.
The QAA has itself tried to engage with the issue from time to time. Its 2008 framework for higher education qualifications includes the following statement:
“The Master of Arts (MA) granted by the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge are not academic qualifications. The MA is normally granted, on application, to graduates of these universities with a Bachelor of Arts (BA). No further study or assessment is required, but the recipient may be required to pay a fee.
At the University of Oxford, the MA may be granted during or after the twenty-first term from matriculation and at the University of Cambridge the MA may be granted six years after the end of the first term.”
So that is the position, which the QAA has set out very explicitly.
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge have been clear themselves about the status of the MA. I quote from a letter from the University of Cambridge that was actually sent to the hon. Member for Nottingham East:
“It has always been well recognised that our M.A. is not a qualification obtained by postgraduate study but, rather, is a mark of status and experience which gives its holders certain rights within Cambridge, particularly in their participation in our democratic governance structures”.
Chris Leslie
It might have been well recognised by the closed circle within Oxford and Cambridge themselves, but the rest of the world does not recognise that, so surely the Minister would have to acknowledge that clinging to the pretence of the title Master of Arts degree is a complete and utter nonsense.
Mr Willetts
Perhaps this is the moment to engage that point. The hon. Gentleman has to offer evidence that the arrangements are causing widespread confusion. We have seen no such evidence. All the material that is available on the websites of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge makes it absolutely clear that their MAs are not qualifications obtained by postgraduate study. The QAA’s documents make clear the status of these qualifications, and we are not aware of the widespread confusion and misunderstanding that the hon. Gentleman claims to have identified.
Chris Leslie
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he has been extremely generous. On the evidence point, in 2000, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education undertook an opinion poll survey of recruiters. It reported that 62% of employers thought that MA Oxon. or MA Cantab. was a genuine, hard-earned postgraduate award. Surely that is sufficient evidence.
Mr Willetts
The hon. Gentleman has cited that evidence in the past, but the evidence from 2000 predates the work that I have described. It was because of that point that the QAA engaged with the subject. It has made explicit in its publications what the Oxford and Cambridge MAs are, and Oxford and Cambridge prospectuses and websites are now very explicit on that point. He needs new evidence; he cannot simply rest on evidence from 2000, given that so much more is now done to be explicit about the unusual characteristics of these MAs.
The challenge set by that research in 2000 has been addressed by Oxford and Cambridge, and it is hard to imagine that anyone who had done a minimal level of research could be in any doubt about the nature of the MA from Oxford and Cambridge. It is not an academic qualification; it replaces the BA as the holder of the BA develops a longer relationship with those universities. The hon. Gentleman has to provide further information than he has so far been able on the argument that there is confusion for employers.
A related argument is that somehow the system undermines the value and standing of MAs awarded by other universities. Is it therefore the case that the victims are not employers, but people who have MAs from other universities? I freely accept that those MAs are genuine academic qualifications for which further work is required after a BA has been secured. Again, I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that we do not have any evidence. I have letters on a wide range of issues in higher education, but in my 18 months as Minister responsible for these issues I have not had a single letter that I can recall saying, “I got my MA from some other British university and I find that it is not respected, because people think that I got it only because I was trying to elect the chancellor of the university, or the professor of poetry.” The hon. Gentleman has a theoretical argument that is not borne out by the practical evidence on confusion for employers or for people who receive their MAs from elsewhere. I commend to him the formulations now explicitly used by the QAA and set out in statements from the universities in question: the MAs that we are talking about are “not academic qualifications.”
For us to act, we would not only have to be persuaded of the problem of confusion, but would have to take a significant step towards intervening in the internal arrangements of the universities in question. That is where the position of the shadow Minister rather surprises me, because my view is that intervening in such a way in the autonomous decisions of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge would go contrary to what I thought was the shared view of both Front-Bench teams—the view that the autonomy of our universities was one of the reasons for their success.
The shadow Minister may have thought that it would be easy to turn up and attack this apparently anomalous situation, but if he wishes the matter to go further, he has to explain why he would be so willing to interfere with the autonomy of the institutions that we are talking about, including autonomy over their academic awards, which was most recently protected and laid out explicitly in legislation that his party passed when in government in 2005. That protects universities’ powers to award their own qualifications. In many of my exchanges with the shadow Minister’s predecessors, they have gone out of their way to say that they value the autonomy of our institutions. Government Members believe that trying to intervene in well-established practices at Oxford and Cambridge would be an interference with their independence that would undermine the Government’s wider approach to their autonomy, and would be inconsistent with the principle of institutional autonomy enshrined not just in the legislation that his Government passed, but in section 63(3) of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992.
Chris Leslie
The Minister is very generous in giving way. The whole point of a quality assurance agency is to have some level of quality assurance across the university network. He would not allow universities to confer any old title—perhaps PhD or MP—on a smaller or unworthy qualification. There must be some quality assurance across all higher education degrees.
Mr Willetts
That is the role of the QAA. I will be frank with the hon. Gentleman. This is where I have to reveal myself to the House as a Conservative. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I welcome the support from my hon. Friends. If Oxford and Cambridge came to us today and said, “We’ve got a smart idea. We wish to invent MAs for Oxford and Cambridge that can be secured with no further academic study and will be different from the established conventions for creating an MA,” the QAA would be wary of that approach. However, those MAs have been around for hundreds of years, and they are a well-established pattern. They are well understood, and they are an established part of the history of these institutions.
Autonomy comes partly from historical experience. The autonomy of those institutions is not simply a result of the rational assessment of what they do today but, in the case of Oxford and Cambridge, it has partly been secured by their history and traditions. Part of respecting their autonomy is about respecting their history and traditions. The MAs at Oxford and Cambridge go back to the mediaeval universities where, after a time securing a BA, people then secured an MA. Perhaps the Opposition’s rootless rationalism means that they have no taste or love for those conventions and traditions that have developed over centuries, but we rather like ancient traditions. The hon. Gentleman has not established that they actively do any damage, because his argument about confusion is not supported by the evidence, so I see no reason for interfering with the autonomy of those institutions simply to remove an historical feature that they have enjoyed for centuries. I rather like the fact that we have centuries-old traditions.
Chris Leslie
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Will you confirm that, under the rules of the House, if the Minister is still speaking at 2.30 pm, the Bill will fall and will not complete its Second Reading? If he wants to explore the issues in more detail in Committee, he must stop speaking before then. I want to clarify exactly what his intention is.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I think that the hon. Gentleman has been here long enough—indeed he is a former Minister—to know exactly how the rules work. At 2.30 pm, I shall ask on what day debate on the Bill is to be resumed.
Mr Willetts
Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker, for making clear what we all understand on both sides of the House. I have accepted many interventions from the hon. Member for Nottingham East, and perhaps if I had not done so I might have been able to get even further in my remarks, but I wanted to ensure that at least I engaged with the points that he made.
He has enabled me to set out my beliefs as a Tory in protecting those institutions and traditions when they do not do anyone any damage. It is clearly the Oxford and Cambridge connection that excites Opposition Members, and they have not focused on the fact that MAs are a widespread feature of Scottish universities. We have heard very little about Scotland’s ancient universities.
St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh, as well as Dundee and Heriot Watt, award a master of arts as a first degree as a consequence of their history. The proposal would have to be introduced on a consistent basis, applying also to Scotland, but some people would note that to attack an ancient tradition that is enjoyed by some universities in England, and at the same time to ignore a similar tradition that has developed in the ancient universities of Scotland, would be an example of the hon. Gentleman attacking the traditions of some English institutions but not showing a similar degree—
Business without Debate
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 25 November 2011.
Fire Safety (Protection of Tenants) Bill
Resumption of adjourned debate on Question (19 November), That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Debate to be resumed on Friday 20 January 2012.
Contaminated Blood (Support for Infected and Bereaved Persons ) Bill [Lords]
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 25 November 2011.
Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill
Resumption of adjourned debate on Question (21 January), That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Debate to be resumed on Friday 20 January 2012.
Kinship Carers (Parental Responsibility Agreements ) Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Hon. Members
Object.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 20 January 2012.
House of Commons Disqualification (Amendment) Bill
Resumption of adjourned debate on Question (9 September), That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. When I moved the House of Commons Disqualification (Amendment) Bill, I believe it was objected to by someone who would be personally affected by the Bill. Was it in order for that person to object?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
That is not a matter for the Chair. Any Member may object. That is up to them.
Sentencing (Knife Crime)
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
I am grateful for this opportunity to present a petition from the residents of Enfield. For too long the borough of Enfield has witnessed the deaths of young people. Tragically, the most recent was that of a young man with a very bright future, Steven Grisales, who in September became the victim of a fatal stabbing by teenagers. Youngsters get into knife crime for a number of reasons. The signatories to the petition ask the Government to introduce amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill that will allow a mandatory custodial sentence for those under 18.
The petition was raised through the efforts of many of my constituents and with the loyal support of the Enfield Independent local newspaper. The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the London Borough of Enfield,
Declares that the creation of a new offence of using a knife to threaten or endanger a person is welcome, as is the proposal to introduce a mandatory six month custodial sentence for those convicted of this offence; further declares that the new offence and sentence is only set to apply to those over 18 years of age, despite serious knife crimes being committed in this borough and elsewhere by people younger than 18.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Justice to give urgent consideration to amendments to ensure that the new offence also applies to under 18s.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000970]
petition
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
I am grateful for this opportunity to present a petition from the residents of Enfield. For too long the borough of Enfield has witnessed the deaths of young people. Tragically, the most recent was that of a young man with a very bright future, Steven Grisales, who in September became the victim of a fatal stabbing by teenagers. Youngsters get into knife crime for a number of reasons. The signatories to the petition ask the Government to introduce amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill that will allow a mandatory custodial sentence for those under 18.
The petition was raised through the efforts of many of my constituents and with the loyal support of the Enfield Independent local newspaper. The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the London Borough of Enfield,
Declares that the creation of a new offence of using a knife to threaten or endanger a person is welcome, as is the proposal to introduce a mandatory six month custodial sentence for those convicted of this offence; further declares that the new offence and sentence is only set to apply to those over 18 years of age, despite serious knife crimes being committed in this borough and elsewhere by people younger than 18.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Justice to give urgent consideration to amendments to ensure that the new offence also applies to under 18s.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000970]
Concessionary Coach Travel
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
May I start by saying how grateful I am for the opportunity to raise concerns about the potential reduction in services and increase in fares that will result from the Government’s decision to withdraw the coach concessionary travel scheme? At the outset I would like to thank the organisations, including Mencap, Age UK and National Express, for the help and advice they have given on preparing for the debate. I congratulate and thank my colleagues who have worked hard on this issue, including my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), who tabled early-day motion 2181 on the matter, my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who has led a formidable campaign against the cuts to the scheme as Labour’s transport spokesperson, and the many Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), who have campaigned hard on behalf of the many constituents who have written to say what a huge difference the scheme has made, enabling them to stay active and see friends and family. I also commend the Express & Star, Britain’s leading evening newspaper, for the great campaigning work it has undertaken to highlight this important matter and fight for a fair deal for pensioners and the disabled.
The House will know that the coach concessionary travel scheme provides half-price coach travel for disabled people and those aged over 60 in England and Wales. The bus service operators grant allows some operators of coaches and local buses in the UK, as well as community transport schemes, to reclaim some of their fuel costs. Excluding concessionary travel, it represents the main source of bus support currently funded by the Department for Transport. The provision of travel concessions on coaches does not come under the general concessionary fares legislation that applies to local bus routes. Instead, there is a non-statutory arrangement that enables long-distance coach operators to claim the grant for offering concessionary fares to all passengers aged over 60 and those who qualify as disabled.
The concessionary fare is available on selected coach services to destinations within England and Wales, and to Edinburgh or Glasgow from England and Wales. It is calculated as up to 50% at off-peak times and up to 30% at peak times. Disabled passengers should always be offered a concessionary fare, but they may be asked for proof of eligibility. More than 11 million people are eligible for the concession and around 3 million concessionary journeys were made on coaches across England in 2009-10 alone.
It was announced in the Government’s comprehensive spending review that the grant will be maintained at current levels until 2012 and then reduced in phases between 2012 and 2015. The cuts apply only in England, as the Welsh and Scottish Administrations have pledged to retain their provision of the scheme. The total reduction will be 20%, with savings amounting to approximately £17 million, forming part of the Government’s £254 million cuts to the bus service operators grant overall. As a result, the current non-statutory arrangement that enables long-distance coach operators to offer concessionary fares to older and disabled people will cease at the end of this month. Pass holders will still be able to benefit from the scheme, but they will have to book their journeys before midnight on 31 October and travel on or before 31 August next year.
Let me turn to the impact of the reductions. The Department for Transport acknowledges that the funding enables bus operators to provide more services and at lower fares than would otherwise be possible, and its own equality impact assessments show that the proposed changes to the bus service operators grant could result in operators increasing fares and/or cancelling routes deemed no longer financially viable due to declining users. The Department acknowledges also that cuts to the grant would adversely effect the equality of opportunity for, and discriminate directly or indirectly against, disabled people.
Despite that, the Department defends its decision, claiming that disabled people will be “insulated” from fare rises, as they will still be entitled to local concessionary fares, but the truth is that the cut to coach services comes on top of significant reductions in Government funding for local bus services, so many of those pensioners and disabled people with free bus passes will no longer have a bus on which to use them in their local areas.
At the same time, coach operators face some of the largest financial challenges that they have encountered in years. The DFT is looking to coach operators to continue to offer the concessionary fares increase on a commercial basis, but fuel prices mean that many operators are unlikely to be in a position to continue to offer concessionary coach fares at their current level once the grant is reduced.
National Express, for example, the biggest long-distance coach provider benefiting from the grant, with at least 30% of passengers receiving concessions on 18 routes, has drawn up plans to replace the scheme by introducing a £10 concession card that will enable passengers who are more than 60 years old or disabled to qualify for one third of the cost of coach travel, but they will not be able to use it to travel to or from an airport. That new scheme is obviously welcome, but the company itself points out that it will not match the terms of the Government-funded half-price concession, and, if a company such as National Express struggles to offer an equivalent concessionary scheme, it seems unlikely that smaller providers will be in a position to do anything like maintaining existing concessions, so passengers are bound to see increased fares and reduced services as a result of the changes.
As I said earlier, more than 11 million people are eligible for the concession, and about 3 million such journeys were made in 2009-10. As the Express and Star showed, 1.2 million pensioners and disabled people in the west midlands, including 77,000 in my borough of Dudley alone, will lose their half-price travel if the cut goes ahead. But it is not the statistics that make the impact of the cut clearest; the truth is that if pensioners and disabled people lose their right to half-price travel, their ability to get out and about, visit family and friends, go shopping or have a day out will be severely restricted.
Ken McClymont, a disabled constituent, told me:
“Taking a coach is usually the best value and most flexible means of public transport for me to use. Any changes to local services or ticket prices will have an impact on my ability to travel. I should be very grateful if you would encourage the Department for Transport to work with the coach industry to fully understand and reduce the impact of the scheme’s removal or at least delay the scheme’s withdrawal until the full impact on people like me is understood.”
Mike Nicholls from the Wolverhampton pensioners convention said:
“Rail travel is already escalating out of our reach and now coach travel will as well.”
One woman contacted me to explain how the concession enabled her to visit her granddaughter in Sussex and great-granddaughter in London several times a year. Now, those trips will cost her several hundreds of pounds more every year.
Mencap has warned that the proposal will have
“a significant and disproportionate impact on people with a learning disability. The introduction of a concessionary fare for the disabled and elderly people is recognition of the additional financial barriers individuals face... This could leave many people in the situation of choosing between stretching already tight budgets or not travelling at all. For many people with a learning disability, this could be the only means of getting out and about to visit friends and family, go shopping or generally exercising their own independence.”
The charity says that the proposal will have a
“major impact on many aspects of disabled people’s lives”
because transport
“helps to achieve greater mobility and independence.”
“However,” it says,
“most people with a learning disability do not drive and half of all families with a child with a disability do not own a car. This means that people with a learning disability are reliant on public transport. A lack of access to transport denies people with a learning disability the right to a basic level of independence, choice and opportunity, which many others take for granted.”
Age UK says:
“Making longer journeys is about to get more difficult for many older people. Removing the concession will mean higher prices and some people will think twice before travelling. People in later life that are at risk of facing loneliness and social isolation will be further put off from leaving their home.”
And look at the comments from their members. One lady wrote:
“I travel a lot by National Express as with the concession it was affordable and as a widow I felt safer and more comfortable on the coach and don’t have to worry about my luggage...looks like that will soon be coming to an end”.
Another said:
“Bearing in mind that most of the National Express coaches that I get to go down to babysit in the school holidays are mostly full with concessions I can see buses running half empty or even complete services being taken off. I think that this is a really bad decision and very short sighted. This is the tip of the iceberg and if they get away with this we all know what will go next.”
We all know that the deficit has to be tackled and savings have to be made, but all these organisations and elderly and disabled people across the country are asking the Prime Minister to honour the promise he made before the election when he said:
“Labour are trying to frighten old people by saying we’ll take away bus passes, or winter fuel payments. Well I can tell you we’re going to keep those things.”
Age UK, Mencap and coach operators across the country are all asking the Department to think again or at least to delay the plans. Age UK got it right when it said:
“There has been no public consultation on the change to coach concessions, which means disabled and older people have been excluded from the debate and decision-making process. The government should seriously consider delaying plans to cut the concession to allow enough time to consult properly with both concession pass holders and operators. With proper consideration an alternative solution could be agreed.”
Mencap is urging the Department for Transport to delay the proposed cuts and to consult coach operators and pass holders to determine a way forward that protects the scheme. Mencap believes that a more desirable solution could be reached by balancing the savings that are required with mitigating steps to preserve concessions for people who rely on the scheme so that they can remain independent and be able to make essential journeys. National Express is still asking whether the Government would consider its offer to maintain the existing scheme at a lower rate of public subsidy.
Even at this late stage, will the Minister agree to delay this cut and commit to proper discussions with organisations such as Mencap and Age UK and the elderly and disabled people they represent? Will she meet me, representatives of these organisations and operators such as National Express to discuss how these vital services for some of the UK’s most vulnerable people can be saved?
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers)
I thank the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) for raising this issue in the House today and I congratulate him on securing this debate on concessionary coach travel, which is a very important issue. From 2003, the coach concession has entitled the over-60s and eligible disabled people to half-price travel on many long-distance coach services, but the coalition has made it clear that our priority has to be reducing the budget deficit we inherited from the Government of whom the hon. Gentleman was a member. In order to achieve this, several difficult decisions have had to be taken, including this one on concessionary coach travel.
The deficit crisis we inherited has inevitably meant that some funding streams have had to be ended. But the consequences of failing to deal with the deficit would be worse, including spiralling interest rates and the kind of crisis enveloping other European countries; more and more taxpayers money being spent servicing debt; and a massive legacy of debt left for future generations. Given the scale of the crisis we inherited from Labour, it simply was not possible to insulate concessionary travel completely from the measures needed to reduce the deficit. Funding for bus and coach travel had to take a share of the cuts that we have to make, and so the decision was taken in the spending review to end the coach concession scheme from October this year.
I recognise the concern this decision causes to those who valued the coach concession and I welcome this opportunity to respond to some of the points made by Age UK and Mencap. We are listening carefully to what they have said, and I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), will be happy to meet them to discuss this matter further.
I want to emphasise that our decision does not in any way reflect our wider view of the importance of coach travel as a mode of transport. Coaches provide an important choice on many inter-urban routes, with services that offer good value for money in vehicles that increasingly offer a very high-quality and excellent environmental performance. However, taking a difficult decision to end the coach scheme has meant that we have been able to protect higher priority programmes, including the national bus concession. Even in these times of austerity, the coalition Government have been able to continue the national concessionary travel scheme for local buses, despite all the scare stories that were circulated by our opponents during the election. This support for the national bus concession scheme is contained in the coalition agreement, and it was reconfirmed by the Chancellor in the spending review.
The local bus concessionary scheme benefits about 11.5 million people every year, allowing free off-peak travel anywhere in England. In 2010-11, 1.6 million concessionary bus trips were made by pass holders in England—34% of total bus trips. This generous concession provides older and disabled people with greater freedom and independence and a lifeline to their community. It enables pensioners and eligible disabled people to have access to facilities within and outside their local area, and helps them to keep in touch with family and friends. That is why it has been a priority, despite the deficit, to protect this concession. However, a deficit reduction programme inevitably means making tough choices between competing priorities. The Government believe that keeping the local lifeline provided by free local bus travel had to be given priority over the coach concession scheme.
The hon. Gentleman complained about the lack of consultation. He will recognise that there was an urgent need to provide a credible deficit reduction plan at a very early stage of the coalition Government. If we had not done that, we would be facing the kind of crisis that has beset some of our European neighbours, who arguably have less serious deficits than we do. The only reason we have achieved the stability that we have in relation to the deficit crisis is that we have produced a credible plan. That required prompt work, which meant that it was not possible to carry out a consultation on this decision. However, an equalities impact screening assessment was carried out, and it was published on the Department for Transport’s website in November 2010. My ministerial colleague the hon. Member for Lewes recently wrote to the chairman of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee about the issue. When the funding for the scheme formally comes to an end on 1 November, a full regulatory impact assessment will be published and copies will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
As with all decisions in the spending review, we have sought ways to ease the process of implementation. This is one of the reasons the Government gave participating coach operators, and the public, 12 months’ notice of the scheme’s coming to an end. We recognised that a period of notice was very important to give operators sufficient time to plan for the removal of the grant and to give their customers reasonable notice of the changes to concessions that we had unfortunately had to make.
It is also important to note that coach operators are, of course, free to continue to offer concessionary travel to older and eligible disabled people on a commercial basis. Another advantage of allowing a period between the announcement that the Government scheme was coming to an end and this decision being implemented was to give coach operators the time to develop new concessionary travel products. Indeed, the Government were pleased to learn this week that, as the hon. Gentleman said, National Express will be offering a replacement concessionary coach scheme from 1 November this year. I understand that it will give those aged 60 and over and eligible disabled people a third off the price of coach travel in England when they buy a concession card.
Although the concessionary coach travel scheme had to go, I emphasise that the Government are still working hard to encourage more people to use buses. We fully appreciate how important they are for a range of groups in society. Bus services contribute to both of the Government’s key transport priorities: creating growth and cutting carbon. By providing an attractive alternative to the car, we can not only cut carbon, but unclog the congestion that can choke our local economies and hinder jobs and growth. Throughout our decisions in the spending review, we were determined that buses and public transport should continue to receive their fair share of funding, within the constraints of the deficit that we unfortunately inherited from the previous Government. A range of programmes aimed at making bus travel more attractive is under way. Again, that is despite the constraints on budgets.
The latest estimates show that in the last financial year, local and central government spent more than £2.5 billion on support for local bus services. That includes more than £1 billion on concessionary travel and £420 million in bus service operators grant. Reductions in that grant are to be implemented next year, but they are far less severe than many predicted and there is reason to believe that the bus industry will absorb them without a major impact on local fares. It is true that reductions in local authority budgets are having an impact on supported bus services in some areas, but by no means in all.
In addition to the formula grant that goes to local authorities to support bus services, the Government have paid almost £47 million to local transport authorities and bus operators to purchase 542 low-carbon buses across England. We are particularly keen to build the capacity of community transport organisations and have provided local transport authorities with £10 million of extra funding to support that sector. That money was found from savings made at the Department for Transport in the coalition’s first year in office. Lastly, we have established a £560 million local sustainable transport fund to support our transport goals of supporting growth and cutting carbon. Many of the successful bids to that fund are providing improvements to local bus services and facilities.
In conclusion, this Government have had to take difficult decisions to deal with the deficit that we inherited from Labour—a deficit as serious as anything that we have seen in this country’s peacetime history. Ending the concessionary coach travel scheme is one of the many melancholy consequences of the economic mismanagement of the previous Government, who borrowed heavily during the boom years and left us in a disastrously weak position when the lean years arrived. Although the coach scheme has gone, we have continued to protect free travel on local buses for older people and eligible disabled people, providing them with vital access to employment, health care and other essential local services.
Question put and agreed to.